For a long moment, nobody moved. The only sounds in the aisle were the echoes of the cheerful pronouncement from the tannoy and the rhythmic dripping of monster viscera from a nearby shelf. The coppery tang of blood and the sharp scent of John's last burning attack seemed to congeal, filling his nostrils with a suffocating pressure.

He couldn't stop staring at the place where Chester had just been standing.

A sound halfway between a sob and a snarl rattled from Jade's throat. She took a half-step forward, her golden projection flickering wildly at her side, its form wavering as if struggling to maintain its coherence in the face of her overwhelming emotions. Doug let out a string of curses, his voice a gravelly rumble of pure fury, his massive fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Lily just gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, her green eyes wide with a horrified disbelief that mirrored John's own.

They all wanted to go after him. It was written in the tense lines of their bodies, in the raw emotion on their faces. They wanted to charge through those doors and rescue their comrade, consequences be damned.

But the monster, the crimson-souled manager, stood between them and the office, its imposing frame an impenetrable barrier.

It just watched them, its bulbous black eyes reflecting their own shock and horror back at them like dark mirrors, its posture an arrogant boast of its own overwhelming power. It was as if the monster was savouring their reactions.

It barely even felt like an act of aggression on the monster's part. It was more akin to an act of pest control. The way Chester had been casually, almost lazily, dismissed. The sheer nonchalance of it couldn't have been anything other than an insult.

John sank back into Accelerate, and the world slowed to a syrupy crawl. The drips of blood hung in the air like ruby tears. It was a familiar refuge, a pocket of stolen time where he could think, process.

His mind turned to Chester first. Did he have any levels ready to go? Any points saved up? The monster's blow had been immense. Broken bones were a certainty. Internal bleeding, a high probability. Without an investment in his levels for its restorative effect or access to a powerful healing spell, survival seemed… unlikely.

He thought of the three items sitting in his inventory, their names a macabre, silent accusation: Human Corpse, Human Corpse, Human Corpse. He kept hold of them with the vague, distant intention of one day using his accumulated Souls to revive them, to undo some of the damage this broken world had wrought. He desperately hoped he wouldn't have to add a fourth to that grim collection. The thought of Chester reduced to a mere inventory item sent a wave of nausea through him.

He had made a mistake. A catastrophic one. His initial plan to act as a decoy while the others destroyed the core had been the correct move. He had let his comrades' baffling desire to stand with him sway his judgment. He had let himself believe that teamwork could bridge the chasm between them and a red soul. And Chester had all but certainly paid the price for his sentimentality.

A part of him knew what he had to do. Retreat. Grab the others and Teleport away as far as his range would allow to re-evaluate. Come up with a new plan that didn't involve a direct confrontation.

But another part of him, a part that was growing stronger and more insistent with every passing day, fuelled by an ugly pit of rage in his gut, rebelled against the idea.

He looked at the stick bug, at its arrogant, motionless form, and he didn't see a monster. He saw a bully. A shithead bully, just like the ones who had made his life hell back in the old world, now given cosmic power. A creature that threw its weight around, that crushed those weaker than it simply because it could.

And he wanted to kill it with a burning intensity that eclipsed all logic. He wanted to wipe the smug, corporate-speak-spouting monster from the face of this miserable existence.

He considered his options, the numbers and menus of his System a familiar comfort in the swirling chaos of his emotions. He had just over 50,000 Aura. A king's ransom. Enough to buy a new, top-tier Spell. Enough to upgrade one of his core Skills to a level where it might actually make a difference, or even Combine some.

His mind flashed back to the battle, to the moment the creature had finally shown a flicker of fear. Dragon Breath. The torrent of white-hot plasma had been the only thing in his arsenal that had made the monster react with any kind of urgency. It was his win condition. If he could just create an opening, a single, split-second of vulnerability where he could unleash the full, focused power of that attack on its head…

But the faces of his comrades, twisted in grief and rage, brought him crashing back to reality. He could see it in their eyes. They were seconds away from doing something stupid, something that would get them all killed. Doug was a coiled spring of muscle, ready to launch himself at the monster in a rage. Lily's knuckles were white on the stock of her crossbow. Jade was visible trembling even to his augmented perception.

