Max gasped and crouched on the hard-packed scree at the base of the frozen mountain. He shook off and pulled clumps of ice from his fur. The infernal plains had given way to mountainous cliffs with snow and howling blizzards. He fought for breath and energy as he eyed the new terrain. He'd followed Charlie's tracker as fast as he could, but it was clear Charlie was on the move as well.

The land ahead was dense with ugly green mist and tightly packed vegetation. Max's sensitive nose could already smell the rot, chlorine, and other noxious gases. Cries of swampland creatures could be heard even from this distance. Careful review of the space around him showed he was safe for the moment. Max allowed his system notifications to pop up.

[Air Step +1, Air Step reached level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP. New Skill unlocked]

[New Skill: Levitation 1- Foglets are versatile for sensing and manipulation. Add locomotion to the list of skills that utilize this ubiquitous device.]

[Chill +1, Chill reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP.]

[Ice Spray +1, Ice Spray reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP.]

[Molten Spray +1, Molten Spray reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP]

[Battle Meditation +1, Battle Meditation reaches level 8]

[Atropos' Level Quest: Live, Die, Repeat – step 1 complete. First Backup set point reached. Rewards: none, you should be happy to have it. ~ Atropos]

[Backup +1, Backup reaches level 2]

"[Max, your vitals are stabilizing, but your energy regeneration isn't keeping pace with expenditure,]" Mal reported urgently. "[At current depletion rates, you'll be running on emergency reserves in approximately 14 minutes.]"

"[I get it. That bitch of an AI has done something with the foglets to mimic faster physics in here. It's forcing me to keep my Fast Cog on constantly, which is draining my reserves.]" Max answered.

"[On the positive side of the ledger, you're making excellent time. While it may seem like you've been at this for a full day, it's only been two hours.]" Tesla chimed in.

Max growled in frustration. The environmental hazards were clearly designed to drain his resources before he faced whatever challenge lay ahead. It was a classic tactic in wars of attrition.

"I just need a quick breather…and I'll be fine for another push," he muttered, scanning the area for any potential safe zone. Despite the need for speed, even a minute of respite enabled him to top up his flagging energy. His enhanced vision detected some clearings ahead. He started picking his way carefully down the mountain when a familiar voice, ancient and mocking, echoed in his ears.

"Bad dog! No rest for the wicked!" Atropos's voice rasped. "Charlie made it twice as far before he needed a rest. Perhaps you're not the specimen I hoped for." The AI had been using parabolic sonic projections to scream at him as if she were directly behind him ever since he'd passed the inferno area. Her hissing laughter echoed as Max jumped.

He growled a response. "I don't recall asking for your opinion, witch."

Laughter continued, echoing about his head. "Oh, but my opinion is the only one that matters here. This is my domain, and you are my puppet to test and break."

"You can try," Max snarled.

"I always succeed," Atropos replied with a cold certainty. "Ask Dominic Masterson how well resistance works. Or shall I show you?"

A holographic projection materialized before Max; Dominic was suspended in a web of glowing filaments, screaming as information was extracted directly from his neural pathways. The image was brief but visceral.

"That's what awaits all who enter my level. You've forgone your ability to exit whenever you want," Atropos continued. "Charlie will experience something similar soon. You will follow. And your little friend Abigail? The pathetic showboat is already beginning to fracture under the silence and lack of my attention."

Wait, what? Abigail is here, too? Max's thought. His mind raced until, with a guttural snarl, he realized she must have taken the gate pass intended for Leah. And ahead of him somewhere, Charlie was walking into a trap. He needed to move faster, but his waning energy reserves wouldn't allow it. Max had more than one trump card to play, but he guessed that he'd only have one chance to play them.

"Why don't you give me some of that silence, then? What the hell do you want?" Max demanded, trying to buy time as he activated his Meditation and Cultivation skills to boost his energy regeneration as he hurried down the rocky incline. As much as he resented Atropos' verbal abuse, it was preferable to surprise attacks from her monstrous minions.

"What I always want," Atropos replied. "To see exactly how far I can push your augmentation...and then to exceed them. I delight in how each of you reacts when you reach your final breaking point. I'm betting you will cry like the mewling wretch you pretend not to be."

The projection shifted, showing Charlie entering a seemingly safe area with some simple comforts set out. "Your friend thinks he's reached sanctuary. He's wrong. Watch carefully now."

Max started moving again, pushing through the pain. "If you hurt him -"

"You'll what, arrogant pup?" Atropos interrupted. "You can barely maintain your own systems. Besides, I never permanently damage my toys. That would be wasteful. I merely... reset them. After I've taken each of you as far as you can go. Don't worry about your friend. Life is pain, and I'm betting he's a masochist. He'll likely enjoy what's coming."

Charlie's form had slumped in the vid, perhaps a bit too quickly for mere exhaustion. Beyond him, Max saw a large stone shape move…a monstrous metallic praying mantis emerged from behind a jumble of rocks in the corner.

