The trek up from Deep Karakorum had taken them through the massive, horizontal elevator shafts of the fallen skyscraper that served as the roof of their base. They hadn’t traveled miles to the 405 highway Sky-Reef today; they were exploring their own vertical backyard. Over a hundred millennia, the upper floors of the toppled high-rise had been completely reclaid by the forest canopy, transforming the ruined corporate architecture into its own localized Sky-Reef.
Will stepped through the rusted, moss-choked fra of what used to be an executive atrium and stopped dead. The floor dropped away into a massive, hollowed-out ga-mall, but the physics of the space were entirely broken.
A ruptured mana-vein pulsed sowhere deep in the bedrock, fracturing the local gravity into chaotic, invisible eddies. Massive, bioluminescent fern-trees grew entirely upside down from the shattered glass ceiling, their glowing fronds reaching toward the floor. Puddles of glowing, lapis-blue water didn’t pool on the ground; they floated in mid-air like massive, shimring soap bubbles, drifting lazily on the subterranean currents.
Swimming peacefully through the dense, mana-rich air was a school of Aether-Rays. The translucent, glowing creatures looked like deep-sea manta rays. Their wide wings rippled fluidly as they banked around the floating water pockets, completely ignoring the humans that had just encroached on their territory.
"Are we going to shoot it?" Don asked, his hand instinctively resting on the grip of his heavy crossbow.
"No, Don," Will whispered, unable to take his eyes off the majestic, alien ecosystem. "We are not shooting the floating space-pancake. Let them be."
"I’m putting five rations on his shoulder dislocating," Don’s voice echoed perfectly clear inside Will’s head, shifting to the telepathic link to avoid spooking the wildlife.
"Make it ten," Tyson chid in, the big MMA fighter leaning against the doorfra and staring up at the ceiling. "I saw the tendon stretch last ti we were in the forest. It looked like cheap taffy."
"I can hear both of you," Elias deadpanned, not taking his eyes off the drop below them. "The Warlord’s Network does not have localized privacy settings. And my shoulders are reinforced with corporate biowave-sh, thank you. It doesn’t ’dislocate,’ it rely undergoes a temporary structural reconfiguration."
"That’s a very fancy way of saying your arm is going to pop out like a champagne cork," Don replied.
Deep in the absolute center of Will’s consciousness, Genghis Khan let out a sound that was half-sigh, half-growl.
"I burned cities to the ground so my ssengers could ride unhindered across a continent," the ancient conqueror muttered, the archaic weight of his voice washing through the telepathic link. "The System gifts you an unjammable, instantaneous Mythic mind-link, and your Vanguard uses it to wager rations on human elasticity."
"We’re not at war today, Khan," Will whispered out loud, carefully stepping around a floating sphere of water. "Let them breathe."
They were on Day 3 of the seven-day grace period. The vault at Deep Karakorum was secure, Bram was heating the Forge, and the civilian camp was finally resting. Will had brought the guys up into the skyscraper’s canopy for a low-stakes salvage run to map the upper levels, and they had just found the jackpot.
Suspended in a localized gravity-eddy about sixty feet away, surrounded by floating debris, was the remains of a high-end pre-System cafe. The front counter was entirely missing, but a pristine, stainless-steel espresso machine glead inside the wreckage, completely untouched by the elents.
"Alright, Thorne," Tyson grinned, slapping Elias on the back. "Go go gadget."
Elias rolled his glowing blue Oversight Eye. Faint, geotric reticles projected into his vision as his cybernetic optics whirred, rapidly calculating the fractured gravitational sheer-zones and mana-density readouts between them and the cafe. He didn’t draw a weapon. Instead, he activated his [Elongation Variant].
His right arm shot forward, the bone and muscle stretching with a sickening, rubbery thwip. But because of the broken gravity, the limb didn’t shoot straight. The invisible kinetic eddies caught his arm, bending it at an impossible, ninety-degree angle. Elias grunted, his face locking in intense concentration as he hooked his stretching fingers around a floating chunk of concrete, spiraled upward over a cluster of upside-down ferns, and threaded the needle straight into the ruined cafe.
"He’s totally going to snap," Don whispered in the network, wincing at the bizarre angle of Elias’s elbow. "I can literally see the structural integrity failing. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, except the car is made of at."
Elias ignored him. His elongated fingers wrapped around the heavy espresso machine and a sealed tallic bag resting on the counter beside it. He locked his grip and ripped backward.
The corporate biowave-sh in his shoulder whined a high-pitched chanical protest under the sheer torque. The heavy steel appliance and the bag flew back through the gravitational maze, Elias reeling his arm in with terrifying speed to avoid a drifting Aether-Ray. He caught the loot perfectly with his left hand, the heavy tal landing with a satisfying thud as he set it gently on a stable patch of moss.
