Everybody Loves Large Chests - Chapter 325

A group of thirteen people were cautiously making their way through a ruined city. Most of them were adventurers, judging by their equipment. They wore armor pieces that didn’t quite fit together, carried various pouches that rattled gently with every step, wielded an unusually diverse set of weaponry, and had a charming amount of scruffiness about them. As one might expect of seasoned explorers traversing hostile territory, they made every effort to remain inconspicuous while constantly scanning their surroundings. Danger could leap at them from any direction and at any time, but they maintained cool heads and avoided jumping at every minor rustling.

Three of them stood out from the rest due to the tattooed insignia on each of their left shoulders. It was a stylized clenched fist inside a cogwheel – the mark of a Blackhand. It was a title given to graduates of the ancient Collegiate of Mechanists in the city of New Dragunov 3. Once widely recognized as the birthplace of the Artificer Job, the tinkerer’s mecca had been gripped by no less than four catastrophic events that had left the settlement in shambles. The dwarves and gnomes that inhabited those lands were a stubborn lot and had stubbornly rebuilt the city over and over, with each iteration being bigger and more efficient than the last.

The Artificer’s craft had similarly gone through a lot of change since its inception. Much like all other Jobs before and since, it had spawned a number of derivative, specialized vocations. In no particular order, these were Gunner, Operator, and Engineer. The first of those was a spinoff on Ranger that focused on firearms, explosives, and trench warfare as opposed to bows, stealth, and reconnaissance. Operator was a Job with both combat and non-combat applications, as it was required to effectively pilot the various military and civilian vehicles that only an Engineer could create. This third vocation was closest in context to the original Artificer but with an added focus on research and civil engineering, which rendered both its predecessor and the Architect Job effectively obsolete.

All of those new Jobs had first appeared about four to five hundred years ago, during a Shift that had gone down in history as the Rise of Industry. It had seen tremendous strides in revolutionizing the way civilizations functioned. That era was the sole reason why oil-guzzling vehicles, mechanical servants, remote mining, automated factories, and various firearms had become so exceedingly common. Prior to the Rise of Industry, such things were considered luxuries since they were far more difficult to create, maintain, and operate when compared to equivalent magical options.

What turned things around was the emergence of Clang, the God of Science and Technology. It had been through His guidance that the world had advanced into its current age. That said, it wasn’t as if Clang had just appeared one day out of thin air. The so-called Machine God had once been none other than Goroth, the patron deity of craftsmen and artisans. His transformation, and that of his entire religion, had been a natural result of the world’s shifting values and needs over the centuries and millennia.

Most of Terrania’s pantheon had undergone similar deviations. Teresa, the once Goddess of Truth and Justice, had become the Goddess of Law and Order. Nyrie had gone from Goddess of Nature and Fertility to Goddess of Life – a title that Solus had relinquished when he became Solar, the God of Victory and Perseverance. This encroached on Axel’s divine domains of War and Combat, which had pushed the older deity towards his newest form as the God of Strength and Honor.

There had been other changes among the divines, but all of them ultimately amounted to little more than glorified makeover and reshuffling of responsibilities. This was most apparent in the pantheon’s list of Taboos, which remained mostly the same as they had been two millenia prior. The biggest differences were the Taboos of Nyrie and Clang. The former had changed her forbiddance from ‘mating with animals or monsters’ to ‘creating unnatural life through magical or nonmagical means.’ The new rule was both more specific and more closely related to what the new Goddess of Life had been originally intending

Clang, on the other hand, had completely abandoned Goroth’s ban on transmutation of minerals once it became widely known that such magic was inherently cursed. This meant those practitioning it would have violated Lunar’s unchanged Taboo, making the former earth god’s rule rather redundant. Clang’s new Taboo was strikingly similar to Nyrie’s in that it forbade the creation of true artificial intelligence. It was fine to imbue objects and machines with a Personality Matrix since that made them neither sentient nor sapient, but merely interactable.

