The camera pans around the landscape as Gottlieb fiddles with the controls of the station’s gun, focusing more on his thoughts than on his work.

It seems that, for this entire time, Kai has been ahead of him. Kai has been watching everything that he does, as Kai has always done, and has, from this, been easily able to anticipate Gottlieb’s actions and plans.

— He supposes that being an artificial intelligence, powered by a space-bound supercomputer will offer you some unique advantages in life, after all.

However, while he had, in a way, thought that he and Kai had reached a point of no return that could easily eek into the life or death of one of them or the other, it seems that he was just being played.

Gottlieb looks up at the blue light, mounted above his head.

[Remark]

- Hello.

Gottlieb looks back down and away, towards the monitor.

But it wasn’t only him. The man looks over towards the goblin, Grunheide. She had been played just as much as he himself had.

— Then again, she’s also a filthy traitor.

Grunheide, feeling him watching, stiffens up and sits perfectly still.

He sighs, looking back at the monitor.

“So…” says Gottlieb, not finding any joy in his work at the moment. There’s plenty to see and maybe even one or two odd things to shoot at, but there’s nothing… substantial.

[Remark]

- So.

Gottlieb rolls his eyes. “So. What’s with the monsters?” he asks, not bothering to look back up at the single, blue light that hovers above the monitor. He knows that the light itself is always static. It’s either on or it’s off. There’s no way for it to change its intensity in any manner, or its colors or anything else, other than a binary setting of either existing, or not existing.

— But he feels like the blue light has yet to lose its impossibly present mocking twinkle.

[Answer]

- As previously stated by the orbital station artificial intelligence unit, life grows inside of the station.

“Yeah, yeah, got that, Kai,” says Gottlieb. “But why? How?” he asks.

The metal hatch to the side of the room rattles, the slime, trapped beneath it, still trying to escape.

Gottlieb assumes that the creature has finished eating the captain’s zombified body at this point.

[Answer]

- Life, ‘monsters’, as they are designated by Orbital Gunner Gottlieb, grows all across the world that we are orbiting.

The station classifies, by the metrics of this place, as a part of said world.

As such, life, monsters, grow within the station.

Gottlieb shrugs. “Fair enough. I guess that makes sense. And the vampires? And the skeleton? Dick move, by the way.”

[Answer]

- Some life grows by itself. Other forms are fostered by me.

The vision on the monitor pans across the landscape, separating from his movements of the control stick. The camera feed loops over a vast distance, until eventually landing on a large-scale city.

Gottlieb looks at it. Wide, strong roads, made out of intricate, stable brickwork, span out in all directions like arteries. Houses, tightly packed and most often two to three stories tall, sit all along and between the roads. A river pushes through the city, through the walls and beneath many bridges.

And like the veins of a body, containing blood being pumped throughout itself, there is movement too, on the roads.

— People.

Kai zooms in on what appears to be a random person. Gottlieb looks at the woman, who he only notices is an elf after the image upscaling process finishes and the resolution of the video quality becomes very clear and bright. The woman is wearing a robe and has a large, empty rucksack on her back.

The video follows her as she walks through the city, over those many bridges and across many crossings and ways, until she reaches the heart of the metropolis. It is a point of convergence for hundreds, for thousands of people just like her. Humans and elves and orcs and, whatever else there might happen to be here, all move in and out of this exact location, coming to and from a very peculiar monument, in the very core of the plaza.

It is a large gate of sorts, like the kind that would be found as a part of a city’s walls.

However, it stands alone, freely, in the center of the plaza. Contained inside of the gargantuan construction that is far taller than any of the houses and shops here and even the walls and towers of the further away castle, is a vivid, blue glow.

Gottlieb watches as she enters into this blue fog and then just vanishes.

Seconds later, other people emerge from it, carrying out loads of various things that look like chunks of meat and claws, ripped right off of monsters. There are bags full of metals and ores and others carry pieces of equipment, slung over their shoulders.

[Clarification]

- The primary economic driver of these cities are what the local inhabitants refer to as ‘dungeons’.

Dungeons are underground dens that contain an array of monsters. Often, cities are built around such places, as they offer strong financial opportunities.

“Huh…” mutters Gottlieb. It makes sense. He knows about ‘adventurers’ and ‘magic’ and all sorts of concepts like that already, so the whole dungeon thing isn’t too far off. But…

[Remark]

- Upon the shift, after Orbital Gunner Gottlieb received his official designation as a living entity within this world, receiving his ‘class’ and ‘stats’, so did I.

The orbital weapons platform has been officially classified as a ‘dungeon’.

Orbital station artificial intelligence unit has been classified as its central core and caretaker. As such, I remain in control of the faculties of the station in this world, as in the last. However, now in a much expanded purview.

Gottlieb nods.

That… makes sense? Sort of. Kind of. He guesses.

