Seems clear. Perry thought, inspecting the empty grassland with every magical sense at his disposal.

He emerged from cover and began stomping on the ground, pacing back and forth across the ancient cornfield until he picked up the slightest change in sound.

Dragor’sKinesis.EXE

A thick layer of dirt held together by a weave of grass roots peeled away, revealing a heavy iron door rusted to near uselessness

Crack!

The spell snapped the door off with no effort, prying the heavy iron away with the casual ease of a twist-top.

Perry descended down into the musty silo, replacing the vault door and sod before arriving in a small room with a door and a keypad caked in the dust of decades.

The security door suffered much the same fate as the vault hatch, allowing Perry to enter the silo proper.

He walked out onto the catwalk, taking a moment to take in the massive nuclear bomb sitting in the center of the silo, long since forgotten by its former country.

The missile was lit by humming incandescent bulbs that must’ve been on for two generations, running on a robust backup power system that may have itself been nuclear.

The damn thing was huge, football field length at least, making Perry antlike in comparison.

Its surprising what humans built before The Tide. Normally I’d assume this was the work of a Tinker, Perry thought as he gawked up and down the length of the massive weapon.

Tunk! Tunk!

The sound of metal striking against metal was the wake-up call to get moving. Tyrannus had probably arrived moments after he’d covered up the entrance again.

Perry glanced to his left and right, spotting staircases leading deeper into the installation.

Left it is. Perry thought, heading down, getting deeper inside as a beam of sunlight entered the ancient silo from above.

Okay, storage room, storage room, where are you? Perry thought, hustling through the spiralling hallway until he spotted the control room from across the way, around the edge of the missile, still lit by an emergency red light, with a thick plate of tempered glass between itself and the ICBM.

It looked like there was something sitting on the console.

No…he wouldn’t…

Perry broke into a sprint as he began to hear voices from above, aiming for the control room.

Perry arrived a moment later and pried the thick metal door open

On the console was a middle finger bobblehead, degraded by decades of neglect.

On the floor was a wheelbarrow full of C-4, connected to the door by a detonator.

Behind it, was a stack of obviously Manitian texts, a glowing sword, as well as a pile of essences and what appeared to be a dragon claw, about a foot long.

The C-4 began to fizzle and smoke alarmingly as the detonator connected to the doorframe tried and failed to trigger it. As booby traps went it wasn’t bad, but…

The shelf life of C-4 is five years, Perry thought, kicking the smoking wheelbarrow aside and squatting down to peer at the pile of books, easily the most valuable things in the pile.

A compendium of Demonic entities, organized by Portfolio and hierarchy.

Neat. Perry put it in his looting bag. His ‘lootbag’ was just a stabilized portal to a secure holding facility where he could make sure things weren’t dangerous before he took them into his lab.

Don’t have too long before Tyrannus and his goons get here, Perry thought, reading the titles of the books as fast as he shoved them into the storage facility.

Geneology: our Divine origins.

Boring.

Perry threw it in.

The Periodic Table of Essences by Paradox Zauberer.

Red herring, Perry thought, throwing it into the bag.

Laws of the Beyond.

In you go.

The Ascent:

Amek Okran

Perry paused, his fingertips hovering above the cracked leather.

Huh.

Perry gingerly took the book.

“Override accepted. On-site detonation active. May God be with you.” A pre-recorded woman’s voice spoke over all the speakers.

Excuse me?

Perry shoved aside the pile of books and essence and realized that they were deliberately stacked in a way that obscured the bottom of the command console for the entire silo.

Which had been torn open and hotwired by a certain determined individual.

I’ll bet you I know who did it, too. Although, it might’ve been a tech working on the general’s orders. Not sure the guy knew enough to hotwire the damn thing in the first place.

Two wires touched underneath the book, leading up into the console, splitting to the left and right, where two keyholes waited for activation.

“Well that’s just great!” Perry shouted. “What kind of asshole booby-traps a nuke?”

Perry started shoving stuff into the tiny portal at full speed. He wasn’t too worried: Even a nuke has a shelf life, and any nuke that could just detonate where it sat probably relied on high explosives to act as the fuse. High explosives that also had shelf-lives, like the C-4 that had just fizzled out in front of him.

If it did detonate, the explosion would probably only be in kilotons instead of megatons.

Still…probably not something Perry wanted to be anywhere near, but not too dangerous, either. Probably.