It was a Taboo that all three of the Blackhands within that group of twelve had broken. It wasn’t all that surprising, though. Blackhands were professionally trained since they were eight years old to become the world’s leading technological experts, equally versed as Engineers and either Operators or Gunners. The trio had clearly chosen the latter of those two combat-oriented Jobs, given the absence of cumbersome, smoke-spewing war machines and the dangerous-looking weapons that each of them bore.

The first Blackhand was a female dwarf with pitch-black hair and ashen gray skin – signs that she had been born in the underground kingdom of Hork. The second was also a dwarf, only this one was male, bald, ginger-bearded, and with a surface-dweller’s complexion. He most likely hailed from Hork’s topside sister-state, the kingdom of Saft. Both of them wore headgear that looked like welding masks bolted onto plate helmets, and carried a hefty Bazooka-class hand-cannon each. The third Blackhand was a human that had chosen a lighter approach to his equipment. He was armed with two repeating pistols and a bandolier of specialized ammunition. His face was mostly visible aside from the mechanized goggles, revealing a mustachioed mug that had a number of nasty shrapnel scars across the left cheek and forehead.

The gearheads’ eight escorts were far less elaborately equipped. Factory-made gadgets and contraptions were surprisingly cheap, but they were somewhat notorious for their unreliability. Hand-crafted ones were much better in every aspect except for the fact that their prices were five to ten times higher. As such, the run-of-the-mill adventurers were decked out in more old-fashioned gear consisting of swords, axes, and bows for the martial types, and wands, staves, and orbs for the magic users.

The one area they hadn’t skimped on expenses was in the armor department. Though obtained from different manufacturers and varying wildly in design, all of their defensive equipment was made out of a sky-blue alchemically-created material called ‘kelvar.’ Named for its inventor, John Kelvar, the polymer-coated synthetic fabric boasted excellent protection against slashing and piercing attacks for its weight and price. It wasn’t all that effective at diffusing the impact of a heavy blow, but it was still an affordable alternative to plate armor. It was also much quieter to move around in, which was important considering the adventurers’ current Quest required a degree of subtlety.

“Wait,” the leader whispered. “Something’s not right.”

The woman in question was one of the nephilim, as evidenced by her glowing yellow eyes and the goat-like horns that jutted up from her scalp and curled around her ears. She sported shoulder-length black hair tied off in a messy ponytail, a gray-and-green robe that covered her kelvar armor, and a mithril wand with a glowing green pattern etched across it. Her name was Gloria, and as the most experienced member on the expedition, she had been voted as the one in charge.

“Where are Lode and Flank?”

She was therefore understandably upset to realize that two of the thirteen people she was responsible for had disappeared. The far more troubling thing was that nobody else in the group had noticed their absence until Gloria had called attention to it. The remaining adventurers immediately huddled around the three Blackhands they had been hired to escort, forming a protective wall as best as they were able. The sudden development had set them all on edge, but they were able to avoid losing their cool and remained on high alert.

Their admirable level-headedness was helped along by their less-than-admirable lack of concern for the missing duo. As veteran members of the Axe Coast Mercenaries, all of them had grown accustomed to losing people on a job. Because of how loosely the organization operated, it was possible that their members might end up on a Quest alongside total strangers or even bitter rivals. Combined with the guild’s readiness to hire just about anyone and to accept any request that came to them, it was no surprise that its roster saw a significant amount of turnover. As such, the Axe Coast Mercenaries usually avoided getting too chummy with each other until they had survived at least a few harrowing assignments together.

That didn’t mean that they would abandon their guildmates, however. The higher ups forced all of the members to carry special recording crystals that could be used to discern what had gone wrong on a failed mission. Deserters were dealt with harshly and quickly, which incentivized their mercenaries to work together no matter how dire things looked. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it provided results as far as the guild’s bottom line was concerned. It was far less reassuring for people in the field since they had no idea how reliable or capable their temporary teammates were going to be whenever biofuel fell into the cooling unit.

“Movement?” Gloria asked.

