Cascade. That was his clear winner, and by a long mile at that. Neon didn’t even need to debate himself all that much.
Wasn’t because the other two had no use. Larceny elegantly merged the two current applications of Ours to Steal, lifting the touch requirement imposed by Denial. Assimilation was good too, bringing traits to his potential arsenal of theft and not giving him level 1 versions of the taken skills. Genuine upsides.
But neither came close to the flexibility and tempo that Cascade offered. A rhythm. The capacity to mulligan the deck no matter how stacked it was against him until he found a hand he could work with.
While he remained unclear on whether disabling would leave him defenseless, the capacity to hop, skip and jump from one borrowed skill to the next meant he didn’t have to measure activations fearing he’d run into a wall anymore.
He could copy to his heart’s content, gaining intel on the augments of their opponents while at it. More than do-or-die commitments, Cascade turned fights into a matter of adaptability and reflexes —and Neon damn well intended to ace at both.
[Skill: Ours to Steal Lvl 3]
Modesty pays in a world without limits.
<>
Haurm. The description didn’t really answer his one question. Cumbersome. Smart would be to test it before anything else happened. Asking Nomine would be easiest, but the prospect alone sounded daunting. At the very least it didn’t have to happen right this very second.
With the level up taken care of, the other thing he’d earnt access to remained sitting there, as patient as an unread notification could be. Perk B, Decoded Feedback. Sleep could wait. Time to actually look at this thing.
Unsure of what to exactly expect, Neon ran the mental command and a new sub-category unfolded across his interface. Available Simulations, it read, with four items arranged inside. Squares, roughly thumbnail-sized and each of them distinct.
The first was a corrupted-looking mess. The second a blaze of fire. Third was a cluster of small, shadowy spiders. And finally, a translucent cog, foggy like spectral glass. One for each team ranked above them. //ERROR, Harmgivers, Atrax and WhoCares.
No need to play detective here. The word simulation was already plenty self-explanatory. He’d get a look at how these teams had fought and won. Potentially their methods. Their augments, if he was lucky. So why wait?
He focused on the first square, and then…
… Nothing?
Neon scratched one of his earrings in confusion. Did he not know how to operate this thing? The rookie tried again, even dragged his fingers across the projected HUD, but the most he got after repeated attempts was a half-second of visual noise before everything settled back into nothing.
These were the peepos that speedran the Hunt, weren’t they? Living up to their name, apparently. So anomalous that the system couldn’t even render whatever it was that they did. Either that, or the interface itself was buggy. Chances were never zero.
To test out the hypothesis, his focus shifted to the second square.
Without a moment’s notice, fire burst forth ravenously from the confines of its outline to devour his senses whole, complete and overwhelming. It yanked him out of the comfortable darkness of the room, pulling him through a blazing tunnel that felt like a descent into a fresh new hell.
For a disorienting minute, Neon was… Nowhere. Just a consciousness unmoored, floating adrift in some undefined between-space without up or down, forwards or backwards. It wasn’t scary, or at least not in a way that his mind could categorize.
Only when the world began assembling itself —environment first, then light, then sound— did the sensation of having a vantage point finally arrive. He had no body, not unlike a VR lacking a proper point-of-view model. But he was somewhere, his senses told him as much.
A city. Or at least what remained of its ruins.
Whatever world-ending cataclysm that had transpired here had left the landscape to reconcile with the aftermath alone. No, that was wrong. This place, too, was as artificially constructed as the jungle and swamp had been.
Buildings leant at angles that should’ve spelled collapse. Entire blocks caved inwards, swallowed by tunnels that appeared handmade to give texture to a game map. Concrete glistened with something far too gray to be water. The horizon felt abstract, grounded only by fires burning in dozen separate columns.
Neon tried to orient himself more precisely, tried to will his nonexistent feet to move. Nothing responded, not even a heartbeat. He was observer only. Present in the way that a ghost would, powerless to disturb a single thing.
He didn’t really get a chance to get used to the sensation.
The rumble arrived to claim the spotlight —a deep, seismic creak splitting the streets below. One of the nearby buildings fell, victim of a detonation gutting it from the base in a moment of consummate disaster. For a moment, glass and displaced concrete eclipsed everything in sight.
Unbothered, the monster responsible stepped through the destruction as if the raining debris was as light and inconsequential as morning mist.
[Contestant 31, Panzer.]
[It/Its. Team Harmgivers. Veteran. Convict. Transgressor.]
Neon would’ve stepped back if he had legs to do it with. Not even because of the demolition work, and just from the sheer pressure exerted by the creature behind it.
