It's pretty obvious that I didn't have the slightest thought of rushing head-on into a superior opponent. Even if this world doesn't follow the "MC always arrives on time, even if that 'on time' is late" rule, it's unlikely that Steele is going to destroy the Vault along with all of its contents. Hell, come to think of it, there's a non-zero chance that I'll be sucked into a portal, so I'd better get ready in advance, and gather a lot of stuff that might come in handy on Earth. First of all licenses, of course, but it's hard to get them on short notice.

  A search in ECHONET on the request "license acquisition" yielded an unexpected result. Turns out we have our own local weapons manufacturer on Pandora. S & S Munitions, at one time was sort of a non-major Pandorian corporation. However, since they were actually a subsidiary corporation of Atlas, they've been getting sicker and sicker lately, with the "parent" pulling resources out of them. Now they're barely functioning at all, and are selling off what property they have left.

  Hmm...

  ...Why don't I take out a loan?

  I highly doubt that even the best combat lawyers are good enough to go to another world, or even another universe, for a lender. Although, of course, AlBa could get wacky... but it would be a very strange version of the Terminator.

  Alas, loans and banking in general are not so good on Pandora. It's more like borrowing money from people you know, on trust, or on the security of property. I can transfer my property, even sell it... but it is better not to hurry with it. Although my story would seem almost finished, and there is nothing to worry about, but still... Yes, and it will not be possible to sell my enterprise quickly. But I can offer it as collateral.

  But there's still the question of who to turn to. Not Marcus. Even though we've come to a neutral relationship with him, but still.

  Moxie, perhaps? I could go to Lily, but after talking to her esteemed mother... Moxie is less chthonic.

  - Moxie, can you tell me where I can borrow a decent sum of money against my business?

  - To you? I don't suppose anyone would lend it to you - you've got too good a reputation.

  Eh?..

  However, Moxie immediately clarified the situation - quite obvious, really. It's all about how the business will be taken back in case of emergency: when the owner is known to be more than capable of standing up for himself, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to take what's owed from him. On the other hand, if he's weak, there's no need for any obligations - you can just come and take it.

  Anarchy, you know.

  Shit. I've become a victim of my own reputation.

  The most frustrating thing is that now is the perfect opportunity for raider... ahem, force requisition... um, to be enterprising and acquire property at zero cost. Without Atlas' force support, one could simply show up at the current S&S bosses and take what they have left, perhaps paying a token amount. Perhaps even money. However, I still wouldn't risk it alone, and putting together a team...

  ...Hmm. Maybe I will.

  - When do you intend to attack Steele's forces? - I inquired.

  - It's hard to say exactly - Roland replied. - At the moment they're fighting the Eridian guards, and there's no point in getting in the way. Plus a good portion of the militia forces are engaged in containing and thinning out the forces from the Crimson Citadel.

  - Too bad we couldn't blow them up - I sighed. Having previously captured the treasury, obviously. Alas, the chances of laying hands on it were getting slimmer and slimmer.

  - The chance of complete success was initially very low - said the soldier. - What you managed to do is already respectable. If you want to participate in the final attack, I will contact you.

  - I'll be waiting - I nodded.

  - Yup, I'm in - Lily nodded.

  - ...But I haven't even said anything yet - I noticed.

  - What difference does it make? - The girl looked genuinely surprised. - The more I observe your activities, the more I am convinced that near you, Magister, strange shit happens all the time. Which means i need to stay close.

  She shrugged.

  - It's not only interesting, but you always pay your dues fairly, including for my security.

  - Work ethic is an investment in reputation - I said. - If you can't get rid of witnesses, you have to leave them with the right impression. Anyway, if you're in shape for a new adventure, I'd like to invite you to participate in a little requisitioning.

  - What kind of things? - The girl asked.

  - Depends on how things go.

  Going on a weird sidequest right before the final battle? It's common, any RPG fan will tell you that. Although I do prefer the machine gun and sniper, but those are details. The bottom line is that I need licenses, and there are too few free ones available... or rather, there aren't. There are too few publicly available free licenses. Licenses, memory modules for ECHO, digital construction schemes - on Earth, at least on my home planet, all this will be priceless. So, since the end of the story is in sight, we should hurry up and get everything we can.

