Our monster encounters had gotten tougher and more frequent the closer we got to the dungeon. By the time the tower—or the skyscraper, rather—came into view, the land was practically swarming with them, more resembling a battlefield ravaged by magic and gouged by projectiles than the idyllic plains it should have been.

  Thankfully, we weren’t alone. Wisdom’s army had mobilized, capturing the bulk of the horde’s attention, while dozens of Hunters of varying levels operated independently. Some fared better than others, and bodies of all shapes and sizes lay strewn about. Some were more intact than others.

  To call it an apocalyptic hellscape would’ve been an understatement.

  Luckily, all the practice Aerion and I had on our way here paid off. We’d not only leveled up and stacked an insane amount of stats, but we’d also learned how these enemies fought. They’d proven both smarter and tougher than most things we’d faced, but not unbeatable, so long as we played it safe and picked our battles.

  It wasn’t until we fought our way to the edge of the enormous crater—the one the skyscraper had punched into the earth—that I realized how tall the building was, and how hard getting inside would be.

  “It’s incredible,” Aerion said, staring up at the structure in awe.

  I nodded. “If there was any doubt this thing came from Earth, it’s gone now.”

  I’d pretty much expected as much when we’d first seen it. What I hadn’t expected, though, were the five faded letters visible on a half-broken sign near the base.

  T O K Y O

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” I muttered.

  “What is it?” Aerion asked, glancing nervously at the nearby battles. We’d picked a clear spot for now, but with chaos everywhere, that wouldn’t last long.

  “It’s a massive city,” I said. “On Earth. Until recently, it had the distinction of having the highest population of any city on our planet. Incomparable to anything on Axius.”

  My thoughts drifted back to Cosmo’s choice of bar. Had he taken me there intentionally? But that would imply he’d known. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  Besides, it wasn’t like that was the only place he’d brought me to. He’d taken me to Hawaii and, of course his regular bar in space.

  “Is that so? Dominium is quite large, you know,” Aerion countered, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  “What’s Dominium’s population?” I asked.

  “Several hundred thousand souls, at least,” Aerion said, thinking. “Perhaps more than half a million.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, the city this thing came from is over seventy times that.”

  Aerion blinked. “Seventy times?”

  “Easily. It’s on a scale you wouldn’t believe. I’m guessing this dungeon will take us through each floor of the skyscraper. With dungeon shenanigans, they’ll probably be way bigger on the inside too.”

  “That would be… interesting,” she admitted. “But how do we enter? There are too many monsters to carve a path through.”

  “There’ll be a door on the ground level somewhere,” I said. “We might have to circle until we find it, but—wait.” I paused. Something down in the crater caught my eye. “Does that look familiar to you?”

  Aerion followed my gaze, eyes widening in recognition. “Is that..?”

  A familiar-looking elf in the distance was engaged in battle with a squad of skeletons and a tentacle blob monster. Another warrior I didn’t recognize was busy smashing the skellies with a warhammer, while the elf in question hung back.

  When the nearby blob of tentacles suddenly collapsed to the ground, dead, any doubt I had disappeared.

  “Yep. That’s Richard, alright. What do you say we go give him a hand? I think we just found our way in.”

  Aerion and I fought our way toward his position—or rather, we bypassed most of the fighting. Thanks to my Grace build, I could fold space, and thanks to my inventory, I could stuff Aerion inside, letting me flash through several enemy lines. By the time they realized where I’d been, I was long gone.

  That wasn’t viable closer to the skyscraper where throngs of monsters almost formed a solid wall, unfortunately, or we could’ve used that tactic to blitz the entrance.

  As it was, it only took me a few seconds to reach Richard.

  “Hey, stranger!” I called, retracting my helmet as I discreetly brought Aerion out from behind me.

  He looked up, blinked, and did a double take. “Greg? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, probably,” I said, grinning. “Trying to get into the dungeon.”

  Richard laughed, shaking his head ruefully. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes. We got close, but we’ve been bogged down for hours.” He gestured to the middle-aged dark-haired woman beside him.

  Like me, she wore heavy armor, though hers was made of a different type of exotic metal, and her helmet resembled the ones Greeks and Romans wore with the T Shaped openings. It showed quite a bit of her face.

  “Ah, introductions—”

  “Save it,” I said, cutting Richard off as a Humvee came barreling toward us, its roof gunner unloading a stream of .50 cal rounds in our general direction. “Later. Deal with that first.”

  Richard grimaced. “Arianna, you mind?”

  “Of course not,” she said softly, before sprinting toward the Humvee like she had a death wish.