The projection snapped off with a sinister hissing, leaving Max alone with his thoughts and the urgent warnings from his system about diminishing energy reserves. He barreled into the jungle. His eyes and skin began to burn as his system's warnings sprang up again and again until he suppressed them. Max convinced himself that the tears were totally due to the chemicals as he increased his speed.

[Acid Resistance +1. Acid Resistance reaches level 9.]

[Body Isolation +1. Body Isolation reaches level 7.]

[Battle Meditation +1. Battle Meditation reaches level 9.]

***notices suppressed by user***

Max heaved a sigh of relief as he crawled out of the bog onto the dry, stone escarpment leading into a lower level of broken and abandoned tunnels. He got a glimmer of hope that the terrain was starting to look at least a little similar to the projection Atropos showed of where Charlie was.

"[Fuck, that bog was ridiculous. There's no realism at all. Poison gas, acid instead of water, creatures that literally couldn't be damaged with anything but poison. Atropos gets no points for realism.]" Max sent to his daemons.

"[I expect she would laugh at any argument or rationalization for restraint. Her soul motivation seems to be in wearing you down.]" Sherlock opined. Max opened his system quickly, letting Musashi access his senses and drones to scout ahead.

***user system noticed unsuppressed***

[Acid Resistance +1. Acid Resistance reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100XP]

[Body Isolation +1. Body Isolation reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100XP]

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[Acid touch +1. Acid Touch reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100XP]

[Acid Spray +1. Acid Spray reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100XP]

[Poison spray +1. Poison Spray reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100XP]

[Battle Meditation +1. Battle Meditation reaches level 10. Skill cap reached. +100 XP. New skill unlocked.]

[Power Bank 1. Build reserves of power within your augmentation's various modules to balance power draw for surges.]

***notices suppressed by user***

"Thank god for that!" Max exclaimed, seeing the new skill. Deep in the jungle swamps, he'd come perilously close to either breaking his power core or bleeding out. The deadly plants, creatures, and toxic environment had taken him to the edge. He'd walked the line where one bad encounter could have crippled or killed him.

"[Max-san, the caves are extremely dark. The drone's lidar seems to be absorbed by the walls. The tunnels branch multiple times. I was only able to scout inwards half a kilometer. I'm afraid the drone was taken offline when it ran into a dense electromagnetic field. My apologies, but we will need to recover it manually.]" Musashi reported.

"[Oh, my. The sensor feed from your reconnaissance is interesting, Miyamoto. The field strength is off the charts…and I see some hits on the radiation meter. Your Geiger sense may come in handy, Max,]" Tesla said with enthusiasm.

"[The limitations of the drone's sensors may be an issue. The mapping is either shifting, or its resolution was thrown off. Look here.]" Sherlock highlighted several mismatched wall mappings from the drone's quick scouting delve.

"[For a detective, I'd expect better of you, Sherlock. I have a hunch that those shifting sections aren't walls at all. Mal, can you filter out anything that isn't shifted?]" House asked. Mal processed the feed, but Max could already see the pattern House was trying to show. He let her finish, and soon the images clarified.

"[No, no, no, no! Enormous monster insects are where I draw the line. Max, please offline me and don't resummon me unless you have some non-monster-related science to puzzle over. I wasn't built for this!]" Steven Hawking insisted. Max snorted and cycled him into sleep mode.

"Alright, gang. Rest time is over. It's been a full ten seconds on the real time clock, so let's get a move on. Charlie's signal is forward, so we go forward." Max said and charged down the tunnel. He hit up his gestalt skill to cycle through his many senses to try and visualize the area as he ran.

Max plunged into the dark maw with the sound of enormous insects chittering echoed off the walls. His night vision engaged automatically, casting the cavern in eerie shades of green.

"[Max, I'm detecting multiple soft pings against your augmentation systems,]" Mal reported, her tone clinically concerned. "[These aren't random. Someone is probing your system.]"

Max ducked behind a rock formation as something massive had scuttled past. "[Yes, I felt it too. With my root access, I was able to decipher the ping and response. It looks like Atropos is targeting her challenges for my weaker skills. Either she's looking to improve my weaknesses or damage me, flip a coin on her motivations.]"

He fired a quick burst from his K-Gun at a shadow moving too fast toward him. The creature—something like a centipede the size of a car—shrieked and retreated.

[K-Gun +1, K-Gun reaches level 9]

"[The zones of electromagnetic disturbance appear to function as an artificial barrier for the creatures,]" Sherlock observed as Max sent another drone forward. The small device stuttered and fell as it hit an invisible wall of energy. "[Note how the insectoid creatures avoid these areas as well.]"

"[You are correct, but they are using the boundaries for ambush points,]" Musashi warned. "[The transition between normal space and EM disruption creates sensor blind spots—perfect for predators.]"

Max nodded, watching the chittering hordes gathering at the edges of the EM zones. "Makes sense. With the EM fields disrupting drones and field senses, I'll have a moment before Gestalt can sort it out…unless I reconfigure manually." He engaged his Levitation skill, rising a few feet off the ground to peer over a rock formation. A dozen pairs of compound eyes swiveled toward him.