  Hopefully the Eridian guards will hold out long enough.

  - Look, Mr. Deathlove - the man in front of me sighed, and my cheek twitched. Man, why the fuck are they all twisting my last name? Death might take offense! - Our firm is doomed. The founders, as far as I know, have been murdered, and we, the remaining employees, are trying to sell off the property to escape Pandora. If you help us get off this damn planet, I'll give you all the electronic keys and access codes I have for this branch of S&S.

  Huh. Jackpot? It's an obvious quest, though. And hence...

  I raised my hand.

  - Mr. Zaidenko, a small favor. For a couple of minutes, please don't move from your seat or do anything.

  The man gave me a puzzled look, but nodded.

  - Lily, take a convenient place for defense - I said, and hurriedly set up the turrets.

  "Incoming message, sender: AlBa. "Cheater!"

  - Just a man who uses his abilities wisely - I objected. - And in fact, from the looks of it, you were the one cheating.

  Of course, as soon as I accepted the quest, bandits appeared on the horizon. In vehicles - luckily, regular couriers and converted trucks, not armor - and lots of them.

  Way more than usual. A whole little army.

  Some might say it was because they were about to storm an armory where resistance could be expected, but that was all nonsense. The office was breathing down its neck, and the guards had mostly scattered, but a gang of a hundred men... That's obviously overkill.

  Fortunately, when it became obvious what kind of horde was coming at us, Zaidenko voluntarily opened the armory, aka the warehouse of finished products, and I began to hastily stamp new copies of the CRETIN turrets on the distant approaches. My AI could only pull a limited number of turrets without additional processors, so I was going to build new ones as the old ones were destroyed, retreating inside the building.

  Which I successfully did. There was a lot of shooting, a lot of dead bodies, a lot of wasted nerves, especially when reinforcements came to the bandits, and then on the smell of blood came the skags - still have doubts that AlBa cheated? - but in the end, everyone went down. All the enemies, at least. The NPC... that is, the workers, were protected.

  I honestly expected a new attack on the march, where I won't have the maximum number of turrets, so I tried to requisition the cars left after the bandits. Fortunately, this is Pandora, so even the relatively peaceful employees of the armory knew how to shoot. Unfortunately, there weren't many surviving vehicles, but there weren't many workers either.

  I'd try to recruit them, but since I'm aiming for the end of the story...

  Anyway, on the way to the spaceport, there were incidents... but nothing I feared - just a swarm of varkids. One car overturned, but the passengers survived.

  And then it was time to investigate exactly what I'd gotten.

  Oh... geez.

  The result of this quest was, shall I say, ambiguous. I got a building with most of the equipment (some of the workers grabbed something), but without workers. Finished products from the warehouse for the most part went to the turrets, and was destroyed with them. There was expectedly no money at all, but there was some resources, which I do not mine myself yet... not much, alas.

  But most importantly, my new property was an administrative center, not a production center.

  This, in fact, was quite ambiguous in itself. In my current situation, it was probably for the best. All I had was a small prototyping workshop, but in addition to the fact that its fabricator was even more valuable than the Vanguard fabricator I had - albeit much less productive - I not only got almost all of S&S's licenses, but also something as fucking valuable as a design terminal with all the software. This… In essence, I had in my hands the freedom to produce any S&S gun, and any modification thereof. With that, you can set up on any planet, formalize a company, and produce products.

  ...And how hard it was for me to think of not being able to haul all the equipment with me.

  The designer software is intentionally created so that it works only on the designer terminal, just downloading it on ECHO will not work. And this prehistoric-looking hulk is not that not transportable at all, but it is unrealistic to take it with you to a hypothetical Eridian portal even if you clear out all Atlas forces first. It's almost like a computer from the seventies, twentieth century.

  ...I'm pretty sure the terminal looks like that solely so I can't steal it away.

  Ok. That doesn't mean there's nothing I can do.

  Convert digitizing schematic files into a suitable format for ECHO. Digitize all instruments and spare parts, if possible. Load all technological documents, technology descriptions, and manuals into the memory. Get my hands on a couple of digital vaults and rejoice in the increased inventory size.

  And then realize the obvious (but for some reason only now) fact, and fall into a deep depression.