“None, boss-lady,” the group’s Rogue and scout reported. “Neither above, nor below.”

“You sure? Wasn’t it the trees that got them?” one of them glanced nervously at the scarlet canopy far above their heads.

“Can’t be,” another replied.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve heard the noise they make. Trust me, it’s not something you’d ever forget, let alone fail to notice.”

“Which means we’re not dealing with some blood-sucking dryads,” the leader concluded, then turned to the human Blackhand. “Mr. Wicks?”

“Yes? What is it?” he responded in a gruff, tired voice.

“Can your goggles track their heat signatures? They can’t have been gone for more than two minutes, so there might still be a trail.”

“No,” the man said sternly. “You were hired to protect us, not vice versa.”

“You selfish son of a-”

“Easy, Bigsby,” Gloria tried to calm her irate colleague. “He has a point, and you know it.”

It was hardly the first time something like this had come up. Arrogance was a trait common among those who reeked of Taboo, especially the mad scientist types. It was a stereotype that these Blackhands embodied completely. They had gone against Clang’s teachings and had created sentient synthetic life in the form of an android called FR-33. The creature had escaped their secret laboratory and the three Blackhands had traced it to the ruins of Morgana.

It was an annoyingly clever place for FR-33 to seek refuge in. The once prosperous city had been reduced to a rubble-filled graveyard literally overnight when the five scarlet-leafed dryads it was built around suddenly woke up about twenty years ago. The twisted plant-ladies were obsessed with sucking the blood out of living things, but had no interest in a being of circuits and wires like FR-33. Furthermore, the only way to safely traverse the ruins of Morgana was to keep a low profile and avoid drawing the dryads’ attention. Blackhands were notoriously lacking in subtlety, which meant that Mr. Wicks, Mr. Burnmouth, and Ms. Ashbone couldn’t just follow it inside.

That was why they had hired the Axe Coast Mercenaries to act as protection and backup while they retrieved FR-33. As part of the agreement, the adventurers had to do all of the heavy lifting so that the Blackhands could preserve their ammunition and energy. The android would not go quietly, and disabling it without destroying it was a task the trio wanted to handle themselves. As such, they adamantly refused to pull their weight unless it was absolutely necessary, even in the current situation where two of their hired escorts had vanished mysteriously.

“So, are we gon’ stay around like trolls with wrenches in our asses or are we gon’ git going?”

“We can’t move on just yet, Mr. Burnmouth,” Gloria insisted. “We’re contractually obligated to make every effort we can to retrieve fallen guild members’ bodies and personal effects.”

Though Lode and Flank were most likely dead, it was possible to bring them back so long as their corpses were brought back to a temple of Helena. The clergy there would know the secrets of resurrection magic, as revealed to them through the Goddess of Love and Mercy. They bestowed Her grace upon any who came to them seeking aid, but such a miracle came at a price. 2,700 GP, to be exact. That was the combined cost of the materials required to perform the resurrection ceremony, plus a little something to compensate the Priests for sacrificing a bit of their FTH. Furthermore, it was impossible to revive those who had been dead for more than five days, had died of old age, had any Level of Taboo, or who had already been restored to life once. There were some other restrictions, but the biggest one was that Priests needed a mostly intact body to work with. That was why Axe Coast Mercenaries required their employees to retrieve the corpses of the fallen if possible. It was a sort of insurance measure meant to put their expendable members at ease, and was therefore enforced quite severely.

“And the sooner we find them, the sooner we can go after your rogue android,” Gloria told the dwarf dryly.

“Oh, for- Fine! Wicks, do what she says.”

The scarred man sighed and grumbled something about ‘bloody incompetent peons’ before he flicked through his goggles’ numerous lenses. Switching to thermal vision, he found no heat signals other than those huddled around him. He was about to snidely inform Gloria that she had wasted his time when he then noticed something odd. The air was much cooler than it should have been one a late summer day. Granted, the titanic hylt trees cast a thick shade over the entire area, but it still shouldn’t have been that cold.

