Back when the Doc taught his team about the Peak spell, their teacher insisted that the colors of sorcery followed rigidly defined parameters. Each covered a very specific area of reality: Red was energy; Orange matter; Yellow concepts; Green life; Blue information; Violet spacetime; and White covered metamagic itself. None could cover the other’s domain.

  The Doc had used the differences between Peak and Premium Thoughts to illustrate his point. The former was a Green spell that reinforced the human body, which should naturally cover its nerves and brain; yet it didn’t improve the user’s reflexes, memory, or thought processes. That was the Blue’s purview, and thus something that required the associated Premium Thoughts spell.

  And yet, Kari Matsumoto had somehow managed to combine the two spells into a new one.

  “You fused Premium Thoughts and Peak together?” John asked with a frown. His bag was full of cash taken from the Dungeon’s bribe, as was his teammates’. No reason they should leave this place without it, after all. They had earned that loot! “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I have a theory,” Kari said in between gulps from her water bottle. She looked more winded than an athlete after the Olympics. “My Key let me briefly observe how Matthew’s Flux acted when that monster hurled itself at him. His Doom Sense and Peak passive spells blurred together when the creature nearly landed a lethal blow.”

  “I’m following so far,” Matthew said. While he was paying close attention to his teammates’ explanation, he also worked to widen the hole in the glass ceiling separating them from the core one bullet hole at a time. The Dungeon had run out of monsters and threats to throw at them, so one good hit to its heart should finish it off.

  “Peak optimizes your body. It works by letting us stay in top shape and exploit all of our human potential, while your Doom Sense is designed to warn you about lethal dangers to your health; harm to your body.” Kari smiled ear to ear. “See where that leads?”

  It finally clicked for Matthew. “They’re overlapping,” he guessed, his heart pounding faster and faster. “The two spells overlap when I’m faced with a threat to my health, because it concerns them both!”

  “That’s what I’m thinking too,” Kari confirmed with a sharp nod. “When we fought the creature, I cast Peak and Premium Thoughts to keep up. I pushed the spells to their limits so that they would let me push beyond my limits… and then they overlapped.”

  “Because their fusion focused on improving you,” Matthew said, the pieces falling into place. “That’s why your hips got thicker!”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Kari replied with a sigh. “But yes, I think the fusion adapted my morphology to the present situation beyond what each individual spell could achieve on its own. Peak alone only lets me use my body to its full potential, but doesn’t change how it works either.”

  “You got Usain Bolt’s legs when you had to run and Scharwzie’s arms when you had to strike,” Matthew summed up. “But you won’t grow wings even if you want to fly, because no human on Earth can do that.”

  “Pretty much,” Kari confirmed. “Or at least I think that’s how fusing spells works. I would need to test this out more and gather more data points before I can confirm it.”

  John stroked his chin as he pondered the discovery. “So this is a hack. An exploit in the color system.”

  “Maybe,” Kari replied. “Either way, we should inform Mr. O’Connor after we’re finished here.”

  “Now I want to try combining Lucky Star with a new spell too,” Matthew mused. He had finished widening the hole in the ceiling, leaving the core completely exposed. “Anyway, I’m done.”

  “I’ve informed Crypto through the navigator that we’re about to blow up the core,” John said.

  Matthew smiled at Kari. “Since you took out the Boss, would you do us the honors?”

  “How gentlemanly of you, Matt,” Kari mused. She opened her bag and pulled out a throwing knife. She looked for a weak point only her Key could notice and then readied her arm. “One, two–”

  She threw her projectile through the air with inhuman accuracy and shattered the core on impact.

  The Dungeon’s death cry rippled across space and time, its wail cracking walls and rippling through the air. Matthew couldn’t shake off a deep sense of satisfaction as reality began to crumble around the Crawlers.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Major Chicken would once again become a place safe for families.

  We all deserve our own spicy bucket after this, Matthew thought as the Dungeon collapsed into a whirlpool of orange and green Flux. He promised himself to grab one as soon as Crypto allowed the restaurants to reopen. My tummy’s growling just thinking about it.

  Matthew had wasted too much Flux today. He needed food now.

  Reality flashed away one last time, with the Major Chicken Dungeon at last disappearing without a trace.

  And another replaced it.

  Matthew knew something was wrong the moment the trio didn’t crash land back in Temple Alley like they should have. They didn’t fall to the ground in a silly way like all the times they’d been expelled from a crumbling Dungeon; instead, they all ended up standing on a pearly marble floor more polished than a brand-new kitchen counter. A welcoming smell of artificial plants welcomed them alongside multicolored motes of light. Red, blue, violet, and more Flux particles danced like fireflies among them. All the colors were represented in this place.