Panzer was tall. Ridiculously, wrongly tall. Its legs were human —massive enough that either could’ve rivaled Neon’s entire torso, yes, but recognizably human. Not so much the load they carried. Everything above the waist had departed from the boundaries proposed by anatomy and proportion.
It was like a siege engine granted the ability to walk like a person. Barrel-wide and armored in segmented plating ingrown into its body, with arms the diameter of artillery cannons that hung below its knees. Panzer had to fold them upwards just so it could move forward at all, every step carrying a hydraulic weight to them. Of pistons cycling, of joints pressurizing, of motorized heat.
There was no neck worth mentioning. The mass of its shoulders simply continued upwards until it became skull. What little skin remained visible between the torn prison uniform and the steel plates was grey and deeply scarred, pretending to be something organic underneath the seeping grease.
Neon sought Panzer’s face for a confirmation that it could still be called sentient. What he found wasn’t exactly comforting. One of its eyes remained biological, muddy brown and bloodshot. Alive, though with poorly contained ferocity. The other had been replaced with a targeting lens burning in an intense red. All hair was gone. Its scalp was a topography of riveted lines and access ports.
To this point, all of their opponents had been… Human. Even Hoax’s puppets could be traced back to the old man’s warped logic and instructions. Could be reasoned with, or maneuvered, or fooled.
But with this… How could he even begin to approach something like this?
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The thought went cold as Panzer’s line of sight seemed to find him, cutting past the rubble it had created and apparently finding them beneath consideration. There wasn’t even the most minute waver in its targeting lens.
One arm was raised. Its thick iron palm opened, revealing a barrel set into the infrastructure of its wrist. Black cables fed into it, charging with an audible flux that promised destruction.
[Skill: Flames of the Panzer Lvl 7]
War is War, nothing more.
Incendiary shells ignited the skies in a chain barrage, painting them red. Any building caught in their path was reduced to wreckage, and the ground soon followed the same fate. Street tunnels that once looked like viable escape routes were flooded by collapsing concrete and napalm fire, sealed off with the finality of total annihilation.
Through the resulting inferno, Panzer advanced —already calibrating for the incoming sequence. No recoil, much less remorse.
To call it a hunt was a poor joke. This bombardment had no real strategy behind it, and any casualty to label the war machine with a Transgressor tag was but collateral damage.
The red lens swept the remaining sightlines.
Locked. Second volley. Onslaught.
A machine doing what it was designed for, never slowing down, free from the frictions of conscience or fatigue.
Locked. Third volley. Onslaught.
Until this already ruined city got ruined even further in its wake.
Was it fair to call Panzer a machine? Somehow, the label felt insufficient. This was closer to weather. Something you couldn’t fight against. You either got out of the way, or you didn’t, and weather had no interest whatsoever.
Movement shook Neon free of his daze, drawing his attention below and to the left of the carnage where a collapsed overhead had formed a shallow lean-to of broken concrete. Someone was hiding inside it, trembling with his arms wrapped tight around himself.
[Contestant 151, Roswell.]
[He/Him. Team Reflections. Rookie. Respawned.]
Neon already knew what would happen. Where this winning footage would end. That didn’t make watching any less difficult.
The overpass where Roswell hid wouldn’t last. One stray shot from Panzer’s wrist and the whole structure inverted, concrete folding away like a rock lifted from wet earth to reveal the insects hiding underneath.
Roswell scrambled in panic, but not fast enough to outrun the red lens nor the cannons it guided.
Except… A different source of danger decided to be faster than all of them.
[Contestant 13, Maxima.]
[She/Her. Team Harmgivers. Rookie. Sponsor.]
She dropped from an elevated position with the sound of magnets coming apart, though Neon didn’t really catch her exact origin, and landed in front of the survivor with stiff, deliberate precision.
The armor she wore was the same undersuit that Nomine used, layered beneath a white cropped jacket designed with no tactical usage and only to highlight her silhouette. Gold accents and other accessories caught the ambient firelight, rigid like her long, unmoving platinum hair —unbothered by wind and flame alike, fixed, like everything about Maxima herself.
Roswell stumbled back a step, a reaction that only widened the sponsor’s smile. She pointed at him, and then, without turning, back at Panzer.
“Stay.” She ordered, to Roswell more than her partner, though the bulky machine obeyed anyway, its cannons lowering by a few degrees like a dog lowering its head.
It’d be harder to make the rookie comply. Roswell’s legs made the decision before Maxima could say another word. He bolted sideways along the rubble field, and she watched it happen with an expression that flickered through three things in rapid succession.