“Boss-lady? Is it me or is it kinda chilly all of a sudden,” the Rogue spoke up as if on cue.

“Quiet, too. No wind to shake the leaves,” one of the other mercs pointed out.

“And we have a bunch of heavy-duty sinners with us,” someone else added in a hushed tone.

Murmurings of ‘Code K-19’ spread throughout the mercenaries, causing their clients to grow curious at the unknown designation.

“What’s K-19?” the female Blackhand asked.

“Standard Axe Coast Mercenaries procedure, Ma’am. Nothing to worry about,” Gloria reassured her. “We’ll handle things from here.”

“Hmpf. You better. We paid top coin for you so-called professionals.”

“Alright, gents,” the nephilim turned to the others. “K-19 is in effect. You know the drill, so let’s get this done.”

The hirelings turned around and began slowly but surely spreading out while walking backwards. They kept a tight grip on their weapons and looked around carefully as if they were searching for something. The Blackhands in the middle were quite puzzled as to what the mercenaries were doing, but the strangely coordinated formation kept them from voicing any protests. They did feel a bit exposed, however, which led them to unholster and load their weapons.

“Please refrain from using those guns,” Gloria softly warned them. “That’s a sure-fire way to get the dryads’ attention.”

“Don’t presume to give us orders,” Mr. Wicks sneered. “You work for us.”

“It’s your own funeral,” she mumbled under her breath.

A tense silence fell on the area as the mercenaries continued to fan out while facing the gearheads in the middle. The ruins they were in were mostly flattened and devoid of cover, which allowed them to keep close tabs on one another at all times. It seemed as though they were watching each other’s backs, possibly trying to bait out whatever hidden enemy had ghosted two of their number. Once they were a good thirty or so meters from the Blackhands, Gloria raised her clenched fist. She jerked it once, then once more. When she gave the signal for the third time, all of the mercenaries suddenly broke into a full sprint as they scattered into the surrounding woods.

“Did… did they just abandon us?” Burnmouth asked dumbly.

“Filthy cowards,” Ashbone grit her teeth. “I’ll turn them into fuel when I get my hands on them.”

“We can deal with those worms later,” Wicks stated. “Right now we need to fall back.”

Those mercenaries were supposed to serve as a distraction for the bloodthirsty dryads while the Blackhands subdued FR-33. It wasn’t an impossible task since they just had to stall them, and the tree-ladies’ offensive capabilities had been well documented over the last two decades. However, the cowards had been right about one thing – there was definitely something else going on. By the time they had scattered the air temperature had dropped so low that a thin layer of fog was starting to form on the insides of the Blackhands’ visors and goggles.

“Wicks, check for mana density.”

Burnmouth had the right idea. Wide-scale magic like that could typically be traced by measuring the ambient mana. It was an ability that had once required a special organ, Skill, or Perk, but the Rise of Industry had seen to it that anyone could do it so long as they acquired a special set of lenses. Doing so wasn’t easy or cheap, but Wicks had been able to manufacture a set with relative ease. After all, he couldn’t have helped create FR-33 unless he was immensely proficient at the Engineer Job.

“Wicks?” the male dwarf turned around. “Wicks?! Where’d ya go ya bastard?!”

The man had disappeared without a trace or a sound. A pair of footprints in the dry grass was all that was left of him.

“Damn it all! I should have done this from the start.”

Growing agitated and somewhat desperate, the man aimed his portable cannon. The armor-piercing shell within the heavy gun was capable of punching through almost anything, including an ancient hylt tree’s Ironbark. He had been planning to use the weapon on the dryads, completely unaware that attacking their humanoid forms was as effective as pissing against the wind. With no such targets in sight, the dwarf unwittingly aimed at where he should have if he hoped to actually harm a dryad – the trunk of her tree. It was an act that was guaranteed to grab the violent vegetable’s attention.

