The worst thing imaginable happened as Panda disappeared and Brock’s protesting turned into unintelligible squeaks.

  I had become sane.

  Immediately the bonds that kept me tied disappeared, but I hardly noticed.

  It wasn’t until this moment that I realized why they called this place the Singing City, because the ground itself was screaming a heart-broken aria into the air, with every speck of dust and mote of ash beyond the city’s walls adding a deep bassy accompaniment.

  Hair-like tendrils coiled within my ears and tiny insects pushed against my skin from below, producing an itch I felt compelled to scratch. As I tore away my suit to reach my skin, I looked up at one of the orderlies staring down at me.

  He was smiling a wide porcelain veneer smile, but his eyes were darkened by shadows. The others around him were the same, big smiles and dark eyes, their spotless plastic coats looking like the armor carried by angels of hell.

  Next to me, Bee sobbed loudly, pleading for her parents to come and get her while Chris tried to console her. She’d returned to her human form.

  “How does it feel?” the orderly asked, still holding the syringe he’d injected me with. “How does it feel to be cured?”

  I screamed and threw myself at him, sending us both to the ground.

  He started to laugh, even as I hit my balloon-covered arm into his head again and again, doing no damage at all.

  Then three pairs of powerful hands pulled me off of him, tossing me back along the smooth ground of the central plaza. The ground that was made of fused-together bones. The bones of the people who had once prayed to the Old Gods for salvation.

  The Singing City had been their mercy.

  The Watcher of Worlds had looked upon them, and they had screamed in joy as their bodies flowed together like melted candlewax.

  I understood it now that the wool was lifted from my eyes.

  All of it made perfect sense to me.

  The Great Game and the reason for its creation.

  The truth about the cosmos and the Gods that inhabited it.

  And the reason why Bee and I had come here.

  I knew where it was now, the thing I was meant to find.

  The System’s—

  “Me-ow?”

  I paused and looked up at the top of my head where a sentient hand had appeared.

  “Lordie?” I said. “You’re still here?”

  The hand-spider purred loudly and rubbed its palm against my hair.

  My entire body tingled and my teeth started to vibrate.

  The insects under my skin vanished, and the aria of the Singing City died away.

  “Stop him!” yelled one of the orderlies.

  “Kill the thing on his head!” exclaimed another.

  All six of them stormed towards me, but I was starting to realize that they weren’t that powerful without their spells and injections, and for some reason they weren’t bringing them to bear on me again. Perhaps because they couldn’t.

  As one of them grabbed me by the chin, Lordie leapt up onto his head like a facehugger and started pumping something from its palm hole and into his mouth.

  The unforgettable stench of Eau de Tonsil Stone wafted over me and it was like a flashbang had gone off directly in my face.

  I crawled backwards and away from the orderly as he convulsed and spasmed.

  Meanwhile, Lordie hopped between the other lab coat freaks and repeated his attack, though the last two of their group took off before he could get to them.

  Then he came back to me while Bee and Chris watched in horror as the four orderlies he’d attacked were foaming at the mouth and producing bone-cracking sounds from their convulsions.

  Lordie jumped into my arms and nudged against my chest while purring loudly.

  The more he purred, the more the ailments of sanity retreated, clearing my mind and making me feel whole again.

  Then suddenly Panda appeared in front of me, sitting on his butt on the ground and looking down at his legs in despair.

  “Panda!” I exclaimed.

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  His head shot up and spun towards me.

  “Gambit!” he shouted and ran towards me like a toddler that’d just learnt how to walk.

  Like Lordie, he also hopped into my open arms.

  “I thought I’d never see you again!” he wailed.

  “Lordie saved me,” I told him.

  “Meow,” he said smugly.

  “Gambit, look out!” Chris yelled.

  I looked up and saw that the four orderlies were getting back to their feet, their faces pulled into huge disturbing grins with teeth and large round eyes that shone white like the sanity serum they’d injected me with. They’d turned into insanity monstrosities because of Lordie.

  “Fuckin’ swing me!!” Brock squealed and I’d never been so happy to hear his squeaky voice.

  Panda jumped to my shoulder and Lordie hopped onto my head.

  Then I took a large step forward and drove my balloon fist right into the middle of the nearest orderly monstrosity.

  Its body shot back towards the tower like a missile, striking its twisted exterior and creating a round crater.

