Chương 78: Return II

[Warning: Due to a worldwide uptick in Custodian casualties, respawn queues may be longer than usual.] [Respawn in: 3min 37sec] How is he back? How the hell did he find me so quickly? Why here, why now, I got back literal minutes ago. Somehow, the pactmaker returned, and despite all my training, despite everything I went through, I'm once again on my back foot. And I hate it.

"B-back a-again — Eep!" The tail end of the rabbit-shaped envoy of fear zipped out of my vision as I rotated in space. I glanced up at where the pink mimic planet once had loomed on the sky, the break in space now little more than a slight distortion of light. I looked to the moon, where the structure I'd seen last time had grown by a nearly imperceptible amount. Undoubtedly, time had passed. After a second, I returned my thoughts to the pactmaker.

He's a shapeshifter, trickster, illusionist, and knows a lot more spells than I saw the Fowl clones use. He probably has some magical items I'm not aware about too. I'm going to need some way to acquire him, and kill him, preferably in one shot. I can do the latter with the shield-piercing sad shots of my Lucky 7, but I don't know how tough the real pactmaker's body is underneath — or if this even is the real him.

"A-are you going to i-ignore me?" said Eep.

"Can you please be quiet? I am plotting to murder a wizard." Space grew quiet for a moment while I puzzled out the pactmaker's demise. I really was planning to kill a person here. Every sign hinted towards that inevitable conclusion: the pactmaker had to die, or people would suffer; first me, then Addy, then the rest of the Custodian world. I could do it, in theory and perhaps in practice. Given all he'd done, it was the right decision. But the question remained: Could I do it?

"A-article 34, paragraph 7 of the Custodian Code states that the willful taking of a human or other earthborn sapient lifeform's life will be met with strict punishment and deployment to T-the Cauldron, increasing multiplicatively for r-repeat incidents. Y-you've already killed one p-person, t-two would put you at double-digit years of Cauldron d-deployment."

"Have you seriously not determined that he's perhaps a repeat offender too?"

"O-oh, we have. And he's a threat to Earth as well. It's just… w-we can't put a quest out on someone from E-earth. When the system was made, t-that was put in as a failsafe to p-prevent first generation Custodians from h-hunting people for experience and soulcoins, like some s-superpowered Gestapo."

"Which implies that you want me to get him, but if I do it in a lethal way I'll still get punished."

"W-we're not a f-flawless system, s-sorry." A pair of ears drooped down from above me.

"That's… alright. I'm not mad at you." Magical girl murder machines weren't an easy sell even with current regulations in place. The concept didn't just have to mesh with the people, but with politics too. Having a bunch of superpowered people pop up in your population could lead an opportunistic government into using them as weapons against other governments. Much like nukes, once one country had magical girls, er, Custodians, everyone needed to have them, if only for defensive purposes or as deterrents.

You could never get every current and future ruler of nations to sign a demonic pact binding their soul to never exploit Custodians, so the next best bet was to bind the Custodians themselves. I didn't want to know what happened to Custodians who murdered and then denied their 'voluntary' service in the Cauldron. I never heard of a single instance of this happening, which should speak volumes to the consequences.

But hey, maybe the system only chose the type of people who did have enough of a conscience to accept penalties as penance? It's all fine until the people we can't hurt want to hurt us.

"Someone still has to do it," I muttered before turning to Eep.

"Anything else new while I fell off the side of the world?"

"W-well, we added a new feature to the system while you were gone! You can plan and buy loadouts while you're dead, w-which can be automatically re-bought or re-summoned on respawn. I-it'll help you catch your footing quicker, o-or so we hope." I sighed.

"Alright Eep. Thanks for the help."

"I-I'm afraid I can't do more."

"I know. Still. Thank you." I grabbed one of the ears and shook it like shaking a hand. The ear went stiff, then with a sudden poof and an 'Eep!', Eep disappeared in a cloud of digital smoke. I stared at my system interface, the respawn timer slowly ticking towards zero. Two minutes left Spells didn't automatically recharge while I was in space, so I only used a single cast of [One Moment] to increase the time I had for looking through the shop's catalogue. The search I'd ordered previously had finally completed.