  All this technology, all these weaponized (and not only) wonders, all this mind-bogglingly absurd hi-tech - all these fucking absurd "technological" wonders.

  ...They won't work on Earth. I'm not betting my hand on it, only because I don't bet on that kind of thing at all.

  - For the first time in ages, I feel like getting drunk... - I muttered.

  - Magister? - Lily asked. The girl had taken part in shooting bandits, and it seemed that she was quite happy with this side quest.

  - There are worlds with magic and worlds without - I said. - And you can choose one or the other.

  If my realization is correct, I won't even be able to carry the valuables with me, because what's in the digital vault can't be retrieved.

  - Oh, is that it? - Lily asked, and I looked at her suspiciously.

  It doesn't matter.

  - And the important thing is that often magic is relatively ordinary and familiar things - I continued. - I have serious doubts about digitalization, too.

  The girl thought for a moment.

  - That's an interesting point of view - finally, she said. - Actually, I had such thoughts. But it's not interesting enough and it's too commonplace, so...

  I nodded.

  - You didn't need magic per se, but something colorful and interesting.

  - Master, did you happen to be enrolled in an online psychology course? - she asked.

  - Why would I need all that darkness and superstition? - I wondered. - No, I just realized that there was a high probability that the higher powers had screwed me more than expected, and all my efforts were in vain. You know, like when you start playing an online game, investing in your character, picking up a build, and then a patch comes out that changes the balance.

  Lily grimaced. She thought for a moment and pulled out a bag of brownies, which she handed to me.

  I nodded gratefully.

  Whatever my suspicions, hope springs eternal, and the chance that I'd be able to sneak at least any valuable metals with me was not zero. So I pulled myself together, and continued to prepare for different options.

  The short message from Roland contained only geographic coordinates and the name of the nearest FTS. Well, it was time to move out for what would probably be the final battle.

  We need to get more explosives.

  - The tentative plan is quite simple, but sensitive to detail - Roland said. - We follow Steele's remaining forces, not letting them retreat, but not engaging them in combat, pressing on the remaining guardians in the area... there were plenty of them. If the guardians win, good, if Steele gets to the Vault, good, attack as soon as she opens it.

  I nodded, but I noticed:

  - That's a pretty good plan, but I don't think Steele doesn't realize it. Unless she's desperate, she must have some kind of trump card of her own.

  - You're right, it worries me too - Roland agreed. - The most likely possibility is that there is some kind of weapon in the Vault and she knows about it. So there is an option to attack before the opening, but Ms. Tannis doesn't know how to do that, but Ms. Steele almost certainly does.

  - Tannis will probably figure it out if we can't do it ourselves - I remarked. - The problem is that if we know the exact location of the Vault, people will go there. And we're guaranteed to get more megacorps.

  Soldier nodded.

  - If we don't empty the Vault as quickly as possible, it's not only a missed opportunity, it's a magnet for trouble - he said. - Atlas is on his last legs, so he was an easy enough opponent. If Maliwan, for example, or Hyperion were to show up, it would be more difficult.

  I sigh.

  - So we'll let Steele pull chestnuts out of the fire. But let's be vigilant, I don't believe it will be easy.

  Everyone present nodded in agreement.

  Actually, there was another problem: the problem of sharing the spoils. However, I didn't bring it up.

  In fact, there had never been any really large-scale battles, not even wars, in the history of Pandora. Despite the incessant violence, from the point of view of Earth's history, it's all a ridiculous fuss of negligible scale: not even thousands of fighters, only hundreds, and even that is very rare. The norm is a dozen or two fighters on each side... well, or one or two Vault Hunters, and a few dozen bandits.

  Steele originally had about a thousand and a half men with him. Now there were about three hundred of them left.

  Unfortunately, the remaining ones were the elite. Equipment, skills, and even morale - according to the observations of the reconnaissance drones, they were fine, excellent even.

  What was particularly troubling was Steele herself. The blue-gray-skinned lady was indeed a siren, and a professional, unlike Lilith, who, though she had gone through the school of life, was still an amateur. The problem, however, was not the skills she displayed - she was a good shot, it was a fact - but what she didn't display: her abilities, minus the hand-to-hand energy attacks that were nearly as good as Lilith's, remained a mystery. Scout drones had picked up the glow of her tattoos a few times, but that was all; usually after that, the drones were shot down.

