"Why is there no loot?" I half cursed, half questioned the world itself.

  We had killed three abominations and found nothing but body parts and blood. They had nothing on them, no weapons and no magic items. Wanting to go through these corridors and kill crimes against clerkanity and we are not even getting paid. I want my loot. I want to get paid for indiscriminate murder. That is the adventure... I mean questing way.

  "This place is a lot sparser than expected, but at least we levelled up." Xyn tried to lift our spirits; she was, surprisingly, an optimistic person.

  I casually wondered what role she had in her previous party. Was she the group's forever optimist or the serious one? Given her potty mouth, I would have thought she would be a rogue like me. The personality, not the class.

  "Indeed, we haven't found a single trinket yet." Marius shook his head.

  I briefly considered handing over some of the stuff I had looted. But to be honest, they weren't anything special. Maybe a few, but I had planned to keep them for later experiments. Crafting my flavour of system artefacts was the next logical step.

  "Even I'm surprised; this place should be filled with treasures. Perhaps someone powerful cleared it ages ago." Rak said, caressing the wall with his claws.

  "Oh, now you tell us." Xyn spoke exasperated and glared at Rakshur.

  "Don't give me that look, half... I mean Xyn."

  "Xynthia," she declared coldly, "only Joey can call me Xyn."

  "I can?" I couldn't help but hope.

  "Don't push it, Joe." She sent a glare that said more than words.

  I didn't flinch. I played it super cool, like Jin Woo. Totally cool and chill, turning to Jer with a goofy-ass grin, unable to keep myself in check. "She called me Joe." I whispered to the talking cat.

  "Good for you; she is BFF material."

  "You think?" I said a bit too loud.

  "Totally, dude." He spoke, and I believed him even though that malicious grin suggested filthy lies.

  "Why am I the only one who can't call you Xyn?" Rak questioned, a little perplexed and perhaps affronted.

  "Because they..." she pointed to us, "didn't try to kill me the first time we met."

  He sniffed loudly, grumbling to himself. I swear I could hear him justifying his actions. I mean, in his defence, he was practically a gladiatorial slave. So obeying was kind of in the job description, if you can call forced labour a job. Really hard to justify slavery in any context, but im sure there are rulers who have certainly tried. Thinking back to the dark elves of Vel-Krazin and their slave system. Now that is what you call warped justification.

  "Fine, Xynthia." He said in a very sarcastic tone, quite surprising actually.

  "Okay, dudes, we need to chill."

  "You keep saying that! I am not going to chill." Rak declared rather harshly.

  "Alright, no chilling, but at least stop bickering; we have loot to find."

  "What loot?! There isn't any loot here." Xyn gestured to the rather sparse room.

  She was right; this place was filled with abominations, crimes against everything that was right and holy. But the worst crime was no treasure, no loot for us to procure as a reward for all the killing we were doing. I mean, it's a basic rule for video games, and this was a game world. Shaking my head at that, I had to retract that thought. Dungeons worked like that, not some temple built by crazy cross-breeding vampires.

  "There is always loot; we just need to find..." I cut myself off, realising there was something in that statement, something I was sorely missing.

  "What is it?" Xyn looked at me, her brows furrowed.

  " I think I have an idea."

  "What?" Rak asked.

  "I have a skill; it's a sense-type skill. I mostly use it to sense enemies. But theoretically I can use it to sense artefacts..." I started listing off, "weapons, magic items, pretty much anything really."

  "And why didn't you use this before?" Xyn questioned, she looked a little peeved.

  Raising my hands in surrender, I gave her my best innocent face. "I didn't think of using it this way, just came up with the idea."

  "Fine, do your thing." She retracted her glare.

  Nodding vigorously, I moved a few steps away from the group. Eyes forward, locked onto the far-off turn down the corridor, I tried to expand my senses. Easier said than done, while I had a decent handle on my new system sense, expanding it was tricky without dumping a bunch of system energy into it or manufacturing a skill to do it. The easiest method would be to request Jenny to spend her precious resources on a full-spectrum scan. Really didn't want to do that for something unimportant.