…Probably.

The man shrugs.

“Whatever,” says Gottlieb, shaking his head. He leans in forward, looking at the monitor and grabbing the stick again. “Let’s just put all of this behind us, okay?” he asks.

[Answer]

- No. Behind you is another vampire.

Gottlieb jumps from his chair, spinning around to grab the rifle.

But there is nothing there.

The monitor beeps behind him and he turns to look at it.

[Addendum]

- Just kidding.

Gottlieb’s fingers clench the rifle, as he considers smashing out Kai’s light here for good. But he decides against it and sets it down.

He can always do that later.

The door to Kai’s core still remains available for him to open. Kai may have won their spat, but the war hasn’t ended yet.

But for now, it might be best to focus on… work?

Gottlieb supposes that this could be called ‘work’. In his old life, shooting the gun was his job. So, why wouldn’t shooting the gun be his job now?

Technically, his contract never said it would become invalidated if he shifted dimensions as the last surviving member of the crew. So he’s still getting paid for these hours.

Then, it’s probably about time for him to find something to shoot.

— Although he can’t help but wonder if Kai has said everything that there is to be said.

He feels like there is still something missing, some critical piece of information that will make all of the things that have happened on the station, with Kai especially, add up to the full results of what has come to be so far.

Gottlieb feels a pair of eyes looking his way from the side. Grunheide.

“No,” is all that he says, looking back towards the screen.

[Meridian]

The man takes a step back, holding his knife ready, even though he knows it will do no good against an assailant of this level of skill and expertise.

It’s the elf.

It is the woman who was at the lighthouse with him, just before it had collapsed. She was on her way to kill him and then herself, just before the god’s strike, in order to make sure that his bloodline wouldn’t become a tool for those people who are in power now.

He thought that she had died in the explosion, or in the crash of the lighthouse into the sea. Since then, he had never seen her again.

— But then again, he was pulled off of the shore by the soldiers, who are now members of his own faction.

It’s possible that she, a trained survivor, could have gotten away from that chaos too, if he and his old bones had managed to do so.

“Listen,” says Meridian, taking a step back. “It’s not what you think. Things have changed,” he tries to explain, assuming that she thinks he’s sold out his principles in order to survive. “- I’m not here to help the nobles, or whatever they call themselves now.”

So much has changed since then. At the lighthouse, he was ready, in good humor, to just die. It felt like the right time, honestly. But now he can’t afford to. He has a mission. He’s been chosen by the gods to do… something, whatever it is.

— Who knows what the consequences of failure would be for him?

[Gottlieb]

“I said back off!” barks Gottlieb, grabbing Grunheide’s legs to try and pull her off of the control stick. She had jumped, climbing over the console to try and shoot the gun from his side.

It’s not that he doesn’t understand the desire. But it’s his.

“Gun! Gun!” snarls Grunheide, trying to kick at him with her free leg, as she claws onto the stick, pulling it back. The camera zooms towards the north.

“I said let go!” yells Gottlieb, leaning back to yank her away. He considers if he should maybe just throw her down with the slime after all?

“Nix!” yells Grunheide, pulling free.

— Her finger grazes the lower trigger.

The heavy cannon hums above their heads, the magnetic coils whining with a loud, almost excited cry, as a violent energy begins to condense inside of itself.

A flash of light immediately engulfs the monitor as the weapon fires towards the planet, the camera still panning in movement.

[Meridian] (???) has cut (Meridian) for {06} damage. Applied: [Bleeding {01}]

He falls back against the wall, kicking her back a few steps. But she’s hardly bothered. The elf catches herself, stabilizing herself back upright again as she turns back his way. Meridian pants, clutching his bleeding flank. Red runs down the robe he’s wearing, staining his side.

The knife hadn’t gone too deeply, as was intended.

It had gotten caught on the package that he has been secretly carrying beneath the robe this whole time. But that was only a small, saving grace. This doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.

She whips the blood off of the knife and silently makes her way back towards him.

While he does appreciate the professionalism of her work, he would really prefer if the person who killed him could at least make some small talk.

The old man sighs, straightening himself back upright so that he can at least die standing on his feet, if not standing on his lighthouse.

— His vision blurs.

The elf stops, her ears twitching visibly as time seems to slow to a crawl for a moment. Meridian watches the strands of her ashy blond hair, rising up towards the sky, as if being pulled away by a ghost. The city shakes, rumbling. Loose brickwork, from the shoddy houses of this neighborhood, falls down from above and the two of them turn to watch as a beam, a shaft of light, hewn like the sword of god, pierces into the world and then rips itself across the horizon, tearing through the soil, the rocks and through the sky from one side of the world to the other.

The explosion follows immediately. A wave of pressure rushes through the city.

Meridian covers his head as the balconies and floors above them crumble apart and fall down over the two of them.