  There were a lot of interesting things to say about the place we were in - for example, this canyon was mysteriously invisible from the air - but I wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. The finale, or something like it, was fast approaching, and I highly doubted it would turn out to be one technological bummer. The final game needs a final boss, after all, and Steele, for all her abilities (I'll give her credit, she was much better with guardians than I was), still didn't seem like a final boss; General Knox was more impressive. So I had two theories, both of which were unpleasant and, worst of all, could be combined: either Steele would get her hands on some kind of battle gear like Knox's mecha-exoskeleton, which would dramatically increase her threat level, or there would be an Eridian gladiatorial champion stashed in the Vault. Hell, a few megaskags would be enough to devour most, if not all, of our militia. And this is just the lowest level of Eridian toys, an obsolete model. I don't want to find out what their best of the latest was.

  I remembered Skull Island, the terrain detail that gave it its name, and I shivered.

  At least the Atlasians didn't have armored vehicles: the canyon leading to the Vault was too narrow and uneven. Unfortunately, this was compensated for, at least in part, by the medium exoskeletons, or mechanized armor, present on almost all of the fighters. There were some aircraft, but they were shot down by the guardians, mostly while attempting to land at the end of the canyon, near the supposed location of the Vault.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  In general, it should be noted that something strange was going on in the canyon. From the outside it was a plain, with a small, unremarkable ravine as an entrance. Inside, it was a narrow path on the slope of the canyon's drop, with the sky above, a cliff to the left, and a chasm to the right, from which the guards appeared. That said, the flat hard surface visible from above was not a hologram or anything like that, it was quite tangible. Even for Pandora, it was impressive. If I were to speculate wildly (why not?), I'd say that if this Vault really is some sort of laboratory for the study of space and other universes, they used their designs to distort space. It's a great disguise.

  And a perfectly defensible position. The fact that the guardians did not kill all the Atlasians, forced to move in a chain along the narrow path, can only be explained by a miracle and the highest professionalism. And by fact that the Eridian robots, or whatever they were, did not attack with all their forces at once, issuing new waves only as their fighters were eliminated and the Atlasians advanced.

  - Did something happen? - I asked, noticing Roland frowning. He glanced at me, hesitated, but answered.

  - It seems so. The Citadel forces have stopped near one of the FTSs, and they're doing something.

  - They can't count on reinforcements, so they want to evacuate...? - I mumbled out loud. - Wait. Their ship is still in orbit?

  Roland nodded.

  - They can't fire on our forces, they'll hit their own, but they're still up there.

  - And they still have...

  - ...Drop pods - the soldier finished for me. - We can expect a landing and a rear-guard strike in the near future.

  - Steele will rear us when we rear her - I nodded. The Roland's expression changed slightly. - Has it already begun?

  He nodded.

  - The first pods have been dropped. Some of the militia have gone to destroy them, the rest of us should get into action. The ship's changing orbital position, no need to find out what else they're up to. Plus, Steele's forces are almost at the bottom of the canyon, we can't let them get a foothold.

  Yeah, they'll put machine guns there and mow down the approaching infantry... I nodded again.

  When the "tail" of the Atlasians came under fire, the chain of soldiers accelerated their movement, focusing on defense. Fortunately, like us, they didn't use grenade launchers for fear of destroying the way back, but hand machine guns, due to the cover of thick armored shields, were also a problem; it was as if we had a moving fortress wall in front of us. At least we had those too, and the direction of movement played in our favor, but in their favor was the heavy armor missing from the militia.

  We had Mordecai and Brick, though.

  The militia's machine gun fire had almost no effect on the Atlas Elite's armor. Roland's attempts weren't very effective either; I wasn't even trying that way from this position.

  Mordecai's shots were rare, but every bullet from his corrosive sniper found a target behind the shields. The hunter preferred to hit at arms and legs; not out of any mercy, but simply because it was the most advantageous in this situation, creating gaps in the wall of shields.

  Brick acted more simply, using basic, fundamental physics, laws of momentum transfer and fulcrum instead of precision and calculation.

  He threw rocks. Big rocks.

