DEAD PACIFICA

  Part 7

  With Milford and the Society soldiers asleep (and sedated) underground, I began to relax now that I wouldn’t be interrupted by unwanted guests, and eagerly looked forward to my “birthday.”

  And also terrified.

  And anxious.

  But most of all, excited.

  I didn’t know why it felt any different to my past birthdays, but maybe it was because I was finally reaching my full year as a Death Core. Back then, I was just human. Did Cores even celebrated their birthdays? Did they do anything fun besides building dungeons, entertaining delvers, and creating traps or monsters 24/7? Did other Death Cores had specific rituals of domesticity?

  For me, I just watched a lot of movies and TV, and played video games (yes, even as a Core now that I had bodies to inhabit). And most all was people watching—my new favorite hobby. Oh boy, I did a lot of that. I almost begged Elvis to make an exception by letting me contact the other Cores in my guild, maybe so we could share our stories, but his answer would be a resounding no like most of my suggestions.

  So, that was out of the question.

  I couldn’t believe that I was looking forward to Cosmic-Con. Although I wished I didn’t have to meet the other Cores once every few years. It’d be nice to have some friends who could relate to my story. You know? Like sharing how they would celebrate their birthdays.

  Oh, well. I’m already planning on celebrating by luring a feast my way anyway, I thought.

  You know what? I’d take whatever I could get just to make this new reality bearable. I didn’t want to admit it to my archetypes, but being the only Core around was kind of lonely. Don’t get me wrong, they were doing their best to alleviate and improve my mood by getting into plenty of wild shenanigans, including the book club, which was Mother Gertrude’s idea. On all of my birthdays, I was surrounded by my family. Now, they’d visit my grave at the cemetery to spend a part of their afternoon while I feasted on delvers.

  Ah, I missed them.

  A lot.

  I had a different family to spend with now.

  There was that quiet stillness that blanketed my domain as soon as a scenario was over. Although no “proper” scenario occurred, the feeling remained the same. The clean-up of the bodies, setting up the props and landmarks on how they used to be, and my archetypes unwinding after a night of chaos—the silence of solitude.

  I felt a presence behind me.

  “Let me walk you home, my liege,” Lord Zal said after the bodies of the soldiers had been dragged into the tunnels to the Furnace Chamber. There, a massive incinerator would get rid of them without having to waste crystals or magic.

  “Thanks, Zal,” I said with a smile. “I don’t want to teleport and use up too much of my energy tonight.”

  “It is my pleasure to accompany his lordship. After all, it is a nice night for a walk,” Zal said.

  “I’ll go with you too, Zally,” Bolton caught up to us.

  Zal grumbled and muttered, “I told you not to call me that.”

  Zal gently grabbed my levitating Core from the air and carried me on his hand. It was a quiet walk into the forest for the next few minutes when Bolton broke the silence.

  “So! It is kind of nice to see you kill all of those people, my lord. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you fight for real.”

  “Has it been that long?”

  “Almost a year, I think? That was back at the Yates House. Or maybe your final fight with Coach Hodge? To be honest, I’ve only met a handful of Cores when I was waiting to become their archetypes until I found you. They just stayed underground and refused to leave. It was very ballsy of you to show up face-to-face in front of Milford and his soldiers.”

  “It distracted them though. I did just blow up three people. Too much?”

  Bolton shrugged. “Cores are the final boss of any dungeon. Once you get older, you’re supposed to be harder to kill. That’s why Death Cores are scarier when they’re ancient.”

  “Do you know a Death Core that old?”

  Bolton shook his head. “No. But I have heard rumors that they exist.”

  “The oldest Death Core I’ve ever known was three hundred years old,” Zal said.

  “And what happened to them?” I asked.

  “Taken out by a golden dragon and his dragon army. It was a Pyrrhic victory at the cost of the dragon empire’s eventual fall two decades later. War taxes and population decline. Could you believe that killed a thousand-year empire?”

  I sighed. “That happens here, too.”

