The earth shook, and glass blew out of a dozen different buildings as the Rust-Belt Wyvern slammed into the ground. Unlike every other time, this impact felt…wrong. Its wings hit at awkward angles, and rivets and welds popped loudly; each wing had to weigh a hundred thousand pounds, and—

  “Do something, Hal!” Someone screamed across the battlefield.

  I looked. Tori stood next to a burning tree, skin blistered from the sheer heat. Her hands were stretched out, and exhaustion covered her face. The second I saw her, though, I understood.

  She’d done this.

  She’d bought me a moment to come up with a plan and execute it.

  My mind went into overdrive.

  Resources: One pretty much spent Telekineticist. One damaged mech—good for ranged, missing an arm for melee. The Voltsmith’s Grasp.

  Problem: One absolutely massive monster. It had to be the strongest thing in all of Chicago. And nothing I’d done so far had so much as scratched it.

  Solutions: I only had one.

  I broke out into a sprint. The mech’s legs pounded the ground as the Wyvern roared. Flames sparked in its throat, and I fired everything I had at it. Three reloaded rail gun bolts, two high explosive grenades. They all hit the back of the looming, cave-like mouth, and I threw the mech into a rolling leap, following my attack right down its throat.

  As the mech’s steel feet pounded against the mouth’s metal, a firestorm burst into existence around me. Wind rushed past the mech’s cockpit, and the temperature skyrocketed. I kept running, pushing further into the gigantic wyvern’s body until—just as I suspected—I ran into something that felt less like a throat and more like a hallway.

  I smiled savagely, kept running, and waited for the heat to die down.

  My plan had been more of a gamble than anything else—Bobby Richards would have been proud—but as I pushed past the flame nozzles and the temperature dropped, I started putting together the rest of it. The Wyvern couldn’t be alive. It just couldn’t be. And if it wasn’t, then it had been built, not bred. That meant that, somewhere in its internal structure, there were maintenance corridors. Hallways. Engine rooms. Wiring.

  Now that I was inside, the solution was obvious. I grabbed a Charge Converter from my inventory, cracked the cockpit, and slid out. Then I pressed it against the massive creation’s body, from the inside.

  I expected the field boss to react exactly how the Whole New World or the first floor of the Hand That Feeds had. A system message. Then, a few minutes later, the wyvern would fall apart.

  But that’s not what happened. Instead, the whole monster shook as its wings beat the ground, and a moment later, it was airborne—with me inside of it.

  Tori’s magic hadn’t held. But it had gotten me on board. Now, I just had to figure out how to bring the Rust-Belt Wyvern down from the inside.

  As I pushed into the flying monstrosity, I stopped thinking of it as a dragon. No, this was a dungeon. A very small dungeon, but all the same, a dungeon. I’d be on my own for this one, though, and that was new. I pulled up my stat block.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 86, Rank Two]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 46 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 52

  ?Charge - 3/150 (+15) (140 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.]

  [Class Skill - Core of Armor - Focus your Voltsmithing into stronger, more reactive defenses, including shields, barriers, and reinforced armor.]

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Voltsmith’s Mech Upgrade Zero (70/70 Charge)

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade Two (45/45 Charge) - Rail Gun Module

  ?Air-Charge Filter (10 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Winged Bowstring)

  Remote Voltsmithing

  ?The Explorer (5 Charge)

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ?Air-Charge Filter (10 Charge)

  When I was done with this, and I had the chance, I’d need to figure out how to build better defenses for the mech. It was strong, but it wasn’t the invincible tank Core of Armor promised it could be.

  But that would come later. For now, I had all the tools I needed. I just had to figure out where to apply them.

  The first place I applied my tools was just down the maintenance hall.

  Drake Guard: Level 85 Monster (Rank 2)

  The Drake Guard was thin and long, almost snake-like, but with four legs made of steel and rubber, and a pair of stubby wings. It looked almost like the monster I was, even now, fighting my way through. The tool of choice was the rail gun; I fired three shots, punching three holes through the Drake Guard, then slammed my mech’s intact fist into it. With one arm missing, my balance was definitely off; it didn’t matter. The Drake Guard was totally unprepared for my assault, and by the time I finished it off, a green experience orb was all that remained.

  Aside from my rail gun and fist, speed was my best tool. I had no idea whether the Drake Guard had a good self-defense system or whether it was just packed full of scrap monsters, but it was definitely flying somewhere.

  I couldn’t let it get where it was going—especially because I was pretty sure I knew its destination. The next pack of Drake Guards was just down the hall. There were two of them, along with a third monster that looked more like a spider than a dragon.

  The grenade launcher fired twice as the rail gun reloaded. I really did have all the tools I needed for this.

  As Hal threw himself into the Rust-Belt Wyvern’s mouth, Tori screamed something at him and broke into a sprint, trying to get there in time to help. A wall of fire erupted between the field boss and her, and she skidded to a stop in a low spot in the sidewalk, with two concrete retaining walls protecting her.

  She screamed again when the monster took off, then burst out laughing. Jessica-Mom would kill her if she knew what her stepdaughter was saying. Tori choked back the laughter for a moment; the gargantuan dragon was airborne, and she was low enough on energy that continuing to cast in the hopes of downing it permanently wasn’t going to be an option. All she could do was slow it down and hope for the best.

