Pe?a flanked us, gravity fields snapping around his hands, finger guns cocked and ready. We sprinted up the spiraling stone path, chasing a battered observation platform that dangled over the abyss. Below us, a squad of Earth soldiers screamed as they were thrown off the narrow walkway, their bodies disappearing into the endless darkness.

  “Talk to me,” Riley snapped as we ran, her voice tight with controlled panic. “The Core... what the hell happened when you arrived? Thought I spotted something back there.”

  The entire cavern shuddered. Explosions were getting closer they mined toward us. A massive stalactite crashed down, impaling three soldiers thirty feet to our left. Their blood splattered across the stone in a fine crimson mist.

  “It felt like it knew me,” I said, keeping pace without looking at her. “Like it was... calling me.”

  My chest burned with each word, not from exertion but from something deeper; a pull, a yearning connection that had been growing stronger since we'd entered the cavern. It felt like homesickness for a place I'd never been.

  “Fascinating,” she muttered. “We got info from a captured Xarnathi. It’s technically called a System Core before it grows. Every integrated planet's got one. Grows slow, like a seed. Thousand years. But this one sprouted up the same day as the Wisconsin disaster. No one knows how or why.”

  “Yeah, about that.” I dodged a fallen slab, breath coming faster. “I've seen something similar before. There was actually this soap—”

  “Soap?” she barked.

  “Yeah. Riley. There's something I should—”

  She sliced the air with her hand, cutting me off. “Later, Barista. Trolls first. Backstory after, if we survive.” Her eyes locked on mine, fear and determination battling for dominance. “I think we've had enough exposition for one day. It's time to fuck some baddies up.”

  We jumped a gap between floating stones and hit the platform hard enough to make it shudder. A soldier behind us missed the jump, his scream fading as he plummeted into the dark.

  The Core hung below, monstrous and alive.

  From this height, I could see it wasn't random chaos—it was designed. Intricate patterns. Writing in a strange and mesmerizing language that seemed to shift and pulse with each passing second. I couldn't read it, but somehow I understood it—promises of power, warnings of responsibility, whispers of destiny. Real hero shit.

  As I stared, the Core pulsed. Once. Twice. And I swear to god it winked at me.

  My HUD snapped awake:

  [CORE SYNCHRONIZATION AVAILABLE]

  [ESTABLISH CONNECTION?]

  [YES | NO]

  [WARNING: EXTREME RISK. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE NONEXISTENCE, REALITY FRACTURES, PERSISTENT DREAD, AND THE UNSETTLING SENSATION OF BEING DRUNK — NOT THE FUN KIND, MORE LIKE BEING PHYSICALLY IMBIBED BY SOMETHING MUCH, MUCH BIGGER THAN YOU.]

  [BUT HEY, NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING. TOTALLY YOUR CALL, CHAMP.]

  “Uh, Riley?” I called over the rising tremors. “The Core just offered to eat me. Politely.”

  She froze midstep, her face draining of color. “Nobody links to the Core. We tried. They died. Horribly.” She grabbed my shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Like, inside-out-and-screaming horribly.”

  “Yeah, well,” I muttered, blinking at the notification. “Wasn’t exactly planning to swipe right on it.”

  My finger twitched near the Accept button but I yanked back like it was a live wire.

  The Core could wait. Right after ‘Why is the sky Pepto-pink?’ and ‘Why does the System hate pants? Specifically, me wearing them.’

  “Where are we even going?” I asked, keeping pace easily, jogging backward while they pushed forward at full speed.

  “Open ground,” Riley said. “You pull a lot of aggro, Coffee Boy. I get you into position, and when they come running to rip you apart, our guys light 'em up.”

  The cavern shuddered underfoot, coughing dust and ceiling chunks around us. Somewhere below, a squad screamed—raw, panicked, cut short.

  Across the platform ahead, the rock split with a wet, tearing sound—a brutal breach, earth clawed open from the other side.

  From the ragged wound, the first Gravethrall heaved itself through. He was a walking nightmare of cracked stone and rusted chains, fists like wrecking balls. The troll let out a low, pleased growl. It wore a torn leather vest stretched over its jagged frame, a battered cigar clamped between teeth.

