I stare across the ocean. A fake ocean and a fake blue sky. But still, not bad. A few clouds in the distance promise rain if we don't finish this quickly.

I check my menus while I wait for a shark attack. 9 levels to go and as I keep going to more difficult studios, I should get more XP per studio. I can do this. I can do this. I... Should have done this already.

I sigh and let my armor shatter into motes of light, leaving me in shirt and jeans. I take a step and lean against the side of the boat.

"What's wrong?" asks tall white guy.

I mutter, "I should have already done this, Gary."

"My name's not Gary."

"People are dying, Gary. And I'm not here for them. I'm only here for me." I hang my head.

People are dying. People are dying right now. They have been dying. Scourge has killed a lot of people, though not as many people as dungeon outbreaks. But what Scourge has been killing, for the most part, is humanity's leveled. The people still willing to fight monsters. The people now strong enough to fight monsters. Scourge was presented as a possible pandemic. But it was a targeted disease all along. It just targeted people like me.

Humanity's fight has swung back and forth. At first we were overwhelmed by the monsters. Then we mobilized our militaries. We got back in the fight. Pushed into smaller dungeons. But as soon as we pushed into bigger dungeons we found regular weapons and troops couldn't hack it. We needed super humans. So we started grinding. Cops, soldiers, militia and ordinary people started farming the weak monsters to get stronger. Strong enough to push into those more dangerous dungeons and ruins. And what did the Dracosys do? It made a disease to specifically target those people.

That's one thing we'd learned. It wasn't the dumb mook enemies from the 1st floor of a dungeon that had Scourge. Nah, it was the tough monsters. That ensured that anyone strong enough to kill a tier 5 or 6 monster wouldn't live long enough to regret it.

"I don't understand," says fat white guy golem. "You're here to protect the people of Massachusetts from Jolene the monster shark, aren't you?"

"Steve, I only decided to rush through and level up quickly because I wanted to touch my smoking hot fiance. Not because I wanted to save Massachusets."

"My name's not Steve."

Gary lights another cigarette as he grabs another bucket of chum. "Listen, kid, I think motivations are overblown. To me, it doesn't matter why you're here. To the people of Mass, they don't care why you're here. To Jolene, she doesn't care why you're here. It's what you do that matters, not why you do it."

Jolene bumps the boat again. I look at Gary. "Yeah, but I could have done this before. I could have just gone in solo a few days ago and... taken care of Jolene."

"Why didn't you?" asks Steve.

My Intelligence and Wisdom come up with an answer I'm not happy with. "There are two paths, both equally valid. One, I push forward alone, killing monsters as quickly as possible, and level up as quickly as possible. I get strong. I get ridiculously strong. I become a hero. But I leave everyone else behind. I end up alone."

"The second route, the one I've been on, I'm trying to not be a hero. I'm trying to be part of a team, to not race ahead of everyone else. This path leads to me having better relationships, and my team gets stronger, and is safer, because I'm there."

"So I got in this mindset, where I didn't think about being the hero. I didn't think through how I could probably just bash through the entire dungeon and level up and start cleaning Scourge."

Steve starts on another cigarette as I continue. "There's that and, well... I was having fun. I was having fun just clearing a floor or two at a time and then retiring to my ship. Hanging out with my teammates. Making omelets." I look up at Gary. "That's the funny thing about Intelligence and Wisdom. They help you get what you want. Not necessarily what the world needs."

Gary and Steve both nod, then start new cigarettes. Gary offers me a flask. I take it, sniff to find surprisingly good bourbon, and take a swig. It's smooth and sweet.

Gary sits next to me. "Listen, kid. I went to war. I know how you feel." He sighs. "But at the end of the day, when you go home, are you a hero, or are you a guy with friends? When you're home washing the dishes, will being a former hero make you happy, or will having current friends make you happy?"

This golem is way smarter than the average golem. Maybe because there's not much to this floor? Maybe all the nanomachines that usually get allocated to dozens of monsters instead got allocated to these two guys.

Somewhere Gwen L'Ronge is probably smiling that I actually paid attention to her Dracosys functionality briefings.

Steve jumps in. "You have to have something to go home to. For me, when I was in 'Nam, it was my wife and daughter. She'd just been born when I got drafted. I fought for them. I kept going so I'd see them again."