Encountering so many different murderbots, and then a mad wizard on top of that probably gave the adaptive search algorithm an aneurysm trying to find something that would help me. That idea only solidified as I took a look at the top three recommended items. [Throwaway shield. Non-rechargable shield bubble. Stronger than rechargeable ones, but once it's gone, it's gone. Price: 400 Soulcoins] [Muffler pebble. Muffles all sound and non-digital communication attempts in an area around the pebble. Short-lived battery. Price: 25 Soulcoins] [The Thunker. 30mm Autocannon, variable ammo, bulky, high recoil, smart system integration, soulbound. Price: 1500 Soulcoins] At first glance it seemed like a randomly thrown-together collection of gadgets. At second glance, it still seemed rather arbitrary. But on the third, I felt a well of inspiration surging through my bones. It's always a question of what you're willing to sacrifice. And for Addy's safety, I'm willing to sacrifice a lot.

"Buy everything." +++ Nobody attacked me the moment I respawned. Well, slight correction: Many things turned to attack me, none of them being the pactmaker. Three shuriken drones swerved mid-air, bouncing off the shield forming around me as I took one moment to get my bearings. They fell, shot down soon after a hail of crossfire that emerged from somewhere to my left.

"Over here!" someone yelled. I was a ways away from where I'd died. The pactmaker was likely waiting at my body in case I wanted to recover my Lucky 7 and other gear, which I did, just… not right this moment. Lacking a versatile weapon, my best bet was to put my trust in allies. I followed their voice, raced to the right— [(One Moment) has been triggered. Trigger charges: (3/6)] — and threw myself into an alley, a hair's breadth away from being cored by another giant lightning bolt.

The small plate carrier and vest combo I'd bought as additional armor wouldn't have protected against that, and the shield wavered visibly where it was clipped by the spell. That lightning seemed awfully effective against shields. The pactmaker was practiced in fighting people with shield bubbles. Which meant wizards or Custodians. Or some types of Murderbots. I had barely burst into the alley when that sense of danger fell on me again.

A glint of sand-blasted metal, seen through my secondary rear eyes — a murderbot stood in the alley, its gun-arm was already raised at me. Oh come on, I just got here. The murderbot seized up. It jittered, clattered.

"Hhh-hee-heeee." A small slit under its chin lit up in turn with a crackling voice. It fell on its knees, laughing so hard sparks flew from its processors. A human figure stepped out of the shadows.

"H-holy shit, that really wasn't as easy as I thought it would be." I aimed a Prickler at his head, having bought the relatively cheap laser submachine gun as part of my loadout.

"Very funny, pactmaker."

"I-I'm not — put that thing down, geez." The guy raised his hands.

"We're on the same side." [Custodian Lenny, Soulful Evoker Lvl 31] So he was. I still squinted at him with suspicion even after lowering my Prickler.

"What's a level 31 have to do to get assigned a post on the frontlines?"

"Have an incredible voice, for one." He did. It was strong and even, with a hidden depth like homemade hot cocoa on a cold wintery day, the king of voice you could sink into and bathe in.

"I'm a performer Custodian. We're a new avenue the system's been exploring for the past year or two. We gather emotions at concerts and use those for widespread support spells, and for a bit of a morale boost. I can share and offload emotions onto targets, but even without that, my voice makes women across the world bawl their eyes out."

"That, and the deep V-neck."

"Sex appeal is the cheatcode of popularity," he said, sighing in defeat as he stepped gracefully around the robot laughing itself into a puddle of slag and battery acid.

"I wasn't made for combat. I was made for the stage." I gave him a look.

"And you killed the murderbot by… giving it too many emotions?"

"Guilt is one hell of a drug. Happiness too, especially if you run on fear like these buckos do." Amazing, yet at the same time oddly terrifying. Direct emotional manipulation was a topic I hadn't even considered for Custodian power use. Emotions were fuel, they weren't just something you… gave out like Santa speedrunning his naughty list. But it worked. And that was all that mattered.

"You shouldn't stay here, Lenny," I said, stowing ammo packs and various gadgets in a series of pockets, fanny packs, and so on.

