She relaxed a little, eyes drifting upward to the ruined skyline. "You think Esmerelda's nearby?"
Deacon looked toward the rooftops, scouring their tops and open windows. "Hard to say. She's slippery. But if she's not already watching us, she's probably watching the terminal or the Boss gate."
"You know her," Jass said with a wry grin. "She'll find us. It's impossible to find her. Honestly, I still don't get why she didn't pick Rogue as her Class, considering all her ninja-ass disappearing acts."
Deacon raised a brow. "Wait, she got offered the Rogue Class?"
"Yeah," Jass nodded, hopping over a flipped-over car. "She got it as one of her four starting Class options."
Deacon blinked. "Same… Damn, I thought she would have chosen a Support Class, like Shaman or Healer."
"Same," she agreed. "I can see you being all ninja-like, with the amount of knives you have and how you love trying out new traps."
"I do love me some traps," Deacon smirked. "But, there is too much effort in being a ninja, and they're just too squishy. I went for Warrior for the better survivability."
"Same." Jass rolled her shoulders. "I'm not trying to die in the first ambush just because I wanted to play edgy."
They rounded another corner, eyes scanning the rows of abandoned storefronts.
"But Esme," Jass continued, "she picked Mage."
Deacon looked at her sideways. "She chose Mage over Shaman? With how she goes on and on about spirits, I would have thought she would have chosen that Class."
Jass gave a shrug, knocking her glaive against her shoulder. "Said the spirits told her to."
Deacon exhaled through his nose. "… sounds like her."
***
The substation was visible beyond a half-toppled-over overpass and a corroded chain-link fence on the only hinge that was attached to its pole.
Deacon slowed to a stop, crouching low behind the jagged remains of a delivery van's chassis. Jass knelt beside him, her breath steady but eyes sharp as they took in the sight ahead.
Dozens of mutants skulked in and around the station; beakswines roosting on tangled power lines and the tops of mechanical looking buildings, mutant hounds patrolled around the area with their faces almost entirely consumed by the fungus, and twisted, gnome-like figures with far too-long limbs paced erratically near the broken circuit breakers. The air hummed faintly, a static charge that raised the hairs on their arms and hinted at mana barely holding the place together.
"Is this all old world tech?" Jass asked, voice hushed with something like awe. "Jonah would lose his shit if he saw this."
"He reached Floor Ten, right?" Deacon asked Jass, gaining a nod from her. "Then we can just bring him here when our Floor One merges with the other Floor Ones of the previous generations."
"Ah, that's right!" Jass exclaimed. "I forgot that when we complete Floor One, it'll merge with the Floor One World Map, and we can visit the other Floor Ones. I can't wait to visit the Wildlife Preserve that my grandpa cleared."
"That's where you wanna go right after finishing Floor One? The place that's infested with rabid tigers and constipated penguins?" Deacon chuckled, gaining a raspberry in return.
"Where will you want to go when we're able to visit other Floors?" Jass said, stepping in his personal space and poking at his chest, eyes glowering at him. "Gen five's Floor One's House of Massacre? The one where in order to pass, you have to get your arm cut off and find all the tools necessary to reattach your arm before the timer runs out?"
Deacon chuckled. "Nah, I was thinking about visiting gen twenty seventh's Floor 10 –Doomsday at the Mansion. The way Adam described the food the locals served… I need to visit that place."
"Ah," Jass groaned as she remembered Adam's description of the twelve story chocolate fountain that was always in the main hall of the mansion and seemingly never-ending. "That's true… ugh, I wanna go there now."
Deacon, seemingly about to tease her, stopped himself as he heard a loud, wet snort from around the corner.
Deacon silently motioned up.
Jass nodded.
Together, they crept up the side of a nearby step-down transformer, careful not to disturb the loose cables or jagged metal. They used an old maintenance ladder bolted to the side of a breaker housing and climbed, leaping across to the scaffolding that led toward one of the taller lightning arresters.
There, he saw that on the opposite side of where they were was a pack of mutant hounds.
Once they reached the top, the wind hit them, cool and sharp. But the vantage point gave them the full layout.
From here, they could see the perimeter of the substation, broken into quadrants. Most of the mutants were centralized near a squat, reinforced concrete building with two steel doors, one of which looked newer, bolted and layered with faintly glowing reinforcement glyphs.
"Is someone living in there?" Jass muttered.
"What do you mean?" Deacon asked as he looked in the direction she pointed at.
"You know how there's basically been zero magical protections on anything or mana devices on this Floor, right?" Jass whispered to Deacon, who in return froze for a second before making a noise in realization.
"Right, I forgot that the genre of this floor is related to the old world tech, so protective enchantments stick out like a sore thumb," Deacon said, scratching the side of his chin. "My bad, I guess my eyes just glazed over them, with how commonplace those are on Floor Zero."
She nodded toward the doors. "So, what's the plan?"
"We go investigate that place covered in protective enchantments and see what's up," Deacon said. "Maybe the electrical grid is there, and someone is just camping around it without knowing its importance."
Jass glanced down at the mutants below, already adjusting the grip on her glaive. "And if they see us?"
Deacon's lips pulled into a grim smile. "Then we kill our way through. None of them are higher than level 3s."
