Hunter leaped off of one of the strange tubular masses of astral, managing to propel himself far enough to reach the other before he was dragged back down. He hadn’t known he’d make it. Without the trust he’d placed in his instincts, Hunter wouldn’t have survived this long. As it was, the gamble caught the last remaining enemy off guard, allowing him to tear out its throat before it threw another of the long spears at him.
The strange land mirroring wherever Daniel had gone did not behave as the rest of the Astral did. Hunter had no idea why, only the hope that this had something to do with why Daniel had come here. For one there was no ground but a pit of roiling color that the tangle arose from. He would rather fade into the regular Astral than tempt whatever lay there.
To avoid that place and survive, Hunter had to navigate the threads of the tangle. Their width varied greatly, the smallest about twice as wide as he was. Whichever one his paws had touched last would be the direction gravity took him. If he didn’t lock into a different strand when jumping from one to another, he’d fall back. The landing wouldn’t kill him no matter how poorly he took it, it was exposing himself to the monsters here that he feared.
Sensing no more of them for now, Hunter settled down and focused on Freedom to remove what damage he had taken. While other wounds from unavoidable conflicts on the way here had healed over time, the ones the creatures here inflicted were alike to the horror’s. There was corruption to them that would have meant his end had he not the means to remove it, though it came at the expense of making himself weaker while doing so.
As the purple and black light was purged from his form it grew more defined as his own will and sense of self recovered. That was what he hated most, unmistakably losing parts of himself with every blow that landed. Each attack that struck came with the fear of going past the point of recovery. When it began to accumulate, he even started to question why he resisted at all.
Hunter was deep in the tangle now, yet still had what seemed endless distance to go. This place was wrong. He would not tire, would not hunger, but his mind could grow exhausted while under constant pressure. Especially when hours of fighting gave no observable progress in exchange. Yet he would persist, no matter how far he needed to go and how many stood in his way.
He refused to fall. The twisted denizens of this place would do well to hope Daniel helped him escape it, or else he would kill them all.
…
Daniel’s skin was burning. Despite Sigron doing his best to disperse the cloud, there was enough remaining to keep the damage active. What’s worse, he was now without Regeneration, and it was readily apparent that their opponent was one of the elite monsters Cloak had warned them about. It had a nigh insurmountable terrain advantage and, more importantly, all of his bags of holding. It has the avianoid’s short sword. If it decides to just leave now we’re screwed.
That was not the plan as instead there were three more bursts of smoke as the elite monster carelessly wasted all of Daniel’s handiwork. Among the smoke bombs was the lightning variety he’d made, adding a constant electric shock to the air on top of the burning. There was no way the converted Rogue wasn’t also suffering from the damage, but with a higher level it was something it could probably ignore. Daniel hadn’t made these types to directly damage the corrupted avianoid but to blind her while the incidental damage ticked up Elemental Onslaught.
The one silver lining was that he’d tagged the monster. Daniel attempted to use Mark Weakness, only to be met with another disappointment.
System Alert: Attempted use of Ability: Mark Weakness has failed due to an Effect of defender’s Feature: Suppress Presence. Your Offense: Intelligence was not high enough to overcome the defender’s Defense: Dexterity.
Great. He could potentially overcome that by boosting his intelligence to level 3 since he’d acquired two advancement potential after defeating the sparrow which were now held in reserve. It would only cost him level disparity to every other attribute, and with strength and charisma still at 21, it would be a long road to balancing himself. Don’t need that yet.
“Shuni, I’m going to grab him. Get ready!” Out of everyone here, he hoped she would be able to zero in on the monster in time. He reached out with Telekinetic Reach and-
System Alert: Attempted use of Ability: Telekinetic Reach has failed due to an Effect of defender’s ~Adaptation: Untouchable~. Your Offense: Intelligence was not high enough to overcome the defender’s Defense: Wisdom.
Fuck this. If the monster god had taken a Rogue and created some kind of ultimate dodge tank out of it, he would just stick to direct damage. Daniel jumped directly at the enemy’s aura, which showed something roughly humanoid with four extra limbs coming off the back. It had been avoiding the others and throwing anything it could get its hands on while Daniel wasted mana on powers it was effectively immune to, but it immediately reacted to his charge.
