By the time we neared the foot of the Singing City’s central tower, Gargalob was completely gone. The black portal of water that Skippy had created inside him had vanished as well, but Panda insisted that it wasn’t fully gone, despite the fact that there was no way for us to tell from this far away with all the towering buildings blocking the view.

  We had gone around a three-way battle of giants between a large light-blue glowing salamander-slug hybrid, a dark-grey metallic ball of mouths, and a demon made of tar with white bone plates covering its obese humanoid shape. While each of them presented enticing targets to harvest for monstrosity materials, Panda had said that the slug and tar demon both possessed some kind of aura, so getting close wouldn’t be good for us.

  My Schmonic Boots were still suffering from the effects of Gargalob’s aura, and the gold that covered them had made them many times heavier than before. However, they seemed to still possess their original speed boost, and the gold was actually preferable to the pee-stained white color they originally had.

  The tower in the middle of the city was like a coiling horn made from six individual bone spires that’d been forcefully twisted together. How it had been constructed was a mystery, but so was the rest of the city, to be honest. The edifice was situated in a large open plaza, but strangely, there were no monsters, big or small, anywhere in sight. Instead, six figures all clad in white plastic-looking lab coats stood guard in front of the tower’s entrance.

  “Demons?” I asked Panda.

  “No, they’re definitely human,” he replied. “But I didn’t think there’d be anyone this high-level besides Steve and Matthew Twine outside of your group.”

  I squinted to activate my Appraising Eye and the information for one of them popped up.

  [Appraisal x ]

  Level 10 — ‘Jones’ — Player

  “Settle down, it’s time for your injection.”

  Class: Sanity Healer

  Main Attribute(s): Strength, Perception, & Wisdom

  You remember Jones, right? Him and his buddies remember you, that’s for sure.

  Before the GREAT GAME’s initialization, Jones worked at Calm Springs Asylum as an orderly. He was one of the stronger ones working there, so it was often up to him to do the physical restraining along with the five other brawny men on his team. But don’t let his strength fool you, because he can deliver an injection with pinpoint accuracy.

  Jones was supposed to become another thumb-head like the rest of the orderlies that now reside within the asylum, but then you went and messed with the dimensions, changing the course of fate forever. It’s funny how even a small change can ripple outwards and affect so many things. But then again, your actions could hardly be called ‘small’. You haven’t created ripples, you have made literal waves across causality and time, and Jones and his buddies avoiding a monstrous transformation are just a small consequence of that.

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  Now, you might wonder what on Earth a Sanity Healer is, and well… You’re about to find out.

  He has been hunting you since your escape from the asylum.

  “What do you think their skills are?” I asked as I shared the appraisal with the others.

  “They’re obviously going to heal our insanity gauges,” Chris said and started walking towards the group, waving at them to show he was friendly.

  Bee and I shared a look.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t bode well for either of you,” Panda surmised.

  “You’re glossing over the ‘hunting me down’ part,” I said to Chris, but he didn’t seem to care and just kept walking towards the tower.

  “Are we fighting them?” Bee asked.

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” I said.

  “You could just go back to your base,” Panda suggested.

  “I want to say hi to Billee,” I told him.

  “Me too!” said Bee.

  Panda sighed. “Well, then you’ve got some people you have to politely ask to step out of the way.”

  “I can ask politely!!” Brock exclaimed. “Just swing me in their direction!!”

  I grinned and started rotating my right shoulder, warming up for a fight.

  “Meow,” Lordie suggested.

  “We’re not harvesting them,” I told him.

  “Meow…”

  I frowned and turned to Bee. “He says he really wants to incorporate their bodies into his flesh mech.”

  “I think we should let him decide,” she responded. To be fair, that opinion wasn’t really much of a surprise coming from her, especially since she was still carrying the net with Gargalob’s golden flesh and Skippy’s blubber.

  “Woah, hold your horses!” Panda exclaimed. “You’re talking about something way worse than killing people!”

  “Why?” Bee asked sincerely. “Once they’re dead, they don’t need their bodies for anything.”

  “She does have a point,” I conceded.

  Panda put his squishy arm to his head to steady himself. “This event has really done a number on your moral compass.”

  “We’ve gotta win to survive,” Bee said.

  “By any means necessary?” he retorted.

  She just shrugged.

  “Don’t shrug at me!” he yelled petulantly.

  I turned back to call out to Chris, but then I froze when I saw that he was suspended horizontally in the air with white-glowing magical bonds wrapped around his torso, abdomen, and legs, constraining him completely.

  “Chris!” I exclaimed and fired myself towards the group of six orderlies in their ridiculous lab coats. One of them was holding his arms out, clearly casting the spell that kept my friend trapped, so I altered my trajectory towards him.

  Bee and Panda quit their bickering and immediately followed me as she took to the air with him on her shoulder.

  As I soared through the air with my balloon arm pulled back and ready to unleash a beatdown, another of the orderlies lifted his arms in my direction, and I immediately felt bonds tie themselves around my body, cancelling my momentum and sending me gently floating down to the ground.

  WARNING!

  You have been afflicted with ‘Asylum Shackles’!

  Time remaining:

  3 minutes

  Lordie immediately retreated into the transport cage, clearly not a fan of a little bondage play.

  Bee let out a yelp and then a moment later she was floating down from the sky next to me, also bound up with the strange chains.

  “This is bad!” Panda exclaimed from where he was standing on her forehead. “Their spells are really effective against Players with an Insanity Gauge above 75%! The effects seem to scale with your insanity, so Gambit is trapped for three full minutes, while Bee and Chris are only about one-and-a-half!”

  I wanted to yell at the orderlies to eat my turds, but the shackles also prevented me from speaking.

  As I reached the ground, arriving almost right next to where Chris was shackled, the six orderlies stepped forward, their plastic lab coats squeaking as they rubbed against their bodies. Three of them had their arms stretched out to cast the spells that kept us bound. The other three pulled out massive syringes from within their coats, almost looking like turkey basters, except they were filled with something that glowed a pale white light akin to the harsh LEDs that’d lit up the asylum halls.

  “Is this how I find out this whole adventure was just a figment of your imagination!?” Panda wailed incoherently as the orderly next to me rammed the giant needle into my heart.

  WARNING!

  Your Insanity Gauge has been reset back to 0% by ‘Sanity Serum Injection’!