It was now 10 days after everyone returned from the Ascension games, so day 221 PGS. We traveled ahead at impressive speed and Jill sughtered the patrols after we crossed the river, as pnned. She gained five levels on average per patrol and there were quite a few of them, while we picked our noses and admired the sheer brutality on dispy.

  Afterwards, we found the crater site where Joel the assassin died despite his stealth skill. I finished writing up my diary entry. Kim messed around with his subterfuge tactics by baiting shots and, once he scrounged up the courage for it, tested the hiding part of his decoy trickery. It worked. There were a couple of minutes between shots and three turrets somewhere far up ahead, he cimed he could see them even.

  “Final gear check.” Elias called out.

  Another checkup felt unnecessary at this point, instead I repced it with a smoke while everyone once-overed their stuff. The factory boys did me a solid, working round the clock on some quality 10 swords to give me a few physical attack options and to repce my ruined right sleeve and pair of boots with equally worked ones. Company financing sped up my sword stockpile as well, which meant a full quiver and nearly the same for my sheath.

  At first, my handicap and frequent recovery coma’s limited me to scribbling on a new practice pte, but most of my healing time had been spent enthusiastically working on a quickly forged shieldsword repcement. I wanted to post-process this one myself since they had such a habit of getting wrecked, even went so far as to double up on the effort, augmenting it with both runescribing and smithing. Someday, it would reach quality 100 on both and then it would be awakening time.

  I tapped out and stashed my pipe as our squad finished up their checks. We bundled up around Kim, exchanging nervous gnces while his raggedy ephemeral cloak billowed out and covered us, creating a see-through half dome of bckness. Next, he popped eerie white fres which sucked the light out of our capsule and turned everything into greyscale. It was a bit of a mindfuck because everything outside his cantrip range still seemed to retain its color.

  Finally, he created an army of copycat Kim’s which spread out far and wide, already moving forward. Why he called them false this and that instead of clones escaped me. After half a minute, three separate copies got blown up by ground shaking impacts as the stationary guns continued their crater measuring contest while a bunch of nearby pine trees tottered, and then fell over.

  “Let’s go quickly, but make sure to stay close,” Kim said.

  It was certainly a novel experience. At least he spared our eardrums by spreading the clones out ever further and they dragged the meteoric strikes along with them. It took us the better part of a very tense hour to reach the frozen walls. A pitted ndscape stretched out behind us, marking everything but our exact trail. We’d curved out to angle our approach from the south. Fortunately, the artillery fire ceased once we closed, probably because the automated defenses lost line of sight. It gave me an idea.

  “Here’s a thought. What if we peek the cannons and I put a sword into each one? We should be able to spot them if we skirt around the back and crest the mountain slope. Aim-assist will take care of the targeting and then we’ll have an actually viable avenue of retreat.”

  Carlos rubbed his bearded chin, a beige manda shape stood out on the back of his hand. “It’s not a bad idea, but judging by the size of this pce we’ll likely dey the operation by half a day if not more, assuming we return here, which is the pn, no?”

  “The problem is, we don’t know if they respawn,” Kwame said, his tone implied he thought they did.

  Cleo deferred, “Good point, Elias?” The spiked full pte transformed her typically gentle, whisper like voice into something menacing instead.

  He held a finger to his ear in a vain attempt to cancel out another trio of booms tagging some trailing illusions while he mind-chatted with my girlfriend. “I am forwarding the question to base camp, one moment… Negative, we proceed as pnned.”

  Now it was on to the breaching. We all hugged the giant blue wall, selected as an entry point due to a ck of any other obvious ways in. Well, hugged might have been too friendly a statement. This was sophisticated breaking and entering. Carlos, Cleo, Noah and Kim didn’t have anything to do but the rest of us pulled off some proper combo shenanigans.

  First, Elias and Kwame combined their ability and high-magic infusion respectively to painstakingly create a thin but deepening slice into the frosty fortress. Once they were done and moved on to make another, I mentally held a magical sword against the indentation. Jill then completed the setup, using the boot-printed hammer side of her weapon to drive my bde in like a nail, although it took a couple of attempts to sink it in to the hilt.

  To our great relief, it worked and miniscule circuits spread along the wall. Jill dug into them experimentally with the pointy end of her halberhammeraxe after waiting for half a dozen minutes, successfully chipping the otherwise solid wall. Before long, a person-sized hole was well in the making and we settled down for lunch.

