Sooo I’ve been putting this off.

  I wanted to speedrun my whole Kingdom trip ever since shit hit the fan. Which was right about the time I got off that train. At that point, the rest was inevitable. Who knows? If I didn’t make a scene with the rest of the newbies in Wattopia, maybe I wouldn’t have met Raijin. But I did.

  And here I am now with time to kill anyway. So I might as well get some much-needed training in. Admittedly, the callout-swearing was a bigger game changer than anything I’ve managed since. But I’m not stupid enough to think I won’t run into those two overleveled dicks again. Fool me once…

  Actually, did them showing up the first time count as fooling me? Or did that only happen once I assumed I wouldn’t run into them afterwards? Before I got around to hunting them down for the Vengeance Quest, I mean. Gotta remember not all of the dicks who kill me will be as lazy as Oneshot.

  Either way, it’ll be shame on me the next time unless I can kill that big dick in one move. Or else the little dick will kill me again. He’s faster than me, so I need the other one out of the way to get to him. And I don’t think I’ll catch them off-guard again with my little sword-flipping maneuver.

  To that effect, I’m finally practicing my sheathing workaround. As for why I’m doing it now? The monsters around here suck. They attack faster and more often than anything I’ve ever fought in a dungeon, and they all have more HP than anything but that Diamapede. All of which makes for great practice.

  That, and I need loot. A LOT of loot. Thankfully, what the monsters around here lack in ease, they more than make up for in drop quality. I haven’t gotten a Mythic yet. But I scored a few Legendaries, and a hell of a lot of Epics. Aaand who-knows-how-many Rares, Uncommons, and Commons.

  No good katanas yet. Not that I’m counting on finding anything better than what I have equipped. And yeah, it’s boring, but so what? Loot outweighs fun any day of the week. I mean I’m all for fun. But I’ll dive right into hell for even the slightest chance at some slightly better pants. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what dungeons basically are?

  So, in the interest of getting this little slice of hell over with, I zip through the rooms and chambers and antichambers, and past hoards of Octo-squirrels in the way. I figure since I can’t do the kingdom quite yet, I might as well speedrun the dungeons instead.

  It only takes me a few minutes to Surge my way through to the end of the mansion-maze, stopping to float just in front of a massive, opulent doorway. “BAM!!!”

  As the doors slam open, one falling off its hinges, I stroll into the grand ballroom and eye its lone occupant.

  [ BOSS MONSTER TARGETED: SQUIRREPHALOPOD DIRECTOR ]

  It’s got a bulbous, almost deflated-looking head, on top of a massive, furry body. Except instead of hands and feet, there’s just tentacles. More than one per hole. And wriggling.

  As for the callout… It took me weeks to come up with switching from ‘fuck’ to ‘fucking’. The problem, as it turns out, is the fact that ‘Fuck’ is a statement all on its own. Which is a strength when used alone, but a weakness in combination. It serves as not only the peak, but the entire point of the statement. Every accompanying word is made not only irrelevant, but a detriment to the whole.

  ‘Fucking’ is different. Useless on its own. Neither the thesis of a statement, nor even self-sufficient. It sacrifices all of that to be an ideal connective tissue. Perfect for the midpoint of a multi-callout combo. I’ve also gotten more intensity out of it than I ever managed with ‘fuck’ by itself.

  It’s the rest of my callouts I’m stuck on. Say what’s in your heart. That’s the only way any of this has ever worked. I know that. I also know I need a word before and after ‘fucking’, but I can’t think what else would be in my heart. So trial and error it is.

  “LET’S!!!”

  [ INTENSITY: 427 ]

  I draw both extending blades, even as I rush full-tilt at the house-sized tentacle-bear-thing. “FUCKING!!!”

  [ INTENSITY: 969 ]

  My katanas erupt with lightning and lava, as does the… Golem? Is that what I just hit?

  Anyway, after scissoring it with both swords, I toss them to the side and spend several minutes in a frozen moment activating the same Skill about a dozen times through the menu.