However, for better or for worse, that did not happen. When Burnmouth pulled the trigger, the weapon made a ‘clunk’ instead of a ‘bang.’ Looking down at it, he saw a sticky translucent thread had jammed the firing mechanism. Overcome with a fit of wild panic, he tried to throw the gun away, but the mysterious substance had glued his hands to the handle and barrel. He frantically turned around to Ashbone for help, but she was also gone. Well, most of her. Unlike the two mercenaries and Mr. Wicks, her head was still there.

More precisely, her cleanly severed head that dripped with blood as it hung from a hair-thin spider thread.

“Ah… AHHHHHHH!”

The dwarf screamed, completely unable to comprehend what was going on. A glob of more webbing then splattered against his mouth, instantly silencing his cries. He then felt a freezing chill as some rock-hard limbs embraced him from behind and held something incredibly sharp to his neck.

“Easy now, tktktktktkt,” a voice as smooth as silk chittered into his ear. “You might wake up the quintuplets, and we don’t want that, do we?”

Despite his better judgement, Burnmouth slowly turned his head to glance at his assailant. He saw a pale woman’s face with dark purple hair. She had flawless skin and sharp features, especially the large mandibles that flanked the sides of her fanged mouth. It was her eight orange bug-like eyes that frightened him the most, though. They were the defining trait of the one entity that all Taboo bearers feared. She had amassed many aliases throughout the years – the Phantom Assassin, the Gods’ Garbage Girl, the Embrace of Death, and That Scary Spider Lady That Ate That Guy’s Face. Admittedly that last one wasn’t all that widespread, but it was a no less accurate means of referring to the world’s deadliest assassin.

Her full name was Dreaheath Uniolphial Maramakartor. As one might expect, the tundra webstalker had changed somewhat over the past two millennia. Her icy carapace now covered almost all of her body aside from her stomach, inner thighs, and cleavage – gaps that she had given up on questioning long ago. There were other physical changes, but the most significant one concerned her extra limbs. Instead of six sword-tipped appendages attached to her back, she instead had eight blades of magical ice that drifted around her and responded to her every whim. A curtain of freezing mist fell from her shoulders like a cloak, signifying her greatly increased elemental abilities.

In summary, Drea had unlocked her full potential as a tundra webstalker, but there was more to her new self than appearances and skills. The most radically different aspect of her was her personality. She had successfully overcome the bizarre shyness that stalkers usually suffered from, so she no longer felt awkward or uneasy whenever mortals saw her. She had grown bold and confident as a result, and flaunted her lethal techniques and exotic appearance whenever appropriate. These were the things she had been able to learn since Boxxy’s departure, though she had done so out of necessity. Her current responsibilities involved sending a message, which was why she had resorted to such theatrics when executing those three Blackhands. It was also the reason why she had left plenty of witnesses behind.

The fact that those mercenaries had a whole range of procedures in place for abandoning a client to save their own skin never failed to amuse Drea. It was only natural, of course. Given the inherently shady and questionable nature of that guild’s clientele, there were likely several scenarios where the mercenaries were allowed to bail on a job that was obviously suicidal. In this particular instance, they had recognized the hints that Drea gave them and promptly vacated the area. They had also given up on trying to find their fallen comrades since it was a well known fact that there were no bodies left in the wake of the Hero of Death.

Though she hadn’t become an Overlord like Boxxy’s other two familiars, Drea had been able to claim a position that no other demon had held in the entire history of Terrania. She had been the chosen Hero of the God of Death and Secrets for fourteen consecutive centuries, and it was unlikely that anyone would ever replace her. Mortimer, who went by ‘Seth’ these days, had at one point decided that mortals weren’t a reliable instrument of his will. Though there had been some superbly gifted Heroes of Death, most of them had been either mediocre or subpar. This inconsistency in competency caused quite a few headaches for Seth. It was also infuriating how even the good ones would perish all too soon, at least from the perspective of a god.

