{You have been routed to Orchard Nexus 001.}

  The flare of Ashtoreth’s warp spell faded, and she put her hands on her hips as she looked around the dimly lit circular chamber. Water dripped off every part of her body, and her eardrums popped, then regenerated as small trickles of blood ran from her ear cavities down the sides of her face.

  Hunter appeared before her, coming out of his [Shadowcloak]. “Uh… you okay?” he asked, looking her over.

  “Absolutely!” she said. “I don’t have to breathe, so it’s not like I get the bends. Plus, my [Defense] prevents most of the effects of high pressure anyway.”

  “Where were you?”

  “The Marianas Trench,” she said. “I didn’t go all the way down, though. Just enough that they’ll have some trouble tracking me within the next few days. Water works all kinds of havoc on magical traces—you know how it is.”

  She engulfed herself in hellfire to speed up the drying process. “So what’s up?” she asked Hunter.

  “I’ve been going through the monoliths while stealthed,” he said. “It’s about what you’d expect. Each of them leads to a different spot with monsters of the listed level. I don’t know where they’re getting their mana from. I ranged out pretty far in the low-level zones, but I didn’t see anything that felt out of place—just a lot of low level creatures, all ripe for the picking. The lowest-level one leads to a sort of forest or jungle. The next one over leads to some mountains. I don’t think they’re really anywhere close to one another.”

  Ashtoreth extinguished her hellfire, then reached up to feel her hair. Perfectly dry. “What’s the highest-level zone you went to?”

  “140 to 160,” he said. “I’ve been going through them all stealthed. Just exploring. But everything seems to be the way it should be. I don’t know how, but thousands of years of inactivity haven’t messed up their level distributions.”

  “Interesting,” Ashtoreth said, her gaze sweeping over the labels set into the walls above the teleporters.

  “It’s almost like an artificially-made system tutorial,” said Hunter. “I don’t know how you’d even go about making a place like this.”

  “Me neither!” she said. Then she grinned and floated over to the teleporter that was labelled 450-500. “Wanna try something a little more our speed?”

  Hunter eyed her. “Are you sure we should be fighting?” he asked hesitantly. “I’ve barely had time to explore. We don’t know that there’s noone else here, yet. Or if there’s high-level monsters where they shouldn’t be. There’s a lot that could go wrong.”

  “I know,” she said. “But we’ve only got a short window where I can fake ignorance about this place to high command, so let’s trigger all the consequences that do exist while I’m here. I’ve got a great plan. You’ll see.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m certain,” she said, reaching out as if to lean against the teleporter even though she was still floating in midair.

  {Transport via waygate? Y/N}

  “Don’t mind if I do!” she said.

  A moment later, she was warped into a strange landscape of crystal-veined rock formations that jutted out from the ground, creating an uneven and almost completely intraversible topography. It was daylight, and the sun glittered where it struck the crystal.

  “Neat!” she said, rising into the air to look around as Hunter appeared beside her. She spotted movement nearby, and her head jerked toward it instantly, tagging a creature that seemed to be a glittering mass of crystal.

  {Frost Elemental — Level 456}

  “Say! Elementals!”

  “So… you just want to start farming?” Hunter asked.

  “Uh-huh! The lack of trees means I’ll feel less bad about blanketing the world in hellfire!” She began to conjure an array of javelins.

  “Yeah…”

  Ashtoreth conjured Ramschloss, then lifted the cannon-sword, took aim, and then fired, creating a shockwave of hot air as the round left the muzzle in a plume of purple fire.

  The elemental hadn’t even turned toward her when the shot connected, shattering it into hundreds of fragments that were immediately consumed by spreading hellfire that covered a huge swathe of the terrain.

  She began to conjure another round, rotating in place to scan the landscape. “Did that get anyone’s attention?” she asked. “Honestly, that fellow felt a little slow and stupid—maybe the rest are too? I feel like the giant purple explosion should have—oh, here we go.”

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  {Earth Elemental — Level 453}

  The elemental had emerged out of a dark crevice in the distance, taking the appearance of several glossy shards of black stone that were held aloft of a whirling cloud of dark sand.

  A moment later, it had taken a new appearance: that of a conical swathe of hellfire radiating away from Ashtoreth as she reloaded her weapon, unwilling to wait for her passive ability to do it for her.

