We didn’t see a single dungeon monster as the mecha stomped toward the hedged house.

  Tori was on edge about it. So was I, but unlike her, I wasn’t showing it. Part of it was the sheer logic of what we were doing; there just weren’t threats in the Tier Four dungeons anymore. Tori was Level 80 now, and I was 82 and Rank Two. And part of it was that I was looking for more resonance between the dungeon’s Charge and the world’s, or signs that a secret was hidden inside of it. I wasn’t trying to break this dungeon, though. We wanted the experience, as little as there really was. A Tier Four most likely wouldn’t provide the answers I wanted.

  And Tori was right. This place felt off.

  “You’re just acting like it’s no big deal because you’ve got that mecha!” she said, glaring. “You’re a walking tank now.”

  I shrugged. The machine copied my motion as my hands pulled on the joysticks. “I am. Let’s focus on figuring out why there aren’t any monsters. That feels…wrong.”

  “Yeah, my MMOs realized that trash mobs were important after the Gladiator’s Exam raid,” Tori said. “There’s no way the Consortium doesn’t know that, too.”

  We walked through the gate in the hedge—the mech’s feet literally pounding through it before Tori stepped across the bent, twisted iron—and stopped next to the dark-leafed oak tree. Nothing moved. The entire place was still, except the house’s weathervane, which spun slightly in the breeze.

  “How do you think we get this thing started?” Tori asked.

  “No idea. Check inside.”

  “Got it.

  As Tori opened the door and started poking around inside the two-story, colonial-looking house, I kept moving, doing a circuit of the yard before stopping next to the old car. It was rusted, but when I slid out of the Voltsmith’s Mech and checked the driver’s side door, it opened with a screech.

  A single crow cawed.

  I looked up at the tree. One of the clumps of leaves flapped its wings. Then another.

  “Ah,” I murmured. Then I broke into a sprint, sliding back into the mecha and yelling for Tori. “Birds!”

  The Birds: Level Seventy-Three Elite Dungeon Boss

  Current Difficulty: Trivial

  They come from above. Their attacks are relentless, their numbers infinite, and their mission singular: Murder. They won’t stop until their target is dead. They won’t be dissuaded. They won’t be defeated. There is only one answer. Run.

  Myriad: This boss’s Elite state consists of innumerable members of a swarm, and will continue swarming until conditions change.

  Escort: This boss will be defeated when the escort target successfully escapes.

  “Dammit,” Tori muttered. “I hate escort quests so much!”

  Hal was outside, yelling his lungs out for her, but she didn’t have time for that crap. There was a woman, maybe thirty, and completely put together in a blue dress and coat. Her hair was 1950s perfect. She looked terrified. And, of course, she was moving slower than the worst escorts Tori had ever dealt with in her games.

  The Mark: Level One Boss

  Every time Tori got more than ten feet away from her, she froze. Every time Tori tried to get her to move quicker, she froze. It was the most frustrating thing—and even worse, she could hear Hal fighting outside. A grenade went off with a shockingly loud whump, and the stomping of feet moved toward the front door.

  She kicked the door open.

  Then she cast a Gravity Well—just as the first wave of birds slammed into it like missiles.

  There were thousands. Sea birds—seagulls, pelicans, and waders. Eagles, falcons, and a couple of black cormorants. And songbirds—so many songbirds—filling the gaps between the big ones. The moment she opened the door, every single one of them stopped milling around and strafing Hal’s mech and started shooting straight for the woman.

  Who, of course, immediately stepped across the Gravity Well, stopped on the faded white house’s porch, and started fishing through her purse.

  “Cover her!” Tori yelled.

  “What?”

  “We can’t leave her alone! She needs to be escorted!”

  “Oh, alright.” The mech stomped over. The porch crumpled under a literal ton of concentrated weight, and Hal turned around and fired another grenade. It exploded point-blank. Shrapnel filled the air in front of him. “The car door opens!”

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  “Got it!” Tori took off. The moment she did, some of the birds noticed her. She Pushed them, then threw a Levitation at the next pack. They froze mid-air, flapping helplessly, and Tori snorted.

  Then she arrived at the car, threw open the squeaky door, and tossed herself onto the driver’s seat. The door slammed shut. She swatted a hummingbird out of the air like a mosquito, then looked at the dashboard. “Fuel, battery, everything it needs. Just missing…oh, god dammit.” Then she slid into the passenger’s seat, popped the door open, and threw a Pull across the maelstrom of feathers.

  The woman flew off her feet and crashed into the car hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs. Tori winced, but she dropped a pair of Gravity Wells as she clambered over the hood. Then she opened the driver’s door and tossed the coughing, blue-faced woman inside. “Get it going!” she yelled.