  “That proves my point,” Bolton said. “An old Death Core caused that. Still a win in my books even if, well, they’re dead.”

  “May I say one thing, my lord?” Zal started. “Don’t think about if you’re doing too much against delvers. Use everything. You don’t care about collecting essences when they are at your front door. You fight to survive against the delvers who made it to your lair because you are the final boss.”

  “Doesn’t that make them worthy?” I asked. “Give them a chance to prove themselves.”

  “By letting them kill you? No, no. All animals fight to survive, even you, and yes, even The System, for it is the greatest beast of all. If they truly defeated you, then they are worthy of renown, I guess. But to realms where Cores are aplenty, all mortals know that when they reach the final dungeon, they will be in for the fight of their lives. A shame Mr. Milford did not know that. Once you revealed yourself, an average delver would have tucked their tail, picked up their gear, and run! Level up and delve another day. It takes considerable planning to take down a Core, especially a Death Core. Not all delvers have an army behind their backs.”

  “Too bad humans on this planet can’t do that,” I said. “You know? Level up?”

  “Ah, yes, I forget sometimes that this is a brackish, cesspit, backwater world with no capital and numinous value whatsoever.”

  Bolton laughed. “But what happened is much more fun, Zally!”

  “Again, not happening, Bolton. That name is not going to stick.”

  “I’m just joking around. Gosh, you’re always so serious all the time.”

  “I take my work seriously, dear Bolton. It is an honor enough for a lich like myself to serve a Death Core, an equal to the God of Death! And so I must harness the opportunity to sharpen my mind and learn what I can.”

  “Ah, well, you forgot to learn how to loosen up.”

  Zal glared at him. “Go over there, fiend, and bother someone else. Don’t you know I have our liege on my hand?”

  “He just doesn’t want to do the clean-up, Zal,” I said, raising my eyebrow at Bolton.

  Bolton didn’t looked at me and let out a whistle. “Jeez. Spider Mama is already telling her brood to do all the cleaning. Can’t I enjoy a nice walk, too?”

  Zal grumbled loudly. “Fine. You can stay, but steer your devil horns away from my eyes.”

  We reached the Core Tree at last.

  A massively vast, gnarled, and twisted tree with roots bursting from the earth in the middle of a clearing. In the past, the crystal gemstone would have rested inside its bulwark, but over the past few months, I had dug several hundred feet deeper into the earth and created a tunnel through its massive roots, creating an entrance to my lair. Mother Gertrude and Lord Zal casted magic around the grove to hide it from prying eyes. A bird, a plane, a satellite, and even a powerful scrying spell could not penetrate through the abjuration shield.

  Lord Zal and Bolton walked up to the dark entrance where I carved a cliche warning for all delvers to read: ABANDON HOPE, ALL WHO ENTER HERE.

  The stairs began immediately beyond the threshold. Narrow, stone steps spiraling down into a throat of darkness, dropping nearly two hundred feet where I had placed several enchantment, illusions, and transfiguration effects on the brick walls. When a delver descended here, faces of past delvers would swim, crawl, and protrude out of the surface, beckoning and warning them to turn back and run. Some would mock. Others would wail. It was a pretty effective trick that would eat away anyone’s dwindling courage. Bonus points if the illusion created a perfect likeness of a dead delver the person knew.

  At the bottom, the stairs spat us out into a broad stone foyer, reminiscent of the Selection Chamber. An hourglass sat on a pedestal overgrown with weeds, surrounded by intricate stone carvings of all my archetypes along the walls, also covered with moss and vegetation. Double doors made out of stone sat in the middle of those carvings, thick enough to stop a siege engine. As Zal and Bolton approached it, the doors opened on its own, revealing a short tunnel to one of my first dedicated trap rooms within my domain, acting as buffer rooms for my lair.

  I called it the Pictogram Room.

