I couldn’t believe how stupid I was.

  Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

  I huffed a shallow breath through my unfiltered mask as I replayed every exchange I’d had with Toar until now.

  He’d always known about my signing bonus. That was why he took an interest in me. It’s why he brought me down here.

  It was possible others knew. So why hadn’t anyone else tried to get me to sign up to their group?

  No. Toar had someone tell him. That or he overheard staff talking about me. Maybe swiped a letter.

  For better or worse, the gold and other provisions I had weren’t common knowledge, at least right now.

  Not that I really needed to concern myself with that until I found a way out of this place. Speaking of which…

  This place was weird.

  I’d walked through the tunnel for three minutes before being confronted with something I couldn’t rightly make sense of… a large clearing, and what seemed to be some kind of metallic door, the size you could almost fit a building through. To the left of it, there was a beeping flat surface with a screen on it that almost resembled a system menu.

  There were symbols on the surface of the screen, which was firmly embedded in the wall. From the lack of handles or levers surrounding the massive metal barrier, I was led to assume that the screen had something to do with opening the gateway in front of me, and that pressing the buttons might be the means to do so.

  I walked up to the wall-embedded screen to inspect it more closely, and found that the screen itself was made of glass. In spite of that, the buttons beneath reacted to my touch.

  It really was like a system menu, only I had no clue what it said. I wasn’t keen on the idea of storing it to learn more, either, in case it ceased to function if I moved it. I wasn’t sure how the door and screens were connected, but removing it might sever that.

  Then there was the door itself. Far too big to store, even with my improved [Hoard] capacity, and definitely sturdy.

  A glance around me confirmed that there was one other exit in the large empty space, besides the tunnel I’d entered from. A smaller metallic door, also with a screen beside it. Only this screen was completely blank and the glass was cracked.

  I placed my hand on it.

  [Would you like to store Operation Console (broken)? Y/N.]

  I selected ‘yes’ just to see if I could learn anything from it. I read the description in my system menu.

  [A touch-screen wireless device used by Drassians to electronically operate sliding doors and other devices. Armed with security deterrent. Powered by light. Broken. Dimensions: 60cm x 40cm x 1cm. Estimated value: 5-15 gold.]

  Drassians… I had never heard of them. Maybe that was a country I wasn’t aware of? I imagined being able to open a rift portal meant being able to enter a rift from anywhere in the world. Even places so far away I’d never heard of them.

  And what was this technology? I had never seen or even heard of anything like this before. Toar had called it ‘rift tech’. Was it possible that the materials down here had enabled the previous miners to make massive technological leaps?

  Storing the smashed screen confirmed my theory. These consoles were meant to make the doors open—only one of them was broken and the other was currently impossible for me to use.

  There was also the fact it was ‘armed with a security deterrent’. Who knew what that meant? I was doubly sure I didn’t wanna mess with the console now.

  That left a single option for getting out of here. Smashing through one of these doors, ideally the big one. The smaller door off to the side gave me the distinct feeling it led nowhere.

  I considered how I might break my way through. I had a couple more explosives left, but using them in a space like this didn’t seem ideal to me. If I caused this room to cave in, I’d end up trapped in the preceding tunnel. Then I’d surely die.

  Well, time to check out the contents of my [Hoard]. I had those new crystals I’d picked up, after all, and there was a good chance at least one of them might help me out here.

  I ignored the various clothes and miscellany in my [Hoard] and focussed directly on the crystals.

  Spirit, Recovery, Rush, Power, Pyre, Control.

  Naturally, I bee-lined straight towards Control.

  [Control Stone, D Grade: A naturally occurring substance found in Sub-Rift 371, Control Stones can be used to operate mechanical objects with appropriate slots, as well as control organic creatures. Ingesting a Control Stone offers a temporary cognitive boost. Addictive substance. Value estimated at 25 silver per gram.]

  Cognitive boost? Slots?

  [Placing a Control Stone into your bloodstream offers a temporary intelligence increase. Certain mechanical objects have areas in which Control Stones can be placed.]

  Wow, it dumbed it down for me. I didn’t even have to ask it to. It just recognised words I hadn’t seen before and replaced them.