With that, he dropped back to the scaffolding, soft-footed and silent, ready to chart a safe descent. Jass followed without hesitation. Neither of them had ever stormed a building surrounded by Old World tech and mutant wildlife… but then again, surviving the Tower meant thinking and adapting on the fly.
Deacon hit the cracked pavement first, crouched low behind a derelict circuit breaker, and scanned the closest quadrant. Mutants shuffled in loose patrols, unaware of the intruders weaving between the shadows.
Jass landed beside him without a word, her glaive pulled tight to her side, body low and poised.
Deacon whispered, "We cut through the east line, fewer hounds and more gnomes. They're slower and have a much shittier sense of smell. We keep it quick and quiet."
"Copy," she murmured, already ghosting in his footsteps as he slinked forward, crouching behind the jagged husk of a transformer.
The mutants moved in disorganized loops, reacting more to ambient noise than actual threats. Deacon waited for the wind to blow against the rusted gates to create a shrieking noise that would mask their footsteps. They crossed the open lane, slipped past a hunched crow-beast gnawing on old cables, and ducked beneath an arch of warped rebar.
They were only ten meters from the reinforced building now.
Deacon raised his hand, signaling a stop. They both crouched behind an overturned cable reel as two of the gnome mutants skittered past. Their bodies were thin and wiry, heads bulbous and twitching like flies. They passed without seeing them.
"Clear," he mouthed, and they pressed on.
Deacon stepped up to the door and pulled the laptop from where he strapped it on his back, tucking it under his arm as he inspected the locking mechanism of the protective enchantments with Jass.
He pressed his hand against the surface, and for a split second, the glyphs flared, scanning.
Then–
Click!
The door's lock released itself with a metallic click and squeakily groaned open. They quickly ducked inside and closed the door shut behind them before the mutants caught a whiff of them.
As their eyes turned to face the inside of the building, Deacon spoke up, "I think we found the grid."
A rectangular room extended before them, humming with the unmistakable sound of old world tech, servers stacked in neat rows, flickering monitors built into the wall, and, in the far back, a massive control panel fitted with six glass-screened terminals.
All of which were connected to three diesel generators in the corner of the room, providing them with power for the next week or until the electrical grid is turned back on.
And at its center was a lone sleeping bag, a fireless heat glyph inscribed into the floor, and a few ration wrappers strewn about.
Someone had definitely been here… Recently.
But for now? It was quiet.
Deacon set the laptop down onto the center console and knelt beside the nearest terminal. He was halfway through pulling out the device's worn charging jack when Jass whispered sharply from behind him.
"Deke."
He turned, following her line of sight, to the far end of the server room. A hatch was set into the floor.
It was wide open.
Deacon's jaw clenched. "We go down?"
Jass nodded slowly, adjusting the grip on her glaive. "Yeah. If someone's been living here, that's where I'd hide if I felt someone breach my protective enchantments. Could be booby trapped too."
He rose from the terminal and stepped cautiously toward the open hatch.
He felt as though a faint hum of mana could be heard from the open hatch led to, but that could have been his paranoia talking.
They exchanged one last glance before Deacon began descending the metal ladder, his boots clinking softly against the rungs. Jass followed close behind, her weapon slung across her back for ease of movement.
The basement was cooler, almost unnaturally so. Rows of stacked supply crates and wiring spools lined the walls. In the center of the space stood an array of old diagnostic equipment, most of it covered in tarps. Someone had cleared a path through the clutter, and just ahead was a makeshift workstation, notes, enchanted paper tags, and old tools scattered across a large metal table.
Deacon stepped forward, eyes scanning the diagrams sprawled out on the table, one of which was a topographical map of the entire city. Another looked like it had handwritten notes scrawled across schematics of the grid terminals.
"Boo!"
Deacon and Jass both spun on instinct, weapons drawn.
Jass had her glaive halfway through a swing. Deacon's fingers crackled with fire mana, his short sword half-unsheathed.
Only to find Esmerelda, standing a few feet behind them, arms outstretched in mock menace, grinning like a devil.
"Godsdammit, Esme!" Deacon and Jass barked, lowering their weapons and spell. "What the hell!"
Esmerelda giggled, totally unbothered. "You should've seen your faces! I was waiting for you two for like an hour and couldn't resist."
Deacon took a steadying breath and sheathed his blade. "We could have hurt you."
She wiggled her fingers, her grin unrepentant. "You'd never hit me. The spirits would've whispered a warning."
Deacon said as his heart calmed down. "Why were you hiding in the dark like some troll, Esmerelda?"
Esmerelda skipped past them, circling the workbench and hopping up to sit on it cross-legged. "I figured someone would come poking around eventually, and who else but you two? I've been piecing together the reboot protocol from the notes and terminals upstairs. The good news? We can turn on the grid from here."
Deacon stared at her, still reeling a bit. "You've been camping here? Alone? Surrounded by mutants."
Esmerelda tilted her head. "The spirits don't like crowds, and the mutants can't get through the enchantments I put around the building."
He and Jass shared a knowing look.
Esmerelda looked around at the table full of half-completed enchantments, scattered maps, and scrawled diagrams. "Anyway. Following a bit of clues aka the map I found, it led me here, but I wasn't really sure what to do from this point on, so I just sat and waited here for you two."
"Well, we got the laptop to turn the electrical grid for the city on," Deacon said while scratching the bridge of his nose. "Let's go and see how we can turn on the lights of the city."