  Here, the delvers had to navigate the correct sequence of block tiles on the floor to reach the other side from these seven pictograms: A dagger, a wolf, a serpent, a cabin, a crystal, an hourglass, and a tree. There was a small glass prism for a single delver to peer in, fixed on a slab of stone at the starting platform that depicted the correct twelve-step sequence to navigate the floor safely, but it would only reveal the sequence once the delvers correctly guessed the first pictogram. After the first, the next step would be revealed through the glass, and so on until they reached the twelfth block tile on the other side of the room. Each day, this sequence would reshuffle—including the floor tiles—so that no delve would ever be the same when playing this room.

  And if they stepped out of sequence, well, bad news for them. Turning back to the previous safe tile would also be a big mistake since they were technically still moving out of sequence.

  On the other side of the room was a large self-reloading magical crossbow inside a caged box that would shoot fire arrows at the delver standing on the wrong tile. One of the neat tricks about trap rooms of Death Cores: if a delver failed the trap and died, their Resolve plummeted to Red, and I get to collect their essence. But it had to be a perfect balance of timing. Sometimes they might die too early before collection, and so the essence would be wasted. Unfortunately, no one had ever reached the Core Tree before to test out these trap rooms.

  If they made it past the Pictogram Room, there were two more trap rooms waiting for them.

  Like I said: buffer rooms.

  Since there were no delvers, all the traps were inactive. Zal and Bolton just walked across the floor tiles where another corridor beyond sloped sharply downward, polished smooth by hand and spell alike. Sixty feet of steady descent. Drips of water seeped through the rock somewhere unseen, dripping slow and steady. It opened up to another circular foyer—a safe zone for the delvers. Here, five tunnels branched off from the room, evenly spaced like spokes in a wheel.

  Three of the tunnels led to nowhere. Short walks that ended in small creepy crypts, each fitted with six coffins arranged neatly side by side. Lord Zal’s skeletons waited inside, folded hands clutching rusted yet still sharp weapons, ready to launch at the delvers who dared to disturb them.

  The tunnel to the center right led to the second chamber: The Lake Room.

  The cavern opened up suddenly, the space so vast it felt like stepping out onto the edge of the world. The Lake Room was a massive cavern about two thousand feet wide with the ceiling arched high overhead to a hundred feet, and the inky black water dove for a hundred feet deep. Several rocky islands from different elevations dotted the lake, connected by rope bridges or meticulously placed logs. A lesser magical darkness encapsulated the cavern so that the delvers could not see past twenty feet even with flashlights or torches.

  For good reason.

  The rope bridges and the logs were like a maze. Some routes led forward. Others doubled back. A few stranded you on islands with nowhere to go. Seven of these islands had booby traps placed on them (and there were about thirty-five islands in total). Every minute, the islands would descend into the water by five feet, and the rope bridges and the logs would either go taut, broke apart, got severed, or sank into its depths entirely, including the islands. The delvers would only have about twenty minutes to reach the other side or end up in the water.

  And you don’t ever want to end up in the water.

  Two months earlier, a semi truck delivering illegal exotic animals from California were being smuggled across the Cascades and got into an accident on the highway nearby (not my doing), and several animals escaped into McLaren Forest. The Sawyers had to round up most of the animals that the police and the game wardens from Fish & Wildlife Service didn’t catch. Most of it they returned to the game wardens, except for one.

  A green anaconda.

  Back then, the snake was only ten-foot long and weighed about ninety pounds. Unfortunately, it decided to hunt down a rabbit in its warren. And that rabbit unfortunately turned out to be inhabited by The Parasite, one of my infectious and mutagenic slime archetypes.

  Ingesting this contagious parasite killed the anaconda within a few minutes, and The Parasite found a suitable host and switched to inhabiting the much larger green anaconda instead, capable of doing so much more than a rabbit could.

  That same anaconda now lived in this cavern, mutated to a nightmarish length of one hundred feet and thirteen-hundred pounds of monstrous proportions. Once a delver stepped foot on a rope bridge, the hunt (and the ticking clock of the sinking islands) would begin.

  Bolton and Zal went to the end of the small dock where a wooden boat materialized out of thin air, and they hopped onboard. The lake stirred to our left. Something vast moved beneath the surface, displacing water in a slow ripple. Then Parasite rose up—just the head at first, still massive and slick, scales and piercing yellow-black eyes catching what little light the cavern allowed. Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air, as if to say hello.

