I sipped at my cup of coffee and knocked on the door to room 3-13 at the Aqua Motel. Weird place. Had a bunch of fish tanks everywhere, and seemed to go for an ocean theme. There was also a strange salty scent to the air as if we were near the ocean, but Aegis was on the complete other side of Bastion from Drifton.

  I checked my equipment, idly tapping the pommel of an Ebonshroud longsword dangling from my hip. I went ahead and made it on my way over here, as well as a sheath and belt to hold it.

  The door opened, revealing a child in all black. Unlike my classic style of jeans and a hoodie, the kid looked like a little edgelord. A demon half mask, dyed black hair, black sclera and what looked like some kind of eyeliner chrome pulled the look together.

  ”Come in.” His voice was deep, though a forced deep as if puberty hadn’t quite struck and he was trying to sound much older.

  I hesitantly followed behind him, spotting the third of our fireteam sitting on one of the beds. She flicked through a page on her book, fully entranced by it. She didn’t even notice us for several long moments.

  The woman blew a bubble of gum and idly glanced up toward us. She was sprawled back, completely relaxed with her legs kicking idly. “Oh, hey.”

  ”…” I nodded to her and leaned against the wall, sipping at my coffee. The kid moved past me and sat on the other bed.

  For a long moment, there was silence. Well, mostly silence. My sips and the woman’s pages flipping were the only noise. I just wasn’t much of a talker, the kid was too busy being ‘dark and brooding’ to speak, and the woman was too focused on her book to care much about what was going on.

  After a while, the edgelord broke first. “I’m Damion, the Demon King of Frescha. Field Striker. Mage.”

  Demon King… Pursius really knew how to find them. Frescha though? Was that another world? Was he an Outworlder? Maybe he wasn’t as young as he looked then? There was a chance he was actually centuries old and yet regressed to the body of a child. That… or… well, kids wanting to be Demon Kings and Heroes wasn’t exactly rare.

  ”Oh? Introductions?” The woman put a bookmark in her book and sat up… before immediately slumping over once her bubble popped. “Burst. Control Anchor. Can do the role of an Assault Striker too.”

  Anchor, Striker, Vanguard, the three ‘roles’ of a raid fireteam. They’d come up quite a bit in my research into Wardens and rifts. A strong fireteam had all three. Of course, there was quite a bit of overlap, but the three roles were generally used to get a quick understanding of each person’s roles and responsibilities. It was handy in situations where there wasn’t a lot of time, such as just before a rift raid.

  Anchors were the backline. They were usually focused on keeping the battlefield either stable or in the fire team's favor. They were the strategists carefully watching the battlefield for any disruptors—if they weren’t the ones disrupting the enemy themselves. That’d be Burst’s role.

  Strikers? They were the heavy hitters of the fireteam. Field Strikers like Damion were generally geared toward large AOE strikes to take care of multiple enemies at once. They were the heavy artillery that ended fights, sometimes before they could even start.

  Finally, Vanguard. It was my role for now. They were the frontline fighters, protecting the team and getting in the face of enemies. The Vanguard led the way like a heavy tank that blitzed through enemy lines to open up the path. Likewise, they were generally in charge of keeping in between enemies and the rest of the fireteam.

  I nodded my head. “Nyx. Vanguard.”

  They were not what I expected when Pursius told me I’d be running with more Anarchs… though, knowing the cat? I should’ve seen this coming. Hmm… or maybe I was just unlucky and hadn’t run across true Anarchs yet? A little edgelord and a bookie who didn’t seem to care weren’t exactly the ideal images of Anarchs I had in the back of my mind. I thought they’d be a little more… unhinged?

  Burst motioned to a TV on the other side of the room and pulled out a Glass. After a moment, a map popped up on the screen. One building in particular was highlighted, just down the street from here—the Aux Hotel. “Here’s our target. Already paid off the guards. Just need to head down and go in soon.”

  ”…?” I tilted my head and nodded to the map.