  [ COMMON ACTION: DEPLOY TETHER ]

  As far as attaching tethers at a range, I can only do it to my own stuff. For anything that isn’t mine, I have to be touching it. But whether it’s mine or not, I can only tether it to one other object. If I try to make some kind of chain reaction, all the tethers snap as soon as I’m done. Although there’s no limit to the number of tethers I can apply to different points on the same two things. From there, it’s just a puzzle. And I love puzzles.

  Finally done, I inhale just enough for all the tethers to appear and connect at once before… “GO!!!”

  [ INTENSITY: 203 ]

  Each reacting to the Skill’s lone callout, all the tethers retract. My katanas and sheaths pull each other at about half a dozen different points to SLAM them both home at once.

  My perfectly, simultaneously, if forcefully sheathed swords flail around on my hips, banging against my knees and thighs. Not the smoothest execution. And it’s a definite improvement over just using ‘fuck’… But yeah. Cutting room floor with that one. Thank god. I only tried it because it kept coming to mind and I was out of other ideas. And now, I don’t have to find another Movement Blessing callout.

  At least the tentacle monstrosity explodes with over twice as much lava, lightning, and good ol’ slashes as I hit it with. I already feel a bit better…

  So I go again. “WHAT!!! FUCKING!!! EVER!!!”

  Wow, that actually got way better intensity than ‘let’s fucking go’… At least the move itself is progressing better than its callout. As long as the two halves are mostly facing each other within the right angle, and as long as nothing intercepts them, it works every time. And, just like I hoped, it counts as me doing it. The same as if I sheathed the katanas with my hands like a normal person.

  Even if the momentum tends to send my sheathed swords flying in the vague direction of whichever piece of the puzzle hit the other one harder. I have Spacial Anchor and Equipment Reset to course-correct for that. But it’s just so sloppy, you know?

  Anyway, grabbing my swords from midair, I try another callout. “SUCK!!! FUCKING!!! DICK!!!”

  Damn. Another failure. I thought if I saved that one for when I didn’t give a fuck anymore, it’d boost the intensity. At least it did better than ‘let’s fucking go’. But it didn’t even do as well as my ‘what fucking ever’ control group.

  I mean it still kills the boss with the biggest payload of lightning, lava, and slashes yet, even if that’s just because the combo itself was so damn clean. And I still get another Epic weapon. It’s a warhammer this time, so I could give a fuck. But that’s just how gambling goes. There’d be no such thing as a jackpot if most of the rolls weren’t shit.

  Teleporting out of the dungeon, I immediately check in on my radar arrow matrix. I happened to come into a lot of these recently and I’ve been using my tethers to whip them all over the place in a kinda-sorta grid about a dozen miles in every direction.

  It’s not so bad when each one has a nearly half-mile radius. And the floating islands actually help spread them out from each throw, not only catching the things at a wider range than flatlands ever could, but also adding a great verticality to my improvised security system. It also helps that the Gaia border is relatively vacant of people who give a fuck whether someone drops a loose arrow on their property.

  So, using that to my advantage, I take ten minutes or so to immediately determine that there’s nobody in that whole range who wasn’t more or less exactly where they were the last time I checked. Aaand switching to the Vengeance Quest…

  [ HERO TARGETED: DIRTY DEEDS ]

  [ HERO TARGETED: THE THUNDER CHIEF ]

  They’re… Still in Joulelands, I think. But really, really far off. More than ten thousand miles for sure. And since ten thousand is my cutoff for abandoning my current dungeon…

  I run it again. And again. I re-check the grid every time before going back in, but there’s never any change.

  And over the next hour or so, I don’t make much progress with the callout, but I do get a lot better with the tethers. My swords still flail around a bit on each resheathe, but the whole setup becomes smoother and easier as I get better and more accurate with my tosses. But even without that, it’d still be worth it when…

  [ LEVEL UP! — LEVEL: +1=14 — SKILL POINTS: 2 — S.T.A.T. POINTS: STRENGTH=1 - TENACITY=1 - APTITUDE=1 - TILT=1 — NEXT LEVEL: 1,048,576 XP ]

  Well would you look at that? Guess it’s power-up time.