  Its face looked like a caveman tried sculpting a human head from wet cement… with a hammer.

  More followed. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Each uglier, meaner, somehow hungrier than the last.

  And then came the Cerulians—floating in like bad dreams, blue robes whispering through the charged air.

  They didn’t walk. They glided, slow and deliberate, their movements too smooth, too together, like marionettes jerked along invisible wires.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Light slithered around them in soft coils of neon.

  I tried counting—twenty, thirty—then a dozen more. And still more poured through.

  “No time like the present,” I muttered, dry as ash, the knot in my gut pulling tighter.

  Below, the firefight had already started.

  Gunfire snapped and roared, but it sounded small, pitiful, against the cavern’s vastness.

  A soldier pinwheeled past our platform, armor torn to ribbons, body limp as a dropped marionette.

  He didn’t scream.

  Dead men don’t.

  I yanked open my apron's infinite pocket, scrolling frantic through a mental inventory that flashed across my HUD. The options blurred past—half of them grayed out, untested.

  [BATTLE BREW: READY]

  [+300% SPEED | +400% STRENGTH | -100% WISDOM]

  [DURATION: 10 MINUTES]

  [WARNING: MAY CAUSE REGRETTABLE ONE-LINERS AND TEMPORARY MEGALOMANIA. LET THE SYSTEM INSIDE YOU.]

  The Gravethrall howled, club smashing against the stone. The platform cracked beneath the impact, a spiderweb of fractures racing toward us. Riley stumbled, catching herself at the edge. Half our squad wasn't so lucky—they slid screaming into the chasm as the section they stood on gave way.

  I met Riley's eyes. For all her training, all her experience, I saw naked fear there. This wasn't a battle. This was a slaughter.

  I ripped the thermos free, sloshing with liquid power. Twisted the cap.

  The scent hit me—pure rage and raw coffee, like someone had brewed death metal straight into a cup. It burned my nostrils and made my eyes water.

  I drank.

  For one heartbeat, nothing happened.

  A freight train of raw power hit my spine, ripping through muscle, nerve, thought. My vision exploded into hyper-clarity, colors so vivid they felt like physical objects. The Core pulsed in perfect sync with my heartbeat, each throb sending a fresh wave of fire through my veins.

  [BATTLE BREW × CORE AMPLIFICATION]

  [EFFECTS DOUBLED]

  [WARNING: OBJECTS MAY APPEAR WEAKER THAN THEY ARE]

  [CATCHPHRASE PROTOCOL: ENGAGED]

  [PROBABILITY OF EMBARRASSING YOURSELF: 100%]

  Golden light erupted from my skin, my apron, my goddamn hair. The platform beneath my feet cracked under the sudden energy discharge. Riley stumbled back, shielding her eyes.

  Every fiber of my body thrummed with potential barely shy of annihilation. I could feel my cells vibrating, threatening to tear themselves apart from the sheer volume of power they suddenly contained.

  I heard Pe?a whisper, almost reverent. “Oh shit.”

  The Gravethralls charged, their stone feet pounding a death march across the platform.

  My mouth opened without my permission: “Fresh pot's ready,” I growled, my voice resonating with inhuman harmonics.

  And then I moved.

  Not ran.

  Moved.

  From stillness to chaos in a blink, I slammed into the lead Gravethrall—and the battle for Earth's Core exploded into full, glorious hell.

  Physics had opinions about how fast humans should move.

  Right now, I was telling physics to go fuck itself.

  I hit the first Gravethrall like a caffeine-fueled meteor, my fist connecting with its stone chest at speeds that would have shattered every bone in my arm if not for the Battle Brew.

  The impact sent out a shockwave that cracked the platform beneath us. The troll didn't just stumble–it exploded, chunks of animated stone blasting outward like shrapnel from a cosmic hand grenade. Three nearby Cerulians were shredded by the stone fragments, their robes turning from blue to purple as their alien blood soaked through.

  “GROUND AND POUND!” I screamed, unable to stop the catchphrase protocol. “THE SPECIAL TODAY IS PAIN AU CHOCOLAT, EMPHASIS ON THE PAIN!”

