“Gargalob is here?” Panda asked. “What the hell is a demon doing in the Singing City? It’s bad if they’re letting demons roam free.”

  “Aren’t the Absolute’s spawn more dangerous?” Bee asked.

  “Well, sure, but demons are insidious and they change the world around them with just their presence. Actually… so do many Absolute’s spawn…”

  “So, everybody is dangerous,” I summarized. “Nothing new there.”

  Cooper looked between us, confusion on his face.

  I quickly repeated Panda’s words to him, but it seemed to just trade his confusion for worry.

  “I think I’d like to go back to our base,” he said.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Panda remarked.

  “Maybe we can swap you for Chris,” I considered.

  Bee was looking intently at one of the nearby pillars. Then she walked around it going left, but she never came out on the other side of the pillar.

  A moment later she returned out from the left side.

  “I found out how we can leave!” she said excitedly.

  “How?” I asked.

  “The pillars are like portals, they teleport you around according to the direction you’re traveling past them, and if you go in a clockwise circle around them, they bring you to an exit.”

  “Hopefully Steve remains stuck down here,” I said. “That guy needs to chill the fuck out.”

  Panda stared at me but decided not to say anything.

  I picked up the net that Bee had made from an orange pear summoned by her Fruit Basket ability. Inside it was all the Frog Meat parts we’d collected.

  Then we followed her around the pillar, and as we walked the surroundings cycled from the swamp to the moss-covered area we’d seen earlier, then to the place with the ramp where we’d arrived, before finally placing us in front of a spiraling staircase that screwed up along the pillar and through the tall ceiling above.

  While we continued walking around the pillar as we followed the steps, the surroundings rolled through every possible destination we could’ve found inside the subterranean chamber. One of them looked like a picnic on a grassy lawn with creepy store mannequins standing around. Another had the floor covered in knee-deep water and octopuses shifted below its surface, probably searching for food.

  Eventually we reached the ceiling and, as we moved through it, the light of the Singing City greeted us. We emerged from a drained fountain with a statue of an armored soldier carrying a child in his arms situated at its center. Though we’d followed the steps up, the way back down was gone when I looked behind us.

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  “This place is pretty weird,” I said.

  “Understatement of the century,” Panda remarked. “Some of the buildings are miniature realms that you can easily get trapped in. As a matter of fact, I think the chamber we just escaped from was one such place.”

  “So they’re like dungeons?” Bee asked.

  “Kind of. The main difference is that you can’t just kill a specific monster inside to get sent back out. They’re like tar pits that cling to you and never let go.”

  “I really want to go back to the base,” Cooper said.

  Despite his appraisal saying he was known for his calm demeanor, the Singing City was really putting that to the test it seemed.

  “I guess it’s not a bad idea to drop off our materials too,” I said.

  “Brock wants to fight!!” my balloon sleeve exclaimed.

  “One thing at a time, Brock,” Bee scolded him.

  A few blocks away, towering monsters slammed into each other, making the ground beneath us rumble.

  “Alright, let’s go,” I said.

  I hefted the net with the Monstrosity parts inside and then lifted Cooper up onto my shoulder with my left hand. No matter how many times I did it, the big man clearly found it deeply unsettling how strong I was. Then again, most adults weren’t used to being picked up like a toddler.

  Bee took to the air and I brought out the sentient longboard. Then we headed back towards the walls of the city. Fortunately, the fountain we’d emerged from was just before the boulevard where we’d encountered the big swamp puppy, so it was relatively close to the place where we’d entered the city.

  We didn’t encounter any other teams as we went through one of the big gaps in the wall, but I saw some Players in the distance grouped together. It was hard to tell if they were fighting or teaming up.

  “I see the beacon,” Cooper announced from his vantage point on my shoulder.

  It hadn’t been possible to see inside the city, thanks to the massive buildings and towering monsters, but out in the ashy wastes beyond the wall, we had a clear line of sight to it. It was strange that the big creatures didn’t venture beyond the walls, but it at least gave us an easy way to avoid them.

  I turned my head to follow his gaze and saw the beacon for Samantha’s base quite far in the distance. If our base was true north, then hers would be southwest.

  “Should we go visit her?” Bee asked.

  “I doubt she’d be hiding in there,” I replied.

  “Hopefully she managed to save the people in the mall,” Panda said.

  Bee flew down to grab Cooper’s shoulders and borrow our speed as we zoomed across the ash-covered ground.

  Although there was nothing to set it apart from the other hills, I felt a slight attraction towards our base. It was probably a slight concession the Great Game orchestrators had made so people wouldn’t get hopelessly lost trying to just participate in the event. After all, even if their ultimate goal was to kill off as many of us as possible, it didn’t make for good entertainment if everyone perished because they got lost.

  In hindsight, that was probably the same reason why my urge to use the bathroom had completely vanished with the start of the Great Game. It would be easy to kill someone with their pants down, but it was less amusing than all the other imaginative deaths the Game featured for us…

  “I don’t like it when you get all silently introspective,” Panda said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  I skidded the longboard to a stop in front of the stairs down into our base and set Cooper down on the ground where he immediately sunk half a meter into the ash.

  Chris and James came halfway up the steps to meet us as we went into our base.

  “What’s that?” the boy asked when he saw the net full of rubbery flesh and a single wizard’s hat.

  “Materials for our Monstrosity,” I told him.

  I emptied out the net, leaving behind a mound of materials. It was all geared towards a Swamp Magic creature, though I wasn’t sure that’s what we wanted to make. Especially since the frog men had been really weak.

  “We should probably discuss what kind of thing we want to build,” Bee said as she realized the same thing.

  Before I could give my suggestions, Lordie popped out of his transport cage and appeared on my head.

  “Me-ow!” he said.

  “He wants me to translate something,” I explained.

  “Meow, meow, me-ow,” he said in his deep voice.

  I nodded along, liking the idea he was presenting.

  “Alright, here’s what Lordie wants us to build,” I translated.