The sounds of several very human footfalls resound throughout one small portion of the walkways which hover hundreds of feet in the air above the concrete floor of “The Basement”. The feet making the sounds belong to a few brave humans and their ally.

In all 360 degrees around the humans and their rather monstrous ally hear the sounds of combat surrounding and terrifying the party. Inhuman monsters of all sorts fill surround the walkways in all three dimensions, but even though the beasts rage they seem almost helpless in the face of their mysterious and determined foe; the guardian of the humans.

The beast who stands between them and a delicious, and normally easy, meal is no ordinary foe. A monster, every bit as monstrous as they are, fiercely protects both humans and its own monstrous allies. The creature lashes out at them with an array of weapons, including both a gun and a floating bow, attacks that stem from the walkway the monsters are standing on or are hovering over to strike their foes, or even the monsters themselves by ordering beasts he shoots to turn on their former allies.  

Every time he hits a foe with his dangerous gun the foe in question betrays its former allies and goes berserk. Whether it’s a hound getting shot and beginning to bite or tackle other members of its pack, or a “Partygoer” getting stabbed by a stray walkway tendril and tackling other “Partygoers”, it seems that this creature invites treachery unless someone is on his side. 

The biggest advantage the creature possesses over the teeming, possibly endless masses of foes arrayed against it is that it is capable of strategizing. While the disorganized horde of enemies that futilely launch themselves at Gustavo and his party has bodies, effectively endless numbers of them, they are not bound together by a gestalt consciousness, nor do any of them think through their attacks individually. The monsters who hurl themselves at Gustavo cannot and do not organize themselves.

They get hit by their own attacks, they get in each other’s way, and they go from being bodies to becoming experience for Gustavo. During the time Gustavo hones his powers by fighting against the disorganized legions under the influence of the Universal Consciousness opposing him, the figure sharpens his skills, making clever use of “Afarkaup Avarkostir” and becoming noticeably more dangerous because of it.

The dangerous perk dramatically bolsters how much experience the sarkic being gains each time he adds a creature to his side. Over the course of the minutes it takes for the lad and his party to inch closer and closer to the location of the vault he steadily begins to transform into something wholly more dangerous than something comparable to a toddler with superpowers: an experienced and dangerous combatant.

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My power, still surging in the wake of my hivemind gaining more human participants, allows me to find it easier than ever to showcase my powers. Even as I clash across the battlefield, whether it is alongside my small but growing army of entities or with my human allies, I confidently utilize my powers to push us further and further into the level.

Thanks to my powers undergoing continual growth I find them easier and easier to use. My gratitude towards “Afarkaup Avarkostir” grows with every passing minute. It is a remarkable power that allows me to grow even slightly every time I slay or corrupt an enemy!

“God there really is just an endless number of them huh?” Marco remarks, to the “Me” that is fighting alongside him as we both turn our guns on a few “Death Moths”. I smirk and nod at the man, though without turning to face him.   

“So long as the portals stay open, those assholes keep coming out of the sky.” I tell him, even as I point my gun skyward and fire it without looking to aim. Marco looks upward and visibly grimaces when he sees my attack hit a distant moth.

“How close are we to the vault?” He asks me, even as we begin to move again. At this point, we’ve been slowly and steadily making our way atop the walkway we are on for several minutes. I understand that he is feeling impatient. We’ve found ourselves in a shitty situation, and there’s no good way through it…

“We’re still a good distance from the damn thing. But we’re getting there.” I remark, honestly. At the same time, I feel myself growing stronger even while I, the version of me that is here with Marco, Anna, and copies of our friends, am not fighting.

Another version of me is distantly fighting far-off foes and assaulting any of the moths that attempt to fly away from the fight. That version of me is aggressively utilizing The Force and fighting alongside entities that we’ve managed to corrupt.

That “Me” is in the midst of a primal battle and has to fight while preventing enemies from escaping. It’s rough, but the only way I can make it easier is to rescue Narlin. Even with how fast my powers are growing there’s no chance I can take out one hundred portals in one go…

“We’ve just got to keep going. If we stop…” I tell Marco, causing him to nod at me.

“If we stop it’s game over for at least one entire settlement. At least.” He says, painfully aware of what’s at stake. My words also seem to motivate him, and he doesn’t complain as we begin to move again.