  [ NEW S.T.A.T.S — STRENGTH: MAGICAL=18 - PHYSICAL=32 — TENACITY: DEFENSE=16 - SPEED=34 — APTITUDE: MANA=24 - STAMINA=26 — TILT: CONTROL=32 - LUCK=18 ]

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It does physically hurt not to keep putting points into that same brand of Strength. But it’ll all be worth it in the end. I mean I’m still minmaxing for Speed over here, let’s not be crazy. Although I’d definitely like more, stretchier tethers. For the former, that point in Mana will help a bit. For the latter, I should invest in Control. But I mean come on… Negative Luck!? Nooo, no no NO. Goddamned RNG bullshit… Not in a million fucking years will I ever go down that road again.

  Besides, minmaxing isn’t about dumping all your points into the same attribute every time. It’s about doing that for ONE of them. Maybe two. Sometimes three if you’re weird. But even then, a good minmaxer also invests in the stuff they don’t care about, right up to the minimum level where it isn’t an inconvenience. Which is why I need my Luck to reach that 32-point milestone. The sooner I get it there, the sooner I’ll reach my peak drop rate, and the sooner I can abandon it forever.

  Removing a debuff is always more important than getting another buff. Well… Almost always. I’m not about to start putting points into Defense over here. Again, let’s not be crazy.

  But speaking of crazy, how is auto-sheathe not even a thing? And it’s not. There’s Skills that have that as a side-effect, but nothing dedicated to it. And nothing that works on a weapon in the secondary slot. I checked over and over before I settled on the Tethers. But in the absence of that, I do know which Skills to go for. One that I’ve needed for a while…

  [ UNCOMMON C.L.A.S.S. ACTION GAINED: ANIME / DEFLECT PROJECTILE — EFFECT: DEFLECT ANY PROJECTILE YOUR EQUIPPED SWORD TOUCHES AFTER ACTIVATION — RESTRICTION 1: DEACTIVATES UPON DEALING DAMAGE EXCEPT VIA DEFLECTED PROJECTILES — RESTRICTION 2: DEACTIVATES UPON TAKING DAMAGE — RESTRICTION 3: CANNOT BE ACTIVATED IN CONJUNCTION WITH ANY OTHER COUNTER SKILL ]

  Aaand one that I put off buying until the last minute because it’s a prerequisite I don’t really want. Just like the next one I need to get. And here I am already regretting it… Ah well, I added the damn Skill, so it’s not like I wasn’t gonna eat that Skill point in the end.

  [ COMMON C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE GAINED: SWORDSMAN / VIBRANIUM JAW — EFFECT: ALL BONES ENTIRELY BELOW YOUR NOSE AND ABOVE YOUR COLLAR BONE ARE MADE OF VIBRANIUM ]

  Woah, my face feels so weird… Like my joints lost all tension. Not in a bad way. Actually, this is kind nice-wait a minute…

  I bite down on my own teeth as hard as I can. It happens. I can feel myself doing it.

  But then my teeth just stop. Their inertia, momentum, everything… Disappears. Like they were never moving to begin with. Almost like…

  So wait, did I really add that Skill? Or did I just export it from another CLASS? Vibranium is a Marvel thing, right? That was never part of my theory. But if kinetic absorption is packaged in, then it does fit, so… Was this just part of the Marvel Subclasses before? And what about Tooth Articulation?

  At least Unsegmented Spine, I’m pretty sure was already a Core Skill. Just not a very popular one for some reason. My whole back and neck have felt perfectly, and permanently limber ever since I got it. Worth a Common slot, I’d say. But then, so are all my other Core Skills. I guess I expected not to get much use out of it since it’s just a prerequisite. Like the jaw thing. I bet my biting power is amazing right now. Actually…

  [ COMMON ITEM REMOVED: STEEL GRATE ]

  [ COMMON ITEM REMOVED: FLANK STEAK ]

  Throwing lava on the floor, grate on the lava, and steak on the grate, I give it a few minutes to reheat before chomping into my overly-tough dinner leftovers from a couple months ago.

