Jerik kept jogging across the city, not pausing until he was directly outside of the safe house he’d selected. He slid to a stop in front of the camera over the door and bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. He looked up as the camera made a buzzing sound. The indicator light on it flashed from red to green after a second, and the door unlocked with a faint click, swinging open. Whoever was in the control room pressed the entry button after making sure it was him and that he was alone. He stepped inside without haste.
His chosen hiding spot was small, but comfortable enough. The strike team had searched for a place that was both far enough away from Magnus’ base in the center of the city, and also quiet enough that their traffic wouldn’t be as easily noticed. Once inside, they’d stuck to the hideout nearly every day, mentally preparing for their job. Except for Jerik, of course. He couldn’t pass up on the chance to get Maker’s Mark. Jerik locked the door behind him and made his way down the long hallway to the main room.
“So I heard you fought Averin,” a voice said to his right. Jerik turned to see a tall woman in dark green robes leaning against the wall right next to the entry. Morgan. She was about the same age as Jerik himself, in her early twenties, but he’d never learned her real age. She liked to keep her details to herself whenever possible. A sentiment he agreed with all too well.
“Been watching the feeds, have you?” Jerik asked, looking away from her and placing his rifle on the makeshift planning table that had been set in the center of the room. He took off his cloak as well and tossed it beside Maker’s Mark. “Yes, I killed him.”
“It’s part of my job to watch the feeds,” Morgan said smoothly, unsticking herself from the wall and sauntering over. Jerik watched her out of the corner of his eye, noting the way her dark red hair flowed, the way he could catch a glimpse of her long legs through the split in her robes. It was more of a dress than a set of robes, he thought, the way it clung to her figure and accentuated her hips with each step. Her full lips were curved into a smirk as if she knew exactly what was going through his mind.
“I can’t be a very good information broker if I don’t keep up with the news,” she said, now turning to lean up against the war table. “I assume he was after you for purchasing Maker’s Mark.”
“No way to know for sure. He could have been after me because I was a target for one of his side jobs.”
Morgan raised one delicately trimmed eye, appearing to think it over. “Perhaps. There aren’t many who consider killing for points to be worth it.”
“Well, I didn’t make that one worth it for him,” Jerik replied, a satisfied smile coming to his face. “Shame I couldn’t get more out of it.”
He checked his points as he thought of it, almost as if to confirm his statement. Sure enough, his kill of Averin had only earned him fifty points. The man was notorious for never having many points to his name. Rumors were that he gave all his points to Magnus. Others said he dropped them on the ground after a kill, leaving them for some lucky wanderer to find.
“I can’t help but notice that you didn’t lock on to him,” Morgan said. Jerik rolled his eyes. Megan was one of the thousands of people who had spent fifty-thousand points to buy more detailed information on the feeds. Where most just saw kills, deaths, boss kills, and streaks, she saw far more. Every minute detail of a fight was recorded in the feeds, and those who had unlocked the [Spymaster] perk from the Grand Exchange could read it all.
“I’ve told you this before,” he said impatiently. “I don’t lock on to my targets. Do you know how many people have an Eye of Prediction? He’s got to have one. He’d have known, and I was far enough away for him to duck behind cover.”
“I understand the reasoning,” she said. “But what if he learns that you blind-fired?”
Jerik frowned thoughtfully, trying to understand what possible consequences could come out of that. “So what if he does? Doesn’t that just mean I got the drop on him instead?”
“It will infuriate him,” Morgan said firmly. She seemed very sure of the idea. “He’ll be incensed that you beat him without actually seeing where he was.”
“I knew where he was,” Jerik grumbled. Morgan opened her mouth to say something else, but he held up a hand. “We’ll talk about it later. It’s time to get to work.”
Her tantalizing smirk faded in an instant, replaced by a serious look. A second later, they were both alerted to the sound of approaching footsteps. Right on time for the meeting, he thought. The door leading deeper into the safe house opened, and the rest of the strike team appeared. Charlie was in the lead, his blonde hair a tangled mess above his spectacles. They were for show, Jerik knew. Charlie said they made him look smarter. The consensus seemed to lean the other way.
Behind Charlie were the two sisters, Katrina and Benji. Both had vibrantly pink hair, though Benji’s was a shorter pixie cut. The two sisters were an incredible team, able to take on nearly three times their usual number with proper cover. They were the power he needed for the mission, and hiring them had been well worth the cost. Charlie was his demolition expert. He had the charges and equipment necessary for the others to break in.
Charlie and Katrina nodded as they entered, and Benji flashed him a wide smile. She had a mischievous air about her as if she were always seconds away from pulling some gigantic prank. Jerik assumed that if they knew each other longer, he’d be the victim of many such pranks. At least for the moment, they all looked serious. He returned their greetings with a nod of his own, then slammed his fist onto a button on his side of the table. There was no sound, but he knew that all around them, their temporary hideout was going into lock-down mode.
“Now that we’re all here,” Jerik said, “We can’t be interrupted. Time to make sure you’re all aware of the plan.”
They gathered around the table, staring down at its blank surface. Jerik gestured to Morgan, who weaved her hands, casting a spell. Lines of light formed in the air and fell onto the table in various patterns, making a bird’s eye view of the center of Zenken City. It was just large enough to show Magnus’ entire compound, as well as the point that he’d take up with his rifle.
“Never hurts to double-check,” Benji said with a grin. She frowned as she studied the map in silence for a few seconds, then pointed. “That’s our entry point?”