  “Uh, is she gonna be alright?” I asked, looking after her small frame with worry. Even with plate armor, the short, slender woman didn’t look particularly durable. Then again, stats completely broke common sense, so I knew better than to judge.

  “She’s Vigor’s Champion,” Richard said. “Trust me, she can handle it.”

  I arched a brow. “Vigor’s, huh?”

  It would be interesting seeing how my own Vigor build compared to the Champion herself. I had a feeling I’d give her a run for her money.

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  “Just watch,” Richard replied. Was that pride in his voice?

  Having decided Arianna was the biggest threat, the gunner focused his fire on her, with dozens of rounds slamming into her body. They didn’t even slow her down.

  She crashed into the Humvee like a force of nature, and the collision was almost comical. The vehicle crumpled like it had slammed into a fully loaded semi at speed, flipping through the air end over end before landing upside down, squashing both of its occupants along with a squad of skeletons that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Arianna jogged back to us, her expression completely blank.

  “I worry there is no end to this,” she said flatly. “We should make haste.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Most people would’ve been grinning after something like that, basking in their rightful glory.

  Arianna just looked… bored. Maybe a little irritated.

  I decided right then and there that I liked this little lady.

  “Indeed,” Richard said. “But now that we’ve earned ourselves a bit of respite—Greg, Aerion? Meet Arianna. Arianna, my good friends Greg & Aerion.”

  “Is that right?” Arianna asked, shaking my hand before glancing curiously at Aerion.

  I shot Richard a questioning look.

  He frowned and shook his head.

  Good. He hadn’t told her who we were.

  “Just a couple of Hunters trying to help out where we can,” I said.

  Arianna nodded appreciatively. “We truly appreciate the help. I am Arianna Duraes, summoned Champion of Vigor.”

  Both Aerion and I made a show of widening our eyes and looking suitably impressed, but it was hardly necessary. Arianna didn’t seem like the sort of person who cared about that sort of thing, and her complete nonreaction proved it.

  “She’s from a country called Brazil from the 1960’s, though I doubt that will mean much to you,” Richard said, playing along for my benefit.

  Arianna nodded. “We come from the same world, from relatively similar times, it would seem.”

  “That’s great!” I said. “You two must have plenty in common.”

  Was it a coincidence that three of us came from modern times? Though, I suppose there were several advantages to being more technologically advanced, depending on the sort of Champion you wanted to summon. We had a better understanding of the universe and were overall more rational than people of older times. Which could also be a hindrance, depending on the god. Eskil probably acclimatized to the existence of another world more readily than any of us, seeing how he fully believed he was in Valhalla.

  “Indeed,” Arianna replied. “Though we only just met. Our powers complement each other nicely. I take it you met some time ago?”

  “Quite right,” Richard said. “We met just back during the last Cataclysm dungeon—took it down together in Dominion and traveled for a while after. I daresay we hit it off quite spectacularly.”

  “Then we’ll all get along just fine,” Arianna said, nodding. “Any friend of Richard’s is a friend of mine.”

  I raised a brow. Awfully trusting for having just met, wasn’t she? Then again, she had fought with Richard against high level enemies. That tended to forge bonds faster than most things.

  “About that,” I said, turning to Richard. “How are you managing with all these skeletons?”

  Passion’s Champion shook his head. “Not well, I’m afraid. My power does terribly little against beings without hearts.”

  “I figured,” I said.

  “The skeletons are quite frail,” Arianna added. “They’ve proven a poor match against my powers.”

  “I’ll say,” I replied. “Not every day you see someone charge headlong into an army and turn an alien contraption into scrap metal.”

  Richard gave me a look.

  “They’re called cars,” Arianna said. “That one in particular was a Humvee, I believe. A wartime vehicle.”

  I had to fight to keep my face straight but stuck with the deception. Arianna seemed decent enough, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her knowing that either of us was tied to Order without getting a better read of her character. The last thing we needed was for her to freak out or go blab about how Order had finally summoned a Champion to the others.

  “Yes, well, I suggest we not delay,” Richard said, looking into the distance. “We’d best be off before…”

  “Too late for that,” I muttered, looking toward a small army of skeletons marching straight for us. “Looks like we pissed them off.”

  The next few minutes devolved into a frantic, chaotic struggle—not just for survival, but for our own sanity—as hundreds of enemies swarmed our position. We were the closest to the skyscraper, and it seemed like every monster had been programmed to stop anyone who got too near. The infighting stopped completely as they converged on us, forcing us to pull out all the stops.