  That was kinda incredible.

  ‘Organic creatures’ was vague… what exactly could I control?

  I wasn’t in a rush to use a Control Stone. A search around the smooth surface of the console confirmed to me that it didn’t seem to have any ‘slots’, and the door didn’t either. The only other use was ingesting it, and these things were apparently addictive.

  I’d consider it if needed. I didn’t want to get addicted to something I didn’t properly understand, but I also knew I was low on options here.

  Before checking out a second stone, I pulled a water canister from my belt. I hadn’t drank anything in a while. Really, I’d be better off storing plenty of water inside my [Hoard] for the next time I got stranded. Hindsight was a bitch. I’d make sure to stock up as soon as I was back on the surface level.

  I pulled my mask down, pinched my nose, and opened my mouth to take a long chug.

  I felt some of the mist snake in as I pulled the bottle away, and even as I rushed to pull my mask up, I could feel the added effects of breathing that stuff unfiltered—it was like ants burrowing into my skull.

  It took me a couple minutes and a lot of shallow breathing to feel okay again. I realised that this mask wasn’t doing an excellent job keeping the toxic air out, either. It blocked the worst of it, and I wasn’t going mad, but my mind definitely didn’t feel settled or calm.

  Those thoughts led me to checking out the Recovery Stone next.

  [Recovery Stone, E Grade: Removes toxins, relieves stress, absorbs harmful substances. Can be ingested to reduce fatigue and dispel poisons. Value estimated at 5 silver per gram.]

  That sounded useful, but I only had three of them, and they were small pieces that glowed more dim than the surrounding stones. I thought about ingesting one to see if it’d make breathing any easier. The description didn’t say anything about addiction or harmful effects.

  I ignored the sound of my heartbeat. Neither of these stones had given me a path out of here, and I was beginning to realise that with only a single canister of water and limited food in my hoard, starvation was as much of a concern as the mist.

  I moved on to Power Stones, hoping the promising name would pay dividends.

  [Power Stone, D Grade: Ingesting a Power Stone amplifies physical strength, as well as the kinetic force behind skills, allowing a person to temporarily push past their physical limits. Power Stones can also be used to amplify muscle-growth. Addictive substance. Value estimated at 40 silver per gram.]

  Okay, seemed simple enough. Take one of these, and I’d be able to lift more? Punch harder? I had a few solidly-sized, bright orange Power Stones.

  It didn’t say it’d scale my body’s endurance to match, though. I worried that ‘pushing past my physical limits’ might do me a lot of harm if I wasn’t careful.

  Then there were Pyre Stones, of which I had three.

  [Pyre Stone, E Grade: Pyre Stones can be used to spark fires or burn through materials when heated with an appropriate reagent. Consuming Pyre Stones causes your body to burn hot, and can awaken fire-based skills, but is dangerous and ill-advised assuming the user has no intrinsic resistance to either fire or extreme heats. Value estimated at 3 silver per gram.]

  Okay. Don’t eat Pyre Stones. Got it.

  …maybe as a last, last resort.

  Then there were Spirit Stones.

  [Spirit Stone, D Grade: Awakens trapped energy within a user’s body, allowing for better mana control and the replenishment of depleted spiritual energy. Can activate certain dormant objects with appropriate slots. Value estimated at 1 gold per gram.]

  I wasn’t sure how useful this was for me right now. I didn’t have much of an understanding of mana, and, being Tier 0, I’d not ever really had to up to this point.

  I knew that mana was the basis by which skills and spells were utilised, and that it bolstered just about everything a person did, but a Tier 0’s mana was passive and couldn’t be commanded or brought to bear, even if it did have some influence on their actions.

  From what I understood, a Tier 0 with a lot of mana still saw some passive benefit, but the inability to control said mana could be dangerous.

  …that said, I did wonder if more mana in my body would help me to scale my endurance when I used a Power Stone.

  Yes, when. I didn’t exactly have other options here. This place was bare besides two doors and an unintelligible console. It was ‘try the magic alien stones’ or ‘sit here and starve’.