However, the deity had been open-minded enough to consider some rather… unorthodox staffing options. His past dealings with Boxxy T. Morningwood had taught him that non-enlightened could also serve as Heroes – quite brilliantly at that. And if monsters could do it, then why couldn’t demons? After a few decades of consideration and countless meetings with the Goddess of Gambling, Seth eventually formed a one-of-a-kind summoning contract with Drea. There were two reasons why she had been chosen – she was perfectly suited to the job, and had served as Boxxy’s familiar in the past. That second one put her slightly above her peers as it meant that she had technically worked for Mortimer before, even if indirectly, and the deity appreciated that sort of thing.

The stalker had accepted the offer on the spot. There was no way she would refuse being hired to do what she did best – chase after and devour high value targets. The only downside was that, without a mortal Warlock to anchor her to the material realm, Seth had to use his divine energy to create and maintain her physical body. He was very economical in that regard and only summoned her when he deemed a mortal was in need of a good stabbing. That meant that Drea wasn’t free to roam the world at her leisure. Furthermore, she didn’t have quite the same amount of power as she used to enjoy while working for Boxxy. Still, she got enough freedom whenever she was on the clock to enjoy herself. In return, Seth had obtained the perfect assassin he wished for – effective, experienced, unswayed by material wealth, and capable of persisting through death. Admittedly it was a bit odd that a God of Death would have an immortal servant, but the deity wasn’t all that bothered since demons existed outside the cycle of reincarnation to begin with.

With Drea’s current assignment dealt with, she was promptly pulled back into the Beyond. Having played around and eaten her fill, she felt rather satisfied with that particular outing. She skimmed through the usual D-mail message from Seth that praised her efficiency and set about catching up on what she’d missed over the past week. As expected, absolutely nothing of note had happened in her absence. Or for the past two hundred and seventy years, for that matter. Drea had her Hero outings to alleviate her boredom, but she was an exception. The overall level of drudgery in the Beyond was so extreme that many of its residents found themselves wishing that the Great Demon War would get a sequel just to liven things up. Such a thing would never happen though, for better or for worse.

Thankfully things finally started getting more interesting about six days after Drea’s return. Word that the Overlord of Sloth had mysteriously disappeared spread throughout the Beyond faster than a succubus’ legs. The countless demons within went into overdrive as they concocted all kinds of theories as to who was responsible or where Xera had gone. Drea had a hunch, though. A pretty good one, at that. She felt confident her intuition was accurate because she knew things the rest of the world did not. The secrets she carried had such terrible weight that merely holding onto them either caused or contributed to Mortimer’s transformation into Seth. That same world-shattering knowledge told her that her former master’s return was the most likely reason behind Xera’s disappearance.

Drea was able to mull over that thought for about ten whole minutes before she felt a familiar tugging at her soul. She was being forcibly pulled through the Beyond in the general direction of the Aether. Admittedly ‘direction’ was a flimsy concept in the demonic realm, but it was the best way to describe the sensation. Drea didn’t think much of it since Seth usually dragged her into his divine space whenever he had a job for her, so she allowed it to happen. Not that she could have refused the ‘invitation,’ but she sometimes resisted a bit as a form of silent protest whenever the God of Death gave her crappy assignments.

When the webstalker arrived, she did indeed find herself in the presence of a deity. However, it wasn’t Seth, but Bob. The God of Chaos was standing off to the side, his spectacles in one hand and the other rubbing his eyes in an annoyed fashion. The source of his exasperation was standing next to him, in the shape of a massive chest-themed abomination. Drea was rather taken aback by the sight. Even though she had expected to hear from Boxxy sometime in the near future, she wasn’t expecting for it to happen quite so soon, let alone in such a way.

“So that’s how that works,” the abomination exclaimed. “I should’ve just done this in the first place.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Bob groaned. “Just, waltz in here, take over the place. It’s not like you’re trampling over fourteen millenia of hard work or anything.”

“You’ll be fine, you drama queen,” it rolled seventeen eyes. “Now don’t interrupt, I have a meeting to attend to.”

“I’m not going.”