That’s a lot of probablies, Perry thought, heart hammering in his chest as he scooped the last of the loot and started running.

Wait a minute, Perry’s head reared up as he felt something on the dimensional wind. It felt like…

Is that…Marchia’s blessing? Well, that’s not good.

Paradox’s Probability Dodge.exe

Perry triggered the Probability Dodge. One Paradox dove into the loot bag and tried to disable the portal from the inside while the other started sprinting for the exit.

Marchia’s blessing was a ritual that halted decay or malfunction of an object.

Hey, look at that, there’s the Venglesh Fate-Stealer tongue on the top of the nuke. Neat. Running Perry thought as he flew past.

It was a tongue glued to the top of a building-sized nuke several stories above him, and it was dark, so Perry excused himself for not seeing it.

In theory, there was a symbol of Marchia welded onto the undercarriage of the nuke, where nobody could see it, probably corroded into a pile of rust.

Last time Perry had come into contact with the spell was when his grandmother cast it on his soul-surgery equipment to make sure nothing went wrong with the first procedure he ever did, giving himself access to the Light spell.

Marchia’s blessing. (Neophyte)

Ingredients: Forked Tongue of a Venglesh Fate-Stealer, Symbol of Marchia made from crude iron, glue made from the bones of Tiran Gremlins, vivant root incense.

Glue the tip of the tongue of the Venglesh Fate-Stealer to the object to be blessed, glue the symbol of Marchia to the other end. Waft vivant root over the assembled items.

If done correctly, the crude iron symbol of Marchia will rust in place of any damage or malfunction the blessed item might have suffered.

“Shit shit shiiiit,” Portal Perry sang as he worked, switching the safeties off as quickly as he could. The damn shielding and endless safety measures on the portal made it sticky to close from the inside to prevent people from getting stuck inside.

At the moment, that was exactly what Perry wanted.

Running Perry burst out into the sunlight, straight into a confused dragon’s face.

“WHooO!” Perry whooped, grabbing Tyranus’s horn and swinging around the enormous dragon’s skull, flattening himself down between Tyrannus’s shoulder blades and using the near-indestructable scales as cover, wrapping himself in an armor made of the Pernicious Prison and a shell of Dragor’s Kinesis.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it.

“Para-“

The world went white.

HP 10 -> 0

…

……

Ow.

Perry coughed out a lungful of ash and blood.

Which Perry am I? Perry wondered, looking at the sky. That wasn’t really telling him much. He glanced down and spotted a mushroom could on the horizon that looked to be quite a few miles distant.

Most telling, there was a dragon carcass lying smoking on the ground beside him, burnt down to bone and scraps of hide by nuclear fire.

The Runner made it?

Consulting his memories, he realized the closing portal had focused the nuclear blast down into a laser of annihilation that destroyed everything inside his loot bag, including himself.

I honestly thought that was the better choice, Perry thought. If he’d had a fraction of a second longer, it would’ve been. Then Tyrannus never would’ve laid eyes on him.

Perry tried to move.

It did not go well.

Hmm…

Perry was shredded. And not in the cool way. There was a lot of exposed…everything. Things were seeing the light of day that shouldn’t be.

Spurt!

A jet of blood pumped out of the stumps of his legs.

I’m starting to understand why Billy hated the general. Dude sent me straight into a booby trap to try and blow up the dragon.

How did the corpse hanging from the ceiling know Billy would be there too? Perhaps the general didn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t the dragon…or perhaps didn’t particularly care for Manitian half-breeds.

Or maybe he got sick of waiting and wanted to kill somebody.

Well, sucks to be him, I got the loot anyway. Mental note to check the books for further booby traps.

Am I dying? Perry wondered, glancing down at himself. He was in about the same shape that Professor Replica was in after their fight.

A torso.

Perry craned his neck to look for a living subject to drain with the Pernicious Prison.

Unfortunately the blast had scoured the earth down to bedrock for a half mile in every direction. The crumpled bodies of other Acolytes littered the ground where they had fallen.

Shit.

PPP.EXE

Perry used the sticky black tar to seal off the bleeding, buying himself some time to get somewhere with living things he could drain.

Goddamn I’m woozy,

Perry heard a guttural groan. A gasp from lungs bigger than his entire body.

He glanced down and spotted the corpse of Tyrannus twitching.

