Josh's Juggernaut class was a heavy type of melee fighter, using a shield and a mace. On request from Ken, Josh showed off his weapon: a dangerous-looking mace called a morning star, where a metal shaft ended in a ball of metal covered in pointed spikes. Luke hoped the mix of puncturing and bashing would work well on the Hollows.

  Lucy, the other melee fighter, was the complete opposite of Josh. She was short, with a thin but athletic frame, and she wore a white t-shirt and a pair of black shorts, her hair up in a bun and bandages wrapped around her fists. At first, Luke thought she was some sort of brawler, but then she equipped her weapons. They were unusual, to say the least, with hilts fastened around the forearms using leather straps. Long, thick, and pointed blades stuck out from the handles near her knuckles, meaning she cut things by either punching or slashing with her arm.

  "They’re called katars," she said when she caught him eyeing her weapons. "Adds a lot to my reach."

  Josh looked back at them over his mail-clad shoulder. "You should stay behind us, Luke."

  "Can't heal if I'm not close," Luke said. "Short-range healing only."

  "Oh, well," Josh began. "I’ll keep you safe."

  "He’ll keep us safe~" Gordon sang, strumming on a lute.

  A teal note sprang from the instrument, rose into the air, and then drifted to Luke.

  Song of Protection: Increased Resilience.

  "He’ll keep us all safe~" Gordon sang, and more notes sprang up around him, heading for the other party members. They differed in color somewhat, from teal to light pink, blue, and even yellow, like a music-filled little rainbow.

  Luke nodded in approval. "Nice."

  Gordon grinned, increasing the deep furrows in his face, the signs of a hard life. He had long disheveled hair dyed black, and was tall and thin, wearing a black band t-shirt, faded jeans full of rips, a black leather belt with studs, and more bracelets around his wrists than any man could need. He completed the look with a pair of black Ray-Bans. Gordon flashed a smile and held out his hand.

  "Gordon," he said, shaking when Luke took it. "Used to play punk rock back in the day. But the system wouldn’t let me choose an electric guitar, so I got this instead." He waved the plain lute around. "Kind of digging the sound, you know."

  He plucked a few more notes, this time without activating a skill. Luke recognized the tune, but he couldn’t name the song.

  "Pogues," Gordon said. "Dirty Old—"

  "Heads up!" Josh said. "I think we’ve got company."

  Five people came running toward them in the distance, and Luke just knew they were Hollows. None carried weapons. They all ran with intent and focus, like there was only one thing on their minds. Still, the group waited until the monsters were within range.

  Inspected Monster: Hollow. Level 6.

  "Let me," Mia said, stepping up and raising her hands.

  Gordon tapped Luke’s side with his elbow. "What's a chaos mage, anyway? Sounds cool."

  "I think we’re about to find out," Luke said.

  The space in the front of the charging hollows tore open, revealing a glowing eye that made Luke's head throb just by looking at it. Tentacles of distorted light and darkness reached through the rent in space and grabbed two Hollows. They shifted in on themselves like reality itself was bending their very form. A breath later, they exploded like water balloons filled with gore, their innards splattering to the ground. The rent in space shuddered as Mia held up her hands, straining as if grabbing hold of the opening's sides, struggling to close the hole. The eye on the other side gave her a disdainful look, then turned away, allowing the opening to close.

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  Gordon and Ken stepped up next.

  Gordon played a discordant note that appeared in the air. The jagged, crooked musical note sped toward the coming Hollows, crashing into all three. They didn’t take any damage, but their movements grew sluggish, like they struggled through syrup.

  Ken put his hands together, open palms facing up, and then moved them apart. A chill blew past the group, and a patch of ice materialized right in front of the Hollows. They skittered and fell in a heap as shards of ice formed in the air above them. Once the icy blades had formed, they sliced downward into the monsters.

  Josh and Lucy walked up to the Hollows.

  "Careful. I don't think they’re dead," Luke said.