  “Take us across the lake,” I said.

  The anaconda dipped under the boat, its bulk sliding beneath us, and the skiff lurched forward swiftly and smoothly across the lake.

  “Thanks, AP!” Bolton called once we reached the other side, leaning over the side like he was waving to a ferry operator. It was his nickname for Parasite’s anaconda-form, which stood for Anaconda Parasite.

  The Parasite had three other forms, including one of Duke Henry’s cute little pet vampire bats I named Vampy. So far, that was Parasite’s oldest form, and I never really asked why he’d rather be a bat. I reckoned he just loved the aesthetics? Or being able to fly? Or Duke Henry’s—sometimes annoying—company?

  The anaconda surfaced once more, head lifting high enough to regard us with one dark, lidless eye. It cocked its head slightly, then slipped back under without a sound.

  Bolton smiled to himself. “You know,” he said, “we should really bring Parasite to the book club one of these days.”

  “I don’t think slimes appreciate literature,” Zal said. “More likely he’d dissolve the pages. They eat. They sleep. Or in his case, impregnates. That’s about it.”

  Bolton giggled. “Hm. Must be nice.”

  As soon as we stepped off the boat and our feet touched solid ground, the boat shimmered and vanished. The boat was only meant for my archetypes and other guests, although I didn’t get many non-delving visitors into my real lair besides Elvis, who had been here twice in the past. But due to my overwhelming Dread and how uncomfortable Elvis was, we had decided to keep our monthly chats at the cozy death cabin instead.

  The next entrance was actually fifty feet up the cavern, reachable only by zigzagging stairs that hugged the cliff’s side at a near vertical slope. They were very narrow and had no railings. So, if a delver was not careful with their climb, they could fall off the ledge to their deaths by a strong gust of wind, which this cavern could produce from the environmental runes I had placed around with random triggers.

  And yes, a storm could be generated inside the cavern.

  Eventually, we reached the top, and ended on another corridor and a small resting foyer before the final trap room.

  The Library Room.

  It was really just that—a typical, ordinary small library. A circular room with a domed ceiling revealing a fake night sky. The shelves were lined with books and the floor was made of squeaky marble. At the center stood a marbled statue of a winged angel carrying a massive shield with a finger pressed to its lips.

  A Zone of Perception suffused the room.

  And the rule was simple: Do not make a sound.

  Each day, the angel’s shield would have a specific emblem etched on its surface from the same pictograms from the first trap: A dagger, a wolf, a serpent, a cabin, a crystal, an hourglass, or a tree. Near the statue was a stone table with seven book stands. If the shield bore a dagger, then the delvers needed to find seven books that pertained to a dagger from its title or book cover, then placed them on the book stands to open the next room—my lair.

  But if a delver made a sound above a whisper, tiny needle darts shot out from hidden nozzles scattered all over the room. These were filled with venom that would cause excruciating muscle spasms and contractions as if the delver was about to give birth. Every sound a delver made would cause more of these needle darts to shoot out. Shot with enough darts and a large amount of venom would kill a delver with just seven shots.

  And it would be painful, draining their Resolve to its lowest until they died. The more needles they get hit with, the more excruciating the pain.

  And I was not a heartless monster. Hidden inside a book was an antidote that would stop those painful spasms immediately, literally titled: ANTIDOTE. Two antidotes would be created every time the room was triggered. They were very fragile and easily breakable. I couldn’t help them with a spare.

  Sensing my presence and of my archetypes, the Library Room powered down as Bolton and Zal walked in. Seven books with a house on the cover flew off the shelves and landed on the book stands. The stone doors opened across the room, and we entered the Core Chamber.

  My home.

