“Fascinating… I’ve never thought of using spatial tech like this before, but how did you… Hm, I see! This is quite…” my chubby friend continued to mumble incomprehensible things as he examined the trinket in great detail, “Have you linked it anywhere yet?”

  And of course, Big Bob’ll be the first to understand its function. I shook my head. “I was hoping to use our old hang-out as the anchor point. The one we brought Q to last time.”

  “Hm, that lounge is a tad small. I think I have a better location in mind,” He grinned, “Do you mind if I designate the location?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, it’s your building.”

  “Just give me a second…” He took a few tools out of his belt and began to fiddle around with the thing. Molly’s gaze turned soft as she saw her partner so engrossed in his work that she chuckled to herself.

  “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Abigail said.

  “Sorry,” I answered, “It’s a little device that I made, it works off the same tech that Babylon uses, as you can clearly tell. Uh, you can familiarize yourselves with it later. But skipping the technical details,” Mainly because I didn’t know any of them… “it’ll transport you, from anywhere really, into a preprogrammed location. In this case, it’ll be linked to one of Master Babylon’s offices.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, doctor.” The Director’s eyes widened as she understood the implications of what I just said. “Wait, doesn’t this mean that I use it to circumvent the trip back home…”

  Molly nodded. “If she’s close to Babylon, I can easily take her back to Hope’s Memorial.”

  “And,” Abigail continued, a smile starting to creep up her lips, “With Lady Malice’s help, I can arrive home a day earlier…”

  I smirked. “Exactly. The invaders will think they have more time than they actually do. I’m sure that will screw with their plans.”

  Big Bob looked up from his tinkering. “It’s better than that, actually. Seige missions don’t have a completion requirement per se; not like the other, standard Trials. Well, I suppose they can defeat the boss to get home faster, but Aspirants rarely choose that option since it would mean skipping out on experience and items. In any case, the Aspirants are rewarded based on their contribution at the end of the Trial." My friend's grin turned vicious. "That is to say, they won’t be on guard about failing their mission, and they certainly won’t be on the lookout for an angry god coming back a bit early.”

  I scoffed. “I doubt the Aspirants even know they’re only there because Abigail’s away. Chances are they’ll treat this as any other Trial and won’t even question the destruction they’re causing.”

  The Director’s gaze hardened, as did her grip on the mug. I had to give her hands a gentle squeeze to remind her that things were not as dire as they seemed. She gave me an appreciative smile and spared the poor mug an unfortunate fate. I refilled her drink.

  “Alright,” Bob said, handing Abigail the tweaked trinket, “I got it linked to one of my new offices.” He turned his attention back to me. “These are mass-made, so I’m guessing you’ll have other guests in the future,”

  I gave my friend a nod.

  “Excellent! And I made sure that the place you’re brought to properly reflects our status. You’ll love it! Wait until you see some of the new stuff I’ve installed in the lot. There’s even a maglev station built in, and you won’t believe the model I managed to hijack! It’s-”

  Molly gave a heartfelt chuckle and pinched my friend on his arm. “That’s enough, dear. You can tell them about it later.”

  Big Bob blushed and gave a slight bow to Abigail. “Sorry, I tend to blabber whenever I see new tech. But Malice is right, we have more pressing matters to discuss.”

  “Our goal is clear,” I concluded, “I’ll stall the Aspirants for six days, doing my best to minimize the damage, and wait for Director Abigail to come back to clean up the mess. I’m sure I can do some serious damage to them if I-”

  “Just be careful, though, Walter,” Big Bob warned, holding up a hand. “Malice and I can get you in here to interfere since you are technically a part of the Hospital, but you’ll have to limit how much you act, at least while the Trial is underway. The Overseer’s got specific instructions to look out for your unique signature and he’ll be informed if you outright fight or kill the Aspirants. You can use your powers once or twice without triggering a response, but more than that? I don’t think I need to tell you why we want to avoid that.”

  I frowned. “That complicates matters… is that limited only to me, though?”

  Big Bob nodded. “Yeah, I heard the higher-ups at Central made quite a commotion after your last stunt. I’m not sure what you did in the fourth Trial, but they’re setting up protocols in case you make another mess of things. Not just for Pandora or the humans, mind you, but for every Trial in all of Central going forth.”

  Abigail sighed. “It seems my doctor’s making a nuisance of himself. I’m not sure if I should feel happy or not about the news.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “He is good at that,” chuckled Bob, “But be careful, Walter. I mean it.”

  “I always am, but…” I grinned, “I think I can game the system again. You think you can help me sneak in a few extra bodies?”

  Big Bob turned to Molly, who frowned as she thought about something. Eventually, the woman answered. “I can make room for two extras, but that’s it. Any more and I risk being discovered.”

  “Any two?”

  Molly paused for a moment before shaking her head. “No, the ones who left Hope’s Memorial through the Origin Matrix should be avoided. You left through your own means, but the others might have traces of the enemy system. I might be overthinking it, but we can’t risk them returning and being discovered, not with the consequences being what they are.”