We continue our new but proud “tradition” of darting down the walkway we’re stuck on for several moments. As we make our moves more of the fierce moths who we have clashed with dozens of times appear again, all eager to devour us. Some of them are gunned down by Marco and I, others get hit by a subtle telekinetic wave I hurl at them, and a few are defeated by the girls in the group. We don’t even stop as we mow them down and convert them to our side.

For the better part of a truly grueling half an hour this trend continues. It is only when we’re all slick with sweat, even me, that we finally find ourselves nearing the end of the walkway that will allow us to venture towards where the vault is.

“Finally!” I say, as I dart towards the side of the narrow walkway my allies and I are on. I look over the edge of the thing and estimate that the distance between where my allies and I are, and the walkway must be close to a few hundred feet. It is the sort of distance that makes one feel weak in the knees… Nonetheless we are outside of the range of the radon gas, and thus safe from one of the more immediate dangers, as well as close to the entrance of the vault.

“Is that where the vault is?” Anna asks, looking at me even as I begin to seize control of more portals, specifically ones close to where my allies and I are. I feel the portals snapping shut and vanishing, which goes unnoticed by my allies, but they don’t miss the sight of more enemies coming at us from the direction of the portals I just shut down.

We all sigh in annoyance, almost in unison, as we all turn our guns and spears in the direction of the monsters, and we glance at each other. No verbal communication happens but I can sense that our minds are on similar wavelengths as we all mentally retrace our footsteps until we realize who took out the last few creatures.

I am the first to realize that the last member of my faction to corrupt an entity was me, and that causes me to turn and look at Lucy. Moments later everyone else comes to the same realization. Lucy notices our looks and laughs as she begins to open fire on our foes. When they turn on each other, fangs and acid and eerie smiles all at each other’s throats, Rachel is the one to speak.

“So, what’s the plan?” She asks, as she waits for me to educate the party on how to proceed. I silently decide to apply some of my more potent flesh-warping powers for one of the first times ever and I turn to face Lucy as soon as Rachel’s question leaves her lips.

“This won’t be pretty… Lucy, care if I demonstrate my plan using you?” I ask her, rhetorically but to show me gaining the faith and support of those I control. She approaches me and I place a hand on her forehead. As I do I close my eyes and visualize the change I seek to cause. I picture enormous wings jutting out from the top of her back and I make a soft noise as I envision the changes taking hold swiftly and painlessly.

I sense one of my perks, “Shaper”, taking root deep in Lucy’s heart even as I hear her newly acquired wings rip their way free of her shoulder. The power, a direct and potent example of my ability to alter bodies, is not one for the faint of heart and that is revealed as Lucy lets out a loud noise in response to how my power feels.

The sound she makes as my powers reshape her on a deeply physiological level is not one of pain. Nonetheless, it is one of great, some might even say enviable, emotion. I open my eyes and find myself locking eyes with Lucy, who seems… delighted, to feel my powers.

“That… Wow.” She says, her eyes revealing how remarkable the sensation of having her body transformed by me felt. I resist the urge to make a joke about magic fingers, but only barely.

“Now, go ahead and jump. Trust your instincts and take the leap.” I say, even as I smile at Lucy. Inside of the two of us we can feel a loud, curious audience eagerly watching this interaction. That audience, both human and entity alike, are very interested in watching the two of us. Lucy takes a deep breath right before she does as I ask.

My party and I watch as she descends. For a few moments she simply falls, gracefully descending rather peacefully, before her wings begin to flap at an impressive pace and slow her descent considerably. She doesn’t attempt to stop completely but it’s clear that she will land and be completely unharmed when she touches the floor. I turn to my companions and smile.

“Alright, it’s time for the rest of us to get our wings.” I tell my allies, causing them to turn and look at me with shocked expressions on their faces.

“Wings…” Mutters Anna, causing me to turn to her and smirk.

“Anna? Are you volunteering?” I ask, a bright grin on my face as I look at her. I watch her catch her breath but when she turns to face me there is a surprising smile on her face and she nods, delightedly, at me.

I brighten further and I approach her, putting a hand on her forehead and activating my powerful perk once more. I replicate the exact process by which I gave Lucy her wings, and when Anna gets hers she does not hesitate to leap off of the walkway. This sets off a tidal wave of enthusiasm, and in no time at all I find myself swamped by people eager to get their wings and to leap down to the floor below.

