I'd wandered around for an hour after the nuclear (magic?) event. I was in a fugue state over the death of my cousin and possibly my daughter. I had no idea if I was once more exposed to lethal amounts of radiation or whether the mushroom cloud was just a result of a sufficiently large explosion.

  At least my Mark of the Champions still worked. Both functioned perfectly but could give me no updates to the status of the other members of my team.

  Rachel [???]

  Jon [???]

  Susanos [???]

  Rewards

  80,000 EXP [Defeat Avatar]

  17,500 EXP (Sabotage UMCs]

  Level 17 to 18

  2,000,000/3,000,000

  I only cared about two of the names. Unfortunately, it was the reward for "killing" Veles that disturbed me most. For all the fact that Susanos had prevented him from teleporting away and blowing up an entire field of magical towers in his face, it didn't say that he'd been killed, only defeated. Worse, 80,000 EXP wasn't nearly enough to justify him being finally defeated forever.

  Veles was alive.

  I could feel it

  But what was going on? When even your magical bracelets couldn't tell you what the hell was going on, you didn't have much options. I didn't resist when a pair of FBI agents (I think) grabbed me and dragged me off to the black site.

  Which I was now fleeing through.

  "Okay, that was awesome," Jon said, jogging ahead of me. "I mean, terrifying but awesome. If Michael Bay was directing us, we totally would have had that as the big finale. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence could play us in some race blind casting. Obviously, I'm Will Smith. Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do--"

  "My cousin died, Jon," I said, not exactly in the mood to make cracks at this time.

  "With all due respect to your grief and longstanding personal relationship with the man, Alek was sort of an enormous asshole who killed a lot of innocent people," Jon said, looking uncomfortable. "Including Ania and Agata's aunt. Okay, innocent-ish."

  I didn't really have a defense for that. "Be that as it may--"

  "I'm just maybe we should file him under the Thistle and Nightchild portion of our allies list. I.e. the people only Aaron and the immediate family will mourn. You, because you're Ranger Jesus, which is distinct from Marvel Jesus who is Deadpool. Did you know they rebooted the Marvel Cinematic Universe while we were away? Henry Cavill is now Captain America."

  "Jon..."

  "I mean, I'm going to show all the respect to your parents and sister about Alek's death. Don't get me wrong. I like them, especially your sister? Speaking of which, were Alek and she fucking? I just want to be 100% sure because your family has strong Targaryen vibes. What with the divine blood and all."

  "Jon!" I inserted. "Why is this place empty? Please answer that so we can change the subject, and I don't have to beat the shit out of you. Because, right now, I'm ready to."

  I was referring to the fact the black site I'd been dumped at was almost completely abandoned. Every workstation we passed had signs of people working there from half-eaten salads to coffee but no actual people. The massive numbers of guards and secret agents I'd expected, though, were missing. We'd encountered a few wights but the one janitor we'd come across took one look at us and ran like hell.

  "Still waters before a storm, gotcha," Jon said, sighing. "My bad. I'm trying to cope with this myself."

  That was about as honest as I was ever going to get from Jon in all likelihood. "Yeah, well, I am sorry about your, uh, undead dommy mommy."

  "Oh, I don't mind that!" Jon said, giving a dismissive wave. "She was mind-controlling me the whole time! It was purely metaphysical. Also, physical."

  "Which I suppose distracts from the fact you were fucking a corpse," I replied.

  "Says the guy who banged multiple vampires," Jon said.

  "Who were in fact still moist and bouncy," I replied. "Whereas the other is just mind control and illusion."

  "Does that matter?" Jon said. "Are there tiers to the desirability of the undead?"

  "I think so, yeah," I said, glad to get back into the pattern of snarking at one another. "Where are we headed."

  I almost stopped dead in my tracks when we passed the cafeteria, and I saw it was full of wights. Mindless, horrifying, and fresh ones pounding at the door that had been chained up. It was a scene straight from Dawn of the Dead as there were hundreds of individuals inside. They were also wearing lanyards, suits, doctor's outfits, and military attire. So, yeah, I now had a pretty good idea as to what happened to the staff at the black site.

