Kaldalis stared at the prompt, dumbfounded. “Well, obviously,” he said with an eye roll. “Why would you even ask? If you’ve got powers to give me, just pump that shit right into my veins.”

As soon as he said it, he realized that it wasn’t entirely true.

Power often came at a cost. It might be that randomly accepting offers of power could lead him to being in debt to a tiny fuzzy supervillain. Or maybe accepting such powers could represent some amount of psychic corrosion.

It could literally cost him his soul.

Power corrupts in more ways than one, and he didn’t want to be randomly accepting every pop-up until one turned him into a zombie.

That said, he wasn’t going to turn the power down now. From what the tablet said, this whole “Paths Between Paths” business had been explored from a scientific perspective, not as a mysterious arcane phenomenon. It was definitely probably fine. Maybe if he started noticing weird side effects he could debate the philosophy of it all a little longer the next time the game offered him mysterious powers.

He was as aware of the ability in the back of his mind, the same way he was aware of his other abilities.

But his awareness was only to activate it, it didn’t tell him anything about it besides what the tablets had indicated.

It was likely a temporary invulnerability. It would send him…

Somewhere else. Altair-4.

He’d probably want to hold his breath.

But he didn’t know if it would send him there for a second to avoid a single attack, or for hours to avoid an enormous storm.

He might be able to find more information about it from his character page, and so he opened it quickly, taking a glance over his other stats just to take stock of them.

Kaldalis, Level 6 Bodyguard

HP: 965/1085

Aplomb: 100/100

EXP: 512/1750

Acumen: 121

Clout: 127

Vigor: 205

Armor: 138

Attack: 83

His elemental affinities were all at sixty-one, except for earth, which was at eighty, thanks to his level five charm. His debuff affinities were all at seventy-three, except for gust. Because that stat was on his weapon as well it was pumped all the way up to ninety-two.

He was about to switch to his abilities page when there was a rumbling sound from somewhere nearby. It was either someone moving furniture around on the floor above him, or it was a cave-in happening a few hundred yards away.

Kaldalis thought about ignoring it, but he realized he was in a stone building with no windows. If there was a chance of the place coming down, he didn’t want to be buried under the rubble. There would be time to stand still and fuck with his menu once he knew he wasn’t about to die horribly.

He rushed back into the study room, and the next rumble came from a lot closer. He had hoped that it was a one-time thing, or that it was a stationary event happening somewhere else in the city, but it seemed he had no such luck. The next rumble happened when he was on the stairs, and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the courtyard, so close that only the flick of his tail kept him from tumbling down the stairs in a heap. He picked up the pace, breaking into a run as he hit the bottom of the stairs in the giant library room.

A rumble shook the building, and Kaldalis had a brief moment of panic when a nearby shelf started to tilt. He had a horrible vision of being crushed under it right before it tipped back. The hit wasn’t enough to overturn these shelves yet, but if it got any worse, hundreds - or even thousands - of the irreplaceable scrolls could be crushed.

He was starting to suspect what was waiting for him outside. He’d entered the city expecting to find a boss fight. Apparently after getting distracted by the contents of the library, the boss fight was tired of waiting and was coming to him. He burst out of the front door of the building out into the courtyard, glaive in hand and ready to fight. Or, at least, he thought he was ready.

It looked like a cross between a silverfish and a pillbug, but it was the size of a subway train. The creature was plated with a metallic grey shell. It was at about fifteen feet tall from the ground to the top of its shell, and at least sixty feet long.

A trio of tails stuck out of its rear, twitching around like a ten-foot antennae, but despite the obscuring shell, there was no mistaking the front of the beast. It had only two antennae at the other end, but they were twenty feet long, and as the creature skittered around, they waved to and fro, tapping on the ground and walls ahead of it, giving the eyeless creature a sense of its surroundings.

Strangest of all were the pair of curling ramlike horns that jutted out of the frontmost shell segment.

The creature used the antennae to poked at the giant opening it had smashed in the wall of the building next to the library. It skittered back a few dozen feet, and then charged, ramming the hole and bringing down most of the wall.

Kaldalis was almost thrown from his feet by the nearby impact, and staggered out of the library’s doorway. As he watched, the giant bug poked an antennae into the opening, feeling around inside.

“It’s searching,” Kaldalis said quietly to himself. “Probably for me.” He hesitated as soon as he said it, though. “Or for food. It looks like a silverfish, and silverfish eat…” He looked back through the library doorway behind him at the racks and racks of scrolls. “...Paper.”

As much as he wanted to sneak his way to a safe hiding spot to ignore the monster until his friends caught up with him (if they ever did) he realized he was looking at a threat to all the valuable information within the library. He wasn’t sure if the giant beast would actually destroy the library or if it would move on if it didn’t find him inside.

“Yeah, but would I have stood aside and let the Romans burn the Library of Alexandria if I had been there?” Kaldalis asked himself. “I mean, probably. It’s not like it was just one guy and I could poke him with a stick and make him chase me around in a circle until help showed up. Right? I mean… I wasn’t there. Maybe. But that’s the situation here, and the preservation of knowledge is worth it.” He scratched his chin. “But this is a dungeon. Everything is going to respawn for the next party, right? My noble sacrifice would be purely symbolic… right?”

Kaldalis shook his head.

He was stalling.

It was one thing to fight a boss on his own when it jumped down from the ceiling onto him and gave him no choice in the matter. It was another thing entirely to make the conscious choice to hurl himself at it.

As he tried to work up the nerve, the beast turned and charged across the courtyard. For a second, he feared that it had seen him, but it barreled past the library and into another nearby building. This one was almost entirely crushed by the blow, though the monster picked at the rubble with its antennae.

After a minute of digging, it turned, waving its antennae before it turned in a seemingly random direction and charged again, smashing a hole in the wall of the building near where Kaldalis had entered the courtyard, across from the library.

“I can’t just stand here and do nothing,” he said at last. “It seems to be choosing targets at random, but that just means it’s a matter of time before the library gets chosen, and it could be at literally any second. I just can’t let that happen.” He shook his head, gripping his glaive as he stepped out into the courtyard. “I want to make sure everyone watching this stream knows not to try this at home. I’m a trained professional.” He grimaced. “Or, you know. Close enough. Just gotta say that neither I nor Monsoon endorses this kind of reckless behavior.”

He took a deep breath. As much as he recognized that this was a stupid decision, it had to be made. He gave a wordless shout, and the giant train-sized bug turned to face him, waving its antennae in his direction. The creature went through its over dramatic aggro animation, lifting its head off the ground and slamming back down with a deep clicking noise that must have been its version of a roar.

Kaldalis had planned to come up with a good battlecry for the final boss, but now that he was faced with it, all his ideas had fled. But given his disclaimer, one thing readily came to mind.

“Hi, I’m Kaldalis. Welcome to Jackass.”