"I'm in a bit of danger."

"Well I'm not going out there." A blur of a Custodian and multiple scorpion-like drones wooshed past above our heads.

"And you've got the vibe of a dangerous desperado, so I'd rather stick with you, if that's alright."

"Charmer." Come to think of it, that was an awfully quick ambush. One point towards the theory that the pactmaker's directing, if not controlling the murderbots on some level. Right now, he knows where I am. Let's change that. Combining [Echo] with [Illusory double +] and [Of Many Colors], I sent eighteen unique-looking doubles in every direction, one exiting the alley at full tilt, another running deeper in, a third climbing the roof and another diving into the sewage system through an open drain cover.

The rest followed after me, or scattered in directions that I thought held little chance for survival. I closed my eyes and just focused on recharging and giving them orders. The ones in the sewers immediately got vaporized by a barrage of murderbot fire. The area beneath the surface was swarming with them.

The first two doubles that exited the alley were quickly swarmed by shuriken drones, the sole surviving body double leading a small swarm on a wild chase towards the nearest Custodian with an area of effect ability. The one on the roofs found cover quickly. Still, with their lack of weaponry, they were slowly picked off one by one. I lagged behind the one running down the alley, hoping that breaking line of sight for long enough would throw that damn wizard off my trail.

If he had some way of tracking me, I was screwed either way, but when initiative was key, there was no time to plan for failure. To retake the initiative, I had to find him first. Lots of small things flying everywhere. Something heavy and mechanical just found a double that went over the roof. They're fighting. Wow, my double is really good at pretend-fighting with just illusory weapons. I turned my many eyes to the body double in front of me.

"I should upgrade you next." The double didn't respond. It was just a double, an illusion. And the pactmaker, for all his flaws, was a master illusionist. He didn't care how many body doubles I could make; seeing past them was easy, or so he pretended it to be. I've got an upgrade point. Given how often I use it, I feel like [Illusory doubles] deserves a second upgrade. [Upgrading [Illusory Double+] to [Illusory Double ++]] [Illusory Double ++] Creates a double that looks exactly like you at the point of casting.

The double is corporeal, obvious at touch, and will mimic your actions unless ordered otherwise. Gain an extra maximum charge every [30] Soul. Ability to control multiple illusions scales off of Mind. Does not require a chant. + Illusions appear more solid to the touch. Harder to dispel and discern as illusions. ++ Doubles are entirely corporeal. The double flickered and then… something changed. It was the air, I realized, suddenly flowing around this person-shaped thing in front of me.

She was warm too, hot to the touch as I poked her. Did my body run that hot? I bought a system augment for accurately displaying temperature and yep, both our body temps were at around 104°F, or 40°C. Despite that, I wasn't feeling feverish. A side effect of a heightened metabolism, most likely. I looked up to see her poking me back. When I brushed my hair out of my face, she followed suit. Still a double, still nothing like the Joe Bandanas.

But she looked so real, her reactions so accurate and natural, anyone would be fooled. I leaned in and whispered into her ear.

"I know what's in your secret weapon's box." She blushed hard.

"What's in the secret weapon's box?" Lenny asked. Both me and my double yelped, jumping three feet in the air. Damn his hearing was good. Right, he was a performer, a musician. He needed Sense to do his job.

"Nothing important!" I handed my true Samantha some ammo and two Pricklers, the small laser submachine guns being both affordable and effective against threats she couldn't outrun.

"Now, go out there and do your best impression of me." She shot me a salute. And then she was off. All this happened in under a minute. It was still enough time for the enemy to act. Somewhere near the end of the alley, there lay danger. What kind of danger? Who knows? All I knew was that it fried the small camera drone accompanying my earlier double, then the double itself before I could see more than a humanoid outline.

There was no sound, no sign of anything, but instincts told me going down that alley meant death by ambush. Sneaky bots. Sneaky, sneaky.

"Can you do your happy song and dance again?" I asked Lenny.

