A spray of molten metal connected by thin blue wires exploded out of Okeria’ barrels. The spray sliced through the air as it hurled towards the slyk, making a soft whistle against the din of destruction that the signaleech was perpetuating. It didn’t look like much of anything, but the moment it touched one of the slyk’s legs it reared back and screeched in pain.

“Give ‘em a taste of its own medicine, yeah?” Okeria said seriously. Metal spheres hovered around and melted into his twin arm cannons as the slyk thrashed and screamed, destroying more and more of the trawler in the wake of its tantrum. “The first one of these I killed took me over a week ta whittle down, but they really don’t like dealing with their deceased brethren. It’ll focus completely on me, so ya need ta go find some of its electric oil deposits while I try not ta get squashed.”

I nodded, then frowned. “Wait, you wanted our roles to be switched initially? Fucking why?”

“Because I love the feel of fresh slyk electricity crackling over my armor.” Okeria said plainly, and I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or serious. “Don’t put too much thought into it. Oh, and when ya find them, dig deep ta find the little pieces of slyk that the signaleech stashed in ‘em. They’re the key ta taking this freakish thing down without exhausting ourselves.”

“Fine.” I said curtly, watching as the slyk crushed through the last vestiges of the wall’s resistance and contorted through to our room. It was even more obviously a monstrous spider-mosquito now, and as lightning crackled around its severely bloated oily abdomen, I readied myself for its next tidal wave attack.

Or tidal-web, if it was a spider. “How should I get around it?”

Okeria shrugged. “Ask the abyss because I don’t know. Try taking as wide a berth as ya can, and be real careful every ten seconds. The signaleech might focus in on ya every time its stats get drained.”

The slyk screeched and two of its eyes focused in on me as a notification told me that another ten seconds had passed. Three percent of my stats had now been drained from it, and it looked like that deserved 25% of the slyk’s attention. I really needed to get away from it as fast as possible before any more drained away.

“Good luck.” I said as I bolted off to the left, taking as wide a berth as possible to get away from the signaleech. It burbled and shrieked as the two eyes locked on to me tried to follow against the will of the rest of the body, and to my eternal horror, they succeeded.

With a wet tearing and the sound of crumbling ruins, two of the signaleech’s eyes were ripped from its head and began flowing over the slyk’s body to keep up with me. I groaned and picked up the pace, noting that Glittering Flow had activated on both of my newly corrupted armor pieces. That would help with keeping Wipe Away active on the slyk for as long as possible, but I was just a little too preoccupied with the signaleech’s wandering eyes for it to settle in. The traveling spheres were just a little too unnerving for any other thoughts to make it through.

It seemed that the eyes had met their match when they reached the end of the slyk’s oily abdomen. The slyk shrieked in defiance as it reared back to launch another attack, its abdomen rapidly shrinking as its legs clicked together like knitting needles in front of its head. And it wasn’t aimed at me. I breathed a sigh of relief as another drain notification popped up that I ignored, looking around for the safest door to run through to find what Okeria wanted.

I scaled a pile of rubble that went up to my neck in three steps, peered down at a mostly intact room on the other side of it, and decided that that was good enough. I risked a look back to see how Okeria was faring, but all I could see were torrents of ink and flashes of oceanic blue and silver.

“He’s fine.” I said to myself, then hopped down to the ground with a bone-rattling landing. “Alright, slyk piles. Gotta find me some slyk piles.”

The room I found myself in was fairly small compared to the massive factory floor. I could touch all four walls within thirty seconds without even breaking a sweat, with the only risk to that time being the absolute state of disarray the room was in. Rock facsimiles of tables, chairs, desks, and other office staples were thrown about the room like there had been a tornado or earthquake, and most of them were missing a leg or had massive cracks running through them.

I shook my head and waded into the debris, throwing aside every broken leg or displaced drawer that stood in the way of my investigation. If it wasn’t for the sounds of battle just outside the door, I could’ve fooled myself into thinking I was cleaning up after an office party that had gotten just a little too out of hand. Even if I’d never worked in an office a day in either of my lives.

By the time I got halfway through the room, I’d racked up another thirteen notifications of Wipe Away’s activation. All I’d done so far consisted of throwing shit behind me as I worked through the devastated stone office, and I was starting to feel like there wasn’t anything in here for me to find. The signaleech wouldn’t even be able to fit in here to put an… oil sack or whatever it was I was looking for. My search became far less methodical after that, and the other half of the office flew by in only three notifications as I tore through it.