Ignoring what he knew to be the right decision had already cost him once. His vendetta would have to wait. Chester was the priority. Whether they'd be collecting a corpse or giving triage, they had to go get him.

He let Accelerate fade, the world snapping back to its brutal, real-time speed.

"We're going after him," he said.

He didn't wait for a response. He took a step forward, his eyes locking with the monster's unblinking, black orbs. He didn't say a word, but he poured all of his rage, all of his hatred, all of his grief into his glare. I'm not leaving this world until you're a goddamn smear on the floor, he promised the creature. You're dead. You just don't know it yet.

Then he moved. A Flash Step carried him in a burst of speed past the monster's line of sight. He appeared in the midst of his stunned comrades, reaching out and pulling them all close one by one and forcing them to grab onto his arm.

"Hold on," he grunted.

The world unfurled in his mind's eye, painting for his imagination a 3D snapshot of his surroundings. He barely glanced at it for an instant, picking the furthest possible point ahead of him and activating the Spell in full.

They reappeared a hundred meters away, the maximum extent of his range, deep within the management office. The transition was jarring, a violent lurch that sent them stumbling. John didn't waste a second. He thrust a hand forward, and a torrent of darkness erupted from his palm. The inky blackness spread out at his mental command, clinging to the walls and floor, swallowing the dim red light and plunging their immediate vicinity into an impenetrable gloom.

It probably wouldn't stymie the monster for long, but it would buy them precious seconds. So far, the boss monsters had had to follow a set of rules; he just had to figure out what the stickbug had to do, and he'd be able to exploit it.

He took in their new surroundings, and saw about what he'd loosely expected. The room was a nightmare parody of a corporate office. It was a vast, cavernous space that seemed to stretch on into infinity, consisting of a sprawling, labyrinthine maze of grey, fabric-walled cubicles under a low, oppressive ceiling. Dim light filtered down from unseen sources, casting distorted shadows that seemed to writhe and twist in the corners of his vision.

There was no sign of Chester. No blood trail. No sound of a struggle. Just the endless, soul-crushing expanse of the corporate maze.

And it wasn't empty. He could see more monsters. Much like the beasts that had been stacking shelves in the aisles, these freaks were working.

Hulking, beetle-like creatures sat hunched over desks that were too small for them, their spindly forelimbs tapping away at keyboards made of teeth. Slimy, slug-like creatures oozed their way between cubicles, carrying stacks of what looked like vellum scrolls. Absurdly long millipedes skittered along the top of the dividing walls.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Most numerous were the giant bees. None of them were flying around, instead keeping their wings close to their bodies, wrapped around them in ways that looked almost like a shimmering shirt and tie from a distance.

A low, monotonous buzz of chittering and clicking and oozing filled the space, the grotesque parody of office chatter. None of the bugs seemed to have noticed their arrival, Shadow Stream doing its job perfectly. Judging by the fact the doors behind them hadn't slammed open, admitting the stick-insect boss monster, it had served to hide them from it, too.

Still, John decided to err on the side of caution. He kept the Shadow Stream active, maintaining the bubble of absolute darkness around them as he prepared to move again. Estimating the trajectory Chester would have taken, he chose a point another hundred meters deeper into the maze.

"Hold tight," he muttered, and teleported again.

They materialised in a new section of the office, identical to the last. John scanned the area, his eyes piercing the gloom, searching for any sign of a body, a bloodstain, anything. There was nothing. Just more cubicles, more monstrous drones tapping at their keyboards. He repeated the process once the cooldown was done, jumping them deeper and deeper into the corporate hellscape. A hundred meters. Two hundred. Three. Four.