  Burst frowned for a moment before realizing what I wanted. ”Oh, it’s a dummy building. A hollow facade covering up the rift we’re headed for.”

  “…!” Cool. I lifted my cup to drink—empty. Ugh- I should’ve bought another on the way here.

  Damion stood up, his long cloak fluttering in the wind… wind that he definitely conjured up as a mage. We were inside. “This is the Archaic Battlefield, a rift filled with scavengers and wild animals.”

  Burst shifted to a map of the rift. ”Damion here is after a specific Skill he claimed could be earned from the Archaic Battlefield-“

  Damion’s flushed face seemed to glow over the half mask. See? This is why full masks were superior. ”Not just a claim! My all-seeing evil-eye pointed this place out to me. Just have faith! I’m not the Demon King for no reason.”

  “Yeah, yeah… so you keep saying.” Burst shot him a look, her loose braid swaying behind her head as if in disappointment. “Anyway, since we’re here for him, Damion is forgoing any earnings. It’ll be a fifty-fifty split between me and you.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Nice. D-rank rifts had a much higher earning potential then F-rank. Could probably walk out with fifteen thousand Nytes, at least? That’d pay off a fifth of my most recently incurred debt.

  ”You can frontline, right?” Burst glanced away and rubbing at the back of her head. “I mean, that cat knows what he’s doing, but still… our last third was severely injured because they ‘could’.”

  ”Strong.” I threw a faux punch into the air. It probably wouldn’t be a problem?

  A D-rank rift would be a step up from the workshop. F-rank, or Feeble, monsters were weak enough a well armed civy could take care of it. D, or Disruptive, were a bit stronger, needing either an equivalent awakener or a well-trained and armed squad of mundanes.

  C, or Crushing, was where the danger levels really started to spike. Elite fighting forces would need to be called in to suppress it, and even then… Well, there was a reason Wardens were so important. A C-rank Warden was equivalent to a whole elite fighting force. Of course, that was all in theory. All sorts of variables could effect a fight.

  I might be able to take on an elite fighting force, but I was unsure. Bastion had a lot of weird tech and magic. And it’d depend on a lot of factors. For now? High D, maybe low C wouldn’t be an issue? Especially once I started to get some more Skills and equipment.

  “If you say so…” Burst grabbed her book and stood up, flipping it open. She walked toward the door, glancing back toward us. “We’re ready then?”

  Damion scampered to the door, opening it wide for Burst and I to step through. His eyes crinkled into a smile, the eyeliner really making them pop. “Let it never be said that the Demon King wasn’t a gentleman.”

  “Demon. King?” I finally couldn’t hold back my curiosity.

  ”Indeed…” His voice shifted to a higher-pitch. “Well, technically? I’m a returnee. But I was the Demon King of Frescha.”

  Burst chuckled and led the way down the stairs, still fully entranced by her book. She showed off remarkable multitasking in reading, talking, and going down a set of stairs. “Don’t let him fool you. He barely did anything before Frescha was destroyed and he was dumped back here like trash.”

  ”Returnee?” That was a new term to me. Bastion had all sorts of interesting words and ideas.

  “I was stolen away by a rift and thrown into Frescha for decades. Once that world ended, though, I came back here.” He dipped into a bow. “Returnee.”

  Oh. Wild. Was that why he was an Anarch? Or was he an Anarch because he was supposedly the Demon King? And how did he even become the Demon King in the first place? Was that, like, a job title? Or was he an evil, wicked being?

  Damion skipped down the stairs onto the city streets, taking the lead from Burst. The woman shot him a look and slowed down to walk alongside me. Our trio casually walked toward the Aux Hotel, just more faces in the crowd.

  Damion opened the door for us once more, letting us into the Aux Hotel’s lobby. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a real hotel lobby. A heavily guarded lobby, but still just a lobby. Combat drones hovered along the sides of the room, staring out with gleaming red eyes. Cameras watched over the space by the dozens, giving a feeling that something here was just a little off.