One of his own daggers came straight for his face, the shield on his arm moving in time to block it. While he avoided damage on the approach, his target wasn’t there when Daniel landed. The Artificer watched as the aura began to contort into what looked like an impossibly small space given how large it had been at first, and he realized what was happening. It’s squeezing through the mail slot things and into a side room. That’s cheating. “Khiat, toss me a wall!”
The dusker took a few seconds longer than he would have liked, but managed to throw one of the still surviving walls to Daniel who stuck it in front of the gap the monster had just gone through. “Get to the corners! It can throw my stuff through this!” He looked for the red aura behind the wall he was adjacent to and cursed again under his breath as he found it had disappeared. They had essentially reset to how it had been when they’d retreated to the first hallway, only now the enemy had most of Daniel’s things.
No, it was worse than that. As the smoke cleared through Sigron’s continued efforts, Daniel saw Shuni breathing hard in one of the far corners. There were several bloody needles on the ground near her. “Bastard was targeting me,” she coughed out, having received the full brunt of the poison without Fortitude to save her. Daniel’s hand instinctively went to the bag of holding that had his potions before he remembered it was gone.
Khiat looked pained as well as she’d received a few grazes and one direct stab from his daggers, but the combination of her natural defenses and the armor that covered almost all of her had put her in a better position. Sigron was about as healthy as he was, with one of the bond hands covering a poisoned wound while the other repaired a dent in the armor.
With a slight tremble in her voice, Khiat asked, “What do we do now? Shuni’s hurt.”
“I can still… still fight.” She stood shakily, kicking some of the needles away. “He’s using mana to do all of this. Just need to drain it.”
“It has my bags,” Daniel pointed out, not verbally mentioning the mana potions inside of them in case the monster hadn’t figured that out yet. It was intelligent enough to, and Shuni took the point.
“Shit!”
“It?” Khiat had picked up on that.
“Elite monster. No idea how it’s here, but that must mean all of the ones who cleared a rift are like this.” Experimentally, Daniel peeked the shortened muzzle of his blast blow between the wall and the mail slot and fired. The blank splitting ammunition pinged around a few times behind the divider, but there was nothing to indicate he’d hit with his shot. “Used to be a level 2 Rogue. If I had to guess, it has all the powers the former Blessed did, plus whatever the monster god gave them to account for the level up.”
“Then we have to help them!” Khiat looked at the glowing rift in the distance. “If we bring Willow here, she might be able to calm them down.”
“Not a chance.” Shuni’s voice was strained but determined. “We’re putting this one down while it’s trapped with us. Do you want this thing getting out and stalking us for the rest of our lives?”
Daniel didn’t know how he felt about what he was about to say but said it anyway. “It’s technically a monster now. Tlara could take it over if we weakened it enough.” He ignored the look Khiat gave and pointed to the door leading to the rift, then back to himself. “We should get reinforcements either way. Spinner could at least partially counter its stealth.”
Sigron gestured with his normal hand at the other three in the room and Daniel held up a flat palm. He nodded, Shuni looking hesitant but also like she didn’t have a better idea. Moving as quietly as he could, Silent Movement helping tremendously, Daniel walked up to the closed security door leading to the room with the rift. This is risky, he thought as the prompt came up. If it breaks out of that side room while I’m in here, I might not be able to come back until I take over the rift.
It was only a twenty meter dash one way, but the few attacks Shuni had received were taxing her enough as it was. Ideally, the entire team would go through with him, but there were still smoke bombs left in his bags. If the elite tossed them while they were in motion they could be split up in the confusion. He at least felt confident in handling himself alone, and if he could remotely control the doors it would allow the group to retreat to an area without four directions for the converted Rogue to attack from.
His movement was silent, but the slight scraping of metal from the door itself would have alerted the monster no matter what. Daniel charged forward, making it halfway down the hallway before one feature of the room caught his eye. Other doors. “Behind you!” he shouted, not stopping despite the trap that was no doubt already being sprung.
The sound of deploying smoke bombs, Khiat’s bow firing, and another failed incantation from Sigron reached his ears by the time he placed a hand on the rift. It was pure white, similar to when they’d fully cleared one in the past but before he’d taken it over. Any worries about resistance to the process due to the presence of the elite monster were resolved when he saw the Arcadian alerts come through.
Arcadian Security Alert
>Corruption at Lower Armory node fully purged.
