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    Luke stood inside the second fortress of the mechanism, though not in the central stronghold itself. He had chosen one of the side courtyards, the only part of the compound where the ground wasn’t paved over in solid concrete. After escaping the Safe Zone, he had come straight here. Time was already pressing against him. They were probably still hunting for him back in the Safe Zone, and this was the only window of opportunity he’d get.

    He was digging. Both he and Charlie. A wide, deep hole. The side yard had real soil instead of stone, and Luke figured that in Bastion’s version of this fortress, it was probably where Bartholomew kept his private little farm.

    “Hey, Luke. You’re sweating. Maybe take off your shirt?” Artemis teased.

    “I’m not falling for that.”

    “It’s not a trick, man, I’m actually concerned. Right, Charlie?”

    Charlie froze mid-dig, and through their bond Luke felt the faint ripple of embarrassment from her.

    “Leave Charlie alone,” Luke muttered. “She’s pure. Don’t contaminate her.”

    “Please. It’s always the quiet ones you gotta watch,” Artemis snickered.

    Luke ignored her and moved on. Once the digging was done, he began circling the fortress, firing arrows at the magical alarms fixed to the outer walls. Each one shattered under his shots. He knew they would regenerate in twenty-four hours, constructs of pure mana, but for now, the path was clear. By the time he finished, nothing living lingered anywhere near the structure. He returned to the front gate, pulled out his worn notebook, and flipped it open.

    Activating the second mechanism meant triggering the fortress’s event mission. Which in turn meant killing the boss: the Midnight Warden Captain. The Captain wouldn’t come alone. He’d bring an entire host of Wardens with him, and while Luke out-leveled them by a wide margin, he knew better than to underestimate sheer numbers.

    “A man can swat one bee without thinking,” he murmured to himself. “But a man won’t last long against a swarm.”

    The Warden Captain was level 70 and, on top of that, had the power of invisibility. A dangerous combination. But in a straight-up fight, Luke knew he could handle it. He had racked up profession levels, earned ten Uncommon arrows, and now could even generate Rare ones. The grind of the last two weeks hadn’t been wasted.

    But the truth was, he had no interest in fighting that monster himself. He didn’t care about the experience points it would yield. His true goal was far more important: Charlie needed to land the kill.

    She was lagging badly behind. Barely level 30 in her race, level 34 in her class, and her second class hovering in the low thirties. In short, she was weak compared to him. Pathetically weak. And it was his fault. He had neglected her growth to focus on his own. Worse, the dual-class system she carried split her experience gains, bleeding her progress even thinner. Every time Luke stole the finishing blow, every time he soaked up the lion’s share of the XP, she fell further and further behind.

    The gap between them had grown into a chasm. Right now, he looked like a tank, and she looked like a support that couldn’t keep up. That left him with a dilemma. He could kill the monster himself and maybe squeeze out three more levels, though at his stage, that wasn’t much. Or he could let Princess Charlie land the finishing blow on a level 70 monster and watch her harvest an avalanche of experience.

    That was the real plan. Push her straight to level 50 in both classes. That would turn her into a powerhouse, stacking new skills from Death Knight and Pugilist until she became something terrifying. The arrows, the digging, the damned pit, it was all for this. A gift. He was going to hand Charlie the death of a monster on a silver platter.

    He already knew what it meant to be this strong past level 50. Now imagine Charlie. He was an assassin, not a tank. No heavy armor, no fortress of steel to hide behind. But Charlie? Give her both classes over fifty, pile on that obscene gear she carried, and she wouldn’t just be strong. She’d be a nightmare for anyone foolish enough to stand in her way. Everything had revolved around that possibility from the start. His entire plan had one purpose: turn Princess Charlie into a walking calamity.

    “I’m calling it Operation Skyfall,” he told Artemis after laying it all out while the two of them stared into the pit.

    “That’s a solid name,” she replied. “Though it feels… I don’t know, suspiciously unoriginal.”

    “You’re imagining things.”

    His role was simple: drag the Warden Captain out of the fortress, tilt the odds, and keep it contained. Charlie’s role was simpler still, kill it.

    Luke drew a long breath, stepped back into the hole, and kept digging.

     

    ***

     

    “Alright, that’s basically it,” Luke muttered, eyes fixed on the table.

    He had turned one of the abandoned houses facing the fortress into a makeshift base. Spread across the wooden surface were notes and hand-drawn maps, sketches he’d been working on ever since he first scouted the second fortress.

    The plan was simple in theory: separate the Warden Captain from his guards, draw him into a chase, and bleed him out away from support. The problem was that the monster wasn’t some brainless sack of rot, it was a military strategist, a zombie commander. It wouldn’t just wander outside into open ground and walk into Luke’s trap. That was why Luke hadn’t set foot inside the fortress again since his first infiltration. He didn’t want to risk showing his hand, making the creature realize he’d grown stronger, and forcing it to adjust its tactics for the future.

    No, he needed the Warden Captain locked in his same defensive routine. Predictable. Stationary. When the operation began, Luke’s plan wasn’t to lure the boss out, but to pull him deeper inside. He would use the staircase near the mechanism chamber, let the Warden Captain think he had the upper hand, and then turn the whole fortress against him.

    That was why Luke had been mapping Bastion nonstop. In the middle of chaos, there’d be no time to flip through notes. He’d either memorize every path and passage… or lean on Artemis to guide him.

    “Your incredible mind, your ability to devour books in seconds, your spectacular genius, think you can actually help me?”

    “Flattery doesn’t work on me the way it does on human women,” Artemis replied. “But food? That works fine. For every single minute we survive in there, you owe me one full meal.”


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    “One meal per minute? That’s robbery.”

    “Oh, should I make it per second instead?”

    “…Fine. First deal it is.”

    He had no choice but to accept. He needed to reach the marked ‘X’ on his map with the Warden Captain breathing down his neck.

    “And don’t think you can just toss me a can,” Artemis added. “I want real food on a plate. Something cooked. I expect to be treated like a little princess.”

    “You’re getting demanding.”

    Luke leaned back in the chair, sighing, then turned to his dinner. He heated a can of beans, fried up eggs, even bacon, supplies scavenged from weekly chests scattered through the Wild Zone. He plated one serving for himself and another for Artemis.

    “Consider this an advance payment,” he said, holding the dish toward her.

    “Accepted.” The moment he placed it near the collar, the plate shimmered out of sight, tucked away into her pocket dimension.

    Luke pushed his chair to the veranda, eyes locked on the looming silhouette of the second fortress. He bit into a bacon-and-egg sandwich, chewing slowly as he studied the walls.

    “No one from Bastion has shown up to look for me yet.”

    “They probably think you’re still hiding in the city,” Artemis replied. “Or Bartholomew figures no one, least of all you, could ever finish the fortress event.”

    “He’s not wrong,” Luke said. “Why bother stationing guards? To him it’s untouchable. That’s why Marshall never tried to seize it either, not after Angelica’s brother and his whole team were wiped out. Too risky. Too expensive.”

    Luke took another bite of his sandwich.

    “Getting nervous, human?” Franky’s voice hissed from inside the collar.

    “Well, look who decided to speak again,” Artemis drawled. “The little rebel of the group.”

    “I’m not a little rebel!” Franky snapped. “And I’m not part of your group!”

    “The child’s cranky. Should we put him in time-out?” Artemis teased.

    “You gluttonous woman, you’re going to get fat.”

    “F-fat?” Her voice sharpened instantly. “You bastard! Who the hell are you to say that to me? You shit-snake!”

    “I’m not a shit-snake!” he hissed back.

    “Both of you, cut it out,” Luke muttered.

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