  My teeth glide through the meat like butter. And the steak I just bit into looks like I’d cleanly sliced the chunk in my mouth with a sharp, if oddly curved and divoted, steak knife. Leaving my new, tougher teeth to grind down everything but themselves.

  Hm… Not the worst sensation. Just weird. But not in a bad way. Good thing too, since it’s a Passive and I don’t even want to think about what fresh hell my face would become if I used a True Random Mod Stone on it.

  Still, other than a new biting option with my Jackhammer Jaw, the main point of all that was to have any ranged defense at all. Up until now, I’ve just been on the move constantly in every fight. My entire solution to projectiles amounted to ‘can’t hit what isn’t there’. Lasers are a problem. But I’ve been lucky enough to only encounter a few of those so far. And the monsters using them weren’t exactly fast enough to follow my cheat-ass movements with their cheat-ass guns.

  For now, I do something in the first antichamber unique to all my dungeon encounters this year. I walk in, swords not only unsheathed, but unlengthened.

  [ MONSTER TARGETED: SQUIRREPHALOPOD FELLOW ]

  I pointlessly smile at the System-generated canon fodder. “Hi.”

  [ UNCOMMON ACTION: DEFLECT PROJECTILE ]

  Suctioning rigidly to whatever surfaces they happen to be attached to, all of the octo-squirrels immediately start poofing up their fluffy cheeks.

  They get poofier.

  Poofier.

  As soon as their faces freeze mid-contortion, I immediately slow time to a crawl. From then on, I’m basically playing a needlessly vegan version of Fruit Ninja.

  Fired at the pressurized speed of a crossbow bolt, one acorn pings against metal. Another. Five more. Too many to handle with just one sword.

  So I bring in my other one.

  A fourth of the massive lounge, projectiles, octo-squirrels, and everything in between gets shotgunned with lava.

  They all die. Oops.

  But more projectiles are coming in from everywhere else. Still fewer than the initial burst, more and more and then less and less fly in as I slowly, in a flash, weave my other sword through the rippling pond-like air at this speed, to intercept each and every one.

  But instead of breaking or falling or continuing on in a slightly different arc like physics normally demands, the acorns just flip themselves around. Then each one ignores all laws of inertia, gravity, and everything else I ever learned in school, to fly in the exact same arc as before, but in reverse, straight into the chest of the lovecraftian monstrosity that fired it. Huh… Why did that word come to mind? I was just thinking they reminded me of cthulhu and-

  A fireball explodes in my face the instant my sword touches it.

  [ HP: 192/512 ]

  [ IAI QUICKDRAW: CANCELED ]

  Ow… There goes that payoff… Also fuck. I was afraid of that. Alright fine. Whatever. Goddamn fucking fine. Looks like I’m skipping out on Projected Slash… AGAIN.

  But there’s nothing for it. And that’ll be in a few levels anyway, so it’s not like it ever could’ve helped me in the short term. But I was really looking forward to finally getting a ranged option. Still, denying everyone else’s ranged options takes priority. Especially when I’m over halfway dead from a single hot acorn.

  Which is… Not exactly accurate. It’s a real fireball. It’s just that every now and then, one of their faces will expand like normal, only then they’ll start to steam and redden like a tea kettle before, to their great relief, finally spitting it out. Albeit much faster and in a much straighter line than the acorns.

  In the next room, I do the same thing again. But without the lava. And while just straight up dodging all the spicy projectile vomit or whatever.

  Once all the bolts hit their reflected targets from the initial wave, I start the motion to toss all four pieces into the air. “FUCKING!!!”

  [ POWER BLESSING: LIGHTNING BLADE — INTENSITY: 1,292 ]

  [ MOVEMENT BLESSING: SURGE ]

  After a fraction of a second of lag time to ensure their spin has them facing the right way, and another frozen minute or two to connect the dots and deactivate Surge… “BITCH!!!”