>Total remaining corruption: 99%
>Warning! Several incompletely purged nodes remain. Immediate attention is required to prevent node relapse.
>Closest affected node: Lower Aft Power Core
>Processing…
>Action successful. Path routed to nearest incompletely purged node.
Arcadian Administrative Alert
>Teleportation gate at Lower Armory has been activated. Further power consumption noted at the local node.
>Processing…
>Warning! Arcadian power supply critical. Rainbow drive inoperable, main power core offline.
>Action successful.
>Warning!: General alert in effect. Only qualified users are allowed access to the Arcadian’s teleportation network.
>Warning!: Astral corruption has rendered multiple nodes inactive in the Arcadian teleportation network. >Current nodes active: 12
Arcadian Administrative Alert
>Warning! Maximum power threshold reached.
>Root cause: Failure of multiple power cores; rainbow drive inoperable.
>Activation of further systems impossible until power capacity is increased.
>Alerting Engineering.
Arcadian Engineering Alert
>Warning! Arcadian at maximum power consumption.
>Multiple power cores inoperable.
>Rainbow drive inoperable.
>Processing…
>Warning! Automatic diagnostics have failed. Recommend manual repair.
Aft? Daniel put the description of the next closest rift out of his mind, hurriedly taking his phone out and navigating through to the control screen for the armory. The last thing he wanted to do was open the front door, though there were clear enough labels that he was able to select just the one he wanted. Unfortunately there were no options like ‘activate ventilation’. Nothing to make the fight any easier, and by the time he got back?”
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Shuni wasn’t moving. That he could see her aura meant she wasn’t dead, but enough of that ‘Slow Toxin’ must have built up to stop her completely. The monster had identified the correct first target off the bat as Shuni could somewhat track it and was a competent fighter. Daniel could’ve posed a threat but it had taken- Wait. Wait!
Returning to the main room, Daniel found Sigron trying to protect Shuni from projectiles while Khiat waved the point of her arrow around, desperately trying to track where the monster was amid the half-thick smoke. Daniel raised his weapon with more confidence. He’d awakened the exact power he’d needed a while ago, the perfect counter to thieves for a normally economic-focused class. Track Merchandise.
As Daniel hoped, while the former Rogue had a power to hide its presence, it was still carrying enough of his stuff to generate a ping as he’d set the locate parameters to ‘everything’. Getting a strong clustered reading from the corner above where he’d come in, Daniel reflexively marked the space and landed Identify Creature again. Got you.
He turned and fired, not taking the chance to either charge Power Shot or infuse Scatter Shot. While the hexscuttle stalker was a level above him, it appeared much of its combat potential was wrapped around stealth and hit and run tactics. Faced with a rapid strike from a boomstick, it could do nothing but take the first significant hit of the encounter.
The sound it made as the projectiles struck was unmistakably human in origin, but if anyone heard it at night they’d be locking their doors and calling the police. Doesn’t have a dodge power? Good.
While the monster didn’t have something comparable to Dodge Roll, it did have high dexterity and enhanced biology. Daniel still hadn’t seen it clearly, but it was able to move along the ceiling and break his aura. For a second or two. Track Merchandise had a truly absurd mana cost, in how low it was for this degree of effect. A higher-leveled Rogue than him would probably have been able to conceal one or two pings from the ability. However, it had taken almost every item he had in the ruins and the ability included what had been stored in his bags.
I don’t care if you didn’t want this, Daniel thought, turning on his heel to fire the third shot of his magazine at the enemy to another pained cry. The smoke was clearing, and it appeared the monster had figured out its error as it was throwing his bags through the nearby slot leading to a side room. I’m taking you down.
The fourth shot out was only glancing as the former Rogue anticipated the timing, taking cover behind the grate as it snaked its way into the side room where his bags were. “It’s hurt!” Daniel called out. He saw the shape the rest of his team was in and made a decision. “Can’t let it get a potion. I’m going to get my stuff, cover me.”
He ran over to the mail slot and pinged Track Merchandise again, activating Telekinetic Reach to drag them back out. Going inside the room to get them was also an idea, but a stupid one. Isolating himself in a small space without his gear would be-
The partition blocking most of the window swung open as his bags of holding flew toward him. To give him some credit, it got them out of the monster’s reach, but he’d left himself exposed to a counterattack. The four limbs off the back snaked toward him, dexterous enough to approach from multiple angles. Daniel was able to spin away from two but the other knife-like ends of the appendages pierced both his armor and skin. It hurt, but what was worse was the sense of paralysis that came with the injuries.
