The Warden's Tower was more ruin than structure, a lighthouse that had forgotten its purpose. Its stone walls wept black moss, and the spiral staircase inside groaned with each step, protesting the weight of lived history. My Tactical Precognition mapped stress fractures in real-time: [STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 11%] [COLLAPSE RISK: MODERATE]. Perfect meeting place for a group of statistically improbable survivors.
Five people waited in the lantern-lit apex room. Four of them had overlays. The fifth was Gorum, which explained his perpetual grump—he was the native babysitter for River's Reach's resident isekai'd disaster magnets.
[SCANNING...]
[NAME: YULIA FROST-SPOKE]
[RACE: HUMAN (MUNDANE)]
[LEVEL: 8]
[UNIQUE SKILL: "FROSTBITE TOUCH"]
[FIRST IMPRESSION: HOSTILE]
She was blond, sharp-featured, and wore white leathers that seemed to radiate cold. Her overlay was ice-blue, matching the frost crystals forming on her gauntlets. When she looked at me, her eyes did a quick calculation—threat assessment. Her expression said I came up short.
[NAME: DREK IRON-GUT]
[RACE: DWARF (MUNDANE)]
[LEVEL: 9]
[UNIQUE SKILL: "UNBREAKABLE DIGESTION"]
[FIRST IMPRESSION: AMUSED]
He was short, stout, and eating what looked like a raw Gloomvermin leg. My overlay helpfully noted: [NUTRITIONAL VALUE: 40 CALORIES, 3g PROTEIN] [TOXICITY: MODERATE (NEUTRALIZED BY SKILL)]. He caught me staring and winked. "Tastes like chicken. If chicken was a demon."
[NAME: CALLUM VOICE-OF-ASH]
[RACE: ELF (MUNDANE)]
[LEVEL: 7]
[UNIQUE SKILL: "ECHOES OF THE DEAD"]
[FIRST IMPRESSION: NEUTRAL]
Elven, but not the ethereal kind. He was gaunt, with ash-grey skin and eyes that didn't track quite right. His overlay was muted, like a corrupted file. The skill name was ominous. Social Deduction gave me nothing—his emotional state was flatlined.
[NAME: KAEL]
[RACE: HUMAN (MUNDANE → ADAPTED)]
[LEVEL: 5]
[UNIQUE SKILL: "ABSOLUTE CALCULATION (LV3)"]
[FIRST IMPRESSION: THE NEW GUY]
Gorum cleared his throat. "This is the Reach's Worldlost contingent. You know them, they know you. Now that introductions are done—"
"Done?" Yulia's voice cut like a blade. "He killed a Demon-Bloom at Level 2. That makes him either a liar or a monster. Gorum doesn't let monsters live in his town."
My 1 Luck chose that moment to manifest. The floorboard I stood on, stressed by years of neglect and my sudden weight, snapped.
I fell six inches. My ankle twisted. [DEBUFF: MINOR SPRAIN (0.5s DURATION)] . But my Agility was 8 now, and my parallel analysis had already mapped the floor's weak points. I landed on the stable plank to my left, the motion smooth, deliberate—like I'd meant to step there.
"Or," I said, meeting her ice-blue gaze, "I'm just good at math."
Drek laughed, a booming sound that made the moss shake. "He's got balls, I'll give him that. My skill lets me eat poison. What's math do, calculate the best takeout?"
"It calculates how to turn your intestines into a bomb if you piss me off," I said flatly. The system helpfully displayed a 12-step process for intestinal rupture via pressure point manipulation. I didn't need to share it.
Callum spoke, his voice like paper crumpling. "Enough. Gorum, why are we here? The Bloom's dead. The River's clean again. For now."
Gorum's prosthetic whirred, a nervous tic. "The Bloom wasn't random. It was seeded."