  [Rush Stone, E Grade: Compresses your core, temporarily increasing the speed and velocity of the user’s body. Can be slotted into mechanical objects to make them faster. Addictive substance. Value estimated at 5 silver per gram.]

  Again, not sure if compressing my core was a good thing… we’d see. I was already starting to get an idea of how I’d burst my way through these doors.

  It was just going to take some commitment… I had that in spades.

  Failing and getting screwed over hadn’t gotten me scared, nor had it made me feel sorry for myself.

  No. It had confirmed my suspicion that everyone down here was out for themselves, and that I had to be too.

  I started by removing a Power Stone from my inventory. I stared at the crude, jagged shard.

  I couldn’t eat that. I was sure I couldn’t chew on it… it’d break my teeth before I was able to crunch my way through it, and how would it end up in my bloodstream? Through digestion? How long would that take?

  With the help of my light crystal, plus my general skinniness, it was pretty easy to find a vein on my forearm. I was sure that was the easiest way for the substance within the crystal to find the blood.

  Stabbing it into myself hurt. I thought about dabbing a rag with some superior healing potion first to see if it would numb the area, but from how Toar had turned on me and how far I was from safe, I knew I was gonna need those potions. I couldn’t waste them.

  My reasoning didn’t stop my body from hating me in the moment, but the pain and intensity I felt was soon supplanted by a sudden surge of what I could only describe as power. My muscles rippled and surged, my heart pumped with ferocity, my shirt felt like it was going to rip off of my back as my body swelled…

  I felt the crystal’s resonance flowing into my body, slowing until it finally ceased. When I clenched my hand to pull it out, I cracked the crystal and broke it into tiny shards. I looked down at it, almost puzzled, and then a smile broke over my face.

  This was strength, snaking into my subconscious as my adrenaline surged.

  I immediately walked over to the larger door, wound back my fist, and fired a punch forwards, as if I were punching my usual sack of flour.

  The door barely budged, even with the sound of the resonating thump as my knuckles connected with the metal.

  I pulled back my hand to inspect it—I hadn’t put full force into the punch, not wanting to break my hand, but even in spite of that, my knuckles stung a little. I was sure I hadn’t broken anything, but the idea of pummelling this door until it broke down seemed…

  I wasn’t gonna rule it out until I’d tried. I had a bunch more Power Stones, so I didn’t have to make it work instantly. I just needed an idea of what I could do.

  I pulled back my hand and tried a second punch, then a third and a fourth.

  Still it hurt, still the impact was impressively loud, and still the door didn’t budge, even dent. I checked my hand once again to make sure nothing looked swollen, and was pleased to see that the worst of it was some sore redness.

  I was only using about half my strength, I could feel, and wondered if switching to my legs might be a less meatheaded strategy.

  Kicks produced louder thumps, and I could use even more power like this without putting my body through too much strain. Force vibrated up my body as my leg collided with the metal, even with the added power, no visible damage. Just noise and a fair bit of exhaustion after twenty minutes of repetition.

  Not only that, but I could feel the capacity of my body beginning to wane. It hadn’t even been a half hour yet, but the peak of my energy was fading, and along with that, my enhanced strength. I tried shoulder-barges next, working at the door for another three minutes, but at some point, I felt my body beginning to flop against the door as the soreness in my muscles further culminated.

  When the Power Stone fully wore off, that’s when the aches began in earnest. None of it was excruciating, but I felt as if I’d been through a full workout.

  Which just made me more thirsty. I took another swig and didn’t quite feel sated. I didn’t want to burn through my water too quickly.

  Okay. Power Stone wasn’t enough. I was either going to have to try using multiple Power Stones at once or a mixture of different stones.

  I stared at my bloodstained arm and sighed. I didn’t really want to do this, but ‘want’ wasn’t really a factor anymore. Wanting to live, determination to get out of this place, those things won out by a mile, and before I could question it, I’d taken a swig of the superior health pot to prepare myself, and was now jamming crystals into my arm, one after the other.

  I’d been given a health potion after my confrontation with Tattia—that one had felt good, it’d healed me quickly.

  This one was instantaneous. Not only did it heal me so fast I didn’t even get to feel the itch, so fast I felt as if I’d imagined ever being injured or pained, but it also decimated my hunger and thirst. Only the tiredness of my limbs and mind remained, the rest was wiped clean by just a tenth-of-the-bottle swig of this miracle potion.