It takes only a few minutes before the last of my companions has leaped to the ground from the walkway. When I am the last member of my retinue to need to reach the floor, I gaze at part of the walkway just ahead of me. I focus on it for a second, as I mentally take control of the corruption which has been here for a few minutes now.

Throughout my whole adventure I have been steadily spreading corruption to almost anything and everything I’ve touched. Doing so has allowed me to become a master of subtly moving my corruption into objects both big and small, a skill which benefits me as I seize control of much of the corruption I’ve spread in the area.

Without speaking I will the corruption I command to concentrate in a single part of the walkway. The corruption becomes so dense that it visibly manifests as a small puddle of red ooze. I study it for a moment before I shape the stuff with my mind and transform it into a small but potent body, a blank receptacle for my will, and doing so only takes a few moments.

The ooze is putty in my hands… or my mind at least, and so messing with it is easy for me. When I have made a small golem out of ooze I infuse it with a shard of my consciousness, something that is easy for me to do thanks to some of the ways that perks like “Faustian Bargaining” and “Corrupted Consciousness” work.

The golem, empowered by my will, is a deadly fighting machine and I leave it to continue the good fight I’ve started while I step onto the safety railing that would normally keep people from falling off the walkway. I relax and I step off of the rail, causing me to feel the stale air around me and nothing else.

I allow myself to enjoy the feeling of the air around me for a moment before I use the equivalent of “Shaper” but for myself, a perk named “The Flooded”. This potent perk allows me to reshape my body with impressive ease. I use this power to grant myself basic but functional wings.

I flap my wings to somewhat slow my descent and in a matter of moments I find myself approaching the ground. Unlike my allies I am not burdened by the frailties of human anatomy and physiology so I only slow my descent the amount needed to ensure that I don’t damage the floor underneath me when I inevitability land.

I do hit the ground hard, performing a standard “Superhero Landing”, but not hard enough to crack it. My form is sturdy, no doubt thanks to my unnatural assortment of perks. My companions all turn to face me as I get up and they all smile brilliantly at me.

“Hey gang. Let’s keep moving. We’re… close.” I explain, even as I sense something changing in the air around me. I suddenly feel a strange energy fill the air around me, even as I study our surroundings. My companions, eager to see the vault, chalk up my interrupted sentence to the cover story I concocted with my actual companions.

We are currently back on the ground floor of the level. That means that we’re in the same incredibly lengthy hallway we were in when I first traveled to the settlement and helped people. We’re also a stone’s throw away from the vault, which I suspect must teleport throughout the level as only that explains why we could find it as easily as we could while others searched for it for decades.

I point in the direction of the vault and my companions immediately begin to move in that direction. As they do I glance behind me and I see the dense radon field we barely avoided, as well as the litany of bodies whose corpses inhabit the field as a tribute to the fallen and as a warning for anyone who’d come here to turn back.

Distantly I can still hear violence, as well as sense my hivemind growing larger and larger with every passing second as more monsters are absorbed into it. I shiver at the thought of what’d have happened if I wasn’t here, and I turn back in the direction of my actual destination even as my clones continue to fight.

I dart forward, effortlessly catching up to my allies. As I catch up to them I point them to a side hallway that is actually where we need to go. They’ve spent a healthy two minutes getting a bit ahead of where I just was but there’s no real way they’d stand a chance of getting away from me given how fast I can be, but beyond that it’s clear they’d get lost without me showing them the way.

We enter the narrow side-passage and begin to walk down it. As we do this I sense more of the strange energy from earlier, which causes me to tap the ground beneath my feet hard and in doing so I infuse it with some of my corruption. I use just enough corruption for my powers to register what I’ve done and allow me to exert control over the corruption, because I’m not planning anything serious with this particular bunch of the stuff.

I wait as my mind creates another window through which I can perceive reality. When it’s done I mentally pilot the small patch of the stuff, effectively making it a vehicle for my mind, ahead of my party and into the end of the hallway. Just beyond the hallway is another wide area where the entrance to the vault is supposedly located.

As though I am playing a video game I drive the astral vehicle of my own creation and possession, for the moment at least, until my mind reaches the end of the hallway. When I do move my mind darts forward, out into a big and surprisingly narrow part of the ground floor of the level. I am reminded, somewhat vaguely, of the place on which the settlement where my allies lived before, they were recruited for this odd mission was built.