  Worse—they were trying to push us away from the tower, and thanks to their sheer numbers, they were succeeding.

  Thankfully, I had switched into my Vigor armor, and thus tanked hits alongside Arianna while Richard popped the hearts of the tentacled monsters with brutal efficiency, which spoke volumes about how far he’d come. I had a thousand questions for him, but there wasn’t time for any of them.

  It wasn’t all bad, though. I seemed to be dealing with our foes about as well as Arianna, and I’d actually stepped in to take damage in her stead more than once.

  It was hard not to feel pretty fucking smug about that.

  After experimenting with various tactics, we eventually formed a tight circle, fighting back-to-back, each carving out our own quadrant. Even with Aerion conserving her Essence, and avoiding [Reave], we managed alright, with my sword dancing around us and striking anything that slipped through our defenses.

  Richard did a double take at that one.

  Bit by bit, we pushed forward until the skyscraper’s sliding glass doors came into view.

  “Almost there!” I shouted, deflecting a barrage of machine-gun fire with my tower shield. The bullets pinged off the surface, but the impact still rattled my arm.

  We’d somehow managed to hold them off this long, but we weren’t invincible. Given enough time, we’d break.

  “All right!” I called. “Richard, Arianna—you two go in first. We’ll follow. If we get split up inside, we’ll regroup later. Prioritize survival.”

  “Roger that,” Richard said.

  Arianna nodded. “Understood.”

  “Wait,” Richard said, frowning. “Just in case, we should plan on meeting somewhere. This dungeon seems to be from Tokyo. We ought to pick some landmark to rally to.”

  I frowned. “What landmarks? This dungeon might be from your city, but none of us know the layout or the details of the tower.”

  “And I am afraid I do not know anything of Tokyo,” Arianna said with some frustration. An odd response, I thought. How could anyone be expected to be a trivia expert?

  “Could be,” Richard said. “But if it’s from the city, perhaps some of the buildings are, too?”

  I honestly hadn’t considered that. “What do you suggest?” I asked, hoping Richard knew at least some of the buildings. Being from the 80s, most of the ones I knew wouldn’t have existed during his time.

  Thankfully, I needn’t have worried.

  “Tokyo Tower. It’s a tall red and white metal structure. Impossible to miss.”

  I nodded. “We’ll head there, then. If this does end up being just a tower, though, don’t bother trying to look for us.”

  “This works for me,” Arianna said.

  “Okay, then. On the count of three—one, two—”

  I never got to three. A main battle tank rolled over the crater’s rim and trained its cannon on us.

  “Run!” I yelled.

  We bolted, abandoning all plans as I unleashed a volley of Siege Bolts ahead of us. They arced through the air and detonated one after another, shaking the ground and obliterating everything in our path. For a split second, there was nothing left but smoke and silence.

  Then the cannon erupted, exploding into the ground ahead of us, sending everyone flying.

  I tumbled to a stop, righting myself in a coughing fit from the dust the shell had kicked up. A quick check at my armor’s Condition showed I was no worse for the wear, though the same couldn’t be said for Aerion.

  She lay face down and motionless, and to my horror, a pool of blood was quickly spreading from under her.

  “No. Nononono!”

  My blood froze and dread took over. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be!

  My brain stopped functioning. For a long moment, I just… stared until a bullet to my helmet snapped me out of it.

  It was only then that I thought to check my Status. She still consumed hundreds of points of my Essence. That meant she was still alive. For now.

  A quick check of her pulse confirmed it, but when I rolled her over, I nearly retched.

  The entire left half of her stomach was gone. Just gone, like some monster had taken a bite out of her body. Blood pumped out of it in waves, and her organs and entrails were all strewn about, clearly visible.

  Despite all the violence I’d seen, despite all the battles I’d fought, I could barely stand to look at it.

  I stashed her in my inventory, not because it was the smart thing to do, but because I couldn’t stand looking at the sight of my most precious person in such a horrific state.

  With Aerion frozen in time, I at least regained the capacity to think again.

  That tank was still there, and would undoubtedly fire again. Next time, it might be me with half my stomach missing.

  I looked up just in time to see Arianna and Richard disappear through the sliding glass doors.

  With no time to swap armors, I did the only thing I could.

  I ran to the doors, praying that the tank wouldn’t fire again.

  My prayers went unanswered, and this time, I felt it.

  I felt the searing heat of the explosion before the pressure wave slammed into me, sending me flying.

  Flying, ironically, directly at the building.

  I sailed through its open glass doors… and everything went blissfully white.