Matthew’s Doom Sense buzzed louder and louder with each moment.

  He could almost cut the tension in the air with a knife by the time the elevator leading to the Office Floor finally slowed down. Both of his teammates held their breaths behind him. Kari had switched out her gun for her rapier and a knife while John carried no weapons at all. Going on a killing spree on the lower floor had exhausted his ammo supply, though his full Flux reserves would help compensate.

  As for Matthew, all his passive spells were up and ready. He didn’t have enough reserves left to fuel another round of Calamity Force, but his Key should be more than enough to deal with whatever Boss protected the core.

  “Ready?” Matthew asked his teammates as the elevator doors slid open, both of them nodding at once. “Then let’s go!”

  They stepped into a vast and pristine hall adorned with corridors of towering shelves filled with notes, bills, and other documentation lit up by a powerful orange light from above. Matthew barely caught a glimpse of the dizzying number of binders and other books present, but it was enough to give him a headache.

  They had encountered the final boss of capitalism itself: corporate bureaucracy.

  However, a single sliver of hope shone through this administrative nightmare: a seven-meters tall brass statue of Major Chicken standing in the middle of the room. Its stern gaze oversaw a large table resting at its feet. A chicken tenders bucket thrice the size of Matthew himself stood there surrounded by a pile of money stacks, chicken wraps, hamburgers, and enough soda to give diabetes to half of Evermarsh.

  “See that, Maruki?” John asked with a scoff. “That’s a trap designed for you alone.”

  “Nah, Misfire,” Matthew replied, his finger pointing at a card sitting atop the money pile. The word ‘Gift For Friends!’ was written in bright bold letters. “It’s a bribe.”

  The Dungeon had truly learned everything about fast-food culture.

  Since Matthew’s Doom Sense continued to buzz in the back of his skull, he could tell that violence was still on the table should the Crawlers refuse to take the Dungeon up on its not-so-subtle offer to walk away richer than they entered; which they would have to do.

  Moreover, the light from above bothered him. Matthew looked up to find himself staring up at a spotless glass ceiling showing the floor above: an empty space in which floated an orange and green orb pulsating with Flux.

  The Dungeon’s core was less than ten meters above their heads.

  “A glass ceiling? On the office floor?” Kari scoffed in amusement. “Subtle much?”

  “Very kind of the Dungeon to give us a direct line of fire,” John mused, his hands raised into a finger gun pointing at the ceiling. “Maruki, would you kindly widen a hole through the corporate hierarchy?”

  “I dunno…” Matthew said, his lone staring at all that sweet money. “It’s tempting, but…” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “I deserve more.”

  A new pile of dollar stacks materialized on top of the existing one in a swirl of Orange particles, letting it grow until it reached the Major Chicken statue’s waist.

  “I wonder if violence is truly the solution to our problem,” Matthew immediately told his teammates. The Dungeon’s generosity had deeply moved his heart. “When the other party has such powerful and well-reasoned arguments, what can we do besides sue for peace?”

  John smirked cruelly. “Take the Dungeon’s money and destroy it anyway?”

  Matthew loved having teammates who understood him so well.

  Still, it was nice of the Dungeon to waste Flux on creating money instead of monsters, so he decided to make it quick. He raised a finger gun at the ceiling and blew open a small hole there, leaving a large enough opening for John to exploit; which he did.

  Red particles surged from John’s own finger gun in the form of a shining crimson laser. It pierced through the hole and scratched the core with searing heat.

  A screech of pain and outrage resonated across the floor in response. Matthew had half-expected the Major Chicken statue to animate itself and charge at them, yet it didn’t move an inch. The Boss had been closer to the group and hidden in plain sight.

  The giant bucket’s lid grew teeth and hopped off the table.

  The thing immediately grew dozens of scaled chicken legs with sharp talons mid-jump and clumsily lurched forward with ferocious snaps of its gaping jaw. The monster had no eyes or nose to direct itself; only a single maw opening into a crispy gullet reeking of delicious fried food.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I knew it was a mimic! It always is!” Matthew boasted, only for his Doom Sense to send a sharp surge of pain through the back of his skull. “Incom–”

  The Bucket Mimic charged across the hall faster than a bullet train.

  Matthew’s Peak and Doom Sense spells once again combined at the last minute, forcing his legs to leap sideways to avoid the incoming monster. He felt the thing pass by a mere inch as its momentum sucked in the very air around it, while Kari barely managed to grab John by the collar and drag him out of the Boss’ way at the last second. The monster’s body crashed into the elevator’s doors with enough strength to bend steel, leading to a catastrophic crash echoing across the floor.

  Matthew had no idea how a creature with that kind of anatomy could move that fast, but it did! He barely had time to regain his footing as the Boss lunged at him once more with its talons, swinging and flailing and snapping with bestial fury.

  Kari immediately moved to engage it in close combat while John covered her rear with Beam spells. Lasers left searing burns on the Bucket Boss’ back and Kari’s rapier punctured a few of its legs deep enough to draw greenish ooze-like puddles of blood, yet neither managed to divert the monster’s attention away from Matthew.