  Zal and Bolton crossed a narrow stone bridge without any safety railings (and one that would trigger Gandalf ’s PTSD), which connected the entrance ledge to the circular platform at the center of this massive cavern. I couldn’t even see where the ceiling was, meant to feel like it went up forever into the pitch darkness. A deep moat surrounded the platform, and if a delver ever fell off the ledge (again, there were no railings), then they’d fall on the sharp stalagmites a hundred feet below—if the fall didn’t kill them first. One of the best features of the room was that it was suffused with anti-teleportation runes that would prevent anyone from just teleporting from outside. They’d have to walk through the front door.

  As the two archetypes approached a massive slab of rock that was my throne, a machine-guardian, towering over twenty feet I called Sentinel, awakened from behind the rock, glowing eyes like yellow floodlights aimed at both of them. He carried a massive wide blade behind its back and large grappling arms. He reminded me of the Iron giant but with a flashy mohawked head piece, spiked shoulder blades, and massive chains around his waist for a belt.

  Sentinel was not an official archetype in my dungeon but a purchasable minion from the The System. If Sentinel died, he'd die for good. No cooldowns. But I was not worried about that. Not many delvers could reach this far into the dungeon.

  When it sensed me, it bowed its head.

  Zal approached the dais toward the slab of rock and placed my Core at the crevice in the middle. Once my Core was placed inside the shallow crevice, shadowy black tendrils emanated outward, lighting up the crack in crimson bloody glow. The slab acted as my Core’s armor. It would be difficult for someone’s bare hands to pry me out of the crevice. It also acted as an antenna to enhance my reach and influence across my domain. I feel a lot better when I’m sitting in it.

  Zal and Bolton took three steps back, bowing before me.

  “Thanks for the walk, fellas,” I said. “It’s always nice to have a little chat after scenarios.”

  “May I have a suggestion, my lord?” Zal started.

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “With those prisoners you have in the mines, you can use some of them to test out your traps here, see if it works as you imagined,” he said. “Twelve scenarios have passed since the last delver managed to reach the Core Tree, and she did not even reach the stairs before Baron Lothar immolated them to death.”

  “To be fair, she was the last one standing. I doubt she’d get far in the Pictogram Room without a second person telling her where to stand safely before, again, getting a fire arrow to the face,” Bolton said.

  “We designed excellent traps,” Lord Zal said. “It will be a shame to put it to waste.”

  “It’s not a waste, Zal,” I said, reassuring him. “They are a deterrent to whoever dared to reach me. I actually feel better and safer here. Especially with Sentinel to keep me company. He’s very good at playing chess.”

  Sentinel tipped an invisible hat toward me.

  “And it gives me the creeps,” Bolton said, shoulders shuddering visibly. He had mentioned in the past how my Dread suffocated this room since it was enclosed from the outside. Coupled with the “antenna” rock I was now sitting on, then it just made things worse. All of my archetypes could feel its dominating effect, and sometimes, it unnerved them even though it didn’t harm them, unlike the delvers.

  “Well, thank you for your help with Milford and those cultists. I think I’ll be spending the rest of the evening searching for what stories are out there.”

  Bolton raised an eyebrow. “You are not going to join us, my lord? It’s movie night. Goliath is now picking the movie since he won our bet.”

  Zal sighed and muttered, “And I was looking forward to that Matt Damon movie Luke was going to pick.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen the movie Goliath wants. I think I’ll just look around the region. Find my own entertainment.”

  Bolton grinned. “Suit yourself! Hope you find something classy. Or…not classy.” He laughed.

  Zal rolled his eyes. “Come, boy. Let us make haste and leave our lordship to his own devices.”

  At the edge of the circular platform were four teleportation pedestals I purchased for cheap crystals. Even though there were anti-teleportation runes around the Core Chamber, these pedestals were built as an exception. Each of the four pedestals specifically teleported a user to either the cabin, the abandoned amusement park, the Last Resort manor, or the Sawyer Farmhouse. Bolton and Zal stepped onto the Cabin pedestal and vanished.

  Alone at last, I opened my many-eyes and searched for my own entertainment around the dozen or so trails through McLaren Forest and the Selene Mountains.