  I didn't choose to say these things. But the System has a sense of humor that would make a dad joke enthusiast cringe. And right now, pumped full of Battle Brew and Core energy, I couldn't stop it if I tried.

  Two more Gravethralls lumbered toward me, swinging massive clubs studded with metal spikes. I dodged the first swing—not by inches, but by yards, launching myself fifteen feet into the air with a single push of my legs.

  From above, I could see the battlefield unfolding across the cavern, and my heart sank despite the chemical courage coursing through me.

  It was a massacre.

  The observation platform had become a war zone—Earth soldiers falling like dominoes, their weapons barely slowing the tide of monsters pouring through a dozen portals. For every troll they took down, three more stomped forward over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Their low levels helped, sure—but this wasn’t the goblin starter pack anymore. These guys showed up ready to wreck lives.

  Below, near the Core itself, a squad of Earth's finest was being overwhelmed. Their officer screamed into his radio for backup that wouldn't come, his voice cracking with desperation seconds before a Gravethrall's club pulverized his skull in a spray of red mist.

  I hurled coffee pods like grenades, each one detonating with a sharp crack and a puff of steam.

  Espresso shots blasted from my hands like bullets, punching through skulls and dropping bodies before they hit the ground.

  If we lost here, Earth was done.

  Was this really humanity’s best shot?

  Where were the reinforcements? The other countries? Anyone? Someone else had to have figured out how to Awaken more people… but then again, they could only manage it here because of my blood.

  A sharp, ugly thought wormed its way in:

  We should’ve given more people my blood.

  More people. More time. More levels.

  This isn't enough.

  Man, I’m a walking fucking moral contradiction.

  The battlefield exploded into pure chaos—powered blasts flying every direction, bodies and debris everywhere.

  And not all the abilities made sense.

  I swear I saw a guy throwing flaming pizza slices like ninja stars.

  Another stretched ten feet tall and started stomping Gravethralls like cockroaches.

  One bare-chested lunatic was just screaming at the enemy—and somehow making their heads pop like water balloons.

  And that’s when it hit me:

  They had my blood.

  Whatever weird-ass power they had buried deep?

  Yeah. It wasn’t buried anymore.

  Fantastic.

  Riley stood at the edge of the command platform, her twin blades drawn and humming with blue energy. She moved like a dancer with anger issues, each slice of her weapons leaving glowing trails in the air. A Cerulian floated toward her, hands weaving a spell, but she was already moving—ducking under the blast of blue energy and coming up inside the monk's guard.

  “You blue bastards took my entire platoon in Denver,” she snarled, her face spattered with alien blood. Her blades flashed once, twice, and the Cerulian fell in three separate pieces, its robe fluttering like a deflating balloon. “That's one down, about a thousand to go!”

  She spun, catching another Cerulian mid-spell, her blade severing its hands before it could complete the casting. It howled—a sound like glass breaking underwater—and she silenced it with a thrust through where a heart would be on a human.

  “RILEY, DOWN!” Pe?a's voice cracked through the air.

  She dropped flat without hesitation as a blast of energy sizzled through the space where her head had been.

  Pe?a hovered nearby—literally hovered, riding his own gravity manipulation like a cosmic surfboard. He fired blasts from his fingertips, each shot curving around obstacles to find its target with impossible precision.

  “Die motherfuckers!” he shouted, banking hard around a stone column. Three Cerulians tracked him, their spells following his movements but always a fraction too slow.

  He hit a wall, kicked off it, and flipped upside down, both hands forming finger guns. “Bang! Bang! Bang!” He literally shouted.

  Each “shot” bent gravity into a deadly lance that punched through Cerulian robes like they were tissue paper. The monks dropped, their hoods finally falling back to reveal faces of smooth blue porcelain, eyes wide with shock.

  A Gravethrall tried to climb the wall to reach him, but Pe?a just grinned, formed finger guns with both hands, and created a gravity well so intense it crushed the troll into pebbles. “Suck on THAT gravity, pendejo!”

  “Jerry, lookout!” Pe?a shouted.