It was on the fifth jump that he began to notice something was wrong beyond the absence of their comrade. Before teleporting, he had fixed the location of a particularly large beetle-creature's desk in his mind, three rows to their left. After they reappeared, he looked back towards that spot, and the beetle was gone. In its place was one of the slug-monsters, oozing over a keyboard that hadn't been there a second ago.

He blinked, thinking he'd misjudged the distance, but the feeling of wrongness persisted. Monsters seemed to flicker in and out of existence at the edge of his perception, cubicle walls shifted when he wasn't looking directly at them. The space wasn't stable.

When he activated his Mana Sense, pulses of energy radiating out with every beat of his heart, his stomach clenched. The view it provided was a chaotic mess. It showed a dense cluster of mana signatures directly in front of him, where his eyes saw only an empty corridor between cubicles. It painted a massive void in a space where he could clearly see a dozen monsters working at their desks. The physical layout and the magical one were completely disconnected.

The office was a non-Euclidean nightmare, constantly folding in on itself. His Teleport, which moved him from one absolute point to another, was the only reason they were making any progress at all. Anyone trying to walk through this would be lost in seconds.

Dread began to settle in. Finding Chester in this spatial anomaly would be next to impossible.

He turned to tell the others, then stopped, a fresh wave of self-recrimination hitting him as he saw the tension in their bodies, the way their eyes darted around while seeming to focus on nothing.

He had been navigating this visual and magical chaos for the last minute, while they had been in total darkness. The Shadow Stream was his spell. He could see through it perfectly. For them, it was a blindfold. He had been dragging three blind people through a shifting labyrinth, and he hadn't even thought to mention it.

"Idiot," he muttered to himself. He quickly scanned the area for an empty space and spotted a vacant cubicle nearby. Gently tugging on their arms, he guided them into the enclosed space. It was empty, containing only a single bone chair and a desk made of something that looked like polished obsidian.

Once they were all inside, he let the spell dissipate. The oily darkness receded, folding back into itself until it vanished completely, and the red light of the office bled back in.

Doug and Jade blinked rapidly, their eyes adjusting, while Lily let out a sharp breath.

"A little warning next time, maybe?" she murmured, though her tone was more weary than angry. She placed a hand on the cubicle wall to steady herself. "Being yanked through space and time is bad enough without doing it blind."

She looked at him then, her gentle chastisement immediately forgotten, her expression shifting to one of raw pleading. The question was in her eyes before she even spoke it.

"Did you see him?"

John's own flicker of relief from a moment ago was extinguished by her gaze. He looked at her, then at Doug and Jade, their faces all fixed on him, waiting for the news. He could only offer the truth.

He shook his head, the motion feeling leaden. "No sign."

The hope in Lily's eyes died, replaced by an aching disappointment that seemed to make her shoulders slump. Doug's face hardened, his jaw setting into a grim line of frustration. Jade just looked away, wrapping her arms around herself as if to ward off a sudden chill. The silence in the small cubicle was heavy with their collective frustration.

John pulled up his System menus. He scrolled through the lists for Spells and Skills, scanning for anything that could help them navigate this impossible space. Bypassing the flashy offensive spells, his gaze landed on an intriguing entry under the Level 7 Spells: Clairvoyance.

He was no expert on psychic nonsense and the terms thereof, but he was fairly sure Clairvoyance meant a kind of magical sixth sense. If it provided him something like Mana Sense except for sight, or something like the brief snapshot he got from Teleport but permanent and more comprehensive, it would be exactly what he needed. It could potentially cut through this warped mess, show him the office's true layout, and hopefully lead them to Chester.

There was just one problem. The price.

32,000 Aura.

It would take a significant chunk of his current reserves. His only real plan for killing the manager, if it could even be called a plan, hinged on either buying a new, overwhelmingly powerful spell, combining his existing abilities into something unprecedented that could make a difference, or just upgrading the proven ability until it was OP enough to bridge the gap in their respective strength. Dragon Breath had hurt it, but he needed something that would let him nail a good shot before the monster could dodge. 32,000 Aura was a significant chunk of that potential.