"What's there to be happy about?" he cried back as a Samantha double fell from the roof and splatted onto the ground next to us, dying theatrically. Right, noncombat personnel. Probably not used to channeling emotions under fire. The pactmaker was flushing everything in the alleyways out with his robotic allies. My response was another wave of body doubles, most equipped with illusory weapons, but some wielding a real Toothpick to force out a real response.

More importantly, they were buying time while I stalked further into the maze of concrete buildings, more and more alleys being cut off as I went. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. What's his goal? If he's trying to take all my lives during this chaos, then technically I just need to evade him for long enough to gather allies. I could certainly do it. He hasn't seen any of my transformations, nor does he even know that I can transform. But that is not how a magical girl thinks.

"More Spider Eyes." I poked an eye-covered hand out from between two opposing roofs like a periscope. The resolution I was getting from it was better than most cameras, and together with [Of Many Colors], it was more stealthy as well. If I were an evil wizard, where would I be — a-hah! Lightning emerged from a distant speck in the sky, killing my improved body double with the Pricklers. She had jumped on a car-sized drone and was… riding it? Man, she had guts.

Either way, the speck shifted in color and sped along the sky, but I followed him dutifully until he thought himself safe enough to set up for another attack. Which was fine by me. I made another body double decoy, gave her three Toothpicks, and sent her away." Arachnid Form: Body." [Body: 339->505] My body swelled, chitin grew, arms extended and expanded. [Delivery time remaining: 00: 00] Lenny jumped back as an oversized weapon with a barrel twice as long as I was tall fell onto my shoulder.

It was The Thunker, made of darkened steel, no nonsense decorations, all pragmatics, and weighed as far as I could tell over three hundred pounds. Apparently, it was initially designed as a cannon mounted on aircraft. It fit my giant tarantula form just fine. With two large, chitinous left hands I grabbed its lower vertical grip, two right hands grabbing the side grip while I braced myself with the rest of my limbs against a pallet of canned goods.

This thing was hefty, and I was dreading the recoil already — no way, I was using this to any effect without an active [Arms & Arms Proficiency], especially without any training in heavy weapons. [System connecting to integrated smart weapon technology—] <<OOooOOh, new weapon>> <<gimme gimme, gimme gimme>> <<i am a good turret>> My cybernetic arm was rubbing the thing as if a genie was moments away from shooting out the other end.

"You want to control the gun?" <<i help>> <<i am a good helper>> <<helperriffic>>"Alright. Counting on you, Sin." A small aiming pip appeared in my vision, calculating bullet trajectory, wind speed, and expected effect on target, complete with a little gif of an animated wizard exploding into a dozen gnarly bits. Much like the system, Sin was programmed not to directly harm people, but assisting others didn't fall in that category.

"I really am blessed with friends. Arms & Arms proficiency." I muttered, glancing once at a slack-jawed Lenny.

"No need to cover your ears." One of my free hands tossed a muffler on the ground. A sharp, high-pitched noise was quickly followed by uncanny silence. The holographic sight and the aim indicator turned still as I caught the wizard just floating a half-mile above in the air under a cloak of invisibility. It fit his arrogance, floating out in the open like that, thinking himself untouchable. And since I'd expected as much, I already loaded the flak.

My first shot went out with barely a whoosh of air that could be felt more than heard. A digital indicator showed the one-pound projectile as a red dot broaching the distance in under a second. There was a small explosion, grenade-sized, barely more than a dot of smoke at this range. When the smoke cleared, it revealed a baffled pactmaker, without any tracer or sound indicating where he'd been attacked from, and his own shield bubble, flickering yet holding.

He seemed to think it was a fluke, given how he just teleported a couple hundred feet to the left and continued surveilling the area. Too bad for him. I still had a little knob that said 'automatic fire'. <<round 0. 3m off target, recalibrating for wind speed>> <<perish thusly oOwOo>> The ground rumbled as a hailfire of grenade-like bullets ascended towards the wizard, proximity-fuses detonating them around him, showering his shield with more shrapnel and concussive force than it could reasonably handle.