  A piece falling out on its own relieved our impatience. My swords returned into their sheath and Jill embraced her apparent hatred of buildings, tearing out a solid meter of battlement. It wasn’t enough so we repeated the sequence twice over. At least the wall didn’t seem to regenerate. The hammering required less repetition by the third iteration as resistance gave way, announcing we were almost done. Another hour and a half passed and we lined up in formation. Instead of scraping out what remained, she pnned to barrel straight through with us following closely behind.

  “Three, two, one, go!”

  Elias punched her shoulder. Before I knew what happened, she fshed away and crashed into whatever y on the other side. The smash echoed as we filtered into a blue-white featureless hallway, twice the usual size. Good, plenty of room for the axe crazy redhead. No committee welcomed our arrival, so Elias called out the next step. Oddly enough, nothing restrained our vision. It didn’t seem to be Kim’s doing either, as no overpowering perception aura collided with mine.

  “Kim, reach out and track one way. Noah, take the other. We lost comms upon entering, I’ll venture out to update and then we’re continuing onwards,” Elias said.

  As instructed, Kim got down to a knee while Noah raced down the opposite side, west and east respectively. We suspected our best chances to be in the middle of the structure, so directly north. Meanwhile Elias returned, annoyance showing despite his permanent poker face. “The link is broken, we’re cut off.” It gives a notification, why would he expect otherwise? On that note, why follow the route?

  “Maybe we should just keep breaking through walls instead of taking the long way around?”

  Carlos shot my idea down, “Don’t be an idiot. It’ll take days to reach the center, closer to a week perhaps, depending on thickness.” I liked him better when he talked less.

  “We’re sticking to the pn. Kim, give me an update.”

  “One moment,” he took his sweet time, “Yes! I found a path, it veers centerwards and leads to a room shortly after. It splits into four directions there. No contacts.”

  As if on cue, Noah sprinted back and reported in, “Dead end on this side.”

  Before we moved deeper in, Kwame pushed a wrapper against the wall and used my rune pen to draw the beginnings of a map detailing our journey and discoveries. “Done,” he said, after stuffing it into a pocket of his pristine old world jeans. He wore them over his mage suit, along with a loose sweater – equally spotless. Only his footwear had been repced with magical boots.

  We reached the four-way intersection unmolested, but all good things must come to an end. The many entryways left our position exposed, so Noah remained here while Kim extended his aura thingy to scout out the various options. He screwed up because we heard and felt the rumble before he said anything beyond whispered descriptions for Kwame’s impromptu map, and then his eyes went wide. He even squeaked.

  “Incoming, masses of them. It just goes on and on… Closing fast, mixed ice army. No horse.”

  I’d gone to vandalize directions on the walls in the western path while he looked north. “Echoes of ctter here too, won’t be long before they arrive.” My actions inspired Noah to the same on the east while Jill readied her weapon in the middle of the room.

  “The same on this side,” Noah said.

  Elias barked orders, “The south seems clear for now. We’re pulling back and making our stand around the corner.”

  No one needed to be told twice and we backtracked in a hurry while the crashing reverberations paralleled the constant shake of the building, both increasing rapidly. After assembling our kill-team, we spent most of our time brainstorming tactics and getting to know each other. We were prepared for swarms, heavy swarms to be specific, as opposed to the lighter surges common to grouped Underway travel.

  The press of weight worried us the most but we weren’t without our countermeasures either. First we had to stop the onrush and then it was all a matter of cutting into the onsught with consistent brutality, retaking space and doing it again. At least, so we assumed. Hopefully it proved true.

  A trio of swords lifted me up against the ceiling, inching forward as Carlos booby-trapped the hallway with a smirk on his face while occasionally muttering to himself and expending ink all the while. My jaw dropped as the procession entered view. There was no end to the fuckers. They crammed themselves shoulder to shoulder and their numbers made up for the ck of organization. A few of their probing projectiles failed to reach more than halfway, but it couldn’t st. Those up front who stopped for throws and shard shots were trampled mercilessly under the surge.

  “We’re out of time. Holy shit, there are a lot of them.”

  “Excellent, the terrain is well-prepared. Shall we?”