  At the closest watchtower, the ranger, Aaron Delaney, had moved on from the gambling game on his phone to taking a smoke break over the balcony.

  At the gas station where Garth Sawyer relieved Calypso of her shift, and pretended to be the attendant for the evening. A young college couple came in to get some gas and beer, hoping to reach Lover’s Rock by North Cedar Lake for a smooch. Or maybe something more.

  Four high school kids were currently spraying graffiti at the abandoned summer camp, which read in big red letters: HELL ROCK SUCKS! And one that read: THE CURSE IS REAL! Several breasts and penile drawings dotted the walls. Then, the kids started drinking beer before a deputy sheriff chased them off the property.

  I saw plenty of campers with their family currently enjoying the last days of summer, roasting marshmallows, making dinner over campfires under a cloudless night sky, and just having some lovely memories with each other.

  A young couple were currently skinny-dipping in the lake while Circe and Penelope watched, gossiped, and giggled from afar.

  The Ranger Station had three rangers currently sitting inside, talking shit about the next football season with their favorite teams.

  I looked around the highway, especially at a couple fighting inside the car about some office party they just left. The husband embarrassed the wife with something he said about her weight, and he was gaslighting her that she was being stupid and manipulative because of a dumb joke, while their nine-year-old son listened quietly from the back.

  Then I moved through Josey’s Roadhouse before you reached the town limits. It was closer to the weekend, so there were a lot of cars parked around the building. Plenty of customers both local and not, enjoying 80s and 90s rock music. Plenty of people were dancing on the dance floor.

  I passed the town’s “Welcome to Point Hope” sign, boasting a population of forty-three thousand people. Beyond the highway, Point Hope’s lights glinted in the darkness.

  I knew all of them by name.

  I knew all of their stories.

  I knew all of their secrets and desires.

  So, I reached out for [ Control Weather ].

  The dense fog that surrounded the junkyard and half of McLaren Forest expanded outward, spilling over the edges like a slow-motion waterfall. It swallowed the pines first, their needles disappearing until they were nothing but jagged, skeletal shadows, reaching for the campgrounds.

  Through the haze, I saw the flickering orange glow of a dying campfire. A man stepped out of an orange nylon tent, a flashlight in hand. The beam hit the wall of white and simply stopped, unable to penetrate the density. I saw him shiver, pulling his flannel jacket tighter, his face pinched with a quiet, nagging confusion.

  From the lookout tower, Delaney watched the fog, fascinated, as it emerged from the woods and swallowed the ground and his truck below him. The ranger finished the last of his cigarette and scurried inside.

  The fog spilled onto the highway and the backroads, erasing the asphalt. The same deputy sheriff who had chased off those teens looked up at the fog, remembered the rumors of curses and ghosts about Hell Rock, and shivered visibly.

  By Josey’s Roadhouse, the neon “Open” sign hummed, its buzzing sound muffled by the damp air. The pink and blue light bled into the fog, creating a surreal, psychedelic glow that hit entirely different, as if isolating the Roadhouse from the rest of civilization. Three drunk men stepped out of the front door, their laughter dying the moment the cold vapor hit their faces. They looked at the descending fog with awe and curiosity before they piled into their vehicles.

  The fog rolled over the town limits, drifting upward to coat the “Welcome to Point Hope” sign. Its bright colors graying out until only the word HOPE remained visible, floating in a sea of white.

  Finally, the fog entered the town.

  It crept down Main Street, erasing the storefronts and the brickwork. The street lamps became glowing orbs suspended in nothingness. Up in the residential windows, curtains flickered. I imagined the people inside, checking their thermostats, wondering why the humid summer night suddenly became twenty degree colder.

  The fog swallowed Point Hope whole.

  I could learn a lot of things about people when my Dread effects were at their full swing, especially aided by the environment. Manipulating the weather wasn’t just some cool trick to disorient and confuse my delvers and enemies, but it worked as a “mood setting” as well. I would do it once or twice a week and just watched people live their lives around me under Dread, and without. I used it to scout for potential delvers, and it had never failed me to root out the candidates.