A bright, golden prompt imdiately flashed in Will’s vision, mirrored across the entire squad’s UI.
[Item Recovered: Old-World Brew-Forge (Pristine)]
[Saturation Level: 100,000 Years]
[Rarity: Epic]
[Skill Proficiency Increased: Sovereign’s Infiltrator (Elongation)]
[Hidden Achievent Unlocked: The Long Arm of the Barista]
[Reward: 1 Dexterity]
Then, Tyson lost it. He doubled over, his booming laughter echoing through the alien canopy and startling a cluster of glowing fern-fronds. Don leaned against a rusted pillar, wiping a tear from his eye. Even Elias stared at the blue prompt, a genuine, unmasked smile breaking through his normally rigid Corpo discipline.
"The Long Arm of the Barista," Don deadpanned, his voice flat as the golden notification faded. "I have fought literal gods. I have survived the collapse of human civilization and the birth of a magical apocalypse. And yet, the System decides my greatest contribution to the squad’s history is a pun about mid-morning caffeine service. I’m retiring. I’m going to find a nice, quiet cave and live out my days as a hermit who only eats unsalted moss and avoids puns."
"At least you didn’t have to grow an extra three feet of hurus to get the achievent," Elias shot back. He began to gingerly massage his shoulder, where the clicking of his biowave-sh sounded like a very angry, very rhythmic pocket watch. "I can currently feel my pulse in my fingernails, Don. It’s a very unique, very unpleasant sensation. I’m fairly certain I can reach around my own head and touch my chin from behind. My doctor back at the corporate bunker would be having a stroke right now."
"Unique is one word for it," Tyson laughed, giving Elias a playful shove that almost sent the Infiltrator into a floating water bubble. "I was going to go with ’disturbing.’ But hey, a Dexterity point is a Dexterity point. You’re one step closer to being a ninja, Corpo. Or at least a very, very flexible office manager. I’m guessing that 1 Dexterity ans you can fill out paperwork thirty percent faster now?"
"I am a Sovereign’s Infiltrator," Elias corrected, though he couldn’t hide the twitch in his eye. "And I am officially billing the Faction for the structural damage to my corporate-issued skeleton. I expect hazard pay, a physical therapy allowance, and first dibs on whatever is in that bag."
"Check the bag, Elias," Will smiled, shaking his head at the ridiculous achievent. "Did the beans survive?"
Elias picked up the tallic pouch. He tried to tear it open, but the material was completely fused, sealed shut by ti and arcane pressure. He drew his combat knife and slashed at it, but the high-carbon steel simply bounced off, leaving a faint gray scratch.
"They didn’t just survive," Will said, stepping forward. His Warlord intuition flared, sensing the absurd density of the objects inside the pouch. "Human preservation techniques sealed them in a vacuum. Then they sat in a mana-rich environnt for a hundred thousand years. They aren’t beans anymore. They’re magic beans."
Raising his right hand, Will activated [Warlord’s Arsenal].
A blade of pure, solid violet-gold aura snapped into physical existence, projecting directly from his palm. It humd with the terrifying, star-hot authority of his Tier-3 mana pool, casting stark shadows against the mossy walls. He brought the manifested blade down against the fused tal, forcing his Warlord’s authority through the diamond-like resistance. With a sharp crack, the bag parted, revealing a cluster of hyper-dense, amber-glowing crystals.
Will carefully shaved a single, glittering sliver of the crystal into his scavenged iron pot, channeling a microscopic fraction of his aura to flash-boil the filtered rainwater they had brought. The pot flared with a brilliant golden light, the water instantly absorbing the crystal. The scent of the greatest, richest cup of coffee in human history washed through the air, completely overpowering the sll of damp earth.
[Consumable Crafted: Crystalized Warlord’s Brew (Epic)]
[Effect: Instantly restores 100% MP. Grants 20 Maximum MP capacity for 12 hours.]
As Will took his first sip, a rush of cold, crystalline energy flooded his veins, expanding his core capacity in seconds. But because he was actively running the [Warlord’s Orchestra] to maintain their telepathic mind-link, the excess mana had nowhere to go but outward.
The golden energy bled through the network, washing over the squad. A faint, pulsing violet-gold light montarily traced the thick veins in Tyson’s neck and flared deep in Don and Elias’s eyes, physically proving that Will’s magic was circulating through their very blood.
[Warlord’s Orchestra Share Activated]
[Allied Targets receive 10% Residual Buff: 10% MP Restoration, 2 Max MP]
Elias let out a long breath, staring at his tin cup like it held the secret to the universe. "Let’s go ho."
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