  Jon didn't stop.

  So, neither did I.

  "Have I missed something?" I asked.

  "Sort of, yeah," Jon said. "Not the complete fall of civilization but certainly something that is probably going to preempt the Game of Thrones revival as well as all other television for the next few months."

  "They revived Game of Thrones?" I asked. "As what?"

  Jon didn't get a chance to answer that question, though, because the two of us burst through a door to the parking lot. I immediately heard gunfire and saw that Rachel was standing there, scars on her face, and in a pair of blue jeans with a tank top. She was shooting at several wights and had already put down three.

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  "Ah, crap," Jon said, pulling out two pistols and throwing himself to the side as everything slowed down around us. Jon proceeded to double tap each zombie in the head before time resumed and he slammed against the concrete walkway down from the door entrance. Veles might be evil but at least his facilities were handicap accessible.

  "When the hell did you get bullet time powers?" I asked, looking at Jon.

  "Apparently, that's just a thing I can do as an 18th level Warrior [Monk]," Jon said. "I mean, it turns out there's a huge number of abilities I never got to use because I was too focused on Pwiffle. Oh, btw, Pwiffle is a massive esport now. Not just in Korea. They television matches and everything these days."

  "Uh huh," I said, jumping over Jon's fallen form and heading to Rachel's side.

  I gave my erstwhile daughter a big hug. "I am so glad you're alive."

  "Enough to let me give you a BJ?" Rachel asked.

  I pulled back and lifted my arms. "And you've ruined it. Forever."

  "I'm kidding," Rachel said. "Unless you say yes."

  "She's kidding," Jon said. "We're dating now!"

  I stared between them. "What the hell is wrong with both of you? Also, when the hell did this happen?"

  "About a year ago," Jon said. "We were working on ways to break it to you."

  "Also, it was good for coordinating mind games upon you," Rachel said.

  I stared between them. "I am so happy to see you both, I am going to ignore that is fucking evil. How are you alive?"

  "I keep two teleportation spells on me," Rachel said, simply. "Getting you away was the priority and trying to keep Veles imprisoned at the tower site long enough for his avatar to be destroyed was the second. I took Jon away at the last second."

  "Like, literally, the last second," Jon said, pausing. "Which is not a good thing to do if you don't want to give a dragon kung fu master a heart attack."

  "What happened to Susanos?" I asked, looking around and half expecting her to show up.

  "Who cares!" Jon said, waving around his arms as if he was flapping them. "She was mind controlling me to not realize I already had an awesome thing going on with a goddess of love. Seriously, you're not very observant. We've been banging--"

  "I will break your face," I replied.

  "Wow, this war has taken a toll on you," Jon said, shaking his head. "You're going from Spider-Man to Frank Castle. Ranger War Journal: I am really mean to Jon and threatening him with violence because he took my incest baby."

  "You both suck," I said, not missing a beat. Weirdly, it was reassuring to know this whole creepy vibe had been a yearlong prank orchestrated by my supposed best friend. Mind you, that did mean he was a psychopath (or just incredibly bored). "Still, the question stands. Where is the Witch Queen?"

  "Susanos' physical body has been destroyed but she almost certainly brought her soul object with her with then it becomes a question if she'd had time to hide it some place before the tower field exploded. If she didn't, then she's permanently dead. If she did--"

  "We'll see her again," I muttered. "Great."

  "Well, she was on our side," Jon said, pausing. "Sort of."

  "We were just tools for her revenge plan," I replied. "A not terribly well-conceived revenge plan, I might add. Do we have a car? Because I'm pretty sure this place is going to be overrun with wights once they break free from the cafeteria."

  "Yes," Rachel said, lifting a key fob and clicking it.

  A futuristic black Lamborghini that looked like one of the top tier cars in Cyber Dragons 2080 flickered its lights. Apparently, being a civil servant in the dark world ruled by Veles paid a lot more than it did previously.