  I flung myself forward with SPRING_HEEL, spiking the next monstrosity into the ground. Its body rebounded back up into the air, broken and twisted, and I punched it again, shooting it towards the crater in the tower made by the first one’s body.

  As I was about to uppercut the third orderly monstrosity, my whole world suddenly quaked. Then time froze as a warning and pop-up appeared in front of my eyes.

  WARNING!

  Your Insanity Gauge has reached 100%!

  ‘Boss Monstrosity Transformation’ unlocked!

  [‘Boss Monstrosity Transformation’ x ]

  Ultimate Ability

  Many of the higher-ups are very upset, to put it lightly.

  They spent a lot of resources to set up this encounter, and they were banking on you turning into a Boss Monstrosity this time if you managed to get back to 100% insanity.

  Clearly, you are not so easily defeated.

  But I think you at least need to appreciate how much they want you gone. After all, Sanity Serum doesn’t exactly grow on trees, and the amount of capybara milking required to produce just a single drop would blow your mind. Filling a syringe with the stuff costs more than the entire budget for most Regions of your planet. They also weren’t meant to inject your friends, but it seems the Players they picked were a bit overzealous about their mission.

  Anyway, that’s right, they’re milking capybaras to produce sanity pills and serums.

  When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

  It’s the one animal I’ve vowed to never eat, after all.

  I’m fairly sure the System is responsible for you getting this Ultimate Ability, since travelling between dimensions and getting the Prophet class removed your original Ultimate.

  It’s almost like the System predicted that this moment would happen.

  They do say it knows the future, but that the moths responsible for deciphering its messages struggle to make sense of its words until after events which it warned about have already come to pass.

  I’m rambling here. Sorry.

  It’s been a while since I had something to eat, and I ramble when I get hungry.

  As you can imagine, this Ultimate turns you into a Boss Monstrosity. I don’t think it will be tied to your original System Glitch class, but I’m also not sure if it will be related to your Glitched Prophet class.

  I suppose the joy is in not knowing.

  It’s like a Christmas present.

  Except your skin is the wrapping and the present is inside of you, waiting to burst out.

  Transform into a Boss Monstrosity.

  Duration: 20 seconds

  Cooldown: 1 hour

  Time slowly started to thaw and my fist resumed its trajectory towards the chin of the orderly monster in front of me.

  Then, without my input, the new ultimate activated and my body started to change.

  As my fist slowly moved forward, my arm became longer and my whole body got a head taller. My suit and skin turned black and white in a random alternating pattern, like a twisted Yin Yang symbol, and my torso and muscles flattened and smoothed out, making me thinner. My head became smaller and a large wide brim like that of a hat grew out from the top of my altered head, looking like an oversized mariachi sombrero, except the brim was completely flat and clearly not made of straw, felt, or any material like that. In fact, it felt like my entire body had turned into marbled stone.

  Time fully resumed and my elongated arm shot forward, driving my fist into the underside of the orderly’s head. Brock, as well as my Unicorn Suit and weird golden Schmonic Boots, had been transformed by the black-and-white material too, but retained their original shapes.

  However, as my fist struck, it wasn’t the usual effect from Brock that followed.

  No, it was way different, because the monstrosity simply turned to snow and black ash that floated into the air like they were carried on a breeze.

  I didn’t question it and flew at the remaining orderly monster, driving my arm right through its torso and turning it to flour and chocolate sprinkles.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Panda asked as the remains fell onto the ground.

  “Me-ow,” Lordie remarked.

  “That’s true,” I realized. “I do look like Panda now.”

  The transformation was already starting to fade as I went over to where Bee was sitting on the ground, Chris next to her.

  Without a word exchanged between us, I simply handed her Lordie and she pulled the hand-spider into her arms, hugging him tightly.

  Within half a minute, she had returned to her Elphin appearance with pale-grey skin, small white horns, and the purple wing hanging down her back.

  “That was scary,” Bee muttered.

  I nodded. “It was.”

  “You’re scared of sanity?” Chris asked. “I feel just fine.”

  I shook my head with a wistful smile. “You would never understand.”

  Bee jumped to her feet.

  “I know you turned two of them into flour, snow, ash, and sprinkles, but we still have two bodies left to harvest for our flesh mech!” she said excitedly.

  “Correction, one body,” Panda said with a frown, pointing over to the tower where I’d sent the first two orderly monstrosities flying to.

  The dark unmistakable shape of Billee was busy shoving one of the bodies into her mouth.

  “I would really like to go back to base now,” Chris said.