Nestra had to admit, she was impressed. The hab housed an actual meat vat farm with slabs of cloned meat bobbing peacefully in nutrient juices. Helpers moved around the vats, checking indicators and adding powders to the mix. Much of the supplies were piled haphazardly across the room in piles. There was even mold in the corner. To Nestra’s left, an open door led to some sort of biomass recycling thing if the acidic stench of rot wafting from there was any indication. What didn’t look stolen had to be counterfeited and yet Nestra knew with absolute certainty that they still made it work. Mostly because of the skewers she’d had. “Welcome, welcome esteemed customers,” an old lady with a turban and a dark gaze said. Shinoda greeted the lady with respect, which she returned. The file said she was Miss Yadar, no known first name, and probably the hab block’s richest denizen. The two discussed matters in a low voice while Nestra did her best not to scrunch her nose at the aggressive scents attacking her senses. Eventually, they left, though not before exchanging numbers so Nestra hoped this meant Yadar was taking them as serious potential partners. That or the lady wanted to bang Shinoda. She couldn’t be sure. Seduction plays were hard to read for her, especially when they weren’t aimed at her. In any case, they got to visit the hab block’s upper floors. It was simply incredible what humanity could achieve with a complete disregard of work safety, intellectual property rights, worker rights, and taxation. Truly inspirational. There were fabricators spitting jailbroken or custom made appliances to be used all around Fifteen! Rice cookers and mixers at prices that defied common sense were piled in thin metal boxes, ready to be sent down the stained elevators. At least, this specific part was healthy. “No drug labs,” Nestra observed. Shinoda agreed in silence. There didn’t seem to be many addicts either. It looked like they’d drawn the jackpot for assignments. So, that was nice. And just world, sometimes, the life was intelligent. Maybe some aliens out there were chucking poison darts at magically cloned retail workers in some fried chicken franchise. Nestra imagined the enraged copies tossing boiling oil at the invaders from behind the fry stand. Glorious. May they spread the fear of mankind to all those species. Nestra checked her hand for dust. So, apparently, she still felt somewhat human. Or at least on the human side. Even though she wasn’t one. That was… weird? Or was it? She really needed to get the benefactor to talk to her soonish. In any case, she was in a copy of a base inhabited by intelligent life. Intelligent enough to write directions. It was unfortunate she had to kill them but the truth was that portal creatures were irredeemably aggressive. Nestra knew there had been attempts to communicate with them, even including drugs and some ethically questionable and extremely rare gleam powers that made people more… amenable. All those efforts had failed. Now, capturing intelligent creatures was prohibited in Threshold for ethical reasons, which really went to show the unspeakable things humans had done for vengeance or for fun. And that was just here in one of the bastions of civility. In some places like the Nairobi enclave, killing captive intelligent species was a spectator sport because they tended to be… entertainingly resourceful. “Right. Enough of this.” Nestra was on a timer. The portals were growing increasingly complex which meant they took an increasingly longer time to clear. Maybe soon, they would start eating into her sleep time. Or her snack time. Awful. Better get on the way. The portal world was clearly underground, in a complex of dark red, pitted bricks with spaced stones emitting a dull red light. The walls were rather high and the corridors were large enough for her to wield her sword comfortably. The directions on the wall pointed towards several corners. Besides them, there was nothing differentiating one path from the next and the place had obviously been designed to be confusing to navigate, with no corridor being straight for longer than twenty paces. Of course, that didn’t mean anything for Nestra since she had a visor with her. The onboard software would create a map as she progressed. Carefully, Nestra moved out. Corridors only led to more corridors and, sometimes, dead ends. She decided to record the directions on the wall and just follow one for a while. As she glanced past an intersection, she heard a dull explosion. The ground shook once under her feet while dust fell from the ceiling. This was… a bunker? Interesting. A memory brushed her mind, from an eternity ago. A lesson from her father about the rare worlds and what could be found there. Hmmm. Red stone. Bunkers. Explosions. Could it be… the Infinite War? No, that would be too perfect. After one more turn, Nestra finally found her first opponents. The corridor turned right towards a large gate guarded by two bipedal creatures wearing a full body suit of dark material, possibly leather. Cumbersome masks with four bulbous glasses for — she presumed — the eyes, covered all their features. They were stout and almost round, slightly shorter than human, and wielded pneumatic rifles with a bayonet fixed under the barrel. It was the Infinite War! Amazing! Staying low to the ground, she walked out, sticking to the deeper shadows between the light stones. She was only a few steps away when the closest creature let out a grunt of surprise. She used momentum to move forward. The creatures were so surprised they fumbled their weapons. Her first cut decapitated the right one, then she thrusted her blade into the chest of the second. It dropped its weapon but didn’t die immediately. A coup-de-grace silenced it. A rush of power filled her. It spoke of increased resilience, of the ability to endure. Well, not resilient enough to stop her anyway. A quick search revealed nothing specific. The creatures were fleshy but shared more in common with worms than mammals that she could tell. They were just weird. They didn’t really wear armor but their uniforms were naturally protective. A quick shot with one of the pneumatic rifles sent a cone of steel lodging itself into the wall, not very deep but deep enough to hurt her. They did feel difficult to handle though, despite the lack of recoil. So it really was Infinite War. A rare world, Infinite War provided a bleak outlook of what positional battle could become if left to fester for too long. The creatures living there had dug themselves to standstill, with an unknown number of sides involved, all gathering a collection of creatures. The place wasn’t well researched since it was so rare anyway, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the buffet of power provided to her. More diversity of prey meant more power ups since she had diminishing returns on creatures she’d hunted before. Giddy, Nestra found a key to the gate and opened it. Inside, she found… an armory. Not a very big one though. Much like the rest of the complex, the armory was bare-walled and devoid of any decoration. Crates and shelves lined the space in neat, well-organized stacks. There were cone ammo dumps, rifles, side arms that looked like extinguishers with handles, sabers, bayonets, helmets of various sizes, muzzles, and one thing that looked a bit like a flamethrower. That was the issue with many of the portal worlds, at least at her rank. What the natives were using was systematically inferior to human stuff. Ah, whatever. Going out, she selected another directional keyword and kept walking. Less than two corridors later, a noise alerted her. There was a patrol nearby. It consisted of three of the footmen she’d already killed along with a pair of hound things but white and misshapen, and a strange creature that looked like a jellyfish planted on a gorilla’s body as its head. All of them were short and strong. Even though she was in the shadows, the jellyfish turned directly to her. Nestra realized that the entire appendage was covered in eyes. It was absolutely disgusting. The creature screeched and Nestra charged forward. Momentum brought her among the group. The Scornful Crescent guided her steps when she pushed aside the barrels, when she slew the first two guards. A hound jumped and she stepped back, killing it mid-air. The other stumbled on its slain brethren and Nestra struck true. The last guard missed her with a rifle shot but she still rushed back when the jellyfish lit up like a Christmas tree. An azure shockwave spread through the corridor, banishing the darkness with a fizzle of spent electricity. Nestra was back in again before the rifleman finished reloading. She killed both. The jellyfish’s head was super mushy. It pretty much exploded when she sliced it. Power seeped into Nestra’s essence. Resilience from the guards, awareness from the hound, but from the jellyfish came something new. She felt a font awaken in her, pulsing in rhythm with her breath. It was the last piece of the puzzle, the last element of a core: fast mana generation. It was what allowed casting users to stay in the fight even after they’d depleted their reserves.