  The Boss simply hunted him down across the room, smashing the floor with each pound of its talons and throwing shelves aside as it moved. Matthew would’ve already been killed without his spells letting him reflexively move around with inhuman agility; and even then, the effort left him winded. He had to constantly zigzag between shelves to avoid being torn apart.

  It won’t let me get away! Matthew cursed in the back of his mind as one of the creature’s talons narrowly missed tearing out his throat. He looked for an opening to fire a bullet-hole at the thing, but neither his spells nor the enemy gave him the opportunity since the former forced his body to focus entirely on avoiding the latter’s lethal flurry of blows. I can’t even catch my breath!

  The monster seemed to have read his mind, for it finally stopped thrashing around and instead exhaled a putrid stream of fumes at Matthew. Orange smoke flowed forward, rusting the metal shelves and rotting away paper.

  With little other choice to avoid being turned into a pile of waste where he stood, Matthew partly unveiled his eyepatch. He couldn’t fully remove it lest he accidentally suck in his teammates, but he let his black hole peek out just enough to draw the gas into itself. Even then he fought a surge of pain as little amounts of corroding gas seared the outline of his eye socket.

  His moment of respite came when John altered his Beam spell a bit. His laser turned into a stream of crimson lightning that zapped the Boss from behind, briefly shocking it into immobilism.

  Kari followed it up by leaping into the air and landing on top of the Bucket Boss’ lid, sword first. Matthew put his eyepatch completely back on before he could accidentally swallow her in and watched on as she drove her rapier through the thing’s jaw, sealing it shut. The Boss snarled through its bound teeth and spun in place like a top, sending books and documents flying all across the room. Matthew had to duck to the left to avoid taking a shelf straight to the face.

  Kari played rodeo with the Bucket Boss for a while as it thrashed around in an attempt to throw her off its back; all while the Crawler held on to her sword and stabbed the lid with her knife. The monster eventually threw itself at a wall to crush Kari between its body and stone. She let go of her rapier and leaped off it at the last minute to avoid the catastrophic collision.

  And then she changed.

  Matthew’s acute Flux senses caught a brief whiff of green and blue surging through his teammate’s flesh and bones. Her slender legs grew slightly longer in midair, their weight shifting like that of a frog preparing to land. Kari touched the ground with a panther’s grace, her breath perfectly rhythmed with not a single movement wasted.

  Something happened.

  “John, keep it immobilized,” Kari said with a stronger voice than usual as the Bucket Boss emerged from the pile of rubbles it had left in its wake. Matthew couldn’t quite explain how, but it sounded like her vocal cords shifted to allow her voice’s frequency to cut through any noise no matter what. “Matt, cover me. I’ll finish it off.”

  She didn’t wait for his answer before charging.

  Most wouldn’t have noticed the changes in the heat of battle, but Matthew had seen Kari in action often enough to spot them right away. Her body lengthened by at least ten centimeters and her legs thickened to power a fast stride that would put Usain Bolt to shame. Her cadence quickened with a flawless sprinting technique and an efficient running form. Matthew couldn’t tell how all the pieces worked together to achieve that burst of speed, but he instinctively knew that they did.

  It was like watching a cheetah lunging at a gazelle.

  Still unable to open its lid-maw with a sword stuck through it, the Bucket Boss lifted its talons in an attempt to squash Kari flat. Matthew and John shot it both at the same time, the former with bullet-holes and the latter with an electrical Beam. A combination of a lightning shock and Matthew blowing off one of its legs with a hole caused the monster to lose its balance and stumble.

  Kari deftly ran around it and then struck it with her knife. Her body once again adapted to the task. Her arms’ muscles thickened and strained. Her torso gained more bulk and her spine slightly shifted in length to maximize her momentum, all while her Key guided her hand. The slash that followed was too quick for Matthew’s eye to follow, but its result was plain for all to see.

  Kari gutted the monster in a single strike.

  Her knife hit and sliced through its flesh and tore it apart below the jaw. A fountain of thick green ooze-blood erupted from the wound, the blow so strong that the creature’s body snapped in two from the shock. Its two parts fell onto the ground with a loud noise and a final gargle.

  Matthew stared at Kari in silent awe, trying to figure out what just happened. The green and blue glow of Flux surrounding her faded away, and with it, her body enhancements. Her limbs and back returned to their normal proportions in an instant. A few torn holes on her shirt remained the only hint that she transformed at all.

  “What was that, Matsumoto?” John inquired. He looked equally shocked by their teammate’s sudden performance.

  Kari smiled thinly, her hand swinging her knife and flicking away the blood on its blade to the floor like a samurai. Matthew remembered that anime nerds like him called it Chiburi or something. “I think it happened to me too.”

  “What?” John inquired.

  Matthew figured out the answer before Kari gave it away.

  “Her spells fused like mine,” he said. “She’s gone multicolor.”

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