  And I had three of these. Giving these up would’ve been the worst mistake of my life.

  I stabbed the Recovery Stone into my arm; it made my brain feel alert; it flushed the mist seeping into my body. It even made my skin look somewhat healthier.

  I followed it up with a Spirit Stone. Using that one for even a moment felt wild. Like I was awakening an element of my inner self that I never knew existed, prodding it with something, but all the while filling it with strength.

  My entire body felt more alive after consuming just a fraction of a Spirit Stone. It wasn’t adrenaline, it was something else. Something harder to describe. My movements felt more fluid. My body responded to my commands before I even realised I’d made them. It was as if my instincts were heightened. My heart rate spiked like crazy.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The feeling rapidly became the new normal, and while I imagined it was, in reality, a small increase, it felt incredible to have occur all at once. Was this what people felt like when they advanced to higher Tiers? If this was even a taste of that, it was insane. I couldn’t imagine how sluggish my old mind, body, and self would feel an entire Tier from now.

  Next was a Control Stone. The cognitive boost could be useful. I wanted it to ensure that what I was about to do wasn’t completely idiotic.

  My slightly improved, crystal-bolstered brain told me that what I was planning was completely idiotic, but that I didn’t have any smarter ideas available, so I might as well stop worrying and get on with it.

  And so I moved on to the last two.

  Last time I’d used a Power Stone, I’d felt this primal surge that made me wanna stop standing around and start punching something, so I decided to use it and the Rush Stone at the same time; I didn’t trust my brain to be patient, and I wanted as much time at full power as I could get.

  If stabbing one into me hurt, two was markedly worse, but the Spirit Stone made the pain easier to handle, mainly because it was easier for me to focus on other parts of my body.

  After allowing both of the stones’ powers to drain into my blood, I felt two disparate sensations rising within me.

  One was obvious. That of the Power Stone. The desire to go hit something.

  The second was the energy within the Rush Stone. It narrowed everything, even my vision. It compressed me into a human slingshot with a singular desire.

  The desire to move.

  Those two wishes, those needs coalesced as before I knew what I was doing, I was running at the central door, zooming straight at it like a shooting arrow.

  I smashed into the door, feeling my body brace and multiple bones crack as I forced myself at it with every ounce of energy I could muster, willing myself to barrel through it and smash the stupid thing off of its hinges.

  This time, I finally managed to dent it, leaving a large crater where my body had struck, but when I fell to the ground, pained inertia greeting me as I struggled to take another sip of miracle potion and repair my fractured bones…

  I found that the door was still intact. Damaged, but still standing.

  That being said, I’d been able to break it, if only a little. Another swig of potion returned me to full function within under a minute.

  I took another run up.

  I tried again.

  Smash.

  Broken bones. My wrist snapped badly that time, and I was pretty sure I dislocated my shoulder.

  Another swig. Sweet relief.

  Another try.

  Smash.

  Pain. Drink. Repeat.

  Smash.

  This time no drink. Two smashes per drink. Even if it hurt. Even if my body screamed in protest.

  I had to ration if I wanted to survive this. Pain was the price I paid for more attempts.

  After fifteen tries and little more to show for my efforts, I once again resorted to punching and kicking. I could do so faster with my enhanced speed and bodily responses, but even with the Spirit Stone’s benefits, it was difficult to keep up with how fast the Rush Stone wanted my body to move, and too often I punched the door too hard or at a dodgy angle and ended up injuring myself all over again.

  One more swig of potion and a re-up on the Power Stone led me to giving up with the big door and trying the smaller one. I felt as if this door wouldn’t lead me the right way, off to the side as it was, but I was kinda desperate, and I couldn’t keep this up forever. I’d gone through almost half of a superior health pot already.

  I once again prepared for a big run-up, gritting and clenching and pushing every ounce of strength I had into my motion, jumping forwards as I smashed my shoulder into the door with every screaming drop of resilience I still defiantly clung to.

  This was a desperate attempt. I needed it to work. If this proved just as fruitless, I might be doomed.