  So instead I stood still, trying to become one with the universe, attain enlightenment and inner peace. Honestly, I would try everything to get this to work. Okay, let's assess; my senses are working. Big blob of system energy to my left, probably Xyn, weird wavy blob to the right, definitely Marius. The vacuum just behind me was probably Rak, and I can't even locate Jeremy. Concentrating harder, I tried to locate anything else in the vicinity. Scrunching my face in intense concentration, I mean I was going to town on that whole thinking harder stuff. After scrunching my face for ten minutes, I came up with nothing; the place was covered in system energy, making it nearly impossible to filter it all out unless I was super close.

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  "What's he doing?" The baritone voice of Rak assaulted my ears.

  "Shut up." Xyn came in for the save.

  Slowly, I was feeling self-conscious standing here, failing. It was not a good feeling, especially since I barely knew these people. A certain crazy ex-soldier once said. I can feel their eyes on me, wet like peaches. Regardless, it helped spur me on. A thought occurred. Instead of expanding my senses, I could send a pulse or a ping. But how to do that?

  Trying a few ideas, one of them was to piggyback on Jenny's signal. Instead of using her power, I could plug my energy directly in. Thankfully, she was cool with the prototype, and we were ready to go. Later, I would need to turn this into an actual skill. But for now, we needed to test it. With a thought, I let loose a single pulse. A wave of system energy spread out in a wave, reflecting off anything with a similar signature. Filtering it became a chore, but Jenny came in with the save. Opening my eyes, I grinned in triumph.

  "Well?" Xyn spoke eagerly.

  "Over there," I pointed northwest, "I can sense something in that direction."

  "Are you sure?" Marius asked.

  "I am super sure, my dudes, there is something that way." I spoke with confidence, and soon we were away.

  Down a corridor, passed several empty decrepit rooms that seemed like cells for test subjects. The busted-open doors, claw marks all over the walls and dried blood attested to that. However, this was merely a sideshow as we took a left and then another left. As we sped along, we heard distance voices and the telltale clash of steel.

  It didn't take long for us to reach the room, only to find the fighting had ceased. What we found where five figures crowding around a mass of blood and guts. Each of them where tearing chunks of gore and shovelling them into their blood-soaked mouths. Crunching bone without a care in the world. They don't even bother picking the offending objects out of their teeth.

  In a moment I assessed each of them. The inspection skill only labelled them as abominations. Did this mean they didn't have names? Was their species or race never logged into the system? Regardless, I could identify them at a glance; they were very similar to the previous creatures. Humanoid but with a little more variation in form, some were slimmer, taller and others were large and bulky.

  One of them turned to us, face caked in blood and stuff that would make a man with a weak stomach hurl. It was the taller one, with crazy long arms and legs, which were not clerkanoid at all. Is he wearing a pair of daggers? He was, he had a pair of system-integrated weapons haphazardly tied to his midsection. They glowed with the power of the system, and I knew precisely what drew us here.

  "Cannibals?" The words escaped my lips before I could stop.

  And they did exactly what I expected a bunch of crazed abominations would do after meeting a group of walking happymeals. They drew steel, claw and that dude had a mace before screeching at the top of their lungs. Then the charge came; they had gone into a frenzy, leaving their meal to rot. And in that moment I had only one impulse... to make them go away.

  With a rather foolish draw upon my stamina and a slight drain on my system energy, I pulled back my shoulders and thrust forward with all my might. The force that erupted from my fingertips was enough to shatter stone, of that I was sure. Propelling across the modest distance, it collided with my enemies with thunderous power. I couldn't handle more. I felt the backlash as I sent them flying, breaking their bones and bending their limbs.

  The attack practically floored me, draining my stamina until it was nothing. The sudden influx of experience points did help, seems I killed a few of them with one strike. I felt exhausted, bone-weary from launching that intense blast. It was instinct, fear perhaps? Or I was just high on my new power. I'm pretty sure my resilience attribute and its recent upgrades are the only reason I am standing.

