The evening bulletin was up on the big screen in the Eclipse lobby, and nobody was watching it, because a Tyranitar was crossing the floor.
It was going slowly, enjoying the awe. Ren walked in front of it leading it to its new living place. Two members flattened themselves against the reception desk and did not breathe until it was past. A third took a photo and then pretended he hadn't.
On the screen behind them, a map of the Yhwcha world turned slowly in blue. The presenter said that human forces now held 80% of the surface.
"That's the number," she said. "That is confirmed ground, this morning, by the Commission. We are very close to winning this war."
Her colleague added, "Everything they can still put in the field is coming out of one strip along the southern belt now, and once that goes, it's over."
"And beyond this world?"
"Analysts say that getting this world means winning the war. It would not make any sense for us to have to conquer the whole universe."
"And the win, what does it give us?"
"That we will have to see."
They showed a lot of footage after that of the front line victories. Large ships falling from the sky, hordes of Xenomorphs wiped out and the android battles.
Recruitment offices had been full for a month. People were being taken to the other side in large numbers, normal people, not just explorers. They needed people to operate the equipment and maintain the supply lines.
Petar Iliescu came off the pad on Floor One at ten past six that evening with mud on him from another world and four skeletons behind him. The first thing he heard was the duty officer saying, "Don't take the main lift."
"Why not."
"Because there is a very large animal using it."
Petar looked at him.
"It's a long story, Petar. Take the stairs."
He took the stairs. Feeling grumpy since he just got back and had to use the stairs.
He was L4 now and was proud of that achievement.
He had cleared the tier on L3-0977. It was a world similar to this current one. He really liked it. Basically gates would open in the world and people would go in and exterminate the monsters. Those guys were called hunters. He fit right in. Joined a guild there and cleared many dungeons.
He came back with more than he could keep. That is always how it goes. You raise what the world hands you, and then you stand at the gate and pick four, and the rest go back down.
His new minions were leagues above the last. He also finished his potion digestion.
The stairs on Nineteen were noisy. Petar stopped on the landing to get his coat off and someone came the other way at speed, saw the skeletons, and said, "Evening, Gerald."
"Don't."
"Evening, Other Gerald."
"He is not called that."
"He is now."
The naming had happened in the spring, in the canteen, without him. He had let it go for one day too long and after that it was law. There was a plush of Gerald. An actual plush, sold in a shop in Kantgade, licensed through the guild. Brandt had shown him the royalty line in the quarterly report. Petar knew from that moment that he didn't mind it as much.
He signed them when children asked. That was the part he had not planned for. He had come up out of a dryland town in Khovari. Everyone used to avoid him due to his tendencies to observe dead things. Now there were kids on the steps of the Kantgade office with a stuffed skeleton under one arm and a pen in the other hand, and their parents standing behind them looking proud.
He still didn't know what to say to them. He usually said, "What's your name," and wrote it down, and that seemed to be enough.
The four skeletons lived in the sub-basement now, in a storage room off the deployment chamber that Brandt had signed over to him in the winter after the third complaint. None of the complaints had been about danger. Nobody thought they were dangerous. The complaints were about walking past them at night.
Petar had put a lock on it that only worked from the outside. He thought that was funny. Nobody else did.
What Petar wanted the most was L5.
Reach L5 soon, Petar. I'd like you on my team.
He had been carrying that sentence around ever since.
Two more clears at his own tier and he was there. He had already picked the date for his next deployment. Brandt had already told him twice to stop rushing it.
He got to his room. He put his coat on the hook. He was about to sit down when the tower shook, twice, from somewhere below him, and then a member ran past his open door shouting for Adeyemi.
Petar went down.
The dust came up the stairwell to meet him. The door on Nineteen was open. There was a technician on his knees with a scanner, and Adeyemi crouched beside him. There on the other side a bunch of guild members stood very still, looking at the far wall.
Against the wall, taking up most of it, something green was sitting down with its head lowered.
"What," Petar said, "is that."
"That's the Boss's," said the member next to him, without looking away from it.
"The Boss's what."
"Uh, friend?"
Nothing was burning. Nobody was hurt. And the thing against the wall was not angry. Petar could see that much from the doorway. It was ashamed of itself.
Then somebody behind him said the Boss was back, and the whole floor turned round, and Petar stopped caring about the stairs.