Fortitude can’t handle the poison on its melee weapons? He tried to Dodge Roll, but whatever effect was on him blocked it. No, it’s another kind of power. I have to- And then he was dragged into the other room.
…
Khiat watched in horror as Daniel was speared and dragged through an opening in the walls, the divider swinging closed and locking with a click behind him. She unleashed a Sun Arrow, straining Hunter’s Eye as best she could to acquire the target and guide the radiant shot. It still hurt to use and ate away at Sun Resistance, she could in no way use this power around her people, but the recoil had begun improving to the point that she could fire two in a row. It drained more mana and the second one knocked her down, but it gave her options.
Options that were ultimately useless here. She should have been more suited to a battle in low light given her heritage, but the smoke had thrown her careful aim into chaos as she had to worry about hitting someone she couldn’t see. For that matter, the only time she’d directly seen part of the monster had been when it attacked Daniel, and it sounded like she’d missed.
The last few minutes had been terrifying, the constant lurking presence of the monster causing her to freeze several times when she might have tried to land a shot. It had gotten in her head. A predator you couldn’t see was everywhere. She had no reservations about fighting, not against monsters at least, but she’d always had problems when they’d gotten up close.
Now people were dying. Shuni had taken over a dozen hits and wasn’t moving anymore. Daniel had been isolated. She heard his weapon fire once or twice, but he wasn’t shouting anything. No one was doing anything.
Khiat flinched as her side stung, but it turned out to be Sigron rather than another dagger appearing from the darkness. He lightly struck her again and pointed to the side room, and Khiat shook herself out of her head. She could still get lost there sometimes when overwhelmed. The Knight looked between the door and the hatch and then jerked his head at the latter, still acting with far more alacrity than her.
A heavy foot slammed into the part that had folded backward, but whatever locked it rattled instead of breaking. Daniel fired another shot, and from the light she could make out the two amid their duel. The Artificer was completely limp, penetrated by all four of the limbs coming off the back, and yet whenever the claw hands she could barely make out came for his neck or head his shield would seemingly move by itself and just manage to intercede.
Khiat hit the hatch again but it refused to fully budge. “Daniel, open the door!” she shouted before backing up. Seeing even part of the monster helped tremendously. She had a target. Khiat pushed more mana into her bow. It was strange, it didn’t act like a Focus anymore, and yet she still felt the connection. The string became harder to pull, translating into a heavier shot. The draw weight hardly mattered considering the natural strength of her people was still enhanced regardless of whether she could advance it or not.
Charging another Sun Arrow, the point of her arrow was aimed at the floor of the side room. Her eye was on the monster now trying to both work its way into cover while keeping Daniel suppressed. It became a choice as her shot swept through the narrow slot and began to curve upwards, guided by her intent toward the monster. It wanted nothing to do with that arrow and was forced to withdraw from Daniel, who gasped as his lungs were allowed to work again.
She didn’t see the follow up because of the sudden weakness that hit her, the second use of Sun Arrow overdrawing her muscles. Khiat did sigh in relief as she saw Daniel stumble through the opening side door, but it turned into a weak gasp as she saw his body covered in stabs and slashes. Body and armor were repairing, and he had avoided a lethal blow, but why did it look like he wasn’t healing?
“Ar-“ Moving to stand in front of Daniel, Sigron clenched his fist. “Area Denial!”
The existence of incantations among the powers of the Octyrrum was an odd quirk, considered at times random as to whether one would require one or not. Those who studied such things did agree on one point, powers with incantations were generally more potent than those without. It was nothing on the order of increasing its effective level, but there was a noticeable difference.
Perhaps that was the point. One more knowledgeable of the Octyrrum’s true nature and its need to address the fundamental law of Balance could reason so. Requiring speech before using a power, speech infused with willpower no less, made a power worse than one that didn’t need that step. One only had to look at Sigron to see why this could be a problem. Where there was a disadvantage, however, there was an opportunity to grant advantage in turn.
Sigron’s power first caused a shimmer of light to dash across the edge of his shield, which he’d shrunk from tower size to its normal compact form. Unlike the one that bolstered his defense against one attack, this one then projected a dome of light that intruded into the ceiling. It provided no illumination, but it did do something.