It shattered, and he nearly bit the dust then and there. But just in time, he teleported a hundred feet to the side. I readjusted my aim and let fly another burst. Though my [Extra Spider Eyes] weren't as plentiful nor as accurate in this form compared to my Sense transformation, the sight of him visibly swearing as the projectiles exploded around him had me crinkling my eyes with joy. System, autobuy ammo so I don't run out.

[Buying ammo] [Soulcoins: 4200->4170] Three large round canisters thumped on the floor next to me. Man, having a reloader right about now would be really helpful. I gave Lenny a side-eye. He looked to have a great many complaints, none of which reached me due to the muzzler. <<Hey, help me reload, would you? >> No response. I rolled my eyes, kicked a magazine into the air and caught it before clacking it in place of the previous, empty box.

The pactmaker was falling, giving up air space in the hopes of leaving my field of view. A trail of 30mm fire followed him, forcing evasive maneuvers and expenditure of resources. These rounds are dirt-cheap bozo. I can do this all day. Aaand he's landed outside of the base somewhere. Good. Now, time to retrieve my Lucky 7 and buy a load of shield-piercing ammo— The muffler stopped and I staggered. A bullet had pierced my lower back, wedged in between muscle and cracked chitin.

It wasn't lethal by any means, but it was bleeding, and it hurt. Lenny stood behind me, a gun in his hand. His eyes were glazed over and there was a manic sort of grin to his face. I realized then what had been bugging me for a while. Whether because the Custodian implant was casting tiny spells or whether it was directly prodding my brain in the kind of way that made me hallucinate numbers and titles, the resulting text and images weren't tangible.

They had the exact same half-see-through haze of an illusion to me. Lenny was not a Custodian. He didn't answer my text messages because he wasn't connected to the system. He just had a little floating namesign above his head, and a gun pointed to my back.

"You are the epitome of barbarism, Samantha," he said in a no longer sonorous voice. The Pactmaker was speaking through him.

"All this time to prepare, and your best idea for beating me was 'use a bigger gun'."

"To be fair, it nearly worked," I said through grit teeth after webbing Lenny to the wall.

"How'd you survive being shot and then eaten by a kaiju fish?"

"Oh, you know me," Pactmaker-Lenny croaked.

"I'm real good at making friends." In that moment, three Custodians rounded the corner. One of them pointed at me.

"There's the loose cannon! Explode her face, kill the mindworm controlling her!" In the same breath, a message came from the guy yelling at me. <<Sorry about this, but we're sorta demon-contractually obligated to obliterate you on sight. Try to revive somewhere far away and run like hell! >> Outwardly, I stood still for one long moment. Inwardly, I wanted to laugh, cry, scream. Of course the pactmaker hadn't spent these past three months being idle.

Of course he would spread rumors, build traps, and prepare for my return. And of course, he ensured that the worst-case scenario happened right now: I was forced to fight Custodians. And my entire build was centered on using lethal force, on using guns. Fuck. +++ Parsnip Humans were friendly, soft, and huggable. These were the first three truths Sam bequeathed upon the great huntress Parsnip, and she could see they were true.

Outside, humans were screaming, yelling, dying, and yet throughout the five times she'd hopped out to drag a wounded, sweaty individual back to safety, she'd seen big ones cover for small ones, sharp-toothed-ones work in tandem to push a collapsed building off an injured individual, and wounded heroes diving into the fray so that their group had a chance of ducking into cover. So yes, they were extremely friendly. Parsnip made adding to that friendliness a game, a challenge.

"AAAAH," screamed an individual in her arms.

"GIANT BUG, OH FUCK!"

"Silence. I am saving you." And she was being gentle too. The second truth, humans were all soft, had baffled her the most, but Parsnip could adapt. She was a good dancer, and a better huntress. If she just imagined this critter in her hands as a grub, a soft, squirming little thing, the correct amount of pressure came easily enough.

"Stop squirming, you grubbish thing." The screaming paused.

"... you know spanish?"

"Everyone keeps asking that! Is it so unusual for a bug to know a second language?"

"Bugs don't usually talk."