That's it. That's the thing that Ivy had. A place to return to. A place worth fighting for. Me, I've got Mercy here with me. Back home... Back home I have Jose. Jose's kids. Brian. It's not nothing. But maybe, like Mercy was saying, I can make it better. I could have closer relationships with more people. I don't know who those people are exactly, but I could do it. You know, once the world isn't ending anymore.

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"Thanks guys, I think you really helped me out. In exchange, I'll make sure you both live through this."

"Big words from a kid in a robot shirt," Gary says with a smirk. He offers me a cigarette. I decline. He takes out another for himself and holy shit how many smokes are they going through?

I see a red dot on my radar. It's pretty far away. I look out over the ocean. I see a shark fin. It's REALLY FUCKING BIG. "Jolene!" I yell and point. Gary grabs a Vietnam War era rifle. Steve grabs a harpoon gun.

The red shark fin slices through the water. It seems like Jolene might take a bit of time to reach us. Might as well scan her.

Jolene, Blood Wake Butcher. Tier 6. A shark. With blood magic.

Possible Loot: Teeth, Blood Stone.

Well that sounds real bad.

I look at Gary's rifle and Steve's harpoon gun. "Guys, I can upgrade your weapons. Here." I pull two plasma rifles out of my inventory.

Steve takes one and his entire body turns to static, then snaps back together in the form of a skeleton robot. "Thanks, pal!" he says in his regular voice, then returns to aiming as if nothing changed.

Gary doesn't seem to have noticed, and reaches for the other plasma rifle. Before he can grab it, I scan it.

P+A$M^ R1F**. Error code 9084721 - Grasshopper

Oooookay, that's new. I carefully let Gary take the rifle. He turns to static and snaps back as a robot skeleton. He just nods at me and aims at Jolene.

Jolene is coming in fast. I'll figure this out later. "Guys, open fire, you've got plenty of ammo." They start peppering the sea. A wide trail of blood follows the shark fin, turning a swath of the ocean red.

Void Mind! Chimerablood Rise!

Endless dark. The entropic crow flies!

Narrow, pointed plates of purple armor snap onto my body. Once in place I use Void Blades to summon 30 long, thin blades that look like hilt-less swords, pointed on both ends. The blades pull in close and form a three-quarters circle around me, becoming a cloak of glowing purple and black.

My void stuff is suited to taking out bosses. I've got Void Blades, which inflict a nasty status effect (Entropy) that makes injuries explode with sustained damage. I've also got a couple of grenades I can toss, one makes a bunch of small homing shots to turn things into Swiss cheese. The other locks down and grabs targets.

Void is also probably the only element I can use underwater. Solar doesn't work in more than 3 feet of water. Lunar turns water to crystal, which is useful but can also trap me if I'm in the water. Atmos's effectiveness is cut to 1/3 underwater. Void? Totally unaffected.

I know this from breaking into a public pool late at night to experiment. That was a pretty fun night. Jose fired a bunch of guns underwater. The cops came because of the noise and we ran, dripping wet, laughing our asses off.

Jolene rises to the surface. Her body is probably twenty feet wide and over a hundred feet long. The plasma rifle blasts are cutting small gashes into her. These gashes bleed excessively, the blood flowing into the water. Then the wounds heal. It's a regenerating shark. Wonderful.

I leap off the boat towards Jolene, two Vortex Grenades in my hands. As we get closer I launch them with telekinesis, and before they even impact I make and launch two more. The first two land in the water just in front of the charging shark. Dozens of black and purple spirals of energy swirl and vacuum. First they pull water, then Jolene gets sucked towards them. The shark connects with the two whirlpools and is slowed, but she's obviously going to push through them. That's why the second set of Vortex Grenades explodes mid-air just above the first two, and Jolene rises up, her head completely out of the water. "Gotcha," I say to her.

"NO," comes the response from the shark, which surprises the shit out of me. I recover and my Void Blades rise up and then fly towards her, points first. A blood red wave in the ocean rises up and catches Jolene, then pulls her back underwater before my blades impact. Then things turn south.

Dozens of foot-wide tendrils of bloody water rise from the ocean, lashing out at me. I fly up out of their reach. Jolene's blood washes across the whole area, and blood tentacles lash at the boat. Gary and Steve turn and start blasting the disgusting appendages. The tendrils below me flick and become spikes, which then start firing towards me. I dodge the first few and then start blocking with my Void Blades.