  And Tori wasn’t sure if that was the right call, either.

  Wherever the Wyvern was going, Hal was going there, too. Grounding it now could have some nasty consequences for him; it’d be like crashing a plane, but with the plane actively trying to kill him as it went down.

  No, shooting the dragon down was probably the wrong call, but she couldn’t let it just fly off to wherever it was going, either. And, worse, there were hurt people strewn all across Millennium Park. One of them, a woman Tori didn’t recognize, was Level Twenty-Eight. Her leg was broken in at least three places, but it was still attached.

  Attached was good. Jessica-Mom could fix 'attached.’ It’d take a while, and it’d hurt, but she could do it.

  Tori took a deep breath. Okay. Hal was in the monster. Jessica-Mom needed to get to Millennium Park. Calvin needed to rally Museumtown’s defenders to help Hal. Carol and Zane were those defenders. And Tori…

  Tori was very tired all of a sudden.

  She blinked back the exhaustion and started jogging southeast, toward Museumtown. Everyone was there. They’d be able to take over the difficult jobs, like helping people, killing the Rust-Belt Wyvern, and thinking.

  It took her a minute to notice the gigantic shadow falling across the ground as the Wyvern started flying southeast, along a very similar route to the one she was taking.

  “Shit,” she said.

  The moment Calvin saw the Rust-Belt Wyvern high above Chicago, he knew exactly what he was seeing.

  He hadn’t been on the receiving end of a bombing campaign before, but he’d seen the results in the jungles of Vietnam, fifty years or so back. That thing was going to beat the hell out of Museumtown if he didn’t come up with a solution.

  Fortunately, he had one. Or, more accurately, two.

  “Get me Pedro Guttierez and Tori Vanderbilt,” Calvin snapped at the closest people. “I need ‘em both, and I need ‘em near the observatory. We’re all set there, right?”

  “Yes. We’ll find ‘em and send ‘em your way,” the man and woman who’d attached themselves to him as his aides said, saluting. They left, and Calvin started jogging toward the artillery emplacement they’d created there. God, he hated being a general. It was worse than being a grunt.

  The artillery depot was both Calvin’s and, surprisingly, Pedro’s idea. After their not-quite-victory against the Fireborn Crusade in Whiting, Museumtown’s leaders had agreed that a major offensive war was out of the question. If they had to fight the Crusade again, it’d be at the walls of Museumtown itself. Calvin had thought long and hard about how to win a defensive war, and really, it all came down to being able to hit the enemy before they could hit you. Pedro and Tori were supposed to be the core of that defense.

  To his surprise, Pedro was already waiting by the artillery. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Calvin said, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’. Just didn’t expect you to follow the drills when shit got real.” Calvin pointed at the monstrosity in the air. It had landed a couple of times, and the last time, it looked like it had gotten dragged down over Millennium Park. Calvin really hoped that wasn’t the case; if it was, it’d mean Tori had gone AWOL, and this was a real bad time for that. He needed her here, on artillery duty.

  Then the Wyvern slowly flapped its massive steel wings and gained altitude again. It circled over and over. Then, ponderously, like a very large dragon made out of metal, it started aiming for Museumtown.

  “Hell of a time to go AWOL, Tori,” Calvin muttered as he broke into a jog yet again. “Pedro, if she shows up, get shooting!”

  “Where are you going?” Pedro yelled back.

  “To find someone else who can help. Carol or Zane. Bobby goddamn Richards. God. I don’t know.” Being a general was the worst.

  Even as he ran, he knew he was going to be too late.

  The Rust-Belt Wyvern started to dive, and Calvin watched as it plunged toward Museumtown. It was going to land, and if it did, even if Carol and Zane showed up, it’d do a ton of damage. Probably enough to put Museumtown’s chances of survival in serious doubt. The best play at that point would be to surrender to the Garden.

  Two thoughts popped into his head, one after another. First, that Calvin had no idea where Hal was. And second, that the Rust-Belt Wyrm was not, in fact, diving.

  It was falling.

  Fast.

  Right at the fortress blocking the entrance to the Reliquary of Bones.

  Calvin had just enough time to shout a warning, but not enough time to do anything, before it hit. Concrete, rebar, and plywood exploded outward as a bajillion tons of steel, fire, and hate slammed into the fortress, passed straight through it like it wasn’t even there, and slammed into the Field Museum’s facade. For an instant, Calvin thought the building might win the shoving match. Then shrapnel filled the air, chunks of marble as big as Jeeps raining down on Museumtown. The sound of the Rust-Belt Wyvern’s crash landing was only drowned out by a shrieking roar of agony that echoed back and forth as one of the massive pillars lining the museum’s entrance slammed through the monstrosity’s body and out the other side.

  Then the rest of the Field Museum collapsed as the gigantic field boss shimmered and faded away, burying itself in tons of marble, concrete, and priceless artifacts.

  Area Message: The [Rust-Belt Wyvern] has been defeated. All hail [Tori Vanderbilt] and [Hal Riley].

  God dammit. He was going to have to court-martial them for this.

  Or maybe give them a medal. God damn, he hated being a general.