  At times, the Lancers managed to pick up a comrade flying into the abyss, but one who tried to do so fell off the edge together with Brick's victim. And, again, our big man's actions created gaps in the enemy's defenses, which were exploited by our marksmen, especially Mordecai.

  ...Brick threw a live skag at them once, and I don't want to know where he got it.

  Ahead, the glint of the guardians' plasma discharges and flashes of Atlasian return fire were visible. A single member of the Crimson Lance was definitely inferior to a single Guardian, but the men were coordinated. If the Guardians had some kind of overall control, it was clearly flawed, and now it was having a big impact. The Lancers were taking out the technologically superior robots one by one, concentrating fire of multiple guns on them, and the guardians were getting fewer and fewer, while the human casualties were low; the Lancers engineers were field repairing the armor right in the battle, applying patches.

  Shit, how are we supposed to take them out...? The fewer guards left, the more pressing the question became.

  And that wasn't the worst part. Both my visor and my sniper scope gave good magnification, and I could see the bustle of the Lancers who had reached the bottom. Several engineers had set up a digital projector, and were hastily assembling some sort of device from the parts it was creating... shit.

  - Mordecai, can you stop the engineers from assembling the FTS? - I asked through the ECHO. Almost immediately, one of the men working below fell. At this distance, even considering the windlessness...

  ...Shit. No more guardians. I never expected that to be frustrating.

  With their comrades behind them, the released Lance forces couldn't shoot at us, but they could still get a little more movement, so they could attack from the bottom of the canyon.

  I peeked out from behind the shield of the militiaman in front of me for a second - immediately taking a bullet stopped by my shield - and fired a stack of Wave circulars roughly between the rock and the enemy. Huh, the Lance soldier went off the edge... It's not much height, though, so he'll survive.

  There was a roar. Brick snatched the shield from one of the militiamen, and shoved the others out of the way - at least he didn't throw them off... oh, he did throw them off - and rushed forward.

  Shit. It's like bowling.

  - Support him - I heard Roland's ECHOed message, and we rushed in the direction of the people flying like pins.

  "I wonder if Brick could turn over a tank...?" - I thought aloofly, shooting someone in the face. - "Probably yes... I hope Lily doesn't go ahead - I don't want to find out if her mother manages to make it to the other universe. Оh, tits… were."

  Funny thing - a massive melee at close range. Not my thing, but it has one upside: when the hustle and bustle around you ends, you feels extremely alive.

  …Well, almost.

  - AGAIN? - Death asked, looking at me. - OK. THE TERMS ARE THE SAME.

  He put on his glasses and unfolded the paper, muttering something about feed quotes. I think.

  Fortunately, there was still no shortage of replacement candidates nearby, and while their defenses posed some (obvious) problems, the corrosive SG was quite capable of solving them.

  - You might want to think about changing your line of work - the skeleton remarked and disappeared.

  There were no buildings at the bottom of the canyon, only a slightly raised platform with a pile of rocks on it. It was to this that Steele hurried, holding the cone-shaped Eridian artifact in her hand, which, along with her hand, was enveloped in a gradually intensifying blue glow. Most of her fighters continued to hold their defenses, a small group covering the engineers trying to revive the desperately sparking FTS, and Siren seemed oblivious to anything but the object in her hand. A few more quick steps, and the artifact - a key, definitely - lifted from her hand, hovered in the air for a second, spinning, and then dropped into a notch in the ground.

  The ground beneath her feet shuddered. And then the pieces of stone piled on the platform in front of Steele began to rise into the air, coalescing into some sort of structure... an arch.

  A portal arch.

  A flame erupted next to Steele in a near explosion, from which another female figure with glowing tattoos emerged like a wingless phoenix.

  Lilith. She attacked the very moment Steele opened the portal.

  However, despite all the "commandant's" previous concentration, it failed to take her by surprise; she jumped back, firing her revolver - or rather, the two revolvers that had appeared in her hands. The flash of flame only licked her, just missing her shields, and in the next second Steele was two.

  ...And then one again. As her transparent, hologram-like copy disappeared, punctured by a black and red tentacle as thick as a foot, shot out of the portal.

  And more and more kept coming out.

  Magical girls are vulnerable to tenacles, it's a well-known fact. From what I've seen, however, all of us here are vulnerable to these non-gender-discriminatory tentacles.

