The air tank ruptured with an explosion of visual distortions and the muzzle split into several pieces of curling, shredded metal. All to make room for a ball of bright light that popped into existence at the end of the barrel. It glowed every color at once without mixing into simple white light, shining on Ricky's gawking face as he tried to shake it off his weapon.

  The ball clung to the rifle like a crown jewel, and as it swished through the air it left arcs of purple plasma in its wake. They left little red afterimages in Ricky's vision, it was beautiful. And distracting.

  "Shit. Hold on Phanya, I'm coming!" Ricky shouted before he began to slip and slide down the garbage mound, desperately trying to keep the ball of light from touching anything. He knew instinctively that the spell had worked, but in his haste to get here he only skimmed the messages on spellcasting.

  He knew Tapper said it was easier for him to cast magic while touching something, but Ricky put his spell into a gun! That was the whole point! Instead he felt a line of sensation run from the middle of his chest and down the barrel of his gun to grasp the spell. A phantom limb holding the magic in stasis until it touched something, and Ricky couldn't hold it forever.

  [MP 1/2]

  "Shitshitshit!!"

  How long did it take for one point of mana to run out, five seconds? Six? Definitely fewer than ten. The phantom muscles holding the spell started to strain and Ricky's feet thudded on the pavement, the exosuit turning their run into a runaway train. No time to second-guess himself, Ricky held the rifle like a lance and charged into the gremlin. Luckily the exosuit also kept the weapon steady and Phanya managed to twist herself, ensuring the glowing ball hit the gremlin dead-center.

  Then, something exploded in a different, more muffled way. Phanya felt the recoil and managed to keep her feet, even as the gremlin wailed and thrashed with fresh agony. She couldn't hear anything else over the monster and stars swam in her vision, but she felt the thud of something heavy hitting the pavement. "Ricky? Ry, talk to me! Tapper!"

  Tapper didn't respond right away, stunned into silence by the grisly sight in front of him. There was a perfectly circular hole the size of an average human fist in the center of the gremlin's chest, and through it Tapper could see a mix of more ground meat and shining metal bits. The wound didn't bleed but it did pulse, and Tapper couldn't tell which was worse.

  Kakisi was still present and zipped over to check on Ricky, the movement tearing Tapper's eyes away from the gore and towards his friend. Smoke rose from Ricky's chestplate and the occupant lay still, until Kakisi fwapped his face a few times and he stirred once to cough.

  "Ricky is alive, but I believe he is stunned!"

  Phanya grunted in response. Tapper's words barely registered, because she also heard the faint raspberry sounds starting up from the horn again. By craning her neck Phanya could watch the chrome horn slide another centimeter towards its original size, and realized it'll only take a few more seconds before it reaches full size. Cursing her shortness of available limbs, Phanya grit her teeth and brought her forehead down onto the horn.

  She had to angle her head awkwardly to hit it straight on, but she hammered the horn back down and interrupted the gremlin. But she hand't managed to stun it; the gremlin gagged at the impact but the horn started healing right away this time. "Great. Tapper, do something! I'm barely holding on here!" She bonked the horn again, and despite her Body Mastery numbing the pain Phanya knew this would give her a headache.

  "I'm trying, but I can't feel my body!" Tapper shouted back, trying in vain to strengthen his connection. "This is supposed to work! Legs, please stand now!" To his amazement both legs kicked out at his command, bending in unnatural ways to raise the torso. "Phanya, it's working! My body can hear me, somehow! Now, attack the gremlin where it's wounded!" The mining arm swung in a wild punch that spun the torso around at the waist, completely missing the monster. In fact all of its movements were erratic and uncoordinated, and with dawning horror Tapper realized why. "It's blind! Why can you hear me without ears but not see without eyes?"

  Phanya bonked her head on the horn again. Ow. "Tapper, can you PLEASE focus right now?"

  "Sorry! Torso, pause! Calculating… I command you to rotate at the waist by six degrees counter-clockwise! Legs, lean back two degrees! Too far, lean forward slowly aaaand stop! Left arm, engage mining apparatus and strike!" The spinning left hand shot forward in a straight jab, but the gremlin lurched at the last second and caught the drill bit in its teeth. Sparks flew and reflected defiance in the monster's unnatural eyes, promising to consume them all once it broke free. Tapper's fear algorithms screamed, but louder still was his reinvigorated sense of adventure.

  "Don't give up against the vile creature! Drill, I say, DRILL!" A thread of white-hot feeling connected Tapper to his torso for a brief moment as the spell pulled from the mana in his chest. Tapper winced in pain from the manaburn and his torso mirrored the reaction, but he couldn't afford to be overcome again. He added another three mana to make up for the manaburn difference and kept going, pouring until the fractured spell vessel overflowed. Just to make sure it worked.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The drill, still spinning against the gate of razor teeth, started to glow as its speed ramped up to an ear-splitting pitch and it finally broke through. Teeth shattered, a downward lurch put the supernatural drill directly into the wound, and a fountain erupted, spraying blood and fine viscera in all directions. And everyone screamed. A different mixture of fear and anger colored each voice, but every lung screamed at full volume at the gruesome sight. Even Ricky joined in, once the shower of blood brought the young adventurer to terrified consciousness.