  The door budged.

  I ran up and smashed it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  After five attempts, on my fifth, I felt gravity take effect in a different way. I wasn’t bounced off of the structure and forced to lay in the dirt.

  No. I felt the door cave in.

  I felt it careen over and send me toppling forwards, ahead, out of the sterile, monotonous tomb of the clearing behind me, and into a new location, one my mind reeled to make sense of even as I picked myself up, ignoring the throb in my arm and the roaring pain in my side.

  [Fortitude: 9 >> 10. Hard cap reached.]

  That was good. Meant I could combine it with another skill, as per my [Hoard]’s ability.

  Thoughts for later. For now, I needed to focus on the immediate.

  I looked around. My eyes scanned the dusty confines of the small room before me, they searched and they processed and then processed again, struggling to discern or even believe what it was that laid ahead…

  This wasn’t a way out at all. Not even remotely close to being one.

  No. What this appeared to be was a supply room.

  I didn’t let the intrusive thoughts conquer my mind. I wasn’t gonna die in here. I wasn’t trapped. There was going to be something in this cobweb-filled room I could use. Something that could get me out of here.

  There had to be.

  I healed my latest injuries and started searching through metallic boxes and crates, through wall-mounted lockers and across the top of a large table.

  No food. No water. Instead, I found picks and shovels and other metallic tools, some of which I struggled to recognise. One I picked up and stored only to discover it was a mechanical, handheld drill, which apparently had a slot for use with Control Stones.

  Could come in handy. I stored a large cylindrical object which turned out to be an ‘excavator track’ and then finally came across a metallic locker which appeared to be locked.

  I used my elevated strength to bust through the lock. Inside, I discovered three new things.

  A vest, which appeared to me to be some kind of armour, a large metal object that I couldn’t quite discern the purpose of, and two curved affixtures that seemed to slot into the bottom of it.

  I picked up the metal device, which I now noticed had a strap, and proceeded to read the prompt:

  [Would you like to store Ark-46 Submachine Gun? Y/N.]

  Gun? This thing was a gun? It didn't look like any gun I'd ever seen. Where were the balls? The powder? Why was it shaped so strangely?

  I rushed to read the description.

  [A weapon developed on Arkosa, the Ark-46 is a closed-bolt 9mm submachine gun with 650rpm, equipped with a suppressor as well as a thermal monitor effective up to 50 feet. Magazines contain 30 bullets. Weighs 5.1lbs. Dimensions: 59cm x 18cm x 4.5cm at widest point. Value estimate: high.]

  I read it again. And again. And then dumbed it down and read it again in even simpler words.

  I was holding a gun in my hands. A gun that fired bullets at incredible speeds. It had a sensor fitted into it that could track heat signatures, presumably from living things, and would light up whenever it found one.

  I tried pointing it around the room, seeing if it’d pick up on small insects, but it didn’t seem that such tiny creatures set the sensor off.

  Which was probably a good thing. Else it’d be going off all the time.

  The vest was apparently some form of body armour, designed to stop low-to-medium energy projectiles in their tracks. It was a bit too big for me, but after practicing taking it on and off a few times I resolved just to keep it on. I didn’t want to have to rush to equip it if something attacked me, and it didn’t restrict my movement, nor was it heavy. It just made me feel too hot.

  Both of these items were relatively powerful upgrades to my fighting potential, but neither got me out of here. If I didn’t find something to help me out soon, I was going to be stuck throwing explosives at the door. And I really didn’t want things to come to that…

  I started scouring the room. Moving and upturning everything, throwing and storing things as I went. There had to be something better in here…

  At first, the exercise seemed pointless, and I started to wonder if I was just going to be stuck ramming and shooting at the door until my body finally gave out.

  Then I found a book.

  I was so relieved I could cry.

  I didn’t even know what was written in it yet. I just knew that written material, that anything written might help give me some kind of clue to get past that door. Maybe I could search for symbols I recognised from the console and try pressing those. Anything.

  The moment I grabbed it, I was given the option to store it.

  I pressed ‘yes’ by instinct. I hadn’t even meant to. I’d been storing every box and item in this room for the last few minutes and I’d gotten used to pressing yes.

