I landed on my feet inside a room with stone walls, floor, and ceiling. Bee, Chris, his brother James, and Cooper all appeared around me. As I looked around, I realized that the place was like a fucked-up fusion between a garage and an operating room. There were large surgery slabs with wheeled trays overflowing with wicked-looking tools next to them, hooks on winches hanging from the ceiling, a workbench with nasty sewing needles and pitchers of glue, and one corner seemingly dedicated to ritual magic given the sigils on the floor and strange esoteric materials nearby.

  But there was no door leading out.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Cooper asked.

  “They were probably put into a different team,” Bee told him.

  “I hope they’ll be alright,” he muttered, his tone worried.

  “Are you okay, James?” Chris asked his brother.

  The boy nodded. He had a strange hazy shell around his body, like a magical warmth encasing him and blurring his features a bit. I guessed that it was how the System was protecting him from harm during the event.

  “I wonder if this is the place we’re meant to use for the crafting phase,” Bee said, already rifling through the tools next to the surgery slabs, brandishing hooked knives, scalpels the size of swords, and something that looked like an ice-cream scoop with teeth.

  Before anyone could respond, a puff of golden smoke that smelled expensive came from above one of the slabs.

  A golden-scaled imp appeared in the air, flapping two large wings.

  “Mammon?” I asked, recognizing his appearance, though he’d undergone a bit of a transformation.

  “Boy, this gig you landed me sure came with a lot of perks,” he immediately said. “Thanks to Lord Breezy, I’m now working as the Guide for this whole event. He did some kind of weird magic on me, and it split my mind and body into about 4,000 copies, all of which are speaking to each of the teams at this very moment.”

  “He became a Squire-Lord,” Panda remarked, surprised.

  “That’s right!” Mammon said proudly, puffing up his chest. “You’re looking at the new Squire-Lord of the Shining Hoard!”

  He’d grown about a foot in size, becoming slightly taller than Panda. Two curving horns sprouted from his forehead, and his body was now more proportional to his large head, but he still had a slight bobblehead look about him. The contract ring was strapped around his right wrist like a bracelet, and his eyes glowed an ominous orange-gold. His wings were like those of a crow, except with feathers of gold, and his tail had a shining arrowhead shape at the tip.

  I had no idea how Demon ranks worked, but Mammon had been a Footman when I’d first met him, and he’d been serving someone called Gargalob who had himself been a Squire-Lord. It sounded a bit like he’d gone from being a low-wage grunt to a regional manager.

  “Didn’t know you could just swap families like that,” Panda commented. Mammon had originally been part of the RNG family, which explained why he’d been tied to my lottery ability.

  “It is all by the grace of Lord Breezy. He gave me my own family and is helping me grow more powerful.”

  “I’d like to take some of the credit for that,” I said.

  Mammon ignored me.

  “Alright, I bet you simian wimps are truly lost and need my guidance! I will graciously explain things in more detail and guide you through the crafting process. You are welcome to worship me, but donations of gold and other valuables are also accepted.”

  “Man, you think you know someone, but then they get rich and suddenly they forget where they came from,” I muttered.

  Mammon glared at me. “I am not allowed to play favorites, Gambit. This is a golden opportunity for me, and breaking the rules will get me punished.”

  “Fine,” I muttered, annoyed.

  “If you are in 4,000 places at once, how do you keep track of all your clones?” Bee asked.

  “No idea,” he replied. “Anyway, I am here to answer questions about the Event.”

  “Has anyone tried to hurt you?” James asked.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The flying demon looked down at the boy. “What are you doing here? And yes, several. But I cannot be harmed in this event. I am level 100, after all.”

  “Can you see and hear what your clones are experiencing?” Bee continued.

  “Yes. And no, I do not know how it works.”

  Cooper asked, “Can you tell the other guys with My Little Pony t-shirts that I’m alright?”

  “I am not your fucking gopher, you Glutton wannabe!”

  “I can pay you,” Cooper replied, pulling out a handful of coins and small bills.

  Mammon used some kind of golden telekinesis to bring it to him, but then he frowned as he looked closer at the money. “This paper is worthless,” he spat, tossing aside the bills. “And these coins are alloys with cheap metals mixed in…” He groaned. “Fine! I have told your fat friends. But that is it! No more requests!”

  “So, what happens now?” Chris asked.

  “Finally, a question related to the Event!” Mammon exclaimed in relief. “As the Great and Mighty Messimer announced, the first phase is the Collection Phase. Once I am done instructing all of the teams, the stairwell to the surface will open in that wall.”