"Pah. You clearly don't get around a lot. I recommend some travel, and a blood transfusion. Your missing claw-nublets are leaking an awful lot." With a burst of speed and the grace of a practiced dancer, she twirled under a six-legged metal monstrosity in the middle of being torn apart by the giant bird-thing, and slid under her protective wing-shield. Groaning and the smell of blood filled her awareness. The insides had quickly grown stuffy after being converted to the safest hospital on site.

With how many people lay half-dying under her protection, space was quickly running out. The fae-person looked up from an individual, muttering a curse which Parsnip didn't understand in words, but did in spirit.

"I have not seen our mutual friend. She seems quite busy. Now that the time of iced-cream has ended, this world of stone and metal seems no less lethal than the great forest." Depositing her latest catch with the big corn man, who was busy breathing a tiny flame on a needle before stitching an ugly gut wound, then looked about in the dim light for one specific human individual. There! Parsnip kneeled down next to the small human possibly woman with the many shiny things on her chest.

She had given out the most orders, which made her a matriarch of sorts. Her battle scars ended at a leg capped at the knee, wrapped in red-soaked bandages. Every now and then a little light square with tiny squiggles appeared in front of her face. The woman calmly read it before poking it away or barking some order, though her barks were all too close to whispers now.

"What is it, Asvexian?" she asked in Spanish after a moment of intense staring.

"I am not Asvex," Parsnip corrected.

"How fares the battle? Is it lost?" The woman closed her eyes and breathed a sigh.

"It's chaos. The bots found a way to bypass seismometer readings, so we were caught with our pants down. We have no clue as to any casualty figures yet. The Custodians, bless their brave souls, are holding. In the worst case they will be the last to stand above a base of ruins."

"So we are winning then."

"At a cost. This base is a logistic hub first, a fortress second. They don't want us, they want to disrupt us, then get past us. With their massed assault, we're little more than a speedbump. Already, we've got reports of company-sized groups breaking through to earth. That's our home, Asvexian, if you know what that is." Parsnip didn't correct her the second time. She understood the concept all too well. Home is where the grubs are. They could not afford to let them breach the home-cave.

And to chase after them, they needed clear skies, and Samantha for sticky-fixing.

"I am going to get her," Parsnip said after getting up, walking over, and resolutely poking the fae.

"May I have another cursed sword? The last one yelled at me too much."

"You weren't supposed to take it in the first place. How did the knell-cutter of Avig-zarosh not entice you with your innermost desire?"

"I couldn't understand what it said." The two girls stared at each other for an odd moment. The fae sighed, emptying item after item from her infinite bag. So many curiosities in this wide world. She took one of the large round shields. It was light, and after three twirls she had an image of the person who'd once wielded it: a tall, lithe fae with a vicious bite to his words and even more vicious strikes. I am that fae. I am tall and unbeaten. None will stop me.

Giddy at the new experience, she crawled out, passed a smoldering bot body, and leaped out into the battlefield. She stopped short at Sam's old body, remembering her shock and ensuing relief at learning how her idol could simply drop copies of herself like a molt. This too was a molt. And in its hands lay the rainbow-colored treasure Sam had not let out of her sight for even one second for three months. Parsnip picked it up. Perhaps she'll need this. Maybe. Until then, let's see if I can't use it myself.

+++ Sam Why? Why, why, why, why, WHY? Why does he always do this? Set friend against friend? Why does the pactmaker hate me, specifically? Was it because of that one performance of Hamlet that I screwed up two years ago? Does he hate spiders that much? Or is it just because I'm a Custodian, and that's enough for him to tear down so many lives? How much effort is he willing to spend to win against little ol' me? Maybe that wasn't it.

Maybe this was the sort of indifferent evil that bulldozed nature reserves for profit or convenience. If I wanted to stop him, I needed to know what he was fighting for and attack that directly. No war was won through tactical victories alone; why you fight is more important than how you fight. If he's this interested in wiping me off the map, then staying alive has to be my best bet. Y'know, besides the other reasons I'd not want to die.

My [One Moment] passed, and I ducked under a sweeping beam of anger, vaulted over a swipe of fear-tinged claws, and sidestepped a homing love bomb in the shape of a heart with wings that smashed into a building behind me. The building went up in flames. Hopefully it was empty. The Custodians were somewhere between level forty-ish and sixty, and while some of them were giving it their all, others were holding back. Was it a trap? Did they find a loophole in their contracts?

