Lyn stumbled after exiting the Rift into the dungeon. She’d have fallen on her face if Mr. Hawkins had not still held her shoulder. It wasn’t a firm grip, like he was throwing her around or stopping her from moving. More like a reminder, a bit of extra help.

  Mr. Hawkins let her go and walked in front of her, leaving her to stare at the dungeon she found herself in. The previous dungeon had been open skies and wide grasslands. The threats had been varied, coming out the tall grass and bushes scattered around the entire zone. This dungeon was almost the opposite. The ceiling of the cavern was about four or five stories about her, with stalactites stretching down like fingers trying to grab them. The wall nearby was open, and a torrent of magma rolled past with bubbles snapping hard enough to echo. Slow and torturous, as though it were a warning. Instructor Hardy had little to say about environmental effects, but from her own research, F-rank dungeons lacked those dangers. That should mean the magma and fire surrounding them weren’t actually dangerous if they didn’t approach them. Lyn had no desire to test that though.

  The cavern was closed entirely except for a tunnel that led to somewhere further down. Lights flickered in an erratic pattern, dimming slightly before coming back stronger.

  “Stay on the path. It won’t be hard to follow, as it should only be the one,” Mr. Hawkins said, his voice a deep vibrato that sounded like what she expected rocks to sound like. He was massive: broad shouldered and nearly a foot taller than her. His hand looked like it could cover her face. Lyn knew she was small, but standing near this operator just reminded her the size difference. She’d been around men that big before, maybe not as beastly but certainly either as tall or strong. Like the linemen at her school, though they avoided her too. Only with Mr. Hawkins she wasn’t shrinking away.

  He had not introduced himself, though she supposed that they really did not need to. He could see her name as much as she did his, between their name plates projected above their heads and the HUD with its party user interface. Seemed wrong to call an adult by their first name, though. He kept calling her by her full name, though. Not really her full name, but the name she preferred. Her character sheet listed her as her legal name, except that was not what he saw.

  “What was the purpose in waiting?” Lyn asked. Mr. Hawkins twisted, stretching his back for a brief moment, then stretched high. His shirt barely hung on him, the remnants of some dress shirt, probably.

  “Most F-rank dungeons are mob heavy,” he replied as he turned to face her. “A variety of packs with one or two monsters that could safely be called elites if they were in an E or D-rank one. If there are any elite F-ranks, they would be solo fights.”

  “That is what my instructor said.” After prodding her for nearly an hour about anything useful about other Rifts.

  “There’s a correlation: the bosses are weaker.” He stared down at his shirt, the massive hole in the front made by tears and cuts of the scladren’s weapons or burnt away by the bolts the leader was throwing. He just took them, barely giving them any attention, especially after that first attack.

  Lyn had run to the Rift, using rooftops mostly, also the L and busses if only to save her the hassle of waiting. Her [Rip Cord] ability was extremely useful, allowing her to cross any gap she couldn’t just jump. It wasn’t fast enough to arrive before the Rift opened, but she got there pretty fast despite not really having a solid movement skill.

  She had been visiting a police station in Oak Park on the orders of Instructor Hardy, though she hadn’t been told why exactly or what she was supposed to do there. The officers weren’t that friendly; a detective simply had her wait in the lobby when her HUD lit up with a warning of a Rift approaching. It gave her a countdown, a direction, and a rank. That it was F-rank was enough for her to try to reach it even though she had to run along the Blue-line to reach it. A lot of people were staring and pointing at her, and she knew she should have had a serious expression – Instructor Hardy was always on about the public perception of the Guild – but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

  A chance to go back in, to fight and protect people: gaining her core was the second greatest day in her life, and she wasn’t going to waste it. That didn’t mean she had to be overly reckless, so arriving and seeing the first wave being fired upon by the locals, she stayed on the roof. Instructor Hardy had made it very clear at how weak she was, and Lyn had no desire to die. It was the right move to wait for others to show up. She even sent a message to the Guild to come and help, but there was no answer to her request for help. The locals were holding them off, though she wasn’t certain if that was a lot of bullets or not. Sounded like it. The magic bolt was extremely worrisome. Most physical attacks she could avoid, but magic was too strange. It was rare at F-rank, but the rapid fire purple bolts gave her enough reason to pause and stay hidden.