The monster had barely looked towards Drea before she rejected it. It was obvious to her what Boxxy was going to say, based on what she was seeing. Her former master had not only returned, but was casually bossing Bob around. The giant, moaning, chained-up form of Xera in the background was somewhat of a hint, as well. In short, it had succeeded in its otherworldly quests and had returned to collect its ‘property,’ but this particular belonging was not willing.

“Okay. Why?” it asked bluntly.

“I’m over you,” she replied in kind.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” she defiantly crossed her arms. “Did you honestly think I’d start fawning over you the instant you came back, just because you showed me a good time for a few decades way back when?”

“Kind of, but can you blame me?” it pointed to the hopeless pervert behind it.

“Don’t lump me in with those damaged goods,” she scoffed. “I admit, I admired you back then, but you were just a phase. I outgrew you.”

There was no malice or anger in her voice, just a cold statement of fact. Two thousand years was a long time for a personality to change, and unlike the other two, Drea had had far more and varied experiences. She had reevaluated her time with Boxxy a dozen times over, under several different perspectives. Ultimately, Drea had come to see that time period as a fun diversion and learning experience, but it wasn’t worth dedicating the rest of her days to.

“I can respect that.”

Drea stared blankly for several seconds upon hearing those words of acceptance.

“That’s it?” she asked warily. “No ‘How dare you defy me?!’ or ‘You will always be beneath me!’ or any other tantrum like that?”

Bob snorted with laughter at the stalker’s scarily accurate impression of Boxxy. Those practical acting lessons she had gotten while on the job were really paying off. The shapeshifter, however, was unperturbed.

“I almost reacted that way, yes,” it admitted, “but then I got to thinking. Our relationship has never been awfully personal, has it?”

Compared to Snack, who constantly needed ‘motivating,’ and Arms, who required a lot of supervision, Claws had always been the most independent and professional of the familiars. She may have had some odd infatuation with Boxxy at the start, but that had faded long before the monster’s departure. For the majority of their time together, the two had treated each other as little more than employee and employer. Perhaps it was because of that distance that the shapeshifter didn’t feel quite as betrayed by Drea’s rejection as it did by Kora’s. It still stung, but not to the point where it felt the need to enact some form of petty revenge.

“Well, color me surprised,” she relaxed a bit. “I guess you aren’t quite as childish as I remember you. Not by much, though.”

“Claws, you wound me,” it replied sarcastically.

“Uh-huh. Listen, Boxxy, this chitter-chatter isn’t going to change anything. I’ve made my mind up a long time ago – I’m not going to work with you anymore. Not because I have something against you in particular, tktktktktk, but because I work better alone.”

“Will you at least hear out my new offer?”

“Haah,” she sighed. “Sure.”

It wasn’t as if she had a choice, anyway.

“The other side is a strange, confusing place, but the masses are soft. Weak. Naive. If I do things right, I’ll take everything they have and they’ll thank me for it. You can do it too, perhaps even better than me. Best part is, there are literally trillions of victims to go around. Plenty for you and I to share.”

“Are you suggesting a partnership? Because I know better than to accept that kind of offer from you.”

Historically speaking, things rarely ended well for Boxxy’s partners.

“No, just the opposite,” it claimed. “I bring you outside, then we go our separate ways. We don’t need to interact with one another beyond that unless you wish to.”

“Where’s the catch?”

“No catch. I’d rather have a potential future ally on the outside than not.”

“Yeah, I’m not buying it,” Drea crossed her arms again. “If you truly intended to let me run free, then there’s a chance I might become an enemy instead. You’d never make a deal like that. Not only is there no guarantee that things will work out in your favor, but there’s a chance that it might backfire instead.”

Proper risk-reward assessment had been one of the few things that the stalker had taken some pointers on from Boxxy. She felt certain it was trying to trick her in a way that would allow it to benefit at her expense. She wasn’t certain what the deception was, exactly, but she knew how the creature operated. Her obvious suspicion and well-warranted distrust also made it clear that it was in the shapeshifter’s best interest not to push its luck.

“Alright. Have it your way, then,” it gave up. “Enjoy your dead-end existence.”