Khiat watched the Knight recoil from an unseen impact, his shield deforming despite nothing having struck it. She at first feared invisibility, until she was able to bring herself up on her elbows and see past the counter. The monster, which looked like if you took a human, burned its skin to the point of blackness, then added four thin arms to the back, was lashing out against the dome. It couldn’t get past it, not while Sigron could effectively block what it was doing as if the attacks were targeting him instead of the dome.
Dark, inhuman eyes met hers and a shot of panic hit Khiat as she realized what was going to happen next. Seeing her recovering faster than it could break the area ward, the monster turned and charged for the open door. It abandoned its careful maneuvering from earlier, leaving it exposed to the last round Daniel had loaded as the Artificer weakly fired it from the floor. It wasn’t aimed nearly as well as usual and the scattering of projectiles largely missed the monster, who lanced out with its back arms.
Sigron moved to Daniel’s defense, unaware that Daniel wasn’t the true target. The monster had already put in a significant amount of work in weakening him, and it had no reason to believe Daniel could recover rapidly by changing forms. Khiat, however, did pose a significant enough threat to address, especially with her more temporary enfeeblement beginning to wear off.
No. No no no! The Knight was too slow to react as it seemed keeping his active power up reduced his movement speed. She was left undefended as the four knife-appendages and two claws began to savage her, Khiat making out a few of the needle daggers that were being fired from inside of the thing. Her hide was tough, but the tissue between and beneath her carapace was far weaker.
She couldn’t move. Both because of her mind seizing up, and the combination of poison and paralysis inflicting her. It wasn’t fair. She shouldn’t have to keep putting up with this. Khiat still had nightmares about having part of her head turned into an unmoving, unliving thing. She always had to feel at it after waking up to make sure the corruption was still cleansed. In the face of her past’s darker specters this minor flaw felt ridiculous, trivial to overcome, but she couldn’t have tried if she’d wanted to.
Sigron attempted to cut into the monster with a flaming sword, forced to keep his shield arm in its current shape as the light still flashing around its side attested to. Shuni was down and Daniel was trying to drag himself to a bag of holding, apparently out of enough mana to bring it to himself. While exposed, the monster was nimble enough to deal with what was effectively only one combatant. It danced around Khiat, readily weaving in stabs and needles that further debilitated her.
The Knight’s eyes met hers and she saw desperation turn into sacrificial resolve. Two spectral hands floated clear of him as he took in another breath. “Fight!”
One of the hands reached for Khiat while the other went for Shuni. The monster tried to intercept the bond hand but it was ephemeral, untouchable as it collided with and entered Khiat’s chest. She somehow felt it being consumed from within her, ferreting out the poison and other afflictions she’d been given. It wouldn’t last forever, but it gave her a chance. And one more thing.
…
“It’s scary, isn’t it?” her father asked in her memory as she saw them both sitting on a dune close to dawn. He wore his travel armor, but Khiat was forced into her shell by the coming light of the sun. She’d been so nervous, but so resolved when the village had decided she was fit to hunt during the day.
“I can do this,” she heard herself say with all the naivety in the world.
Her father had rubbed the back of her head then, before handing her a quiver holding some of the most precious things in the village. So much so that she still carried a majority of them to this day. “You can, my star. But it is easy to forget this when you are on your own, weeks from tonight, when I am not here to help you. I am still not worried.” Xtalo’s head turned to inspect the fading moon before his gaze fell once more on his daughter. “I tell you this now and every time you need to hear it, whether I am there or not. When your last arrow is in your hands, when the monsters of this world surround you. I believe in you, Khiat.”
…
The words came back to her at the speed of thought, Khiat’s heart racing both due to the poison clearing and the effect of her father’s words. Seeing something unexpected the monster tried to run, but she snagged one of its main arms and then proceeded to do something her father had told her not to do many times.
Khiat hefted her massive, two meter long enchanted bow a third of the way up the stave and swung it into the head of the monster. The blow didn’t severely impact it but she’d pulled the strike at the last moment out of instinct. There was less hesitation in the second strike, actual force behind the third, and what could have been anger in the fourth as the monster was driven to the ground by the repeated blows.