  The rooftop allowed her to watch as the man walked up to the overturned cars and talk briefly with one of them, a dark-skin man lean and fit. The new man had blocked a spear thrown and forced the local down back behind cover before simply walking out towards the monsters. Lyn held her breath as she watched him step closer and closer to the Rift and the leader monster, though she will admit that it was more out of fear than amazement. She nearly hid when hideous purple bolt slammed into the man, but stayed watching, just peaking over the rooftop edge in her observation.

  What followed was a slaughter. He moved recklessly, more than any other new operator she’d seen. He simply let every attack hit him, blood flew off of him along with chunks of skin and muscle. He didn’t stop though. He fought with no form or skill, just throwing wild punches that shattered the monsters. His arms glowed an unsteady red that flickered in and out, but each punch that landed flared a bright yellow.

  She stayed crouched down, hidden on a nearby roof, in awe of the man, this operator who just broke that first wave by himself. Her squad struggled to fight half as many, and she remembered the pain of teeth tearing into her arm, how hard it was to hurt anything, to fight at all. But Lyn was going to be a hero, she was going to save people.

  “What doesn’t, wait really? The bosses are weak?”

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  Mr. Hawkins shook his head then held up a finger. Lyn nearly asked what he was doing when a screen popped into her HUD.

  She did not jump in excitement. She did not. She may have hopped in an effort to get ready, to psyche herself up for what she was going to to do, but she did not jump or squeal or even make any noises. Mr. Hawkins still stared at her under a raised eyebrow. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he replied. “Not for simply feeling something.”

  “I mean, this is serious and I should be professional,” Lyn said. She dismissed it and tried to stand still, or at least less jittery.

  “No such thing,” Mr. Hawkins said. “we’re about to go fight monsters, Lyn Hills, Striker. You’ve already fought them. You already survived. And you’re being asked to do it again. That’s not an easy thing.” He adjusted the sleeves of his shirt, rolling them up then immediately pulled them back down and fixed the barrel cuffs. His attention never wavered from his own screen. “You want to be ready for anything, but don’t want to be anxious.”

  “Like you?”

  He paused his motion, then unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled them back up. “Most F-rank dungeons and delves will have weaker bosses, so to speak. They aren’t really bosses, though, not in a traditional sense like you’d see in a raid.”

  “Raid?” She knew the term from video games, but that was not associated at all with Rifts.

  He waved his hand, dismissing the question. “These bosses in low rank dungeons are more like checkpoints, the means of judging your pace and progress, then actual bosses. A bit stronger, but nothing over the top. It might be preferred for most operators to deal with them, though-”

  “Less elites,” Lyn said.

  Mr. Hawkins turned to give her a soft smile. “Correct. Less elites mean less loot, or at least quality loot.”

  “But you did something different.” He nodded, and she continued. “We entered at a specific time, or as close to it as we can get, to have the opposite?” She scrunched her nose up and shook her head. “Or is it something else? Less mobs, but that doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be possible to remove monsters from a Rift like that.”

  “All Rifts contact a set amount of magic when they erupt onto our plane.” Mr. Hawkins flicked away his screen rather than close it, and knelt down to check his shoes. Lyn was not aware that it was possible to even read the level of magic within a Rift; they could determine the rank, which was similar in a way. Maybe that was what Mr. Hawkins was referring to. This was getting into magical theory; she had not a chance to study anything on it yet. Instructor Hardy refused to let her use the library and most of the information online was terribly inaccurate. He stood up and walked over to her, hands cupping something. “Think of it as opening a box-”

  “like Schrodinger’s Cat?” Mr. Hawkins chuckled. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize; it’s good. I told you, enthusiasm is good. It means you’re interested.”