“Shit,” Perry muttered, coughing and spitting a layer of gunk out of his vocal cords.

A flicker of infernal flame sputtered in the dragon’s empty eye socket for an instant before Tyrannus’s eye grew back, looking at him with burning rage.

‘I’m not angry, just disappointed.’ - some really angry person.

“What? I didn’t force you to be here,” Perry said with a shrug, sending the Pernicious Prison out and draining Tyrannus. Any port in a storm. He really didn’t wanna be bleeding out and at the dragon’s mercy. This was an overtly hostile act, but he’d rather be in fighting condition with a pissed off dragon than helpless against a slightly-less-pissed-off dragon.

“Not…cool.” Tyrannus said, his jaw slowly reforming as Perry piggybacked on whatever trump spell had preserved the dragon’s life.

“Bah. You’re good for it.”

Perry’s arms and legs grew back, his spine fixing itself, the wound in his back that he didn’t realize he had pushing out the dragon scale before sealing itself shut.

The cauterized stumps of Tyrannus’s legs grew back, covered in fresh dragonscale as he slowly climbed to his feet, matching Perry’s rise.

Perry groaned as he pushed off the ground, holding himself upright with a thread of the Pernicious Prison.

“That. Sucked.” Perry muttered, lifting his hands in a defensive posture as Tyrannus launched a counterspell, scattering the inky black threads covering him into raw essence.

Perry nearly stumbled in place, swaying a little as the healing supply was suddenly cut off.

He’d live, but it was distinctly uncomfortable.

The dragon didn’t look much better, shaking his head woozily.

“I didn’t- The dragon coughed, clearing his lungs. *HACK* “I didn’t realize you could withstand a nuclear blast, my friend.”

“Wasn’t pleasant,” Perry muttered, eyeballing the dragon. Tyrannus didn’t seem poised to fight, so Perry sat down, leaning against one of the dragon’s acolyte corpses and rifling through the pockets until he found some chewing gum.

“Want some?” Perry asked, clearing the taste of blood and radioactive ash with minty freshness.

“Please.” Tyrannus said, holding out a claw.

Perry tossed the package, which enlarged mid-flight, turning dragon-size. Tyrannus took out a stick the size of Perry’s leg and began masticating, surveying his lost troops with a critical eye.

“And they say spelunking is dangerous,” Perry said around his gum.

“I’d appreciate it if you gave me an itinerary of what ruins you plan on looting in advance.” Tyrannus said.

“And let you get them first?” Perry asked, “You know that’s not how our relationship works.”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask. I just don’t understand how you’re not a zombie right now. entering the general’s dream should’ve cursed you beyond even your grandmother’s ability to heal. I didn’t expect you to get anything out of him.”

That was a trap, huh?

“Trade secret,” Perry said, relaxing against the corpse. Maybe it was the blood loss, but radioactive ash and dead bodies were really comfy.

Probably the blood loss. I’m tired.

“We still have a truce?” Perry asked.

“Maybe if you give me whatever you took from inside.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you if I find anything interesting.”

Tyrannus chuckled, flopping down on the barren Earth.

“I’ll get what I want, one way or another.”

Congratulations! You have reached level 16!

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Potent Thaumaturge

Level 16

HP: 11

Body: 62

Stability: 63

Nerve: 63

Attunement: 63

Free Points: 40

XP to next level: 35527

Perry froze.

Shit.

He glanced over at Tyrannus, who was staring at him, slitted pupils narrowed.

The gum fell from the dragon’s mouth.

“Perry, did you just now get five percent more powerful in every respect?”

Of course he can see it when I gain a level.

“Mmmmaybe?” Perry said.

It was closer to eight percent if you included the non-physical stats.

Perry could see the dragon revising his timeline, and not liking what he found.

Crimson eyelids narrowed around metallic eyes.

“You grow faster than I do, don’t you?”

“Full disclosure?” Perry said. “Way faster.”

“You realize this means I have to kill you.” Tyrannus said, peering down at him. “And soon.”

“Yeah, I figured it would come to that. I thought you’d come after me when you noticed I wasn’t aging in my late twenties.” Perry said. “So are we doing this now, or…”

“No, let’s get treated for radiation poisoning first.” Tyrannus said, glancing away. “Kill you next week?”

Perry gave a tired thumbs-up.

“That’ll give me time to clean out my desk.”