  For tonight, I decided to relax by unleashing it.

  I opened my many-eyes in the middle of downtown Point Hope.

  What the Havashar Society failed to realize was the extent of my true dungeon’s borders. It no longer stopped at the on-ramp that would eventually lead to the gas station and the road to North Cedar Lake, or at the highway miles away from the town limits.

  That was a year ago.

  My borders had already taken over Point Hope five weeks ago.

  Sure, it took some time to swallow the entire town, but thankfully, my insatiable hunger had calmed down before that. I was thankful that I was not forced to delve forty-three thousand people in a single night, and making it one of the largest massacres in human history. Now, when scenarios were in effect, I had to list the names of forty-three thousand people and other tourists near me every delving night so that they didn’t get caught in the crossfire. It would take me about three minutes to do it with the help of Oracle; a necessary ritual to avoid suddenly giving unearned rewards to random people.

  Elvis wasn’t kidding when he said Death Cores grew fast when left unchecked. Without neighboring Cores to stop me, everything was free real estate. At this rate, I would reach the city of Portland, the largest city in Oregon, in about five years. Maybe another decade more to get to Seattle. Never mind how long it would take to swallow the whole world. According to The System, borders prevented other Cores from spawning inside my territories.

  At some point, I was bound to run into another Core on Earth. The only question was when?

  I was sure there was some way to stop my growing expansion, but The System had been uncooperative about that and none of my archetypes knew how to turn it off. My guess? The System loved that I was growing and killing, and so it was not helping me in the slightest to stop the flowing faucet of deaths its way. Even the Immaran Guild couldn’t tell me how to turn it off either, and I was beginning to believe that these Administrators, experts in the ways of The System, didn’t know how.

  So, I’m stuck forever growing and gathering a list of people to spy on outside of delving nights as a new source of entertainment.

  I extended my aura as thousands of a never-ending stream of thoughts entered my brain through [ Fractal Omniscience ], and then reformed my consciousness into the body of an old man with [ Shapechanger ].

  [ Power: 41/60 ]

  While my Core was safely tucked away back at home, I could freely walk around Point Hope without having to worry about dying. Sure, it would hurt like a bitch to get killed in my avatars, but it was better than dying permanently. My form coalesced behind a tree on a park in the middle of town. As I stepped out to the sidewalk, an elderly couple walked past me on their nightly stroll.

  “Good evening,” said the husband with the white balding hair. “What a strange weather we’re having, eh?” He said with a nervous smile, gesturing to the dense fog around us.

  “Yeah, I see it,” I said. “Be safe out there.”

  “Yeah, you, too, friend,” he said. He and his wife politely smiled at me and continued on their stroll.

  I walked across the street, past several people and eavesdrop on their thoughts. Some greeted me. Others avoided me.

  I felt like going to the diner tonight, which was still open at nine o’clock in the evening, and scooted into a booth with a great vantage point of all the people sitting inside the diner and the people walking outside the windows. A young waitress, with a name tag that read ERICA, approached me. I knew her as Erica Sedowski, my cousin Charlie’s girlfriend, and she recognized this form. I had been to this diner many times ever since I purchased the shape-changer trait, and I had introduced myself as “Samuel.”

  “Hey, Sammy,” Erica said. “Haven’t seen your pretty face in a while.”

  “I was at Brighton for the past couple of weeks visiting,” I said.

  “Family?”

  I merely nodded.

  “Your usual?”

  I smiled. “You know me well. Can I also get a cup of decaf, too, Erica?”

  “You got it, boss.”

  After a few minutes, Erica served me a fresh pot of decaf along with a plate of chicken fried steak, green beans, mashed potatoes, and country gravy. Eating real food as a Core was like eating a bland piece of candy. I could still taste what the ingredients were, still judge whether it was good or not, but it was no longer satisfying unlike feeding on an essence. The thought of eating real food gave me a shot of nostalgia, and it was a nice feeling to be normal for twenty minutes.

  About five minutes in, Charlie Castle, my cousin, walked into the diner.