Its skin and bones were beginning to crack in the places where she struck repeatedly, her mana-infused enchanted weapon almost standing equal with the endurance of a level 3 being. Captured in a trap of its own the monster was beaten into submission, though Khiat withheld what she believed to be a killing blow at the last moment after seeing that the monster had been knocked unconscious. “Is everyone ok?” she asked, noting with some concern that Shuni was still on the ground, albeit moving slightly and groaning. “Are we keeping them alive for Willow and Tlara to look at?”
With a voice full of pain and an empty potion bottle in his hand, Daniel weakly chuckled and wheezed a bit of either blood or healing potion up. “Think that’s up to you.” Khiat looked in surprise as he slid the speaking stone connected to Willow across the floor to her.
…
“Crest, it’s too bad I didn’t get to see you like this sooner. Would’ve gotten a kick out of it. And this is after a healing potion?”
“Yeah,” Daniel groaned while halfway watching Willow’s inspection of the thoroughly bound elite monster. There was still the rest of the armory to explore, but they were handling this first.
He’d been closer to death when fighting the hulk stomper, needing a power to trigger and save him, but it would be completely charitable to say he’d gotten his shit stabbed in after the hexscuttle stalker had hooked him. The curse on its weapons continually amplified its damage like a better version of Elemental Onslaught, and while he resisted its poison, the knife-arms’ extra paralysis effect still worked. That he’d kept a hold on his blast bow was one of the only reasons he was alive, Telekinetic Reach being the other.
The experience wasn’t all bad. Yes, it was currently extremely painful to be Daniel as his body knit itself together with Regeneration at work once more, but he no longer had to keep taking his Focus in and out of the shield. Maybe he should have figured this out sooner, but like a few other times Daniel had read a power one way in his Encyclopedia and neglected to think of how it could be used in other situations.
In this case, he could use Telekinetic Reach to operate his Focus. It would seem like a huge waste of mana but when all he did was tap on the screen it was basically free. Another mental block he’d had until forced to push past it in desperation was that applying massless force on a phone from his world wouldn’t affect the screen except to break it in excess, though his Focus was hardly a phone from his world anymore.
Annoying bug in his shield design resolved and a pretty decent safe room acquired, Daniel was ready for another piece of good news until the heartbroken tone in Willow’s voice stopped him cold. “I can’t save this one.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s…” she backed up and turned away from it. “Whatever they did to it, it’s not a soul or a spirit anymore. It’s just broken.”
Everyone gave that the thought it was due, Tlara succinctly breaking the silence. “Fuck.”
“Thinking about dominating it?” Daniel asked.
Tlara gestured at him in general and spoke with solemn sarcasm. “If it could do that to you I know it’s capable. But, Willow, you’re absolutely fucking sure this isn’t going to bite me three months from now?”
“There’s nothing there.” The armory was fully open at this point, save for the main door, and she backed into one of the empty side rooms away from the elite. “I’m sorry, I just need a minute.”
“We should rest for the night,” Daniel suggested hesitantly. Multiple things were pushing him forward, but the bond didn’t make him suicidally adherent to his goals. He’d come close to death today, and all signs pointed to another elite waiting for him at the next node. Going for anything other than the power core the Arcadian was recommending seemed foolish since they wouldn’t be able to activate teleportation elsewhere. After hearing what Willow had said about the monster Tlara was now circling and inspecting, he wanted to put as many out of their misery as possible. “Shuni, will you be ok?”
The Rogue had been as out of action as he had, though not as injured. She grimaced, flexing a hand to showcase that the poison was still having some effect on her. “Think so. Just a little shook up. That got close.” She injected some humor into her next words after realizing how grim she sounded. “Thought I’d avoid having to fight those bastards by coming here. Just my luck. And hey, big guy,” she said to Sigron, “Thanks for trying. Just, in the future, I don’t think that’ll work on me.”
The fact that Sigron’s armor was damaged in a few places was impossible to miss as he nodded back to the Rogue, a frown on his face. Daniel had seen him sacrifice his bond hands, himself not being a target because he’d been wounded instead of poisoned. “Can you get them back?” Daniel asked. The Knight nodded several times first but then turned his head uncertainly. He definitely would, he just didn’t know when. “Alright. Let’s get Spinner in here and lock this place down. We’re getting through this people,” he said, trying to sound encouraging before looking back to the back room of the armory with the rift. “And it’s not like this place doesn’t come with perks.”
