Beware the man who knows what his worth is.

  "Bones, what's your ETA?" Jonesy's voice crackled across the interface, the event boss's aura interfering with the communication frequency.

  "A hundred feet, give or take." Brom felt the wind rushing past, shifting his position as his target grew larger and larger as the distance shrank. "Armored elbow dropping in 3... 2... 1..." The resulting impact from the high-velocity barbarian was explosively glorious.

  "Take cover!" TJ's shout rippled across the beach as he came up out of his shooting stance, running full tilt toward Ramirez. He made it next to her just before the kraken detonated, showering everyone who had been gathered in battle against it with ink, blood, and small fleshy bits.

  From the rippling, blood-stained sea, Brom walked out, slicking his hair back with armored fingers. He didn't get upset about getting dirty anymore, it was part of the job. He had plenty of clothing that had already been soaked in gruesome unmentionables and torn by tanked blows that he wore when conflict arose these days. He fished his sunglasses out of his inventory and flicked them open, neatly settling them over his eyes as he stared up at the beautifully blue spring sky. "I'm starving. Does anyone else feel like sushi after this?

  "Aww man, I think I am the sushi." Logan's whine was muffled as the man wiped kraken slime off his face.

  Ramirez snorted, dismissing the shield spell she'd raised above herself and TJ, neatly sidestepping the pile of horrific debris that dropped wetly into the sand at its vanishment. "Occupational hazard. You should have listened to Miho."

  Jonesy shook his umbrella, pumping it a few times to get the worst of the gunk off before tucking it away in his inventory. "Left it to the last second, Bones, kill-stealing son of a bitch." There was no heat in his words, only a tired smile as he stared at the russet-haired menace that stank like low tide.

  "You guys had it." He slapped a damp high-five with Logan, dismissing the Grip before he did so, otherwise he'd have broken the man's hand. "Besides, I only just finished with its partner, the only way I'd have gotten here faster is if I could fly." The dungeon flickered around them once, twice, and then they found themselves standing back on Aria Beach. This wasn't a one-time event dungeon, not like where Brom had encountered Boss. This dungeon was repeatable for some reason, likely to help raise Players' levels in anticipation of the upcoming Patch.

  Brom's eyes scanned the crowd around them, then back to his own group. "Are rewards in yet? How're you guys on levels?"

  Brom had spread the word about the trial to Level 10 as best he could, presenting it in terms of his own massive health bar and not in the terms of backdoor information Greg had given him. It had taken him a little bit to figure out what the god of the sea had meant by Brom saving lives, but when it had clicked, he'd been horrified. The reason Brom had been the first to Level 10 was his 900 Health. Nobody else had anything close to that. The Trial that Brom had gone through, the one where the dragon had tried to evict his soul, had taken that health pool from full to nearly empty. Thankfully, Jonesy had been there, performing good old-fashioned CPR since his healing hadn't worked while Brom was undergoing the trial. But it had made Brom vigilant as hell, making sure that nobody in Cold Bay got too far into Level 9 to trigger.

  Because nobody else had anywhere near that health. The Trial was a lethal nightmare if your name wasn't Brom Jones.

  TJ sighed. "I'm at eighty percent, no more for me till the Patch drops." The teen seemed more than a little put out by it.

  "Same here." Jonesy shook his head. He'd been doing desk work ever since Brom had warned them, his antics helping Brom with the cult and the Corpse Moon koi having pushed him far closer than any other Guard in the roster. This event dungeon was his first and now last foray back into the field since the incident. "Actually, I'm uncomfortably close."

  Brom shot the Sergeant a stare, and Jonesy had the decency to look a little sheepish.

  Logan defused the tension with a grin. "I still have room to run! I don't do the world-saving bullshit you and Sarge get up to."

  "It's hardly bullshit, you're just a slacker." Ramirez looked over at Brom. "I have some room, mid-bar. I don't think I'll be doing anything else fancy though."

  "Huh? How did you get so much further ahead of me?" Logan scratched his goopy hair, the slime already starting to dry. He looked at Ramirez like she was a puzzle he had all the pieces too but couldn't quite get them to fit.

  Her shrug was pure nonchalance. "I've been responding to Instance calls."

  "Well, it's too cold to be standing out here for those of us covered in kraken slime, so I'll suggest it again, sushi?" Brom looked at his companions hopefully.

  Jonesy rolled his eyes. "On the condition that you're buying."

  "And that you two shower first." Ramirez flicked a finger between Brom and Logan. "You stink like a beached whale."

  "Pretty sure I stink like kraken and not the rum. But yes, I'll shower, and I'll buy. I've got the biggest appetite of all of us." Brom chuckled. "See you all at Pier 30 in ninety minutes?"

  It was nice to be making plans again. To have friends again. He'd missed the more social aspects of his life, and he had to admit, the three Guards were a healthier friend group than he'd anticipated. It wasn't until he and TJ had fast-traveled back to the house that Brom thought about inviting Quincy. He wasn't as close as the others, younger in age but less willing to fill the 'little brother' role than Logan was. He had his own friends, his own clique that he preferred hanging out with, and that was fine. Even Logan and Ramirez had their own lives, families, and friend circles that took more time.