  My pulse skyrocketed and I barely heard myself think amidst the echoing din while we waited for the Errant army. A blue stump rounded the corner, a dissonant calm steeled my nerves, my addiction fed. Yet hirity broke my composure as the vanguard was swept off their table-leg feet and destroyed, crushed against the wall by the throng pushing them onward. The crashing procession came to a momentary halt.

  Then the battle was on.

  Noah triggered Jill. Her armored form blurred. She swept her halberd in a series of red-trailed crescent sweeps while punching through the chaotic masses, splitting entire Errant into pieces and pulling a shower of icy chunks along with her. Leather cd Noah practically stepped on her heels. Twin metal sticks shattered everything her wide arcs missed with pinpoint precision in staccato stop-start movements. In an instant, they reached the other side and aligned close to opposite walls.

  I followed in their wake with dreadlocked Kwame closely behind. We mercilessly exploited the created opening. My aim-assist fgged a colge of red silhouettes down the hallway just as a line shot out from Kwame’s hand.

  Our attacks were in perfect parallel, covering the first and third quarters of the hall’s full width. His already expanded into holes of dissolving emptiness when fifty unches propelled a magic sword, which threw a haze of misty chips all around to a soundtrack of shattering gss and metallic impacts.

  Instant energy refills combined with two steps spaced him and me to the second and fourth quarter respectively, where we once again pierced the onsught. Kwame reached out and I grabbed his arm, yanking us both to join the first pair with a double unch, where Noah and Jill caught our unbanced tumbles with ease.

  Elias and Cleo rounded the corner and ran ahead, crushing frozen remains with every step. They faced the endless wave head-on while Kim and Carlos stuck to them like glue. Noah looted kills like a madman, with my help, to clear the terrain. Kim’s barriers meticulously intercepted projectiles left and right while Carlos tangled up the enemy front with strips and cloths of magical binder fabric.

  Soon after, Cleo reached the enemy. She stabbed and sshed with surgical precision, dismantling one opponent after another in an ever-increasing pile of malformed body parts. Elias sliced, hooked and diced with his hatchet while shoving and bashing with a triangur shield. His swipes painted invisible strokes in the air, disintegrating the Errant who touched them.

  Fshing hexagonal panels stole the momentum and damage out of every attack which dared to nd on Cleo, mostly augmenting and occasionally extending her spiked armor. Both racked up kills like no tomorrow, but were at first slowly, then more quickly being pushed back as a low wave of Errant parts crowded their footing.

  “Clear!” Noah yelled, snatching an energy marble before it even hit the floor. I positioned myself in the center of our double yer, side-by-side frontline, flipping between potential trajectories.

  “Push and reset!” Elias signaled.

  He and Cleo both rammed the humanoid wall one st time before turning around and legging it after Carlos and Kim, who were already running. Meanwhile, I fired a full bar of energy into the enemy, buying my allies time and slowing down the pursuit. Kim had dropped a series of barriers in the corridor. It was also saturated with suppression and magical darkness. One after the other, the defenses shattered. Yet the greyscale remained.

  We were supposed to retake our original positions, except for Kwame, Carlos and Kim. All three of whom waited at the T-split with wide, sinister smiles on their faces. Instead none of us could resist stealing a curious gnce at what was about to go down.

  Kim already had an impossibly thin panel pced at knee height, stretching from wall to wall. Kwame prepared his high-magic and Carlos simply stood, with one arm behind his back, the other raised to shoulder height, thumb resting on his middle finger. He mumbled, “Closer… Closer… Almost…”

  Carlos snapped his fingers, triggering a few of his many traps. His ambush of crisscrossed invisible binds tightened, tangling up and knocking over vast swathes of eager frozen soldiers like a giant riat just hit them all at once, decapitating many. Kim motioned a push, pying along with the theatrics. His edge flew out and imitated a hot knife cutting through the butter of opposing forces. Finally, Kwame unleashed pressured sprays of effervescent liquid, obliterating whatever survived - both those whole and what the dead left behind. Only cigarette pack sized bricks remained, which the System helpfully conserved for future looting.

  As we casually returned to our original positions, Carlos winked and referred to a random observation of mine, rehashed on the way here, “Assassins aren’t the only ones who picked ‘stealth’.”

  I neglected to comment, thoughts otherwise occupied.

  Originally, I thought the name was a bit me. In retrospect, we’re really owning it though. Syer Squad indeed.

  “Get ready, we’re not done yet,” Elias said.

  A blue stump rounded the corner…