  “No, for interrupting. It was rude of me.”

  He shrugged then continued, “So, we have this box, the Rift right? And everything that this Rift can open up to is already decided. It’s in the box in a set state. We can’t control what we will find when we open any more than we can change what has already decided.”

  “But we do not know what is in it, so it could be anything.”

  “Not anything. A very specific thing that we cannot know for certain. It’s called the System, and like every other system that exists, there are rules to it. Rules and patterns and structures that it follows.” No one knew them, though. The Rifts had only been erupting into their plane for a half dozen years, and there was so many strange things coming from that no one knew anything about them, other than what the System told them. Lyn looked at his hands. He shook and whatever was in it rattled. “Schrodinger's Cat is a quantum physics thought experiment, but it is useful here. The Rift is in a state of superposition, that its final shape is undefined until it is acted on or observed.”

  “By entering it to the dungeon.”

  “Correct,” Mr. Hawkins split his hands apart, still closed around something. “Each of these states exists until one is selected by action or observation, then only one does.” he raised one hand then other. Lyn tapped the left and he opened his hand, dropping a small cloud of dirt and ash. “By observing, we define it. Dungeon or delve or raid has always been that way, and never anything else. But what if we can change how we observe it? What would happen then?”

  “The countdown,” Lyn said. She looked up with a smile.

  “In a way, yes,” Mr. Hawkins said and opened up his other hand, revealing a gem. “It is the only way we can. Its not exact and perfect, and like I said earlier it-”

  “How did you know?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How did you know about the countdown, or when to enter to get the result you wanted? Or when to enter at a given time at all?”

  “Oh, that. Through a lot of trial and error,” he replied. “not mine, but a man I knew. He did a lot of studying over the years, many many years and-”

  “How many? Rifts only arrived in 2019, when-”

  Mr. Hawkins stood up straight, shoving his hand in his pocket. “Right, I- I misspoke. He just started out. It’s new and unproven. Very hush-hush. Come on, you saw the timer, we don’t have that much time.” He walked away, not quite running, but at a swift awkward pace one might use when trying to escape a conversation.

  Lyn tilted her head as she stared at him as he walked towards the tunnel; he was lying, poorly, but for what reason she could not figure out. This knowledge was valuable, extremely so, and if he knew of specific times to alter what was inside a dungeon, especially to create more loot, he could become very rich. “Which is it?” she asked running to catch up.

  “Which is what? Oh, the state?” Mr. Hawkins smiled brightly. “Less mobs of course.”

  “But you said the magic was set, that means it can’t be reduced.” Lyn paused as the thought popped in her head. “Less mobs means-”

  “Actual elite bosses. Most likely singular monsters, but we can’t be for certain.” He kept walking, down into the tunnel where the flickering lights barely cast his shadow. She stood in the entrance, staring at him as he continued walking away towards certain death.

  *_*_*_*_*

  Normann was a dumb ass and wanted to smash his head against the wall. But he had to be an adult at the moment, and that would look really weird, so he’d avoid braining himself so he could die from his stupidity now instead of later. He was responsible for this young operator’s life through his own carelessness, and he’d be damned if he let her die because he wasn’t watching out for her.

  Footsteps followed him, so he relaxed a little bit. There were no monsters in the entrance, a good sign the trick worked. Oliver had explained it in full, and he could only remember a small amount of what he said about the whole ‘superpositioning of Rifts’, but it was far beyond his understanding. The basic explanation he gave Lyn was the one he understood the best. He remembered a few of the equations, the simpler ones at that he could easily remember and use. But it had taken a better part of three decades for Oliver to have a comprehensive theory of how entering a Rift affected it, and he still called it incomplete.

  Mostly because it didn’t matter towards the end.