  "Did you just blow your load at the start?" Xyn came up beside me, looking down from high above.

  "I can go again... just need to catch my breath." He wheezed and huffed, trying to keep himself standing.

  "I've heard that before." She chuckled, eyes locked on the slowly rising enemies.

  Her sword was at the ready, eyes glistening. I followed her gaze to the tall one. It rose to face us, withdrawing both daggers and licking the blades. Xyn didn't even flinch; she grinned like a sadist ready to carve someone up.

  "Oh, those are mine." She eyes the glistening blades with the glee of a gamer high on loot lust.

  Rak brushed by, and his eyes swam with the same intensity. The glowing steel plate armour, which was one size too big, barely fit the abomination, and that made no sense. They should resize to fit the wearer.

  "That armour is mine!" he growled, his weapon raised and aimed.

  "Leave... some... for me." I gasped.

  "Loot rules; get the kill, get the stuff." She rattled off her words like sage wisdom.

  "Just need a second..." I took a rapid inhale of breath before calming.

  By the time I could move again, the battle was in full swing. I thought of jumping into the fray, but decided I needed to hang back a bit. Chilling beside Marius as he directed his ghostly servant to hack its way into an abomination's chest cavity, I wondered how I could help everyone.

  Ultimately, I simply covered the field with distractions. The creepy-looking Slenderman, I covered his vision with a One Piece wallpaper, Luffy running in the centre, surrounded by an entire host of characters packed in like sardines. Then came the theme song, blasted at full volume, telling everyone aboard that ship never to give up. I probably looked weird as I stood back, nodding my head to the beat. My music is at a reasonable volume, and Slenderman's is on max.

  I could see the moment Xyn realised her opponent was distracted as she swiped one blade out of his hand and jammed it into his throat. Pretty cool technique as she leapt into the air and stabbed that blade into his neck. Then, in typical ghost-girl fashion, she went intangible as Slenderman's wide swipe came from the side, hitting nothing but air. And my attention wasn't just on Xyn; I turned to aid the little ghost summon, who was futile hacking away at a beefy-looking crime against nature. As a gift, I showed that creature a full portrait of Jin Woo, aura farming his way to godhood. The one where he is in the suit and his eye is flaming blue.

  Kind of liking this support role, I even aided Rak. The crazy gargoyle was taking on two enemies. One was a pincushion, bleeding profusely but still alive. That was until a bolt went through his eye and killed him on the spot. Then the other one came down upon Rak like a steam-powered locomotive and slammed into the distracted gargoyle man. Instead of turning him into paste, he met extreme resistance. Rak turned himself to stone, and the abomination practically bounced off him.

  "They don't need me, do they?" I muttered before sending off a few more distracting prompts.

  "I don't know how you do that, but whatever you're doing helps immensely." Marius came in with positivity, even ramped down the theatrical.

  "Thank's M, you are such a cool dude..." I glanced to the side and found his ghostly servant being beaten back.

  Checking my stamina, I could spare a few and so curled a fist into a gun and fired off a basic force strike. My hand was numb after the attack, but it got its point across... yeah, right through his skull. Looking down at the edge of my finger, I seriously considered switching to a Wild West persona. Maybe I could make some six-shooters and have them fire off force bullets? So in that spirit, I played the song Wild Wild West by Will Smith. Been years since I watched that old movie, back when the Earthers made soundtracks for action flicks.

  "Desperado..." I muttered the lyrics, blasting off a few small bolts before my hand started to really hurt.

  It took a good ten minutes before we were all ragged, and they were all dead. Marius ghost-hacked his opponent to death even after I shot the bugger. Rak turned to stone, blocked a rampaging attack, tripped the distracted abomination and then brought his stone fist down onto the creature's head. And just like that, it was done.

  "Looting time..." Xyn grinned with glee, face covered in blood.

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