I jumped into another alley, skittered up the nearest wall, waiting for the precise moment that someone rounded the corner, and shot them with strings of web. Being a fear monocaster with a Body-Sense build, the Custodian sidestepped the first two shots, but not the third, webbing them to the wall.

"Fuck man, she's creepy as hell!" yelled another pursuer.

"Rude!" I shot back, webbing his mouth shut. <<web reserves at 30 %>>, Sin, my robotic arm intoned.

"I know," I said, instantly regretting my snippish tone.

"Sorry. Thanks Sin." <<have you considered vehicular manslaughter? >> <<your records show that you are proficient in car accidents>>"Do you have to go through my driving history now, Sin?" The one thing that would set all Custodians in Red Hill Forward Base against me, and not just the mind-addled ones, would be if I packed out the big guns and started blasting. But if I let the pactmaker disarm me again, then this was as good as lost. I already had to abandon my 30mm autocannon.

Despite having over 4, 000 soulcoins in the bank, until the pactmaker showed himself in person the best I could do was buy more web guns and web goop canisters to deal with the Custodians running after me. How did he manage to get this many to sign a pact? Duh, illusions, deception, trickery. He can just make the contract show something different than it really is. I ducked under a tossed brick. It shattered against a wall in a million pieces. It was an awfully ineffective improvised attack for a Custodian.

Why would a Custodian sign a demonic pact with anyone? One moment. What if tossing bricks really is the best most Body-based Custodians can do as a ranged attack? I had quite a lot of high rarity essences after all. The Great Deceiver was a unique essence, and Trigger Bug, Vampirism, and Tentacle-faced Moose Mimic essence were all rare, with the rest being uncommon. I never needed to take a common essence. I'm… not exactly average, am I? And it's a self-feeding cycle too.

Better essences means more stats and spells, which allows you to get more soulcoins to buy better gear so you can overcome greater challenges to get better essences. I don't even have my level 50 essence slot filled, but I bet I have more average stats than them. Another brick flew past me, exploding against a wall like a small grenade. Then again, what are fifty or a hundred stats? Custodians are still capable, which is probably why the pactmaker has to use proxies to fight me.

Underneath that shield, he's as human as anyone else. Red Hill Forward Base is filled to the brim with people who could squish him like a bug. I could squish him. If he'd just let me get in close. So why is he still going after me? And how does it fit together with stealing magical reagents, with setting werepeople against vampires, with— Mid run, I burst into a laugh." Spider Form: Sense."

My body shifted, hair elongating into two antennae swinging back past my hips in a curve, eyes growing on my chest, arms, and legs. My theme song played, variant 2, an eldritch violin sting of fear following the same leitmotif as the other variants. The world around me shifted as my perception expanded. Sounds were put into sharp contrast, and every corner and speck of dust seemed to gain a new dimension, a new level of zoom.

"Holy eldritch fucking — christ!" someone yelled seventeen feet and two inches to my back, and three feet six inches to my left, two feet below as I was mid-jump. I could pinpoint exactly where they were without even looking. I had eyes aplenty, and what they didn't catch came through my antennae as vibrations, like touching the world from afar. But that was not why I'd changed into this form. When I breached 200 Soul, I noticed that I could intuit someone's emotions much easier than before.

At 300, sometimes the air around Parsnip happily chopping her enemies to death took on a slightly yellow hue. It was not something achieved with Soul alone. My Sense was over 200. It was not a stat that people with a Soul focused build seemed to value overly much, only one step less than Body. But with my transformation, it surpassed a breakpoint that felt like dunking my head into ice cold water on a hot summer day.

[Sense: 216->330] [Soul: 396] The air was awash with colored emotions: the deep red of righteous anger, the purple disgust at wounds and dead bodies, the green fear of being overwhelmed by alien murdermachines followed by the joyous yellow relief of being rescued at the last second. I breathed in and yelled at the top of my lungs: "Pactmaker, you son of a rooster, you're a third rate wizard with fourth rate spells! You're a hack! A coward!" No response.

