Universe's End

Rory did not like slugs.

Rory really did not like slugs.

In fact, Rory would go as far as to say he hated slugs. The closest he’d ever gotten to being outright killed by generic monsters had been slugs.

“Why are they so fast?” Allison shouted, sprinting for all her might.

“Level eighty-seven, duh,” Rory shot back, flying through the air on his G.S.A.C.

“Why do you get to fly?” Allison shot back, still sprinting with everything she had.

“Because you’re faster than me; I’d be slug food by now!”

“You can teleport!”

“Yeah, and it’s not cheap!”

It truly was a comical sight, for the two most renowned Founders to be fleeing with everything they had. Not from some uber boss or world-ending creature.

No, from an endless horde of overpowered slugs.

Level eighty, eighty-one, all the way up to eighty-three or eighty-four, perhaps they could have stood their ground, given that there was a distinct lack of any alpha variants. But eighty-seven? And thousands of them?

Not a chance.

Running for everything they were worth, or flying in Rory’s case, the game of keep-away kept up for another hour before Rory glanced down.

“Get ready, seems like it’s happening again.”

“When?”

“Now!”

Responding instantly, Allison flexed her legs before springing into the air like a grasshopper. At the same time, the hardened mirror-like ground seemed to warp, returning to liquid form.

And the best part? The slugs vanished the moment the ground turned back to liquid.

Slamming back down, Allison glanced around as Rory hopped over his glider.

“Huh,” Rory muttered. “So… that was easier than expected.”

“Says you,” Allison huffed. “I’m just glad those weren’t speed-type monsters; no way I could have kept ahead of a pack of level eighty-seven cheetah monsters or something. I want a glider.”

“Sure, let me pull another one out of my ass,” Rory snorted. “Not that simple. Anyway, that would be time wasted when I have a more pressing project.”

“Uh huh, the hangar bay project,” Allison sighed. “How Zoe spent decades around you is a mystery.”

“You seem to like time with me,” Rory said, side-eyeing her.

“That’s sex, totally different,” Allison waved it off.

“Sure, sure, whatever,” Rory said, letting the subject drop. “So, with this I think we’ve got some data on Oscuro-Noctis.”

“Yeah, every hour it turns into Slug Hell,” Allison answered.

“At least this part does,” Rory said. “No idea how it operates deeper into the Noctis section.”

“Well, only one way to find out.”

“Fucking slugs!” Eric shouted as the trio ran for their lives.

“I did not expect slugs to frighten me so,” Tom said, his arms pumping.

“This is divine karma,” Zoey muttered, memories of laughing at Rory for almost dying to slugs haunting her.

“Just keep running!” Eric shouted in a frenzy as the tsunami of slugs continued their pursuit.

I’m sorry for ever laughing, Rory.

The good news was that the deeper they traveled within Oscuro-Noctis, the fewer slugs there were.

The bad news was that they began to fuse and merge into a super-slug the size of the Empire State Building.

A level eighty-eight territory alpha by the end, it was something even all of the Founders together couldn’t scratch. At least, not as they were now.

So just the two of them? Not even a chance. Whenever they knew the hour was coming, Rory and Allison would hide, tamping down any traces of aura to absolute zero. It was like being hunted by an unkillable monster that would surely eat them should it ever find them.

And it was a slug.

Fuckin’ slugs.

Aside from the evilness of slugs, the adventure through Oscuro-Noctis had actually been quite an engaging endeavor. Plenty of powerful monsters that challenged them, usually higher in level to make up for the fact that they weren’t any form of alpha.

Then there were the puzzles. That part Rory hadn’t expected as much, but occasionally they’d find structures shaped like large ziggurats, usually around seven ‘rungs’ tall. The first three were merely tests of physical skill, passing through trial rooms that required insane levels of strength or dexterity.

Between Rory and Allison, they’d seldom been forced to turn around from any of those challenge rooms. Still, there had been a rare few times they’d had to abandon one, such as when it required withstanding a pressure that no amount of brainstorming could get around, other than just having that much durability.

After the first three levels of physical tests, the next four things tended to get… interesting. They were almost like self-contained Trial spaces, ranging from deciphering magical puzzles of conceptual interactions to altering the physical layout of a room that had looked like one massive Rube Goldberg machine.

The absolute peaks of the structures were probably the most boring part of the mini-Trials, simply because they were just a matter of purifying the capstone, or benben. With the miasma-cloaked pneuma that had been cloistering the capstones removed, one could freely snag the mini-pyramid and off you went.

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What their purpose was, Rory had no idea, but at least they were fun to play around with; they seemed capable of freely accepting and integrating conceptual elements, which made for great alchemy practice.

Aside from the puzzle ziggurats, four months into exploring Oscuro-Noctis, the duo stopped as they emerged from a rather steep gulch that overlooked the opposite side.