  This meant I had to go search for the book in my inventory. And I did.

  I read the description:

  [Erason Terr’yak’s journal: This journal, dated six years, three months, and two weeks ago, depicts the day to day activities and thoughts of Erason, a Drassian researcher specialising in crystal diffusion and skill acquisition.]

  [Summarised, the book details a six month period of Erason’s life. Erason, along with the rest of the workers within this facility, had just been through a schism, through which a portion of the facility’s workers attempted to remove the barrier on the portal and leave the rift. This barrier was apparently erected to keep the Drassian government from entering to seize the research material found here, and many residents felt strongly about the need to finish their work before reestablishing contact with their home planet, Erason included.]

  [Defectors were imprisoned, and, in some cases, killed. Amongst those imprisoned was Erason’s wife. Although he was the one to hand her in, his actions troubled him.]

  [Erason and his team had been experimenting with finding a way to use the essence of Recovery Stones to bridge the critical failure of air filtration around the facility and stop the encroaching mist before it turned more of his peers into ‘ferals’. He was beginning to feel increasingly paranoid and restless as the months ticked by, and his reliance on Control Stones had become severe, to the point that he suffered nausea, vertigo, and extreme irritability during his comedowns, and was taking multiple a day.]

  [When Erason’s wife began to show signs of ‘turning feral’, Erason broke her out of her imprisonment and took her to his lab in order to attempt to graft an experimental mesh to her body, hoping to stave off the changes.]

  The summary ended there.

  I could open the book and read more if I wanted to, that was an option, and doing so revealed to me that the text was all written in my own language.

  Yet, when I took the book out of my [Hoard], I once again couldn’t read it.

  I slipped it back inside and began reading the extended version.

  I was mainly looking for anything about how to operate the doors ahead of me, but it was a given that he’d never written down instructions on how to use the consoles. It was probably common knowledge for him and his people, and there was a good chance it was fairly intuitive if you spoke the language.

  Frowning, I walked on over to the console and stared at it one more time.

  I was shocked to discover that about half of the words I was looking at were now in my own language.

  No. They weren’t. I could just read them.

  Why?

  Because they were in that book?

  Was that why?

  Almost shaking as I did so, I took the book out of my [Hoard].

  The words became an indecipherable mess once more.

  I blinked.

  I put the book back inside…

  About half of the words on the screen once again made sense to me.

  It was like magic.

  It was magic.

  “I…”

  I hadn’t spoken a word in hours. I almost shocked myself by speaking.

  “I can’t fucking believe it!”

  I only had about half of the words on the console.

  But I only needed half.

  I didn’t even need half.

  I only needed two.

  And those two words were staring at me right now in bold blue neon text.

  [Open Door]

  I pressed it, and immediately, another screen came up. Of course it couldn’t be that simple.

  It wanted a code. A four digit code.

  I understood the numbers, but I didn’t know the code.

  I started scouring the book for any numbers I could find. There were tons.

  Lots of research stuff. A bunch of equations I couldn’t understand.

  Door codes, door codes… OKAY I found one!

  Three-one-four-two. Heart pumping, I typed it in and…

  I felt an electric shock race up my arm. Ow!

  As soon as I did as much, shaking my electrified arm, a message appeared on the screen.

  [Warning: Emergency protocols are in ——. Failure to ——— the correct code within two more attempts will result in lethal —— being applied.]

  Holy shit. I couldn’t read a few of the words, but I could fill in the blanks pretty easily. Two more fails and I was dead.

  I was sure I’d entered the code properly. It had clearly been changed since. I flicked to the back of the book, looking for the last code entry I could find.

  Three-nine-eight-two. Okay. Please work.

  I braced myself, slowly typing in the numbers and…

  “Argh!”

  I felt the sizzle shoot through my body like a lightning bolt as I crumpled in place, nearly falling to the ground. Even with the buffs from the crystals still resonating in my body, that one hadn’t just hurt, it had rocked me.

  The next one was apparently lethal. And I didn’t have the code. What was I meant to do here?

  Whatever the code had been, it had been changed again since Erason’s time. Either when he’d died, or when he’d moved on to a new journal. It wasn’t clear what had happened to him.