  Matthew’s heart stopped pounding in his chest, the iron grip of fear squeezing it tight.

  “Where are we?” John pondered as he looked away at the landscape windows surrounding them. They had landed in a pristine hall supported by crystal columns with walls adorned with futuristic vending machines. “Did the Dungeon have a secret second level?”

  Matthew didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even breathe, couldn’t move, his entire body trembling with dread. A dreadful chill traveled down his spine and a terrible itching sensation spread from the black beneath his eyepatch.

  His body remembered.

  His lone eye gazed through the landscape windows in the vain hope that he was wrong, that they hadn’t landed in this place. A single look at the iron world awaiting them beyond that coffin of glass shattered his hope.

  A maze of steel floors and crystal staircases sprawled as far as he could see, hosting thousands upon thousands of stores with futuristic neon lights jostling for attention. All were empty and devoid of life, with only blue holograms of inhuman silhouettes to provide a false measure of company to doomed visitors. Some of them still had traces of dried human blood on their welcome signs, the crimson fluids glittering in the light of a silicon screen-sky showcasing bizarre images of eyes looking down on the three Crawlers.

  “This place looks like a sci-fi…” John’s breath grew shorter. “Mall…”

  Impossible.

  Impossible, they couldn’t… why did they end up… this wasn’t real, it didn’t make sense!

  “Matt?” He barely heard Kari utter his name, nor noticed her hand falling on his shoulder. “Matthew, what’s going on?”

  Matt struggled to focus as his lungs fought to breathe. He held his chest as the invisible pressure on his ribs grew stronger. His old friend, the panic attack, had come to pay him a surprise visit after all those years.

  How?! How did this happen?! How could this happen?!

  “Little Brussels…” Matthew managed to mutter to himself. “The third entrance… too close… was too close!”

  The Major Chicken Dungeon had opened a door in the Little Brussels district a stone’s throw away from one of this place’s entrances. Either the Major Chicken spewed the team out there in a last-ditch effort to screw them over, or the Mall managed to intercept them on their way to the real world somehow.

  No other Dungeon ever did that before… but this one was unique in so many horrifying ways.

  “This is it,” John muttered as he backed away from the windows, his tone sharper and more focused than ever. “This is the Mall.”

  Kari paled like chalk. She had never been to this place—thankfully—but she had heard the tales. “We need to go,” she said, the panic finally hitting her. “We need to find the exit right now!”

  Doom Sense drove an iron rod into Matthew’s skull.

  Or at least, it felt that way to him. An agonizing headache worse than anything he had ever experienced set his brain on fire. A buzzing noise rang in his ears, smothering all sound except the distant crashes of a great and ferocious creature crashing through walls on its way to their location.

  It knew.

  It knew, it knew, it knew! It knew they were here, and now it was running straight at them!

  Fear could petrify men or give them wings. In Matthew’s case, sensing the overwhelming aura of Flux making its way to his team forced his body on autopilot mode. He rushed to the hall’s center, following strands of Flux to the door he knew was there. He grabbed them with his bare hands and Key in a desperate attempt to open the gate to the outside world.

  The blood-starved Dungeon ferociously fought back to keep its jaw closed until its executioner arrived, and Matthew had exhausted a lot of Flux not to long ago. Each second spent trying and failing to kick the door open quickened his pulse.

  The malign intelligence ruling this place wouldn’t let him escape again.

  His teammates immediately joined Matthew in the escape effort. Kari had spent so much energy Matthew barely noticed her contribution, but John had paced himself better than either of them. He put all of his Flux reserves into the task and punctured a hole into the Dungeon’s fabric. The rift opened right as walls collapsed behind them and the thing shattered the nearby windows.

  A flash of Flux swallowed him and his team, and when the light died down they all ended up collapsing on a cold concrete floor smelling of oil and asphalt. A condemned elevator entombed in coiling chains and ‘Keep Out’ adhesive tape loomed behind them under a flickering lamp.

  “We’re…” Kari let out a sigh of relief. “We’re out.”

  “This… this is… the old parking lot,” Matthew said in between huffs and breaths. His lungs burned like the heart of the sun. “Mr. Chang… Mr. Chang had it condemned… years ago…”

  John grunted. “Maruki… your back…”

  Matthew peeked over his shoulder and froze in dread.

  A claw had sliced its way across his bag and reached all the way to his shirt.

  Monday/Friday or Monday/Wednesday updates (so two chapters a week instead of three) in the near future to focus more on my Board & Conquest novel soon. Schedule will likely start changing next week, but will keep you informed.

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