  We all looked to where he was pointing. It was the wall behind us, the only one which wasn’t right up against any of the ‘furniture’.

  “All teams have 12 hours to collect parts for their Monstrosity by scouring the Singing City. You can also hunt the creatures that live in the city and roam its streets, but I personally wouldn’t advise it, since they are quite strong and merely encountering them will increase your insanity gauge.”

  “There’s gonna be 4,000 stairwells scattered around the city?” Bee asked. “Doesn’t that mean that people can just enter our base?”

  “Firstly, the stairwells are all outside the city. And secondly, no. Other teams cannot enter your base until the Crafting Phase. You can of course still fight them inside the city if you’d like, and ambushing teams once they’ve collected parts is a strategy I would highly recommend.”

  “That’s a coward’s way to fight,” I replied in disgust.

  “Fight smarter not harder,” Mammon shot back.

  “To be honest, that’s probably what I would’ve done too,” Chris admitted.

  “I agree with Gambit here,” Cooper said.

  James nodded eagerly as well. “We have to fight like heroes,” he told his big brother.

  “Things aren’t that simple,” Chris said. But when he saw the look on James’ face, he quickly added, “But Gambit and Bee are both very strong, so we won’t have to fight like cowards.”

  “Can we use other Players as parts for our Monstrosity?” Bee asked, immediately shattering the illusion Chris had been trying to sell his little brother.

  All of us turned to look at her with a horrified expression on our faces, even Mammon.

  “What?” she replied. “I’m just asking.”

  “Moving on,” Mammon said, clearly refusing to answer the question. “In the second phase, you must use your collected parts to build a Monstrosity. You once again have 12 hours for this step.”

  “That’s a long time,” Bee said.

  “Besides crafting, you are also expected to test out your creation and fine-tune it,” Mammon explained. “And you will have to defend your base from other teams that might not have gotten enough parts themselves, or who wish to sabotage you.”

  “You definitely need to be careful about leading people back to this place then,” Panda advised. “You two have a lot of enemies…”

  I repeated his words to the others since they couldn’t hear him, but left out the last part.

  “Good idea,” Chris praised me.

  Panda frowned, clearly upset I got the credit for it.

  “How does the collection work?” Bee asked. “Can we just stick everything in our inventories?”

  “No,” Mammon replied. “Parts must be carried back to your base manually.”

  Bee looked at Lordie who sat on my head. “Can we add things we already have to our Monstrosity?” she asked.

  “Me-ow!” he exclaimed and disappeared into the transport cage.

  “You are actually scaring me,” Mammon told Bee.

  “Don’t chop up Lordie,” I said. “I’ll die if he dies, you know.”

  “That’s not what I was planning!” she replied. “I was just wondering if we could add Lordie to a Monstrosity in order to control it from within or something.”

  “Like a flesh mech?” I asked, surprised. That actually sounded like a cool concept.

  “Huh, there might not be any rules about that,” Mammon admitted. “I will have to ask and get back to you on that later.”

  “How is the tournament bracket decided?” Cooper asked. “Can we avoid fighting other teams we’re affiliated with?”

  “No. It is randomly chosen,” he replied.

  Before he could go on, I cut him off. “I don’t trust your RNG! It’s literally all run by demons!”

  “Wow, racist much,” Mammon muttered.

  “Yeah, that was kind of racist,” Bee agreed.

  “He has a point,” Panda said.

  “I had no idea you guys were so full of bigotry,” the Greed Demon commented.

  “Wouldn’t it technically be speciesist?” Chris asked.

  “Let’s just all be friends here, okay?” Cooper suggested, taking the high road. It was easy to see why he was the leader of his little gang of pony lovers.

  “Alright, final words here, because I am running out of time before the Event starts. The final phase, the Tournament Phase, will last 12 hours or until all the winners have been picked. If your team’s monstrosity is defeated before the semi-finals, then you will be eliminated.”

  “How many semi-finalists will there be?” Bee asked.

  “Maybe a fourth of all the teams will make it there,” Mammon answered. “Though it will probably be less, given how many are projected to die leading up to the final phase.”

  I frowned. “Maybe I should use my Dungeon-Break after all,” I said.

  “You can’t,” Panda told me. “We aren’t inside a Dungeon Barrier. We’re literally here, in the realm of the Singing City…”

  “Well, shit.”

  “Alright, count down with me now!” Mammon exclaimed.

  “3!”

  “2!”

  “1!”

  The wall unfolded and revealed a stairwell leading up into a red-tinted light. Distant roars and heart-wrenching screams immediately flowed back down to us.

  “Begin!” the demon yelled excitedly.