  Still, he had six months of codes written down. First step was figuring out how often it was changed. Second was trying to see if there was any connection between the codes.

  …seemed to be weekly. Why change it that often? Was that due to the schism or whatever had occurred down here?

  Over six months I found twenty-four codes. I had nothing to write with, so I simply had to memorise whereabouts in the book they were and flick through to compare them.

  All different. No duplicates.

  That said, all of them seemed to begin with three. That narrowed things down to one in a thousand if it held true now, which was a generous assumption. Not great odds.

  Even if I removed every code in this book, it left 976 possibilities for the remaining code, and one attempt.

  Pretty sure no one’s that lucky. I needed more to go off.

  There were twos at the end of a lot of these. Twos. Hmm…

  …could I touch the screen with something that didn’t conduct electricity? Like one of the rocks from my [Hoard]?

  Just to see if that was an option, I tried pressing the ‘three’ button with a rock just to find it didn’t do anything. It seemed the screen only responded to heat.

  Maybe I could heat the rock. Maybe…

  Wait.

  All the numbers were ascending.

  The first number I’d found, earliest in the book, was three-one-four-two. The last had been Three-nine-eight-two. I read through the numbers two more times to confirm it: they all went up.

  Went up by how much?

  Seventy every two weeks. The increase on odd weeks was random, but even weeks always seemed to be seventy higher than two weeks ago.

  So were we on an odd week, or an even week?

  I rushed back to the summary.

  Written six years, three months, and two weeks ago…

  Even week. It’s even. If the last entry was even, and six years, three months, two weeks… what’s that in days?

  [This journal, last entry dated 2296.7 days ago, or 328.1 weeks ago, was—]

  Okay, even. This thing is ridiculously useful.

  Okay. So, if 328 weeks ago, the code was at ‘three-nine-eight-two’, and if it increased by seventy every two weeks, and if it’s been 328 weeks since then…

  Assuming it resets every time it hits 9999…

  Assuming the excess carries over…

  Assuming that it’s still being updated in the same way…

  And assuming my math is correct after I checked it fifteen times…

  Five-four-six-two.

  That’s the number.

  It’s either my ticket out of this room, or it’s my death sentence.

  Five-four-six-two seem like a pretty shit choice of last words.

  But fuck it.

  I found striking a Pyre Stone against a rock allowed me to heat it. I used the edge of the heated rock to press down on the console.

  I stabbed a recovery stone into my arm before I started. I pulled down my mask, not fearing the mist, and gargled a large amount of superior health potion in my mouth.

  I breathed through my nose as I typed in the code using my rock, holding the potion and preparing to swallow it.

  As soon as I pressed the last digit, I’d swallow. I was pretty sure the shock going through the rock wouldn’t be enough to kill me, but I wasn’t sure who or what this was meant to be a lethal dosage for. Maybe something far more durable than me.

  So the extra precaution seemed worth it. I couldn’t worry about things I’d wasted if I was dead.

  And it did turn out to be wasted. That swig of potion went down like a charm, not having to revive or defibrillate me after having received an insurmountable dose of electricity.

  Because somehow, astoundingly, incredibly…

  The code had updated automatically. The formula hadn’t been changed. The addition I’d done in my head had been correct. The [Hoard]’s information had been frighteningly accurate.

  I wasn’t filled with electricity and burnt to a crisp, but you couldn’t tell my heart the difference. It was thundering like a roiling storm.

  [Mathematics: 5 >> 6.]

  [Literacy: 5 >> 6.]

  The sliding metal doors creaked and groaned as they slid open, a great wheel churning somewhere beyond my vision, and in moments, I was staring out at something that I, and likely no one I’d ever met before, no one in my family bloodline, had ever seen in their lives.

  An entire foreign facility, filled with strange and wondrous technology. Seemingly abandoned. Full of glowing lights and towering structures.

  Full of possibilities.

  My mask still somewhat worked. I still had energy to spare. Multiple crystals remained at my disposal.

  I needed to find a way out… but the surface could wait a little while.

  I’d finally gotten inside. Now I wanted to explore.