  Just as he suspected, the monsters’ flesh writhed, knitting itself together as they healed themselves. Josh raised his morning star and bashed a Hollow's head in, then another, finishing with the third, before Lucy punched the katars into each of their chests, stopping their movement.

  "No loot," Lucy grunted.

  But Luke walked up anyway and leaned over the corpses. With a yank with Threads of Mana and some cutting with Needle of Life, he extracted their monster cores.

  "You can get a core from each one?" Josh asked.

  "Those are rare," Lucy added.

  Luke grinned and tossed them one each. "Keep doing this well, and I’ll share."

  Gordon, Mia, and Ken got one each as well. There would be plenty more of those before they were done. This group knew what they were doing. Even Mia and Ken, who'd seemed so inexperienced. Luke lifted the corpses into his inventory and then stood and walked over to the two Mia dealt with, but found the corpses were too ruined for him to loot, and he wasn’t about to pick up small pieces and put them in his pockets.

  He turned to the group and shrugged. "Guess I can't get them all."

  "What was that thing, Mia?" Lucy asked. "Gave me the creeps."

  "The spell is called Otherworldly Attention," Mia said. "It calls these things from beyond our world. I don’t know if they existed before the Integration or not, but they scare me."

  Gordon frowned. "Then why pick that class?"

  "Well," Mia began, pulling a hand through her hair. "People always say I'm kind of a mess, you know. Chaotic. So I figured Chaos Mage would fit me well. Turns out it’s a different sort of chaos."

  "It’s strong, at least," Lucy said before nodding to Ken. "What about you? Mage sounds kind of generic."

  "It is," Ken said, not bothered. "Sort of like a, well, you all know what a Mage is. I picked it because the description said I could learn new spells from scrolls, so I'm not stuck to only getting new spells when I level up. Just have to copy them into this." A thick tome appeared in his hand. "My spell book. And I get scrolls outside of the regular loot, so I already got quite the arsenal."

  "That's cool~" Gordon said, strumming a note. It floated over to Mia and Ken, split in two, and drifted onto their heads before disappearing.

  "Neat," Mia said. "Mana regen."

  "Let's get going," Josh said. "We still have to find that Queen, and we've barely started."

  Luke looked back toward the portal and found quite a lot of people following them in the distance. Not all, of course. Quite a few went in other directions. More and more people still entered the dungeon. If this place wasn’t huge, they'd soon be trying to struggle through a crowd of people. The number of monsters to fight would be almost too small to be worth anything. They needed to create some distance between themselves and everyone else.

  But before that, Luke needed to address something with the party. Standing in the middle of all those people earlier, he hadn't been able to use Weaver's Eye to hone in on his party members, since the noise of people's diseases and injuries was just too much. But, having created some distance between themselves and everyone else, he got the information he needed.

  Turning to the group, he looked at Ken first. "Ken, your heart is close to crapping out."

  Ken looked down at his chest like he'd be able to see his heart. "Is that a medical term?"

  "I think so," Luke said with a grin. "It's the walls of your aorta. They are too weak. I think it's liable to rupture."

  "So that means I'm dying?" Ken asked.

  "I think I can help you," Luke said.

  "Do it," Ken said.

  "I don't have any guarantees."

  "Don't care," Ken said, tapping on his chest right above his heart. "I'm not going to die before I fill my spell book. That would just be a poor joke."

  "I'll take a look then."

  He turned to Josh. "Also, there's something about your eye."

  "My eye?" Josh asked, blinking.

  Luke nodded. "I'm not sure what it is. I have to look closer. But I'll try to fix it."

  "And if I don't want you poking around in there?" Josh asked.

  Luke shrugged. "I won’t make you. If you want to go blind, then go blind."

  Josh paled. "Please see if you can help."

  Luke then turned to Gordon. "And you."

  "What's wrong, Cap?" Gordon asked.

  "Your liver has a bunch of scar tissue on it. You need to stop drinking."

  "Can't you heal it?" Gordon asked.

  "No."

  Gordon grimaced. "I'll think about it."