  “I don’t get it,” Hunter said. “Why do the elementals explode?”

  “They probably have essence or something that counts as blood,” Ashtoreth said. “They’re basically filled with concentrated mana. Plenty to ignite.”

  “Air elemental,” Hunter said, pointing. “Do you want to—oh.”

  A dozen [Hellfire Javelins] connected with the blur of motion coming toward them, transmuting it into a bright purple cloud.

  “So the ancient humans had a world that they used to farm,” Ashtoreth said, her eyes still scanning the landscape. “And so far, it looks like it’s the least dangerous place that one could possibly go to kill monsters. I know the system lets you lean on its sense of fairness, but this feel crazy. We’re really taking the sport out of the thing.”

  The air filled with the sound of thunder as she released another shot at a distant elemental.

  “I don’t mind,” Hunter said.

  “Where are these things even coming from?” Ashtoreth said. “They gave us the equipment for an army of five million people. Are there enough monsters here to level them all?”

  “Orchard would have to be huge,” he said. “But then I guess the precursor humans could probably manage a world that big.”

  “What I want to know is, where are these things coming from?” she asked, squinting at a distant point of orange light. “How can they make a bunch of different zones with precise level ranges? If the elementals all kill each other until there’s one big elemental, does it somehow get pushed up past level 500?”

  “Elementals can be made with enough mana and the right equipment,” Hunter said. “But the right equipment usually includes a lot of cores, for the high level ones.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Clearly, they did something.”

  The distant point of light that Ashtoreth had been watching came closer, resolving into a superbright fire elemental that took the form of a spinning wheel of flame. She raised her weapon, taking aim once it was only a few kilometers away.

  “Will the bullets kill that?” Hunter asked.

  “Dunno.”

  The air shook as she fired another round from her cannon. It lanced through the air, then barely disturbed the wheel of fire as it passed through.

  “Dang, guess not.” She shrugged, then conjured another dozen hellfire javelins. “Oh well. I guess it gets to learn what it’s like to burn to death right before it… well, burns to death.” She launched the javelins.

  The flaming wheel managed to dodge most of her first volley, but it mattered little: fire elementals were essentially perpetually burning fountains of mana, and a second volley of javelins, also only partially successful, saw the wheel turning purple as her flames drained its [Defense] and gradually ignited more and more of it.

  Ashtoreth sighed as the elemental burst into a plume of hellfire. “You know, my build is super overpowered against huge groups of enemies. But ever since we finished killing the bastions, it’s just been duel after duel. Now this. I’d just like a challenge for once.”

  Hunter looked around nervously, but despite the clear opportunity for optimal irony that Ashtoreth had set up, no new threats appeared. She sighed again.

  “You could always try the higher levels,” he said.

  “Definitely,” she said. “But not yet. I’ve got a plan, remember?”

  She dispersed her weapon into a cloud of hellfire that she immediately reformed into her scythe, which she swept through the air to gather all the surrounding hellfire. Then she began to charge her gauntlet with a [Hellfire Nova].

  “Is that… a contingency?” Hunter asked.

  Ashtoreth grinned. “Nope!”

  “I don’t get it,” Hunter said. “It’s unnecessary. You’re going to break something.”

  “I’ll take off my spellfire diadem,” she said.

  “You’re still going to break something.”

  “Just not anything magical.”

  Hunter was quiet for a moment. “Explain?” he asked at last.

  “If anything on this world is sapient, or if anything developed sapience in the last thousands of years, they could be very threatening to us. This will probably get their attention. Like a signal flare!”

  “One that’s visible from space.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Definitely… a plan.”

  “We’ve only got so much time that I can be here without tipping off high command, right?” she said. “If we want to find out whether there’s anyone else here whose attention we’re going to attract by farming, I’d like to do it before I tell General Matthews to stuff it. Maximize the information we gather while keeping our options, you know?”

  “I… suppose…”

  “I’ll do the old, ‘drop a nova and then leave,’ trick, and you can stay behind in case someone—or something—shows up post-roast to check things out.”

  “...Yeah.”

  “Look, it makes perfect sense to me,” she said. “But if you want to talk me out of it, now’s your chance,” she said. She looked down at the landscape around them. “It’s definitely going to take a few more of these elementals before I can incinerate everything we can see.”