  Damn, so no Marcus or Jae-Hyun. Well, I wasn’t planning to bring the creepy priest in any case, not if I could help it, but losing the Regressor? He was the only person who knew how to organize and plan a defensive siege, and not having his help would hurt. That meant that I’d have to rely on Vadeem and Noel to do the fighting; I would have loved to have Claire around as well, but her abilities were still budding, and it wasn’t quite time for her to take on such a task.

  “That’s fine,” I said, “Just having two extras helping out is enough. I’ll contact you when I need them brought in, and I’m guessing I should register them with Sarah first?”

  “If you could,” the Director confirmed.

  “Will do. And, uh,” I scratched my windpipe “I know I should have asked this earlier, but when exactly is all of this supposed to take place?”

  “The meeting is set to start in five days, but I’ll have to leave in four. I’m not sure how that translates between planes, however.”

  Big Bob pulled a small phone-like device out of his pockets and checked the numbers. “About a week and a half on your side, give or take a few hours. We should come here a bit earlier and get everything set up, so let’s play it safe and say seven days.”

  “A week, hm…” I muttered, doing some rough math in my head. “Which will give us about a day here to get things ready?”

  “More or less,” Big Bob nodded.

  “It’s doable…” I shook my head and sighed. “Alright, I’ll make proper plans for that later, can you fill me in on the details now? What am I expecting? What are the defenses like here?”

  Big Bob and Abigail nodded and we spent the next hour and a half going through the available resources of the Hospital and the important things to take into account during a siege. Bob couldn’t be sure which race the Trash Matrix would send here, apparently that kind of information was well protected, so we all agreed to focus on general fortifications. Either way, it would be an uphill battle.

  I found out, much to my disappointment, that the majority of the hospital’s defenses and general safety were caused by the direct influence of the Director’s presence. Her divinity manifested in those strange rules that every inhabitant - sans myself and Alice of course - had to follow. As Abigail explained earlier, without her here, those restrictions would be all but gone, which meant that the orderly operations of the hospital would all be lost.

  Worse, the hospital staff still had a duty of care (well, they consider it care in any case) for the patients here. That meant that the nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals would have to protect their charges. That made the areas that we needed to defend enormous since moving the highly “sick” patients around wasn’t an option. Worse, it also meant that a large percentage of the staff here couldn’t move around outside of the patient’s ward or its immediate surroundings.

  The only flexible members I could utilize were the disciplinary guards and the custodial staff, and I’d have to somehow use a few hundred individuals to defend the majority of the hospital. Abigail assured me that the two wiener dogs would help out, although I wasn’t sure how much those glorified sausages with legs could do. By the end of the meeting, I was left with a vague notion of what we had in store, but at least it was a start.

  “I think that’s about as much as we can do for now,” I concluded, “I’ll get things ready on my end.”

  “I’ll have Q contact you when it’s time,” Big Bob said, “And do you have any more of those trinkets of yours? Just to borrow, mind you, I want to see what you did to get them so compact…”

  I took out another one and threw it toward Bob. I still had a few extras, and it wasn’t like I was giving ‘em out like candy in any case. Let my chubby friend tinker away, maybe he’ll find a way to mass-produce those things and save me the trouble of upgrading all of those titles I’ve been getting.

  His eyes lit up as he hurriedly snatched the token and stuffed it into one of his suit pockets. I saw Molly give her partner an exasperated sigh and it took some coaxing for my friend to remember that he was still acting as the Master Alchemist and not plain-old Big Bob. We excused ourselves a few moments later, and after saying my goodbyes to the Director, doll-Molly brought me back to Pandora.

  I was bombarded by the whole gang the second I exited the portal, and the concern on the faces of my friends was evident.

  “Walter, are you okay?” Yoona said, “Noel said she couldn’t locate you in the building!”

  The redhead nodded vigorously. “You just upped and disappeared! And there’s only one way that could happen!”

  “It’s uh…”

  Jae-Hyun shook his head. “We know damn well what it was, Walter. What’d the bastards have you do? Don’t think you can pretend otherwise.”

  “Yeah,” grunted Vadeem as he gave me a sour look, “We know you well enough by now to know that you’d want to shove all the damn burden on your own shoulders until it’s too late. The damned mental contamination almost did you in last time; we’re not letting that crap happen again. What did that admin fucker have you do? Spill it.”

  Geeze, I did not know just how much my own safety and well-being meant to them, but it was nice to see that I was so loved. It’s a good thing I had the excuse to just up and disappear now since I did not know that Noel’s spying abilities had grown to such a level. I’ll have to be a bit more careful in the future.

  I held up my hands and got the crew to calm down. “All right, all right, take it easy guys. I’ll tell you; I wasn’t planning on tackling this one alone in any case. How about we get some food first, and I’ll explain over dinner?”

  Vadeem gave me a questioning look, but ultimately nodded when he saw that I wasn’t lying this time. “Fair enough, is the HQ restaurant fine with you?”

  “Isn’t it always packed nowadays?” I asked, remembering the last time I peeked inside there. It looked like half the population of Pandora made a reservation there; I had no idea what the Regressor or his sister did to make the place so appealing, but it was one of the selling points for the guild. I knew, personally, two dozen people who applied just so they could skip the waitlist.

  “As if we need to wait for something like that. Let’s go, Walter!”

  Want to read ahead? Check out my Patreon!

  24 chapters ahead!