  "Nice," I said, simply. "What about Veles?"

  That was when there was the sound of a door smashing open along with moaning from the cafeteria. It seemed the wights had broken out and were now spreading through the facility.

  "Later," Rachel said. "We've got to get out of here."

  I'd expended all my magic trying to take down Veles except for MASS UNDEAD SLAYING. I took a moment to cast that spell and shot it down through the hall. It went through the death wights like an anime laser blast and annihilated something like ninety of them in a single go. Much to my surprise, it left a glowing blue flame on the ground that the survivors stumbled on and caught fire from before the flames leapt to other wights. In a few seconds, it seemed like they'd all been destroyed.

  REWARD

  100,000 EXP (Clear Black Site 31)

  Level 17 to 18

  2,100,000/3,000,000

  Rachel blinked. "Okay, maybe we can spare a few minutes."

  "Wow, you got more EXP for wiping out a bunch of mooks than destroying Veles' avatar," Jon said, staring. "That is bullshit."

  "I'm optimized to slay the undead," I replied, shrugging. "The benefits of min/maxing."

  "Yeah, yeah, you have hate crime powers against the living dead," Jon said, shrugging. "It would have been great if you'd had godslaying ones back when we were following Susanos. As much as I hate to admit it, you are the better tactician. I, on the other hand, am more a lover than a strategist."

  I rolled my eyes. "Does that mean Veles' avatar was destroyed?"

  "No," Rachel said, walking to the lambo. "He drained something like a hundred thousand of his followers of their life force to sustain himself. That's resulted in panic across Washington D.C. Whole swaths of the government and Epic DungoneeringTM have dropped over before rising from the dead. The illusions covering a lot of them have also failed. Everyone is being advised to stay indoors and wait for reinforcements from the Anti-Undead Task Force."

  I stared in horror. "A hundred thousand people?"

  "Those who knew what Veles were and sold themselves to him," Rachel said. "These kind of soul pacts can't be made without full knowledge from both participants. Because magic."

  "It's okay, Aaron. They were bad, so it was okay to murder them. It's the American way," Jon said, patting me on the shoulder.

  I glared. "What does this mean?"

  "It means that Veles is weakened," Rachel said. "But not dead. He's going to be extremely pissed off when he recovered."

  The doors rose up in the air for the Lamborghini.

  "Great," I said, walking down to get into the driver's seat. Much to my surprise, I found that its steering wheel was bound and there was a weird computer that had a low level magical feed. "Huh. I have no idea how to drive this."

  "You don't," Rachel said. "All the cars in the future are self-driving."

  "Ah," I said.

  "Don't worry," Rachel said. "None of the demons bound to them are sentient so it's not slavery."

  I blinked. "Demons, huh."

  "Yep," Rachel said, getting in the backseat. "There's a reason Epic DungeoneeringTM's EVs are the best on the market."

  Jon, of course, climbed in the passenger side. "I'm not going to lie, our chances went from shitty to really shitty with what happened."

  "I get that," I said, pausing. "I guess I'm going to have to figure out a way to beat a god that doesn't obey any rules."

  I stared at the steering wheel for a second then shrugged and snapped my fingers in front of it. Much to my surprise, the vehicle started up and displayed a map of Washington D.C's transformed landscape, listing all the various places that were now cordoned off due to zombie infestations. Great, I started The Walking Dead. Or, at least, Veles had and I wasn't someone who'd prepared for it.

  The fact Veles could draw on his followers to keep himself alive was a sign that we were no longer operating on "fair play" RPG rules. I mean, Veles had been cheating from the very beginning, but this was beyond the pale. It meant he would do anything to survive and win our conflict. I'd hoped, on some level, that the original Veles would let us "reset" him the same way the other Old Ones had been, restoring them.

  No dice it seemed.

  Hehe, dice.

  "Well, you can talk to Ania about it," Jon said, entering an address on the computer screen.

  "What?" I asked, doing a double take.