As I threw the last desk to the side, I noticed something clatter to the ground as the desk crashed down to my left. I bent down and plucked a small metal key from the ground, one that looked like it would start an industrial machine instead of opening a lock or starting a car. I turned it around in my hand and furrowed my brow in confusion; what was this supposed to start? Or would it open a locker somewhere that had a hidden prize for me to claim?

I quickly scanned the room and shook my head. Whatever it was meant to open, if it was in here, I wasn’t going to waste my time while the signaleech was still alive. I sent it to my inventory with a thought, and then the key’s description popped onto my visor.

//Locker Key 281.

//A key to locker number 281.

Well, that answered that question for me. My initial instinct had been wrong, just like it had so many times before, but knowing that I’d been wrong was just as good as being right in the first place. I scrambled over the mess I’d made on the way in on my way to what had one been a door, then froze as two crackling orbs flashed through what little I could see of the main room.

The slyk slammed into the wall, cracks shooting up it from the ground as little pieces of stone rained down around me. Was it here to kill me? Did Okeria already lose, or had he abandoned me to do whatever the fuck he wanted? I gulped and slowly backed away, staring into the crackling orbs of the slyk as they focused back on me with an equally intense glare.

“SORRY! THE THING GOT AWAY FROM ME!” Okeria yelled as a massive explosion rocked the room. The slyk hissed in anger even while the two eyes were completely focused on me, the malleable oil of the signaleech’s abdomen trying to squeeze itself through even as the rest of the slyk started lumbering away in the direction Okeria’s voice had come from. “THAT’S RIGHT, FOLLOW ME TA THE UPPER LEFT SIDE OF THE ROOM! NOT THE LOWER RIGHT THAT WE’RE CURRENTLY IN!”

I didn’t think the slyk understood what Okeria was saying, so there was no reason for him to relay that information as strangely as he did. But who was I to think that the giant oil-spider-mosquito-rock wasn’t intelligent? Hell, it was probably a really bad idea to think like that in the first place.

Dee’s face popped into my mind, his permanently-etched scowl spouting words that weren’t as pessimistic as I always expected them to be. “Plan for the worst, but hope for the best.”

I hadn’t forgotten those words, but it seemed as if the worst had been constantly happening ever since Endra and Addia went to war. I needed some hope for the best now, and the first step to that was getting to Rainbow Basin. The step after that was finding humanity so that we could kill Endra and avenge Nia, but there was still more to life after that. I needed to find something to fill that with so I could hope for the best to come to pass.

Another Wipe Away notification reminded me where I was. I needed to find whatever I was looking for, take the slyk remnants inside, and somehow use them to kill the signaleech. I nodded to myself and clambered up the pile of debris, now twice as high thanks to the slyk slamming into the wall moments ago, and scanned the room for another entrance that the signaleech could’ve fit through.

There was only one from where I was standing. The hole the signaleech had blown to fit through what had once been doors. If there was going to be anything hidden, it would be in there. Or further down into the signaleech’s lair. But I couldn’t just run through the room without being cautious; those two eyes that seemed perpetually focused on me would alert the signaleech the moment I tried to run. Especially so if I took more than ten seconds and Wipe Away triggered once again.

So I needed to wait, but not for long. The next Wipe Away alert would signal for me to start, but until then, I needed to be out of sight. I shoved a rock to the side with my shoulder and crouched down next to it, the slyk mostly out of my line of sight, and Wipe Away triggered. When I definitely wasn’t ready to start sprinting.

The slyk shrieked. Okeria yelled in defiance. And I decided to wait for the next notification to make my sprint. It was a grueling ten seconds of shrieking metal, rumbling stones and sloshing oil. I watched Okeria fire something into the slyk’s abdomen that caused a bright silver explosion within, all sound muffled and devoured by the oil inside, and the slyk didn’t even seem to notice. I hoped that was Okeria’s intent, or else this creature was just a little more resilient than its stats seemed to say.

The notification popped up right as Okeria rained a storm of bullets down on the slyk. The two eyes on its abdomen briefly shifted to focus on him in a wondrous coincidence of timing, and I took the fuck off. My speed still wasn’t amazing, but I was more than fast enough to sprint halfway across the factory floor in the time it took the slyk to recover from Okeria’s onslaught. A piece of debris rolled into my path along with a nondescript war cry from Okeria, and I mantled over it without missing a beat. All the worries I had seemed to bleed away while I was in combat.

I activated the Scorched Bloodcoral Concoction and dove under another chunk that fell from the ceiling, tucking in my legs and rolling over my left shoulder before coming up in one swift motion and continuing my sprint. I weaved through the slick mess the slyk had left, my feet sticking fast in the strange oil that made up the creature, and realized that it knew where I was. And that the shield under my feet would be useless if I stood in it any longer.