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  Not everyone was as married to their career as Jonesy. He didn't seem to have much of a life outside the Guard. Or hadn't until he'd thrown his lot in with Brom. Brom still wasn't sure if Jonesy hung out with him so much because of Brom's stellar personality or because it gave him the opportunity to hang out with Boss. If ever there was a slightly obsessed fascination of man with machine, it was Jonesy and the eldritch ship-shark.

  Alice no longer attempted to escape out the door. Brom had installed a feline barricade as a house upgrade, and she'd noticed, giving him the cold rump for two weeks before she'd gotten over it. Now she'd just sprawl at the threshold whenever the door was left open, staring out into the world beyond like a determined sentinel. She did, however, still greet anyone who came to the door and claim her attention tax.

  TJ stretched, shutting the door behind them with a hip bump. "Today went pretty good. I'm really looking forward to the Patch, though."

  "Just itching to get your hands on Level 10, huh? Don't rush, it's a pretty big choice."

  "Yeah, well, unlike someone, I'm not going to take two months to make a choice." TJ laughed, making a shooing motion with his hands. "Now go shower, you really are starting to reek. I'm surprised the cats aren't trying to lick the fish smell off of you."

  Brom rolled his eyes, mimicking TJ with his hand, a smile on his face. "Speaking of cats, rescue Bean from the fridge top."

  "Already on it." He was, his voice floating through the dining room.

  Dumping his clothes in the hamper, Brom debated taking most of the ninety minutes till the meeting time in the shower. The unlimited hot water upgrade had made him a glutton for nearly boiling himself alive. Plus, when you regularly ended up covered in the unsavory gore of unimaginable monsters, hot showers became something you'd kill to protect. The sting of the spray on sore shoulders drew an eyebrow-raising groan out of him, elbow dropping a kraken from terminal velocity didn't exactly feel good. No matter how satisfying the splatter afterward might have been. Brom was becoming very used to walking things off though.

  He was singing, his voice reverberating off the walls, filling the space with sound since he'd forgotten to put an actual record on, when the entire house shook. A moment later, TJ's frantic shout came from downstairs. Brom didn't think, he launched himself out of the shower with just enough presence of mind to grab a towel large enough to wrap around his waist. Strange light rippled across the walls, the sky outside a mix of electric plum and neon lime, like the worst club he'd ever been in had drunk too much Hypnotic and puked across the heavens.

  The front door stood open, TJ already on the porch with his bow in hand, ready to answer whatever fresh hell was being unleashed on them.

  In light of the situation, Brom skipped the stairs, jumping from the landing to the bottom smoothly and hauling himself outside next to the teen. "What the actual fuck..."

  "Do you think it's the Patch?" The tremor in TJ's voice was the only sign of his fear, his posture steady and relaxed otherwise, with an arrow knocked but not under tension. "It's not supposed to be for three days."

  "Yeah... no. This isn't the Patch." Brom had only felt something like this once before. The Advanced Tutorial, when Earl the Necromancer had put all his energy into one final, devastating strike. "This is bad juju. If you see a rotting corpse bearing a suspicious resemblance to Rasputin break out into a musical number, run..."

  "The fuck?" His nephew's confusion was so absolute that Brom could practically see the question marks floating above TJ's head.

  Had nobody ever sat the kid down and let him watch that movie? Shit, it was too late now, nobody had figured out how to recover Old World media just yet. Not a day went by that Brom didn't lament it, he didn't own every song he loved on vinyl. His inability to access his digital music library was killing his soul slowly every time he wanted to listen to something and ended up just humming it himself. That didn't work with every genre of music.

  The detonation of the clouds drew him out of his musings, bits of neon light starting to rain downward. A circle of light, like a stage spotlight, broke through the crack and illuminated a patch of Brom's lawn. TJ raised his bow and the Grip armored Brom's arms.

  "Here it comes..."

  Brom hadn't needed it pointed out to him, but he understood TJ's nerves. He reached out, fingertips on TJ's arrow, pushing downward and shaking his head. "Remember, you're too close on XP. Let me handle whatever it is." For a brief moment, TJ held firm against him, his eyes never wavering from that widening chip in the sky. "Theron..." Brom's voice held a warning note that finally got the teen to drop his weapon.

  "Okay, but if it starts to look bad, I'm shooting the shit out of it."

  Grey eyes flicked from sky to nephew and back again, Brom's mouth opening to remind TJ if the whatever it was coming out of the sky turned out to be bad enough to shave down over a thousand health then TJ would be better off running. Except just then, another deafening explosion sounded, and fragments exploded outward in streaks of light. The neon green hurtled off somewhere, small glinting white lights like confetti sprinkling around, and wrapped in that plum hue, a figure tumbled out into space where nothing had been before. The crack in the sky snapped shut, the strange light show ended, and the body of a woman hurtled toward the ground at what was going to be a lethal impact speed when the fall ended.

  Brom didn't think, he just ran. He used one of the abilities he'd gotten at Level 10, the aptly named Leap. Arms came out and caught her, and then cushioned her as they both hit the ground again. His knees didn't thank him.

  It wasn't stupidity. He wasn't acting on some noble and heroic impulse. The sole reason that Brom had saved her was the Player Information bar above her head.

  Morgan Lv. 10

  Brom Jones wasn't the only one anymore.