Surprise first, briefly, almost insulted, like someone not following her instructions was simply unthinkable. Then irritation, swiftly replaced only by amusement, likely because irritation and surprise weren’t aesthetically consistent with the image she wanted to project.
Her speed took Neon by surprise, catching Roswell by the nape of his neck with one hand and crushing him down face-first with an ease that had no business coming from hands that small. She held him against the concrete, adjusting her grip from neck to hair to pull his head up and back.
Towards her, then towards Panzer. Making sure he could see both, letting him understand the geometry of their relationship.
“Can you see it? Isn’t it beautiful?” Neon did what he did best, looking into any detail that Maxima’s tone could tell him. “That’s mine, and mine alone.”
Stiffness was the dominant force in her voice, but… Her speech was anything but cold. Enjoyment? Whatever it was, it was poorly concealed under an attempt to imitate how actually commanding people sounded like.
Gross.
Panzer stepped forward, and Maxima, likely the one behind its movement, just kept her flawless composure. She stood up, lifting Roswell off the surface with complete indifference to his struggle to break free.
“Alright.” Her arm extended, presenting her captive to the mouth of Panzer’s cannon. It charged for longer than any previous volley, loading the atmosphere with a tangible pressure. “Go ahead, honey.”
A burning light took over the world. Consumed the entire simulation in an earthquake of blinding white, exceeding whatever parameters the replay could render. It lasted for several long seconds, system glitching as if to admit there was a limit of how much power it could compress into watchable footage.
When it finally reeled back into normality, a new crater had been formed —Deep. In flames. Decisive.
Maxima stood at its center. Unchanged. Untouchable. Her hair refused to move even now, her jacket remained impeccable. The only evidence that something had happened at all were her accessories catching flames, yet even that looked decorative.
Nothing remained of Roswell. His executioner confirmed it herself, turning one hand over, then back. She was examining her nails, seemingly satisfied that there wasn’t a single mark on them.
Neon sharpened his focus. He’d been wrong. Something had changed, faint and easy to miss. Maxima’s body —her skin— held a muted gleam to it, and the realization was finally rewarded by the system.
[Skill: Perfect Body Lvl 3]
A sea of lies, all inside.
Her chin moved upwards then, reacting to something unseen.
“Oh. That’s it?” The words came out quiet yet cloyingly petulant. She looked at Panzer, and the expression shifted into something softer. Fond, even. “I barely realized we got so many. You were too effective.”
Panzer didn’t answer. Panzer would never answer.
Climbing closer, she reached out to press her hand against the nearest surface of its plating —the lower cannon mount, still radiating a visible heat that should’ve been a deterrent. She kept her palm flat anyway.
“Next time…” Maxima closed her eyes, relishing on something Neon could never hope to understand. “… Let’s make it last a little longer.”
The simulation faded, warmth and ruin blackening like an ember going out. Before realizing it, Neon resurfaced into the dark of his room.
He remained still for a moment, picking up on the different tone of darkness on the ceiling above him. His heart was doing something irregular, so for a couple moments he just worked on his breathing, staring at nothing until his pulse agreed to settle.
As soon as he regained a sense of distance, Neon’s mind began to work overtime. No time for feeling overwhelmed or discouraged. Decoded Feedback was a lot to take in, but all the insight it offered was too good to waste on anxiety. He couldn’t just close his eyes and pray these monsters would eliminate each other.
Harmgivers. First on the leaderboard, barring //ERROR, clearing in just a little over four hours. No wonder Roswell had felt so underprepared. Normal, really. It just wasn’t enough time to grasp the reality he was in.
And yeah, all of that was thanks to Panzer. An entity not even Neon could find a gap in its defenses by being funny or kind or defiant. In many ways, he figured the thing had no real defenses, in the sense that walls didn’t have them —though this one moved forward trampling everything in its path.
But the war machine had a weakness. Maxima.
Sponsor or not, she was a rookie just like him, and it showed. The little tyrant was clearly drunk in power, and Neon had already scored a win against a fool just like her.
It wouldn’t be easy. Of course it wouldn’t. Maxima’s augments made her invulnerable to a blast that obliterated a human body without leaving a single trace behind. But egotism and vanity cracked the loudest —and Neon was almost excited to be the one who dismantled them.
The simulation had confirmed one more thing. He couldn’t probe while inside a Decoded Feedback, and copying anything seen in there also seemed to be a nope. In hindsight, that was probably a given, but ah well.
Didn’t really matter. His eyes were already moving to the next thumbnail, eager to meet the other critters he shared a prison with.