  And every screaming voice was consumed by the muffled gray void all the same.

  [Enemy defeated! Engorged Gremlin level 10, +23XP!]

  DING!

  Once the notification hit the assault stopped and everyone fell silent, numbed by shock until Tapper broke through with a whoop. "Oh splendid, I leveled up! But wait, I'm still running out of emergency power! Body, pick me up! No I'm over — confound it. Phanya! Phanya, please help!!"

  Phanya dropped the corpse and unceremoniously jammed Tapper's head onto his shoulders, letting him take care of the fine connections so she could check on Ricky. He was alive, but it was difficult to determine whether he was unharmed while drenched head to toe in bright red blood. Blood that was thicker than a human's, brighter red, and also reflected rainbows like oil.

  Eventually Ricky calmed down enough to tell Phanya that he was fine but trapped in the unresponsive suit. He had to walk her through the process of manually opening the suit and her hands kept slipping in the blood, but he was miraculously unharmed.

  "What the hell was that, anyways?" Phanya asked, free to admonish once she ensured Ricky was okay. She rapped a knuckle against this head for good measure. "You try to punch the gremlin with a live grenade, or something?"

  "Ha ha, no. It was a spell!"

  Phanya groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh no, you became a spellcaster too."

  "Damn right I became a spellcaster too. And it was the only thing that really hurt this monster!" Ricky puffed out their chest, but quickly withered under Phanya's glare. "...Alright, even if it didn't work out exactly how I wanted. But still! I knew I was working with inferior tools, so it's a miracle that I could craft a trinket at all."

  "Alright fine, did you punch the gremlin with an 'explosion spell' or something?"

  "No, it was a Split spell." Ricky knew Phanya had asked sarcastically, but he leapt on the chance to answer before she could close the door. "I was trying to eek more damage out of the system by splitting the target into material components instead of something straightforward like 'split the skin,' but I don't know what happened. Last thing I remember was the gremlin exploding out where I hit it, which might actually be even better if I can cast the spell at a distance. Thought using the rifle would work, but there might be a rule in the system that I overlooked..."

  "Ry, I'm going to shove you back into that dead suit if you don't shut up."

  "My goodness everyone, look!" Tapper shouted, both to stop the bickering and in honest amazement. The fog was lifting, a gray curtain pulled back to let light and life in once again, and in seconds the landscape grew to reveal the horizon. Almost immediately their time within the shift storm felt like a bad dream, the details just fuzzy enough that no one was sure they had really spent hours wandering the gray void.

  But they did see the plain evidence before them; amidst the new cliffs and hills formed by shifting elevation lay the wrecked remains of the miners that chased them in. Most of the vehicles were dotted with blood or scorch marks where they hadn't been stripped for parts, but there wasn't a single monster or human corpse in sight. So much was suddenly so nearby that Phanya wondered how they hadn't noticed any of it, until she panned around and found the jitney. Their car lay a mere 30 meters away from their multiple hours of trekking.

  It just wasn't fair.

  Eventually they managed to free the mercenary, who thanked them but kept his distance. Now that he was out in the open for the first time Tapper automatically performed a bartender scan, reading his physical and nonverbal characteristics to create a customer profile.

  He was a male reptilian, green scales with red undertones, early 30s but difficult to determine an exact age due to poor hygiene. Hm, or his uneven shedding was possibly an anxiety response and unrelated to hygiene, suggested by his subconscious scratching. He wore high-tech goggles that bugged out slightly and moved independently from each other, adding to the sense of unease, but also indicated that he was a man of some means.

  Conclusion: He would order shot bombs in energy drinks, but should be limited to avoid overstimulation. Tapper stored the information away without bothering to reference it, since his opportunities to ever be a proper bartender remained few and far between. Instead he held out a hand and said, "Greetings, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person! My name is Tapper, how may we address you?"

  The reptilian did not take the handshake. "Uh, I'm Salazar." He hugged himself and peaked outside, and Tapper watched his reaction as he looked down. Salazar's scales paled and his neck frill twitched, flashing brilliant reds and oranges in a defensive instinct gifted from his genetic manipulation. All because he saw the gremlin lying dead on the tarmac.

  Salazar made a quick hand gesture in front of his chest and said, "You really killed one of the demons? That's professional level work, how'd you do that without any antimaterial gear?"

  "We have magic!" Tapper happily answered.

  Phanya's head snapped to attention at the dreaded m-word, and she sucked air through her teeth when she saw Tapper talking to the bounty hunter. She had her concerns about why the system didn't want them to tell anyone, but she had no doubts about the bounty hunter. "Hey Tapper! How's the, uh, back nozzle feeling?"

  The robot let out a squeal of anguished static at the reminder. "What monster would try to eat a robot? That's something that should only be a danger to organic beings!" Then Tapper made a different static noise, maybe like a gasp, and his mood shifted back up. "Wait! How long would it take for a creature to digest one of your arms?" He looked at each organic being, all of whom answered with a dumbfounded stare, and Tapper shrugged. "It seemed logical that organics would know to ask those questions about themselves. But the point is, maybe my spindle hasn't been digested yet! There's still hope!"