  [ INTENSITY: 192 ]

  Damn. That word really is kinda ruined for me, huh?

  Still, both sheathed katanas spin haphazardly through the air and their lightning fizzles out, even as it explodes from the impact point of every deflected acorn.

  Not everything dies. Even at over ten times the original damage of the bullets, that’s only enough to take out the weakest of the squirrel-headed octopi. Actually, now that one of their tentacles is flying past me, I can’t help but notice the little rodent hand on the end of it.

  But yeah… Yeah, I can work with this. “Back.”

  [ EQUIPMENT RESET: UNAVAILABLE ]

  [ UNCOMMON ACTION: SPACIAL ANCHOR - SWORD ]

  Grabbing my primary katana from the air even as its shockwave dissipates, I repeat myself. “Back.”

  [ COMMON ACTION: EQUIPMENT RESET ]

  [ SPACIAL ANCHOR - SWORD: UNAVAILABLE ]

  Then I get to work cleaning up the rest.

  I slaughter half the room before they start to break out of their paralysis. Which is more than a little cathartic after everything I’ve hit with my new Power Blessing has tended to either die instantly, or be immune to it or something. Including all these high-level dungeon bosses. But I get it. It’s a boss in an MMO or whatever. Gonna need a whole lot more paralysis than that to lock it down.

  Similarly, once the cute tentacle nightmares recover enough to start firing again, I just wave my lava sword in their general direction, and repaint the room with the stuff.

  But then something odd happens. The dungeon wall on one side of the grand chamber… Melts. Not all of it. But a big section. And behind that? A yellow energy barrier cuts off the opulent sitting room from some kind of alien ruins. It’s covered in hieroglyphics I don’t recognize. Not that I would recognize any. But it says something that the System’s whole universal-translaty thing doesn’t universally translate it just by looking.

  But remembering from school… Hieroglyphics are basically just ancient Egyptian emojis, right? And the little picture patterns are… Surge-based? Kinda? Maybe?

  Despite no real idea what any of this is, I get the distinct impression it’s connected to Fulgora. Not the region, or the palace, or even the Surge Kingdom. The Apex herself. So, as her prophet, shouldn’t I be able to interact with whatever this is?

  I look for a switch or slot in the wall to insert a token or something.

  When I don’t find one, I try Lightning Blade.

  When that doesn’t work, I try to Surge through the transparent yellow wall.

  But the moment my lightning form touches it, I’m back to human and floating less than an inch from away. “In the name of Fulgora… Apex of Lightning-I mean SURGE… Um… OPEN SESAME!!!”

  When nothing still happens, I give lava a shot.

  I keep trying. That mainly results in me fruitlessly wailing on it for an amount of time I lose track of, to no real effect. But I’ve never been one to give up just because there’s a wall. Especially when there are still parts of my face I haven’t smashed against it yet. Oh that’s right!

  I try to bite the barrier. But it’s a flat wall, so the closest I can get is to give myself an overbite and smash my two front teeth into it.

  That does nothing.

  And all too soon, I have to give up anyway. Time for my daily trip to the store.

  With a sigh, I run through the whole place and finish the boss with three consecutive Working Fucking Title callouts.

  Once I’m finally outside with a sweet new Legendary pike, I spend a few subjective minutes over a few subjective seconds Tethering up all the radar arrows near enough for that. I don’t fling them over to me or anything. Turns out, attaching a tether to something I own lets me add it back to my inventory. I don’t even have to connect the tether. A good thing too, since my attach range is something like a thousand times my connect one.

  I abandon the rest of my radar arrows as I head off to buy a whole lot more. I’ve never been one to waste resources, or even litter. But I spread those things over like 30 miles or something. Not like I was even paying attention to where they all fell from my toss over a hundred miles up. And at that point, fuck it. Not like I’m coming back here again anyway.

  With that in mind, time to go shopping.