“You seeing that?” Allison asked.

“Yeah, I am,” Rory said.

“That’s clearly a quarry,” Allison added.

“I can see that.”

Miles away, with elevation dropping once more, was a partially submerged quarry. A small quarry, but a quarry nonetheless, with large, obelisk-like stalagmites that glittered with an unknown substance.

“You do see the problem, right?”

“I do,” Rory confirmed once more.

The ‘quarry’ was fenced off, protected by wandering guards who looked like lesser versions of M’wana, the guardian of Oscuro-Noctis.

“Plan?” Allison asked.

“First off, we need to gauge those things,” Rory said, pointing at the guards. “If they’re at some absurd level, obviously we circle and avoid it.”

“That much seemed obvious,” Allison agreed.

“But if they’re within the margin of what we can handle, one of us keeps them busy, the other mines those rocks.”

“Do we know what those rocks are?” Allison asked the very obvious question.

“No, but even from here, they’re valuable,” Rory said. The moment his eyes landed upon them, he could feel his eyes getting all twitchy.

“So, who mines, who distracts?” Allison asked.

Rory thought about it for several moments before shrugging.

“We could probably argue it six different ways from any perspective. So, best to handle things in the most foolproof way of deciding things ever.”

“Being?” Allison asked.

Rory held out his hand in a fist.

“Rock Paper Scissors,” He answered, face completely straight as he said it with utter seriousness.

Allison shook her head, sighing.

“Not sure why I expected differently,” The woman said before holding her hand out.

“Fine. Winner mines?”

“Winner mines,” Rory agreed.

“Rock,” Allison said, starting them off.

“Paper,” Rory followed up.

“Scissors!” The two said in synch, throwing out their chosen weapons.

Allison frowned as she looked at her hand.

“Best of five,” She finally said, having made the amateur mistake of throwing out the obvious starting rock.

“Deal,” Rory agreed. “But I’ll have you know, I’ve polished these skills to a T.”

“It’s a game of luck; you can’t polish that up,” Allison countered.

Approximately eighteen seconds later, Allison could only stare dumbfounded at her fist.

“Told you, polished to a T,” Rory said, having won a clean three-oh. “My daughter is really good at Rock Paper Scissors.”

“That just doesn’t seem fair,” Allison muttered.

“I don’t play games for fun; I play games to win,” Rory said.

“How your daughter likes being around you is beyond me,” Allison said.

“Easy, because she still tends to beat me at games,” Rory snickered. “You should see her at UNO. In fairness, she does cheat, but it’s not really her fault.”

“Something about apples and trees,” Allison sighed. “Anyway, let’s just get this over with.”

“Whatever you say,” Rory said, saluting as a moment later he held a pickaxe. “The children yearn for the mines, after all.”

“You’re an old man, not a child,” Allison pointed out.

“Child at heart,” Rory said.

“Right,” Allison rolled her eyes before sticking her hand out. “Glider.”

“What?”

“Hand me the glider.”

After a moment, Rory muttered to himself and summoned the glider, giving it a light shove with his foot as it floated over to her.

“Good. I’ll drive by from above, check the levels, and if I swing back around, it means we’re good to go.”

“Aye aye, boss lady.”

Allison made it a point not to dignify the comment with a response, instead boarding the glider and taking off a moment later.

“One Mississippi…. two Mississippi…”

Taking his time with the counting, it wasn’t too much longer before the glider came back around, Allison shooting him a single thumbs-up before taking off.

Alright, well, that’s the signal.

Trailing with a few rapid flickers, Rory paused just far enough away to watch as the guards, level 85 Noctis Enforcers, began to chase her, angrily shaking hands at Allison as they displayed the same ability to shadow step as M’wana.

Individually, they were weaker than a level eighty-one territory alpha, but not substantially weaker. As a general rule, territory alphas were roughly two ‘rungs’ of power above an average monster, meaning a level eighty-one territory alpha was somewhere in the ballpark of a level strength anywhere between that of a level eighty-seven and eighty-nine; the sheer swathe of potential variables always made such verbatim statements rather… tentative at best.

The point was, Allison was currently attracting the attention of roughly two dozen of the monsters as Rory took one last flicker to appear in the enclosed mind, the liquid up to his knees.

“Best be quick,” Rory muttered to himself. “Sure wish I had some form of stealth skill.”

Aside from suppressing his aura, there wasn’t much Rory could do; bending light was a fun little trick he’d practiced enough to do without his former illusion spear. Still, visible-spectrum light was hardly the main factor in stealth against monsters at tier eight and above.

“Alright, so- fuck me sideways.”

Examining the ore within the obelisk-like stalagmites, Rory exhaled as if he’d been gut-punched.