I allow my astral self to explore the place a bit, facing in every other direction before it faces in the direction of the entrance to the vault. On two sides the narrow area is surrounded by impressively solid walls, and another side is one long walk until someone gets fairly close to the settlement I spent part of today in but the problem lies in that last, fourth, side.

On the fourth side, the one that allows explorers to explore in the direction my companions and I were heading in if we continued to walk in the direction of the walkway we were just on, which is also the direction we were heading in until we hit the wall is a single stranger. The creature is in front of a few stairs leading up to a door made of gold. That must be, according to even the map in my mind’s eye, the vault! The vault shows up on my mini map, as it should… The creature doesn’t.

The figure is tall and fierce looking, wearing an old-timey suit of armor made of well-maintained metal and holding a massive sword. This creature also does NOT show up on my mini map, which is the real problem. A lot of our understanding of this region has to do with my mini-map, but this one little beast somehow ignores that outright. How fascinating, and how deeply annoying.

At a glance the newest creature to stand between my party and I’s goals seems to be human. The stranger does not move, and instead he maintains an eerie, silent vigil regarding the area in front of him. He must be some kind of guardian for the vault!

I keep an eye on the figure and when my allies and I are close to the end of the hallway I make everyone stop. As everyone comes to a stop I begin to allow my mind to conceptualize some situations in which my team confronts the stranger and we win. My corrupted allies and I gleefully take advantage of the hivemind’s potent calculative abilities to begin to strategize and help me keep track of possible ways to defeat the foe, all of which depend on whether the foe wants to him to surround.

“There’s a creature out there. It looks like a man. It has been watching the area in front of the entrance to the vault. It’s clearly a guardian of the vault though I’m unsure of whether it’s been placed there by the constructors of the vault or by successful raiders who want to ensure no one else comes and gets their stuff. Either way… we need to get past him. I have a plan but I’m unsure of whether it’ll work.” I tell my companions.

They all have different levels of combat experience and none of them are delighted by what we must do but at the same time none of them are planning a mutiny or a revolt over this. They know the importance of the vault, especially in the wake of the aftermath of the battle atop the walkways. A battle which really hasn’t ended yet.

“We need what’s in the vault. With it we can shut the portals down and safeguard the settlements that dot the level. But to get to that we must get past this guy. While I distract him, dart past me and get into the vault.” I explain, gently. This causes the eyes of my friends to widen in surprise, which makes me laugh.

“Listen, there’s only one of this guy and there are many of us. I can tell from the way he examines his surroundings that he’s hostile towards us. So that means we can’t just dart past him, at least not permanently. If we want to win we need to get an object from a chest in the vault, which I can do, but that means getting into the place. We can overwhelm him with our numbers, so long as we’re careful. I’ll use myself and the entities I’ve captured to make it past our foe.” I explain, which causes my friends to relax a bit.

It seems that they thought I’d be on my own, but since I’m not they can breathe a bit easier.

“Alright, wait until I’ve distracted him and got him away from the door before you sprint for it. It’s a big thing made of gold, you can’t miss it.” I reveal, waiting for my allies to nod at me before I nod back at them and turn in the direction of the exit out of the slender hallway. I will my floating bow to stay here with a mental command, and then I step out of the hallway. I am immediately seen by the stranger guarding the door to the vault.

He does not speak, but he does glare at me with a look of annoyance. His sword was previously pointed downward, but he kept a hand around its hilt in case he needed to defend himself against some foe. He proceeds to lift the thing up to point it at me in a display meant to intimidate. I let out a hearty laugh as I lunge at my enemy, determined to get him away from the door.  

As I dash at him I “Observe” the man, scanning him for any information that could be useful. I am shocked but I don’t slow down when I learn his title: He is the “Keymaster”, an apparently enigmatic entity like I, effectively, am and normally he is a kind soul but my scan also reveals that he is, actually, hostile against me and my allies. The system does not tell me what his reasons are, it seems my level with the skill is not high enough for me to do something as exceptional as pry into someone’s past.

Right as my fist is about to collide with his stomach he deflects my blow using the flat of his sword and superhuman reflexes. I am sent out of the way ever so slightly, but even as I sail through the air I can’t help but smile. I am excited for this conflict! As I relax and enjoy the sensation of the wind on my skin, I begin the process by which I call entities who have been tamed by my powers to fight at my side. Before I hit the ground a few have actually appeared behind me, ready to guard me.