  Several of Lance's fighters found themselves strung up on outgrowths that ignored their armor in a matter of seconds. The stuff wasn't all-piercing, and I could tell that their shields were... not exactly stopping them, but at least hold one hit, but if that was any consolation, it didn't last long.

  A large eye appeared among the cluster of tentacles, and in defiance of common sense, it fired a laser roughly in my direction.

  I dove forward and down as soon as I saw the eye, sensing with my ass what was about to happen. Alas, not everyone around me shared my understanding of the stampede.

  At least a quarter of our squad was mowed down, leaving their lower halves smoking. The attack also caused the road we were traveling down to collapse.

  - Let's kill the monster, we'll deal with each other later! - I yelled, materializing a grenade launcher in my hands. It's not like farting at this thing with a SG...

  The tentacles spread like anemone wide enough that even with the RPG low accuracy I hit them, making a sudden splash of purple... blood, probably.

  - EXPLOSION! - and a new explosion blossomed on the tentacles.

  - Lily, retreat on your broom! - I commanded through the ECHO.

  - But this place is so interesting! And I can take care of myself!

  - Re... port the main forces of what's going on! Only you can fly!

  The girl tsked.

  - Keep the broadcast on.

  With those words, she tossed the bear in my direction and soared into the air.

  "Message received with attachments."

  Huh. Still, Lily, for all her badassery and weirdness, is a good girl, and knows the way to a man's heart. She sent me a stack of grenades, simple and reactive.

  However, the next moment a tentacle stretched for a couple of hundred meters pierced the stone next to me, and I was not thinking about women.

  On the plus side, tentacles aren't poisonous, and you can live after a single penetration, especially if you don't tell anyone. On the plus side, the Lancers heeded my call and focused their fire on the monster threatening both sides, not on us. On the plus side, they had enough grenade launchers and grenades.

  Everything else is a minus.

  ...Ah, no - the fact that the creature was obviously so huge that it couldn't squeeze through the portal, an optimist might also call it a plus.

  That didn't stop more and more tentacles from popping up in place of the ones torn off by the explosions. Oh, and to make things even more fun, the wounds it been inflicted with were healing quite quickly, though the elemental effects were definitely counteracting that, especially the fire ones. What can I say... I was expecting a vicious final boss - I got it.

  In fact, everything was... well, on the level of the final boss. Yes, death is near, yes, extremely strong, perhaps even cheater, creature, but - it was clear that not invincible. It's regeneration was far from instantaneous - actually, Brick's was faster. Its tentacles were powerful and fast, but predictable and not unstoppable.

  And foolishly, or out of greed, or whatever, when a dozen tentacles were torn off, the thing that the ECHO called "Destroyer" stuck its face out into the portal. Or at least part of it. It looked like a mixture of a skag's face and a dewlap, perhaps.

  Sticks out, and it's stuck.

  On the one hand, this added to the problem, since it was more agile with its tongue than with its tentacles, and two more lasers were added to the one that fired from time to time. On the other hand, the muzzle had clogged most of the portal, so there were only six tentacles left... alas, new ones still coming through to replace them.

  There was just one question. My ECHO, unlike all previous enemies, did not display a health bar. And consequently.

  - Can this thing even be killed with a conventional weapon? - I muttered, firing a circular Wave in the direction of the eye. The organ seemed vulnerable, but the creature covered it with tentacles and a thick eyelid lid.

  Suddenly - good thing it wasn't exactly underhanded - I got an answer.

  - According to my data, in our universe, the creature is vulnerable, and it is showing signs of feeling pain. Also registering changing biological indicators... Transmitting assessment program.

  Whoa. The health bar is finally showing up, and it's already been halved.

  Just as I was getting excited about it, a tongue pierced one of the few remaining Atlas fighters and dragged it into the monster's mouth. Someone immediately launched a grenade into it; the tongue twitched, dropping its victim, but it was unlikely that even a homo recens would survive such a thing. The empty health bar confirmed that.

  - Send it the others - I told Angel.

  - I already did - she said, and then fell silent.

  I didn't have any cover I could use to create a turret, but I did have Lily's gift. Hand grenades... I didn't risk getting close enough to throw them, and I didn't have a teleportation modifier (that trophy one was crap anyway), but rocket-propelled grenades were still quite relevant. The creature's hide was incredibly tough, but the Lancers observation and sacrifices had found a number of vulnerabilities: something like articulations on the tentacles, the mouth, the eye, previous wounds... And as for the hand grenades...