‘It is,” Jerik confirmed. “It’s a Legendary-Class Barrier shield. You’re sure you can take that down, Charlie?”
Charlie waved a hand, smiling confidently. “Easily. I crafted the perfect EMP explosive for it.”
That was the main benefit of hiring Charlie, of course. Out of all the humans that had been transported to Menora, he was one out of a handful of people who had learned the finer points of the system they’d found themselves in. He’d learned how to craft things, and could even learn new blueprints by reverse-engineering items that he found. He was the mind behind the drone that Jerik had used.
“You know,” Charlie continued, looking pointedly at the rifle Jerik had set on the table, his eyes wide. “If we had an extra hour, I could learn how to augment that without too much trouble. I can do it cheaply, too.”
“No time for that,” Jerik said gruffly. He tapped the table sharply, bringing their attention back to the map. He wasn’t about to admit to them that he was running on dregs. He already owed Morgan nearly fifty thousand points. “After Charlie knocks out that barrier, you three are going to make a beeline for this building here. It’s their supplies. Part of the contract is that this has to be destroyed. You can even grab some things if you want, and I’ll give you a cut of the sale price. What’s important is that Magnus’ supplies get hit.”
“That’ll certainly piss him off,” Katrina said, her eyes shining at the prospect. “Mind you, that will probably bring an army down on us.”
“That’s the idea,” Jerik agreed. “If he sends his men out, he has to show himself too. He can’t let it be known that he’d hide from only three people.”
“True,” Katrina said. “But it’ll be damn near impossible for us to get back out alive.”
“That’s why I’ve hired Morgan.”
“The information broker?” Benji asked, looking skeptical. “I mean, she’s got a nice robe on, but she can’t beat a small army on her own.”
“No,” Morgan agreed, speaking for the first time. “But I can make a teleportation circle faster than anyone else.”
The other three looked at her with raised eyebrows, quietly impressed. Mobility magik was expensive, and very few took the time needed to master it. That alone would be a huge help when they were so outnumbered, not even counting the other spells she might know. She wasn’t well-known as a fighter, but any helpful magik was good magik if it even slightly increased the chance of them surviving this hardcore rush.
“So once we hit the supplies,” Benji said, speaking up again as she leaned on the table. “What next? We just get out with Morgan’s teleportation magik?”
“Not quite,” Jerik corrected. “First we have to have a reason for Magnus to come out of hiding.”
“And losing his supplies isn’t enough?” This was Charlie. “He’s gotta have nearly a million points worth of gear in there, judging by the size of that building.”
“Possible,” Jerik said. “But don’t forget that they have hundreds of thousands of points spread between the members. They can just replace the gear we destroy or steal.”
“Still,” Charlie demurred, looking skeptical. “I wouldn’t let anyone get away if they took all that from me. And if they have that many points between them, then they’ll probably be focused on obtaining an epic shard.”
Jerik frowned thoughtfully at those words. It was the one that hadn’t occurred to him. In the grand quest that Jel-Menora had set the humans he’d abducted, the goal was simple. Reach a million points. Except that it wasn’t that simple. One of the thousands of players, forming a quick group of friends, had reached two hundred and fifty thousand points in two days. Everyone had just assumed that they would win the quest in a week. But he’d been unable to get points past that mark. At least, that was until another player had found the first epic shard.
Epic shards were only dropped by a handful of extremely powerful and rare monsters. The kinds that took platoons of soldiers or a highly-geared strike squad to take down. Only six had been defeated in the past three years. Jerik glanced sideways, sharing one long, concerned look with Morgan. Her face matched his sudden feeling of ill omen. Without a word, she retrieved her tablet and opened the feeds. They all watched her in silence for a moment, noting the growing frown of concern on her face.
“Damn!” She suddenly exclaimed. “Jerik, pull up the leaderboard.”
He did so at once. The leaderboard always showed the top one hundred people in terms of points. It updated instantly as well. He mimicked Morgan once he reached the top, where Magnus had sat ever since betraying the captain of his old group, the Dawn Vanguard. “Damn!”
There, at the very top of the leaderboard, was Magnus’ score. The only problem was that it had jumped up by about a hundred thousand points. He almost couldn’t believe it, but there was no denying the evidence.
1st: Magnus Oran (867,952 points).
“He got a shard,” Morgan said, flipping her tablet around so they could all see it. Jerik glanced back down at the tablet to see Magnus’ score increase by another twenty thousand. “They’re selling gear at the Grand Exchange.”
Jerik closed his tablet at once and snatched up Maker’s Mark. “There’s no time. We’re hitting him now!”
“He’ll have his entire army with him!” Charlie exclaimed. “There’s no way we could reach him! Just give it up, mate. He won.”
“Not on my watch,” Jerik snarled. His rifle secure, he turned to Morgan. “I need points. All the points you can spare right now.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he exhaled loudly, showing his impatience. A second later, she’d thrown a chip at him. Eighty thousand points. Good enough for sixteen extra rounds of Maker’s Mark. He purchased it right then and there and knew a drone would be moving toward him now. He pulled the lever back on Maker’s Mark, knowing he had to have it ready. “Next favor is-”
She didn’t wait for him to say it, as she already knew. With an exasperated look on her face, she waved her hand in a circular motion. A spinning disk of light formed in the air between them, showing him the Grand Exchange. A four-story building directly in the center of Zenken city. And Charlie had been right on the money, for there was an army there. Jerik took a deep breath and placed the butt of the rifle against his shoulder. “Well, wish me luck.”
And without another word, he jumped into the portal.