  Neither Damion nor Burst seemed intimidated by the drones and moved for the front desk. The guard manning it looked up, hit a switch on the table, and headed to the back room without saying anything. The drones went completely idle, leaving us standing in the silent lobby.

  Burst groaned and snapped her book closed. “Ugh! Damn it! I was so close… what happens next?”

  Damion just sighed and shook his head, muttering under his breath. “And you say I have issues…”

  ”I heard that! See if I help you again after this.” Burst blew a bubble and slid her book into her bag. “Anyway, we’re here now. Should be just through the door.”

  Damion shrugged and moved to a door leading out of the lobby, opening it for the two of us. His artificially deepened voice cracked. He spent decades in Frescha, right? Did that mean double puberty? How awful. “After you, lAdies.”

  I stepped out of the lobby- and yeah, it was definitely a dummy building. Just past the lobby, a massive space opened up. There wasn’t even a roof on this thing, just an area slightly reminiscent of a graveyard. Only, instead of graves, spectral looking blades were stabbed into the ground.

  The ground itself was dark, stained black by ancient blood. Bones peeked up through the soil, as did the shattered helms of fallen soldiers. All of them spectral, of course. They gave off a faint glow, though the glow was overpowered by high-power spotlights shining on every part of the space.

  In the center of the area, two cracked pillars stood tall. A rectangular rift stretched between them. The edges of the rift looked like they were fracturing space itself. They tore and pulled at the edges of reality unnaturally.

  “There it is. The Archaic Battlefield…” Damion kicked at one of the spectral swords, his foot passing right through it. “Hmm… the Veil is a bit thicker then last time.”

  Veil was a phenomenon that happened when a rift settled in a place for a long time. It slowly over rode the surrounding area, making the outside look like the inside. Also a new term that I recently found while doing research.

  “Not what we’re here for, oh great Demon King.” Burst stepped past him toward the rift, wasting no time. “C’mon. The quicker we’re done here, the quicker I can get back to my book.”

  ”Yeah, yeah.” Damion shook his head and followed right after her, stepping through the rift. In a mere moment, they both vanished.

  I hesitated a moment, feeling the unsettling sensation of the rift against my skin. I cast a look around the dummy building one last time before stepping into the Archaic Battlefield.

  — — —

  The twisting sensation of traveling through a rift hit me, causing me to stumble slightly. I steadied myselfwith a breath. The scents of rust, blood, and battle immediately slammed me in the face. It was a familiar combination—comfortable, almost. Reminded me of home. If there was just a touch of Decay…

  A dark fog covered the Archaic Battlefield, making shapes blur together. It was night here, just as it was in Bastion. Synchronized time, maybe? Or was it always dark here? Regardless, there was no moon. The night sky stretched ever on in the darkness.

  The dark wasn’t all that much of an issue for me. Burst’s eyes whirled to life, dropping the flesh facade. She cast a vigilant look around the area. Probably some kind of dark-vision chrome? Damion simply used some kind of magic. Or maybe it was a Skill? Either way, his eyes started glowing red.

  The surroundings looked a lot like the outside. Weapons were stabbed into the ground all over, and rusted armor lay scattered and abandoned. The ground here was even darker than back in Bastion, seemingly steeped in the blood of countless battles. It was like a festering mass that life barely clung to.

  “We’re in.” Damion had his cloak pulled even tighter around himself and stood in a ‘cool’ pose. Wind buffeted him, though I was completely unaffected just a few steps away.

  I took another breath of the comforting air and drew an Ebonshroud dagger from my hoodie pocket, twirling it around my finger. I casually leaned against a spear stabbed deep into the earth, striking a much cooler pose. See? This was how you did it, kid.

  Beside me, Burst drew a rifle of some kind. It had a vat of water strapped to the top instead of normal magazine. Oh, and it was bright pink like some kind of toy water-gun. She didn’t even try for a pose as she looked out onto the Archaic Battlefield.

  Burst blew a bubble of gum, popping it when it got too large. The sharp pop of the bubble seemed to echo across the quiet space. “Then let's get going, shall we?”