  Five minutes later, the dirt road away from the beautiful house with the dead oak tree outside of it was completely covered in bird corpses. Some had been crushed by tires, and others had been shot out of the sky by airburst grenades and telekinetic magic. It was carnage. But…

  Boss Defeated: The Birds

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  Winged Bowstring (Rare, Charge 25)

  +8 Mana

  The wielder of this bowstring gains the ability to direct projectiles slightly, at a rate of five degrees of bend for every ten feet the projectile travels.

  Infinite Purse (Epic, Charge 5)

  +12 Awareness

  The Infinite Purse functions as an upgrade to a user’s storage space, allowing an additional 0.579 tons of material to be stored within their inventory. However, this additional space requires five seconds of time to access per item the user is searching for.

  Hal had eyes for both of the drops. Tori hated it when he got both items, but realistically, she didn’t have a use for either. Besides, it was in her best interests to have him in debt to her for the later bosses—just in case there was something build-defining coming up. She didn’t want to miss out on something big.

  I hadn’t leveled.

  But both of the items I’d picked up were incredibly important to me. I was running not one, but two empty slots right now, and since both were magical items instead of creations, they went right into my build. The Bowstring was amazing—I could hit with my rail gun shots, even against small targets. And as for the purse? It was fine. I’d use it to store the mecha, and have a decent amount of space in the rest of my inventory for ammunition, repair parts, and my own personal gear.

  The Birds had been both nightmarishly chaotic and laughably easy. As I thought back on it, the hardest part was supposed to be moving the Mark from the house to the car. She was supposed to be vulnerable for almost seventy feet. Instead, Tori just grabbed her and slammed her into the car. She probably had broken ribs, but the boss was beaten—and we were twenty-five percent done with the dungeon’s completion.

  “Next?” Tori asked. She’d noticed the twenty-five percent thing first, of course. We were on track for a full clear, and based on the number, we wouldn’t be seeing any of what she insisted on calling trash mobs.

  “The Sonic Falcon. Should be easy for us,” I said as we moved toward the gigantic granite cliffs in the distance.

  The whole place felt off to me. It was the charge resonance; there wasn’t any. Every other Tier Four dungeon we’d cleared had had at least some resonance, but this time? Nothing. I didn’t know why, but I did have a guess.

  The Consortium had figured out what I was doing with resonance.

  If I was right, my days of using dungeons as resonance detectors were over. I’d have to find another way. As we pushed up to the edge of the cliffs, I worked the problem over in my head.

  The obvious solution was the Waypoint Beacon. It still had resonance. I doubted the Consortium could change that, either; they were relying on that beacon to do something with Integration, otherwise, they wouldn’t have made it the central focus of an entire phase. But just because the beacon wasn’t something the Consortium could mess with didn’t make it safe. It was still an obvious trap, and I didn’t want to fall for it.

  Relying on the beacon meant, essentially, sequestering myself in Cindy’s Garage. And that wasn’t acceptable. Not yet.

  So, given that the Consortium didn’t want me learning from dungeons, and they were fine with me learning from the beacon, a third option might not even exist. Or, alternatively…”They’re hiding it from me,” I muttered.

  “Hiding what?” Tori asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Alright, suit yourself, Hal.” Tori sped up to a run as she reached the bottom of the cliff, and I shook my head to clear it. Just because the first boss had been a cakewalk didn’t mean—

  The Sonic Falcon: Level Seventy Dungeon Boss

  Current Difficulty: Trivial

  Gotta go fast. Gotta—

  I didn’t have time to read more.

  Tori Pulled something out of the sky. It hit the ground like a meteor, kicking up dust almost fifty feet high and blinding me even through the mech’s viewport. A second spell crackled to life—Gravity Well—and I blinked and rubbed my eyes to clear them from the dust. When it cleared, the oversized, grey-brown bird was thrashing on the ground. Its talons and beak lashed out helplessly as Tori tried to Crush it to death with her magic. Every time she cast, though, it moved.

  I aimed the rail gun and pulled the trigger as she used Gravity Well. Three bolts slammed into the bird. Feathers puffed out, then shimmered as the boss’s body slowly disappeared, leaving behind two purple items.

  Boss Defeated: The Sonic Falcon

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  “That’s it?” Tori asked. She looked flabbergasted at how easy the fight had been, and I couldn’t blame her. It had been a total joke—even more of one than our ten and twelve-level advantage should have made it. “No levels or anything?”

  “I think we had all the tools to end the fight instantly,” I said after a minute. It was a ready-solved problem.” Sometimes, in mechanic work, you get those—where the customer has already done the fix, they’re just missing a final step. Easy fixed, but the pay’s usually not great, because there’s no man-hours on the job. In this case, though…looks like you’ve got plenty of rewards for not much work.”

  Tori stared at me. Then she nodded slowly and touched the two purple lights on the ground. Her face lit up, and she pumped a fist. “Alright! This is perfect!”

  I smiled. “Figure out what you’re going to replace, and let’s head for boss number three.”