After pulling up his Status Page, Deacon tapped the arrows beside Intelligence, Wisdom, and Perception, assigning 5, 5, and 1 points respectively. His pool of Free Points dropped back down to zero.
Looking back up from his Status Page to Jass and Esmerelda, who were looking like they were in complete bliss while lying on the floor with their faces stuffed with s'mores.
Clearing his throat, Deacon attempted to grab their attention, but to no avail. It was only after the third time he cleared his throat that the both of them snapped out of their s'more-induced coma and came back to the present.
Jass blinked first, a smudge of melted chocolate on her lip, a marshmallow stuck just beneath her lips. "What?" she mumbled, eyes wide, voice half a breath away from a moan. "Is someone dying?"
Esmerelda sat bolt upright beside her, cheeks flushed a deep crimson as she realized she was still holding half a graham cracker to her face like it was sacred. "No! No, just Status Pages. We were supposed to check that, right? Right."
They both scrambled, fumbling through their pouches and satchels with faces reddened with embarrassment as they searched for their bundles of parchment in order to check their own Status Pages. Drips of chocolate and broken crackers fell to the floorboards. Deacon watched the chaos with a deadpan expression, though a trace of amusement ghosted behind his eyes.
Jass was the first to retrieve her parchment, already glowing faintly as her mana began to channel into the surface. "Five into Strength," she muttered, finger tapping the air above the arcane inscriptions. "Five into Endurance. Four into Wisdom."
Esmerelda's brow furrowed in concentration as her own parchment lit up, casting pale violet light onto her face. "Six into Wisdom and Endurance," she said under her breath, eyes flicking through the numbers. "If I'm going to keep up with you lunatics trying to off yourselves every few seconds, I'll need as much mana regen and stamina as I can get."
Once they distributed their Free Points, the panicked atmosphere between them shifted.
The playful haze from their s'mores haze faded as the three of them sat upright, and all at once, the flickering firelight seemed brighter.
Deacon reached into the pouch at his belt and retrieved a small ritual chalkstone. Pushing aside their raised, steel campfire pits, which they had made from three kits they found in the store, he began drawing an angular magic circle between the three of them, surrounding the three Status Pages now laid flat on the attic floor. Each parchment pulsed with faint light, infused with mana and freshly sealed by the pricks of their blood at their corners.
"Ready?" Deacon asked.
Jass nodded, now fully composed, her eyes sharper. "Let's do it."
Esmerelda pulled out the final pieces: a glowing, honey-colored crystal and an Elite Beastcore, still brimming with the residual life force of a mutant hound. She set it gently in the center of the circle, just atop the meeting point of their three Status Pages.
Deacon pressed his palm against the edge of the circle and started flowing his mana into it.
"– Party create," he finished, channeling mana from his chest, still faintly echoing with the thrum of Undying Flame.
The chalk markings flared red-hot as if branded by heat. Arcane glyphs shimmered into being, crawling from the edges of the circle inward like a blooming flower of light.
The crystal at the center began to glow brighter–
Crack.
Jass and Esmerelda pressed their own palms to the circle's rim, mana surging outward from all three in synchronized pulses.
Then the Beastcore cracked before shattering in a silent burst of raw energy.
A final wave of energy spread outward from the point of impact. It washed over the attic, over their bodies, over the Status Pages now glowing with the imprint of shared mana and blood.
Party Formed – MMR
Members: Deacon, Jass, Esmerelda
Party Leader: Deacon
Sync Level: 100%
"Why MMR?" Jass asked, with Esmerelda nodding along with her.
"Melee," he pointed to himself. "Melee," he pointed to her. "And Ranged," he then pointed to Esmerelda.
"Seemed fitting enough for our team comp," Deacon said, watching as both girls looked to each other and shrugged. "I mean, we can change it to our group chat name if you guys want, when Sam and Bonehead meet up with us. But I don't think The Five Dumbasses would be a good name for us to be labeled as if we reach a group-based competitive Floor as a team and our team name gets called as such. "
***
They walked in silence, their boots crunching over cracked concrete and shattered glass. The ruined city of Seattle had gone mostly quiet after they'd taken down the Floor Boss, as most of the mutants that remained alive after the massive battle either ran back to their nests or ran away in places such as heavily infested buildings filled with toxic spores or into the sewers where the mutated crocodiles were - effectively keeping away from the cadets to prevent themselves from getting killed and waiting for an opportunity to escape to a nearby Floor once their Floor One would get added onto the Floor One World Map.
Jass nudged a piece of rubble out of her way with a quick kick, not bothering to look back. "Yo, Esme," she called, her voice casual but sharp. "You hit your thirty mutants yet?"
Esmerelda rolled her eyes. "Did the events of what happened four hours ago seemingly disappear from your mind? How many mutants do you think I killed keeping them off your back?"
Jass shrugged and grinned. "Five?"
Esmerelda rolled her eyes as the three of them rounded the corner. "I had it completed just after we escaped the substation."
Jass stopped abruptly in front of a grotesque sprawl of organic matter slumped against the side of the ruined house, a nest the size of a delivery truck. Tangled vines twisted into skeletal shapes, bones hung like decorations, and fungal clusters pulsed like beating hearts within the biomass. The smell was revolting.
"Speaking of which…" Jass muttered.
She reached into her pack, pulled out a battered red diesel container she'd been carrying for some time and tossed it casually at the base of the nest. The thing gave a thump as it smacked the head of a dead mutant that lay in front of it.
Jass snapped her fingers, Ignis.
A whoosh of flame ignited instantly, licking up the vines in a curtain of red-orange heat. The nest shuddered as if alive, shriveling into ash and molten ichor.