  "Use them."

  Covered by a stack of corroded armor shields, Brick sent me a smirk in response, and grenades flew from his side into the monster one after another. Now that's someone who has no problem with throwing distance...

  The eye of the Destroyer began to flare up for a dangerous laser attack just as I was reloading the grenade launcher... oops. I don't have a grenade launcher. I defended myself against the tentacle. The weapon was fucked, I was thrown, but I was still alive. However I still had to survive.

  Roland, however, had a grenade launcher, and his projectile hit monster under the eye, causing it to twitch and discharge into the sky; the lower part of eye turned milky. Immediately, a hand grenade fell from the claws of the Bloodwing onto the top of it, clinging to the flesh and erupting in a cloud of persistent flame.

  Lilith and Steele, spread out on opposite sides of the battlefield - still not victims of the tentacles, against all odds - were making seemingly token contributions with their assault rifles, but the ECHO showed a slightly but shrinking health bar, and the magnification of the visor allowed me to see the burns their bullets were leaving on the monster's vulnerable parts.

  - Mommy... - someone squeaked, and the number of Lancers was reduced by one more. At least the dead man had left me a brand-new grenade launcher, just what the doctor prescripted... As the tentacle whistled over my head, I picked up the weapon. Oh, there's still a grenade left, we're living.

  - THAT WAS FAST THIS TIME. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY THINK ABOUT CHANGING YOUR OCCUPATION - said Death.

  - I'm sorry for the inconvenience - I repented, hurriedly looking around for someone to feel sorry for. Damn, there were no more Lancers I could "accidentally" shoot.

  Shit.

  This could have been a good place to end the story, but... Caution and prudence, mind them and they'll save you.

  And money helps, yes.

  Sighing, I slipped my hand into the special armored container on my belt, and pulled it out of there.

  Death stared at me questioningly, as if unsure of how to feel about it.

  - Is something wrong? - I asked. He sighed and waved his hand.

  - JUST DON'T DO THAT AGAIN.

  - As you say - I agreed and shot the hamster.

  By the way, I also got a warning from AlBa too not to do it again, but the main thing was that I was alive. Again. And once again I began to contribute to the victory of the Pandorian madhouse over the anotheruniverse madness.

  If you're expecting a dramatic, pathos-filled story of desperate struggle and miraculous victory, I must disappoint you. This battle was bloody, hard, but without any intrigue. We just poured kilogram after kilogram of ammunition into the creature, trying to survive ourselves and finish it off, and in the end we succeeded.

  Well, how "succeeded"... The creature twitched more and more as it was wounded, and at one point it jerked with such force that it slid back into the portal, leaving behind a sizable chunk of flesh. Immediately, the glow in the arch faded, the arch itself crumbled into stone, and the artifact-key that had activated the portal jumped out of its slot and rolled away, falling apart into three pieces.

  - Did we really survive? - Mordecai's voice in the ECHO sounded somewhat puzzled.

  - We're the toughest badasses on Pandora! - but Brick sounded pleased. - Only, uh, where's the treasure?

  - And we still have a little problem - Lilith said, pointing her gun at Steele. She looked around, released the machine gun - her ECHO also slipped from her belt and fell to the ground - and slowly raised her hands.

  - I surrender - she said, looking up at me. - Mr. Dethlove, I believe I have something to report to your superiors.

  Glances crossed at me, and I grimaced. I waved my hand.

  - I don't mind, but we'll talk about it later.

  "Message received, sender: AlBa.

  Achievement: 'Very big game.'" Although it wasn't you who struck the last blow, and there was no last blow, but you made the Destroyer of Worlds flee in shame (seriously, that thing ate a couple of them, it just wasn't comfortable on Pandora). Be proud of that!

  ...Perhaps I'll toss in a memento. Later.

  Mission received: Your "princess" is in another "castle". You've made it, and you've reached the Eridian Vault, which contains a portal to another universe. Unfortunately, not the right one. But higher spirit, perhaps you'll have better luck next time!"

  I facepalmed.

  - Bastard.