I look down at the ocean from 100 feet up. For miles around us is blood. Miles of blood which Jolene can use as a weapon. A dozen spikes fire at me in a single second and only my superhuman Reflexes keep me alive. I can't just wait for her to surface again. The dozens of spikes below me are rapidly becoming hundreds as spikes start flying at me from a wider and wider area. I need to kill the shark. Now.

I flip upside down and pull my blades underneath me like an upside down umbrella. I fly straight down into the blood red sea knowing this is a bad fucking idea but it's all I've got. I can't see shit in this bloody mess, so I trust my radar and use my flight as propulsion to swim towards the red dot.

(Flying powers, as long as they're not directly wind based, work as propulsion underwater. We also think they'd work in space. Science!)

I get punched in the head by blood water, but keep going. I'm in her guaranteed-hit domain. I just have to survive long enough to kill her. I feel tendrils of water form around me and lock me in place for a split second before I spin my Void Blades around my body, disrupting the shark's efforts. I let all but 8 of the blades fade away. I push deeper underwater. Faint ruby-red light shimmers as the sun desperately tries to breach the sanguine sea. My radar shows her close, 50 feet away.

I'm holding my breath because my suit isn't air tight and doesn't have an air tank. At 100 Constitution I can hold my breath for about 3 minutes. 135 seconds of air to go now.

"SNACK," I hear Jolene's monstrous voice growl. Small spikes cut into my neck from above and below. A remote shark bite. I feel the sharp spikes cut into my neck, which isn't covered by plate armor. My Toughness keeps the damage to feeling like dozens of thumbtacks stabbing me, with about as much damage. Which isn't nothing, I assure you.

I use my hands to grasp at the water around my neck and try to brush the hydrokinetic teeth away. I am partly successful, but find my left leg being chomped on as well. I've got armor there so I ignore it.

I watch the dot that is Jolene on my radar. She's charging at me. I feel something is wrong. I can feel my tiny neck wounds ripping themselves open wider. It's excruciating and horrific and really, really bad. My head gets fuzzy as I lose a lot of blood. Jolene is almost on top of me. I try to wipe away the blood water teeth from my neck. They're gone. That means this is a status effect. I fire my eight remaining Void Blades towards Jolene as I channel healing into myself to reduce the effect's duration and try to recover more blood than I'm losing. I can't see what my blades do to Jolene with my vision filled with blood. I let them dissipate as I work on my plan.

A spike of blood water stabs into my right arm, punching through my armor and ripping my muscle. I do not scream. I need the air. Jolene's radar dot enters the center of my radar. I feel her massive jaws racing towards me, her teeth clamp down and begin to grind against my armor. 77 seconds of air to go.

A line of 22 Dark Mote Grenades have been trailing me since I released 22 Void Blades. 22 grenades, pulled along by my telekinesis. And now that they're within 10 feet of an enemy, each one explodes. 255 motes of darkness form from each grenade. 5,610 dime sized balls of death swiftly strike the shark in the face. This hurts the shark badly enough that it opens its maw enough for me to escape. Or to dive in deeper. I dive straight into the shark's 18-foot-wide mouth, past its deadly teeth and into its throat. There's enough room inside for a walk in closet. And that's when-

6th Step, Astral Pathbreaker, Star Swarm!

I turn my stars into a flat disc around me and spin it. The buzz saw-like effect starts to rip into the inside of the shark. The Entropy effect from my void mode triggers, and fist sized chunks of flesh start exploding all around me. The shark's mouth fills with its own chum. I feel it thrashing about and I'm slammed into the wall of its throat. This, of course, pushes my star buzzsaw deep into the shark's inside. I start to push my blade of death to become wider and wider, cutting deeper and deeper through the fish in all directions. 20 seconds of air to go.

The red dot on my radar disappears, along with most of the blood in the water. I find myself deep underwater, with two halves of a giant shark falling away around me. The shark begins to fade away like a truly destroyed dungeon monster and some small items sparkle in the dim light. I snatch them and jet up. I hit the surface and immediately let my armor fade, taking a desperate breath of air.

The ocean calms down. The sun above shines. I float on my back and just relax for a minute. Gary or Steve, not sure who, throws a life preserver over to me. I lazily grab hold with the hand not filled with boss loot.

That's when the door from the lower deck of the ship bursts open and I hear shouting. Angry, annoyed shouting. From multiple teammates. Ah fuck.

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