A soft chime echoed in her mind, informing her of the completion of her quest which granted her both access to Floor Two as well as the location of Floor One's Waystone.
She groaned, throwing her head back in mock agony. "Gods, finally. If I had to find another nest and deal with its stench… I'd probably punch Deacon."
Behind her, Deacon stood near the broken porch of the house, flipping through the translucent System Notifications hovering before him.
The faint smirk tugging at the corner of his healing cheek said enough.
Jass turned toward him and huffed. "Don't look so smug."
Esmerelda crossed her arms and nodded toward him. "What's yours say?"
Deacon's eyes flicked across the screen one last time before he dismissed it with a swipe of his fingers.
Floor One – The Ruined City:
This ruined city, previously known as Seattle, stands in ruin, its skyline shattered and its streets overrun with infected humans and animals. Radiation storms tear through destroyed buildings while the infected walk through wreckage.
WARNING: In 7 days, hordes of mutated humans and beasts from the surrounding ruined cities – once known by the names of Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond – will converge on the city. There are simply too many of them. Sole survival is by defeating the Floor Boss, whose presence fuels the swarm's aggression. The Floor One Monolith will not operate until the death of the Floor Boss.
Floor Completion Criteria:
▸ Kill the Floor Boss before the end of the 7th Night ✔
▸ Collect 10 Elite Beastcores ✔
Rewards:
Access to Floor Two, Knowledge of Floor One's Waystone Location, & Mycelial Grasp.
"Uh," Deacon muttered as a fungal covered gauntlet seemingly materialized out of thin air and landed on the floor in front of him with a soft thud.
Item Name: Mycelial Grasp
Artifact Number: 00345
Type: Hands – Gauntlets
Rarity: Rare
Description:
A gnarled gauntlet of living bark and spore-woven leather. Its outer surface pulses with faint, flesh-like growths, and when imbued with mana, thin fungal feelers writhe outward to entwine your weapon when worn. The gauntlet feeds on aggression, releasing clouds of toxic spores with each violent swing. While your weapon is entwined with its tendrils, it gains the ability to deal poison damage on hit.
Effects: +5 End, +5 Wis, Poisonous Strikes.
"That looks disgusting," Jass said, grabbing his attention away from the gauntlets' description panel. "I'm actually glad you got the last hit loot bonus now."
"Like don't get me wrong, it's an artifact and has a pretty good effect," she said, trailing off as she looked at it. "But… it looks… just make sure to keep those far away from both me and any food you find, okay?"
Deacon rolled his eyes as he placed on said gauntlets and found them to be surprisingly comfortable as they fitted themselves around his hands.
***
The streets leading to the Floor One Waystone were cracked and covered in both grime and mutant corpses, but the closer they got, the cleaner the air seemed to feel. Maybe it was just the tension letting up or the lack of filth around the Waystone, he knew not, but he truly felt at ease.
The Floor One Waystone came into view as they rounded the corner of a small alleyway and entered a park that looked to be untouched by the city's ruined state: a smooth, obsidian spire rising out of a fractured park courtyard.
Even from where he stood, he could feel its low, thrumming pulse. He could even see a faint shimmer of translucent light that rippled across its surface every few seconds, reacting to the cadets that approached it.
It looked almost entirely different compared to Floor Zero's Waystone, the one that led them all to Floor One.
Half a dozen other survivors were gathered around it. A few stood in small clusters, comparing wounds and swapping loot. One group was laughing too hard, probably from that high that came from living through the city wide war or the realization that they actually climbed a Floor. Another cadet vanished in a sudden column of blue light, ascending to Floor Two.
Deacon's boots crunched over loose gravel as he stepped into the courtyard, Jass and Esmerelda flanking him.
"That's it?" Jass asked, tilting her head toward the towering stone.
Esmerelda nodded. "No mistaking it. Even if we didn't have the System's marker, you can feel the mana coming off it."
They slowed as they approached, eyes scanning the cadets already gathered there. Deacon recognized some of them, one from the Top 100.
Someone muttered, "Deacon Hayes?" and another turned to look, but no one moved to block them or speak. Just a few nods of acknowledgement, subtle glances, a few exchanged stares. Some were wary, some annoyed, some even hostile.
Deacon ignored them all. His eyes were locked on the Waystone.
He stopped three paces from the Floor One Waystone.
The others that huddled around it were of seemingly an equal distance away.
"Well," Jass said, slinging her arms behind her head, "guess this is it. Floor One, done and dusted."
"I still couldn't get rid of the mutant mushroom smell," Esmerelda muttered.
Deacon cracked a faint grin.
Then he reached out and placed his palm against the Waystone.
The surface shimmered instantly under his touch, flaring with blue light. A deep hum rang out through the courtyard as the mana began to gather around him, wrapping his body in thin tendrils of glowing energy.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
You are eligible to enter Floor Two.
Confirm transfer?
[YES] [NO]
Deacon exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes flicking to the girls beside him.
"Well," he said, offering a wry smile, "if we end up being split up again, we just follow the direction that's given to us on our Status Pages."
"Don't die before me," Jass muttered with a grin, cracking her neck, repeating what she said just before entering Floor Two.
Esmerelda simply nodded, her expression uncharacteristically solemn as she whispered something beneath her breath.
Deacon's hand moved.
[YES]
The world warped around him.
Jass vanished first, engulfed in a pillar of pale blue light that shot skyward without warning. A second later, Esmerelda followed – her own column of soft green light flaring upward as her form dissolved into it.
Then, light surged beneath Deacon's feet, swallowing him whole in a sudden blaze of gold.
And then-
Wet, humid, and foggy.
"Fuck."