It didn’t give her a chance to respond before it somewhat spitefully sent her back home.

“Ow. Only one out of three so far, huh?” Bob commented playfully. “At this rate it’ll just be you and that sloppy ball of depravity.”

“You be quiet,” it growled.

While the creature was clearly angry, its wrath was aimed at itself. It really should have known better than to try to pull one over on someone who knew it so well. In actuality, Boxxy had been intending to use Claws as bait. It was extremely illegal for existences like them to roam free on the other side, and law enforcement agencies had immense resources at their disposal. The only way for the monster to survive was to hide and bide its time, and it wanted to make life easier for itself by having the authorities chase after someone else. Claws would have been that decoy, but in retrospect it was probably a good thing she had seen through its motives.

Boxxy had concocted that plan on the spot, and with the benefit of hindsight it realized the idea was bound to backfire eventually. It hadn’t been lying when it said Claws would do well out there. She was careful and thorough, and hiding was literally in her nature. Admittedly the same was true of Boxxy, but it was also far more prone to taking risks if it meant obtaining a juicy enough prize. All things considered, it seemed likely that if both of them were out there Claws would have been the one in hiding while Boxxy fled from the authorities.

“Seriously though,” Bob spoke up again. “Can you please not take Xerababadubuth? I can’t do the ‘seven deadly sins’ thing if there’s only six of them.”

“So just get her replacement,” it groaned.

“Ah, yes, good old Michael McDoesn’t-Exist. Let me just pull him out of my back pocket, why don’t I?”

“Wait, you actually forgot to prepare one? You had two thousand years!”

Bob had known about Boxxy’s plans, so his uncharacteristic lack of foresight was surely his own fault.

“Do you know how incredibly difficult it is to convince a sloth demon to do work?!” he complained. “She’s the only djinn that ever said ‘yes’ to it!”

“Can’t you just kinda force it onto someone when they’re not paying attention?” the monster suggested haphazardly.

“No! Maybe. Okay, yes, I can probably do that,” Bob relented. “It’s still a dick move to make more work for me this late in the project.”

“I mean, I could just create a copy of her.”

“Ugh. No, don’t. I’ll handle it.”

The whole Overlords thing was a pet project of Bob’s. It was a hobby not entirely unlike an extreme version of gardening. He didn’t want to cheat at it since it would cheapen the sense of accomplishment.

“Yeah, well, for your sake I hope you handle it better than that.”

Boxxy pointed towards something in the distance. It was difficult to spot at a glance because of how far away it was, but there was definitely an oddity within the endless white void that made up Bob’s private space. From where the two of them were, it looked like a splattering of color that shifted rapidly and randomly, almost as if a few hundred rainbows were having a frantic high-speed orgy. In truth, the anomaly was somehow simultaneously far more terrifying and significantly more innocent than that analogy.

At its center was none other than Minic. The tiny animate jewelry box was prancing around without a care in the world as it chased after a harmless mote of light that darted back and forth like a bumblebee. That was the innocent part. The terrifying part was the incomprehensible cacophony surrounding it. Lightning burned, fire bubbled, air cracked, thunder meowed, and ice tap-danced in its wake. It was as if reality itself was having an existential crisis while it tried and failed to process the wooden critter’s fifteen-digit LCK Attribute.

“Yeah…” Bob grimaced. “I still need to get around to fixing that…”

“What’s stopping you? Weren’t you able to process hundreds of tasks simultaneously?” Boxxy teased.

“Honestly, I’m kind of scared to mess with it. I feel like the whole system might implode if I try anything. Just quarantining it here was… interesting.”

“I don’t think it’s one of those things that will go away if you ignore it.”

“You never know. It just might,” he shrugged. “Anything’s possible over there. Plus, if I wait long enough it’ll eventually become someone else’s problem.”

“… I’m gonna go poke it.”

“Please don’t.”

“Doing it!”

On that day, for precisely 3.624 seconds, the tapestry of stars that surrounded Terrania was replaced by a blurred image of a small box being chased by a larger box.