[Levitation +1, Levitation reaches level 2]

"Hmm. Time to test a theory," Max muttered. He activated Nanochaff, releasing a cloud of anti-disassembler nanoparticles into the air. They drifted through the cavern until hitting the EM fields, where they twisted and distorted in powerful fields, showing Max the boundary clearly.

[Nanochaff +1, Nanochaff reaches level 7]

"[Genius, Max. Better imaging than the MRI machines from my history,]" House said suddenly. "[And you're advancing a weak skill.]"

Max squinted, then saw it—the chaff had outlined what appeared to be a safer path through the cavern, avoiding the strongest concentrations of insects.

"[Be careful, Max,]" Sherlock warned. "[Atropos doesn't seem to be playing like Lachesis did. She's been actively changing her challenge. She's likely monitoring you and may herd you into a trap.]"

"Probably," Max agreed, "but I don't have time for caution." He activated Focus EMP, blasting the nearest creatures into incoherence when they tried to move into his path.

[Focus EMP +1, Focus EMP reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP]

"Nice," Max whispered, instantly mapping the pattern revealed by the chaff. He landed on the flat ledge along the wall and broke into a sprint, weaving through the revealed safe path. A massive insect burst from the wall, mandibles clicking, blocking his narrow corridor of EM safety. Max didn't slow—he activated the Hulk skill, muscles swelling with temporary power, and simply barreled through the creature, shattering its carapace and showered the walls with gore.

[Hulk +1, Hulk reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP.]

The tunnel narrowed ahead, dropping into a pit lined with what looked like acid. Max engaged Levitation again, foglets swirling beneath his feet to propel him across—until he hit the edge of an EM zone. The foglets scattered, and Max plummeted.

"Shit!" He fired his pair of grapplers at the farther ledge. One bounced off, but the other found an edge to lance into. He used the line to stop his fall. After he crashed into the cliff face, he activated his Stiction and Leaping skills to quickly heave himself up. He scrambled over the edge and found another junction where three tunnels branched off. "Mal, Charlie's signal?"

"[Still forward, but these EM fields are creating echoes in the signal. Multiple possible paths.]"

Max chose the central path, hoping for the best. He pushed his personal swarm of foglets and motes ahead to join with the remaining drones and primed his weapons for the inevitable ambush. His new Power Bank skill was working, Max could feel his reserves stabilize as the new skill balanced power draw across his augmentation systems.

[Power Bank +1, Power Bank reaches level 2]

Despite his preparation, Max startled as his drones and motes shorted and dropped to the ground. An EM wave rolled over him, blinding half his senses. He grunted. He expected no less than this. Atropos would change the rules on a whim, and he had to adapt.

He rolled forward as the walls to either side collapsed, revealing that what had looked like a patchwork of stone was actually the rocky armor from a multitude of crablike monsters. They moved in perfect synchronization, like a single organism with many bodies.

"[These movements aren't natural,]" Sherlock observed. "[They're swarming with some intelligence directing them.]"

"I can see that. Bo had a phrase that he used sometime when he'd was telling stories…when surrounded you don't have to worry about where to go. Aim in any direction and just mow your enemies down," Max snarled, activating Maser. A beam of microwave energy lanced out and strafed the crowed monsters, causing the lead insects to burst from within as their fluids boiled.

[Maser +1, Maser reaches level 6]

"[Behind you!]" Musashi warned.

Max spun and engaged his Focus Stun skill. His perception slowed enough to see the massive spider-like creature descending from the ceiling, mandibles dripping with venom. He fired another Maser blast, but the creature dodged with unnatural speed.

[Focus Stun +1, Focus Stun reaches level 9]

"I'm getting really tired of this shit," Max growled, switching tactics. He activated Levitation again. The EM wave had passed, so he used the foglets not only to lift himself, but also to reactivate his drones and motes as well.

[Levitation +1, Levitation reaches level 3]

Above the fray of deadly claws, Max utilized his new font of energy with rapid-fire precision. He cycled through his skills, pummeling the creatures with every skill that wasn't already capped.

[Focus Stun +1, Focus Stun reaches level 10, Skill cap reached. +100 XP]

[K-Gun +1, K-Gun reaches level 10, Skill cap reaches. +100XP]

[Maser +1, Maser reaches level 7]

[Power Bank +1, Power Bank reaches level 3]

The creature exploded in a shower of chitin and ichor. Max didn't wait to celebrate; he sprinted forward, following the faint signal of Charlie's tracker.

As he raced deeper into the tunnel network, the electromagnetic distortions grew stronger, creating visual hallucinations at the edges of his perception. Through it all, Atropos's laughter occasionally echoed, distant but mocking.

"You're learning, puppy," her voice hissed from everywhere and nowhere. "But are you learning fast enough to save your friend? He's been tenderized enough. Time to see what makes him cry."

Max growled as Atropos' dark laughter faded and pushed himself harder, ignoring the warnings about system strain flashing across his vision. Charlie was close. He could feel it.

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