"You're really spending so much effort just to squish one small arachnid? What are you, incompetent?" Still no response.

"I bet this wasn't even your own plan. You probably cribbed it from some movie you saw. I'm not judging you too much, but if I were in your place I would have been a bit more creative. Heck, give me a few years, and I'll catch up to your magic studies no problem." There it was, a cloud of rage, of fury, the red color of rankling ill-will. More than a single person could reasonably create. Wow that was a lot of anger. Bit of a sore spot, wasn't it? It sprung up in the far distance like a guiding beacon.

Carefully, I realigned my path in that general direction, running up a wall and over, ignoring the cussing coming from not too far behind. I had to concentrate. The mental strain in this form was terrible, only the extra scaling of The Great Deceiver essence allowing me to run and talk at the same time.

"You are no wizard," came the pactmaker's voice from the throat of a Custodian werewolf flying up next to me, ethereal claws expanding from her already prodigious natural weapons.

"And you never will be." I ducked under a swipe and stuck out my tongue.

"You're right. I could never hide so cowardly behind my 'allies.'""But you would give everything to protect them, wouldn't you?" The font of anger shifted, picking up speed. He's going towards Momma-Bird, towards Parsnip, Silica, and Pol. I sped up. His voice followed me, laughing and taunting.

"What's the matter, Custodian? On the back foot yet again? Tick-tock, girl, there's never enough time with what's at stake."

"Given too little time, a Custodian can still do quite a lot," I shot back.

"Given time, a wizard can achieve anything."

"How about you try to become a better person? Or make a real friend?" I burst out from over a rooftop, when the next building I was supposed to land on crumbled in on itself as a murderbot drill vehicle burrowed its way out of it. I landed on the hardened vehicle, dunked an overheating Toothpick magazine into its exhaust pipe, then jumped onto the ground, hoping that I would be permitted enough time to reload my web guns. I miss having Moe do this for me — crap!

A pair of hands shot up from beneath the earth, a weremole grinning through bits of red dust.

"Got y—" I jumped, stepped on his head — and was immediately tackled to the floor by three more Custodians. Because of course, level 40+ Custodians were still quite quick and tenacious.

"You're not the only one with the power of friendship on your side, Samantha," came the pactmaker's voice, this time from the real him floating a couple hundred feet away. He had a staff, and was already charging that damn lightning spell again.

"Now hold still while I vaporize the lot of you."" Arachnid Form: Mind."

"Arachnid what now—" My eyes closed, my body shrunk. I became gummy-Sam, the family-friendly, high in saccharine jumping spider girl. This form would have taken a lot more getting used to without [Proprioception sensors], and even with them suddenly shrinking down to five foot tall was jarring. I channeled [Elasticity], turning my body even softer than before, then shot a wall with a web, yoinking myself out of the Custodian's embrace.

I was already making my body more solid mid flight; combined with over 300 in Body and the extra efficiency to anticipation spells that my Mind form gave me, I hit the wall like a rubber ball, bouncing between here and there chaotically. A bolt of lightning missed me by inches as I redirected my momentum with another quick silken thread.

"What the hell even are you supposed to be?" the pactmaker gnashed.

"This isn't some circus, you brat. Face me!" I would've answered with a clever quip if I wasn't busy trying to figure out how to ricochet right into his face. Behind his magic and his shield, the pactmaker was just a normal human. If I could just bounce off that ice cream truck, fling myself at his head at the right angle, I could— His wand shifted slightly. I realized then that this was the same plaza we'd landed in. To the right and behind me was Momma-Bird.

I shot him with all the Pricklers and web-guns I had on me.

"Useless," he said, as it bounced off his shield, newly recast and repaired.

"Your webs are too fast and your lasers too energetic to pierce my—" A series of explosions rocked his shield.

"Super secret rainbow weapon, go!" A rainbow-colored handgun flew past the pactmaker's shield and cracked against his nose, taking him completely by surprise. He dabbed his face with one hand, feeling blood. Parsnip's whoop was as joyous and recognizable as ever, but she'd jumped out of cover to redirect his attention. He aimed at her and fired.