The word landed like a grenade. My overlay exploded with definitions:
[SEEDED: DELIBERATELY PLANTED BY EXTERNAL AGENT]
[AGENT CLASSIFICATION: DEMONIC CULTIST (85%), RIVAL SETTLEMENT (12%), WILDCARD (3%)]
"Someone," Gorum continued, "put a Demon-Bloom spore three miles upstream. Someone who knew River's Reach had no Warden. Someone who wanted us gone."
Drek stopped chewing. Yulia's frost spread across the floor. Callum's eyes finally focused—on me.
"You think it was a Worldlost," I said. Not a question.
"Worldlost have Unique Skills," Gorum grunted. "Skills that don't follow local rules. Skills that could smuggle a spore past wards. Skills that—"
"Could turn a settlement into Essence," Yulia finished. Her voice was cold, but her overlay betrayed her: [EMOTIONAL STATE: FEAR (MASKED AS AGGRESSION)] . She'd seen this before.
A quest window materialized:
[QUEST OFFERED: THE SEEDING]
[OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY THE SABOTEUR]
[SUSPECT POOL: 4 (INCLUDING SELF)]
[REWARD: 5000 EXP, UNIQUE GEAR, RIVER'S REACH TRUST (COMPLETE)]
[FAILURE: SETTLEMENT DESTRUCTION, PARTY WIPE]
The saboteur was in this room. My parallel analysis kicked in, mapping every microexpression, every heartbeat, every statistical anomaly.
Drek: Heart rate 68 BPM, elevated cortisol, but that could be the Gloomvermin digesting. Probability: 22%.
Yulia: Subdermal frost formation, aggression baseline 40% above normal. Probability: 31%.
Callum: Flatlined vitals, no emotional leakage. Either a corpse or a master of control. Probability: 29%.
Gorum: 18%. Native. No Unique Skill. But prosthetic could hide a spore compartment.
That left ????%. Someone not in the room. Or someone with a skill that could fool my analysis.
"You're scanning us," Yulia said. Her frost coalesced into a dagger. "Rude."
"Necessary," I replied. My overlay showed her attack trajectory: a feint left, real strike right. 1.4 seconds to impact. "Your left shoulder is 0.3 millimeters higher than your right. old injury. You favor it in combat. You won't attack with it."
Her eyes widened. The dagger sublimated into vapor. "How—"
"Math." I turned to Gorum. "I need access to the spore site. The planting location will have residue. Residue has a signature. Signatures can be traced."
He nodded. "Drek's taking a salvage team upstream. You go with them. Observe. Calculate." He looked at the others. "And the rest of you—watch him. If he's the saboteur, you'll know. If he's not, he might save your asses."
[PARTY FORMED: DREK, MIRA (JOINING ON-SITE), KAEL]
[QUEST STATUS: ACTIVE]
[TRACKING: DEMON-BLOOM RESIDUE SIGNATURE]
Yulia stepped close, her breath freezing in the air between us. "If you're lying, I'll freeze your blood one drop at a time."
My overlay calculated her skill's temperature output: -40°C at touch range . She could do it.
But I had something she didn't: a system that had just seen a 0.4% probability anomaly in her threat pattern. She wasn't the saboteur. She was a distraction.
"Understood," I said. "But while you're watching me, watch Callum too. His heart hasn't beaten since I arrived."
Everyone turned. Callum's smile was slow, and it didn't reach his flat, dead eyes.
"Perceptive," he whispered. "The River chose well."
He vanished. Not metaphorically. One second he was there, the next—[ERR: TARGET NOT FOUND]. No teleportation graphic. No sound. Just... data deletion.
[ALERT: UNIQUE SKILL "ECHOES OF THE DEAD" ACTIVATED]
[EFFECT: TEMPORARY PHASING]
[DURATION: UNKNOWN]
Drek drew a warhammer I hadn't seen him carry. Yulia's frost spread across every surface. Gorum's prosthetic unfolded into a crossbow.
And me? I just stood there, my parallel analysis mapping 3,847 possible futures in the next three seconds.
In 3,124 of them, Callum reappeared and attacked.
In 723, he fled.
In 0, he explained himself.
"Worldlost meeting adjourned," I said quietly. "The real game just started."