He was caught in an impossible choice. Spend the Aura now on a gamble that might lead them to Chester, or save it for the inevitable confrontation with the monster that had put him in this situation in the first place? Rescue versus revenge. The needs of the one versus the survival of the many. He stared at the text, his mental thumb hovering over the proverbial purchase button, his mind a battlefield of conflicting priorities.

"Jesus Christ," Doug breathed, his voice a mixture of awe and disgust, dragging John out of his stalled thoughts. He looked up to find the old man was peaking over the diving walls, taking in their surroundings with a sneer on his lips. "An infinite office, looks like. A whole new level of hell, if you ask me. Nothing and no one could've got me to be a worker drone. Worst nightmare, that."

"This is the second stage," Lily whispered. "It's always like this. There's always a second stage."

John looked at her. "Second stage?"

It was Doug who answered, his eyes scanning the endless maze of cubicles with a wary, weary expression. "Think about it. The portals have all had two parts. The graveyard we cleared? We fought our way through the tombstones, and then we found a staircase leading down into an underground mausoleum full of spiders. The warehouse was the same. We cleared the main floor, and the back office opened up onto a misty dock that stretched out over a black ocean."

"The bus depot," John murmured, the pieces clicking into place. "The buses, and then the kraken. It was the same in the school, too. With the caves in the centre."

It was a pattern. A deliberate design. A gauntlet followed by an even deadlier, more surreal arena. This office, this monstrous bureaucracy, was their mausoleum, their cave, their phantom dock. And somewhere in this nightmare landscape was Chester. Or what was left of him.

"So what's the plan?" Lily asked, her gaze fixed on John. "Do we go back? Try to fight our way out?"

John shook his head, his resolve hardening. He looked out at the endless expanse of desks and monsters. "This is a gift."

Doug stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "A gift? Kid, are you seein' the same thing I'm seein'?"

"It's a training ground," John clarified. "Look at them. They're not aggressive yet. They're just working. I ran into something like this back in the school, and I think we can exploit it again with the right combination of Spells and Skills." He gestured out at the monstrous office drones. "This place is a goddamn gold mine. We can move through here, pick them off one by one, and farm our points until we're strong enough to go back out there and kill that manager."

"And Chester?" Lily asked, her voice soft but insistent.

"We find him," John said without hesitation. "That's the primary objective. We move through this place, we search every cubicle, and we find him. But we do it smart. We use the layout, we use the fact that these things are preoccupied. We get stronger as we search. By the time we find him, we'll be ready for whatever's waiting for us. And then, we go back out there, and I put that stick bug's head on a goddamn spike."

+400 Aura

The silence that followed was thick with tension. He was asking them to plunge deeper into the nightmare, to trust his cold-blooded calculus. He saw the doubt in their eyes, the fear, the grief for their potentially lost friend.

But he also saw a flicker of something else. Hope. He was offering them a path forward, a way to turn their loss into strength, their grief into rage.

Finally, Doug let out a slow breath and nodded. "Alright, kid. I'm in. But the moment we find Chester, we get him out. Deal?"

"Deal," John said, though he didn't know precisely how that would work in practice. He looked at Lily and Jade, who both gave him a hesitant, but firm, nod of agreement.

"Okay," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper as he scanned the nearest block of cubicles. "Everyone stick close. We move as one. I'll take point. If it looks like we might get overwhelmed, grab on to me. We teleport, we reassess."

He held out his arm. One by one, they moved in, their hands finding a purchase on his jacket. Doug's heavy hand on his shoulder, Lily's firm grip on his bicep, Jade's trembling fingers closing around his forearm. The physical contact was grounding, a strange but not unwelcome anchor in the swirling sea of his own conflicting emotions.

He Teleported away, bringing his team with him.

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