  For the moment, his attention needed to be on the quest at hand. He flicked down with his forefinger and pulled up the screen he simply pushed aside earlier:

  Most of the information was what he had expected from the System. Though, the ‘Bonus Objectives’ were a surprise; that they came from his [Cassandric Knowledge] passive even more so. He had already intended on ensuring the young woman made it out of the dungeon alive and well, but that her survival was tied to the success seemed important. He’d have to figure it out later. He had to worry about the monsters he was definitely approaching. The further he walked down the tunnel, the better chance of being attacked.

  Lyn ran and caught up to him, walking just behind him. He hadn’t heard her so much as felt when she was right there, nearly brushing against him. “When we get to the first pull,” Normann said, not bothering to hide his voice, “Wait until I have hit them all first before attacking, Lyn Hills, Striker. No matter how many there are.” He’d the time to ensure he had threat and keep them off of her. Without another ability, all he could rely on was the debuff his passive gave him.

  It was clear the SYSTEM was setting him on some Defender slant with his passive giving threat, though he lacked any real skill to be a successful one. No training with shields or to dodge anything, no experience in heavy armor. The best he could was simply not fall down when he hit. It’d have to be enough.

  “Why do you call me that?” Lyn asked him, soft as a the wind and barely above his heartbeat. An interesting trick, probably something to do with her core. Or her chassis, he thought then pushed it aside. Best not to dwell on something that didn’t matter to him. How she get that component was her business.

  “It’s your name,” he replied. The tunnel was long, lit only by the faintest wisps of fire from crevices in the walls, enough to light the tunnel. He led them deeper into it, thanking whomever he wasn’t claustrophobic.

  “It’s actually… Its not really my name. It’s just what I want, I mean preferred to be called, but I didn’t think the SYSTEM showed that name. But why call me by that?”

  For any other operator, it might just show the name they were known as. It should have shown their given name, not their preferred. He couldn't understand why he could see that particular name. Calling her by her full name plate was easier. There wasn’t a good why he called her by her full name plate. Part of it was habit, from nearly a decade of conscription and being forced to address someone solely by their Role. Or from when he finally was free and able to call people by their name, saying the full felt more comfortable and natural. That wasn’t why though.

  Well, it was a little. He first called her by the full nameplate without thinking, his habit of decades of doing so. He only kept doing so because of how she responded. She liked hearing it, as though someone calling her by her full name was an oddity. Or maybe it was simply the first name that was. Some people just had a name they preferred, a name they may even keep secret from others. Their reasons were their own.

  “It’s your name.” Normann repeated with a shrug He slowed his pace as the tunnel leveled out and grew brighter. “Doesn’t matter what others might want to call you, or what you’ve been told should be your name. It’s yours.”

  “It’s a nickname, Mr. Hawkins.”

  He stopped, and she walked into him. He hadn’t been called that in a long time. So long that he forgot what it sounded like. To his body, it felt weird like the sounds didn’t process right. To his mind and soul, it felt like he wasn’t that person. He didn’t deserve it. He fell back onto words that always came out whenever his name was said and he was unsure what to respond with: “Mr. Hawkins is my father. Normann’s fine.”

  “Okay,” Lyn said, “well, then I guess I’d prefer if you just called me Lyn. Not that whole other thing.” He could hear the monsters, only a few by the different sounds coming from ahead. Maybe twenty feet further in. He couldn’t tell if the licen or something else, but they were present. Maybe they could sneak up on them, though he was terrible at sneaking. He hoped they didn’t have good hearing or sense of smell.

  “Nice to meet you, Lyn.” He held out his hand but didn’t look her way. She shook it, though with none of the strength she used earlier on him. The timidity would have to be gone when they started fighting. He exhaled heavily and slowly, grabbing old of the storm of magic within his body so he could channel it through his fists again. “Remember, just let me hit them first before you jump in. I don’t have anything to grab them off of you, so their attention needs to be on me.”

  “So we’re going to fight soon?” Two daggers slipped out their sheaths, the quiet metal on metal scrape didn’t quite echo in the tunnel, but he heard them. Or imagined them. “I’m ready.”

  “Good,” Normann walked down the tunnel, around a corner and into an open cavern. “Because here we go.”