Today's Earth date: June 20, 1992

The crew says something big has been following us for the last day or so. They don't know what it is, but they can see the shadow beneath the water. They're pretty certain it isn't a sea serpent because it's not long enough, but they don't know more than that.

Chosen Heroes of the past have fought giant octopi (look at me remembering English class), colossal sharks, a raiding party of mer-men, and a sea slime jellyfish.

A few lucky parties didn't fight anything at all. I don't have high hopes for our luck.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Vanilli sent a chat message asking Wayne and Fergus to meet him in Kenny's workshop. Wayne wanted to knock on Fergus' door to see if he was coming but thought better of it. If Fergus was too busy to answer Voice, Wayne didn't want to see the private activity occupying him, or the were-creatures that may or may not be involved in that activity. So he ventured through the Iomallach gate alone to see what Vanilli wanted.

Kenny and Vanilli both leaned over a mostly disassembled fighter plane, looking at the engine and talking. Wayne couldn't hear what about, but he assumed it was mechanic stuff. They looked up as he approached.

Kenny crossed her arms, smiled, and stood proudly. Vanilli seemed unsure what to do with his arms and stood next to her with a blank expression.

"Got a surprise for ya," Kenny said. "It was all Vanilli's idea. Don't let him tell you different."

"Alright…"

Vanilli led Wayne to the back of the workshop to an object that was maybe fifteen long and covered by a dirty tarp. Wayne's first thought was that a train was beneath, one of those rideable scale models that wealthy white boomers loved to build in their yards for some reason. Otherwise, the shape was unusual. He couldn't think of any other vehicles that might fit the silhouette he now saw.

"We discussed the desert problem," Vanilli said, "and I was reminded of a creature from my world."

"The world of demons?" Wayne clarified.

"Correct."

Oh, lovely. Only something good could be inspired by a demonic creature from another dimension.

Where Wayne expected Vanilli to say more and build up to the reveal of his creation, the demon-in-disguise simply yanked the tarp off. The object beneath resembled an exceptionally long snow mobile, perhaps two or three times as long as such a vehicle was on Earth, but its bottom was flat and smooth. There were no skis or wide tracks of rubber tread, however.

Instead, an assortment of arms–ratman, goblin, human, skeleton–protruded from the sides like the legs of a centipede and ran the full length of the object. There were too many of them to count.

"It's pretty darn fast," Kenny said, admiring the craftsmanship. "We've got a smaller version of the same concept, goes even faster, but only one of ya can ride it at a time. Pretty clever, huh?"

"This… This is meant to be ridden?"

"You bet! Seats five nice and comfy-like."

"You don't like it," Vanilli said.

"No, no, no!" Wayne protested. "That's not it at all. I've never seen a design like this, so it's taking me a minute to understand how it works."

"It's simple. The hands move the vehicle forward."

"Right. I realize that now."

"And you still don't like it."

"Vanilli, no. I like it a lot. You did great work. The… inventiveness is shocking to someone like me. Someone who doesn't know anything about crafting or making machines, I mean."

Kenny wrapped an arm around Wayne's waist. "Ain't much desert 'round here for us to test it, but her weight's real spread out. Shouldn't sink like a wagon wheel."

Vanilli nodded. "In my world, these creatures moved across deserts with ease."

Wayne said a silent prayer that he never be isekaied into the demon world. "It's perfect," he said. "When will it be ready?"

"It is complete."

"I guess all that's left is getting it to Maliit and testing it out." Wayne thought. "Give me a little bit to relocate the gate there. We won't be able to get this down the stairs of the inn."

"It's… disturbing," Fergus said. The rest of the Zeroes nodded that they agreed.

"But does it work?" Margo asked.

"That's what we're here to test. If this can manage the sand, we'll finalize our plans and head out in a day or two."

Fergus knelt to inspect it more closely but still kept his distance. "What did you say this was called?"

"I didn't," Wayne said. "Kenny called it 'the Groper.'"

Margo cackled. Armond and Hector laughed along with her.

"Didn't you mention a smaller one also?" Fergus asked.

"That was the Groper Junior."

"Well," Fergus began, standing to put his hands on his hips, "suppose it's time we get to groping."

"I don't think that verb is necessary."

Fergus turned to look at Wayne with an eyebrow raised.

"We don't need to describe its movement as 'groping.'"

"How else would you describe its method of locomotion? Running assumes the existence of legs, which the Groper clearly lacks. Crawling assumes either many legs or a combination of arms and legs, so that also won't work."

"What about 'creeping?'" Margo proposed.

"Doesn't one typically creep by standing mostly erect?"

"Ah, yeah."

"Swimming almost works," Fergus continued, "but this obviously isn't for transportation on water."

"Fingering," Hector suggested.

Wayne rubbed his eyes while Armond, Fergus, and Margo paused to think on Hector's statement, clearly impressed.

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"We'll stick with groping," Wayne said, finally. "Let's just test it already."

Climbing into the frontmost saddle, one of five, Wayne gripped two rods that extended vertically from the "front" of the Groper. Vanilli had compared them to the devices he saw in some of the airplane cockpits and designed these controls to function similarly. Press forward to go. Pull back to stop or reverse. Then steer side to side as necessary.

The machine lurched forward and stopped. Wayne tried pressing forward more gently, but it lurched again. After several more failed attempts, he accepted that smooth starts and stops were simply not possible with the Groper. Leaning with his head low, he took off into the desert, mostly succeeding at avoiding the whiplash pain of an abrupt start.

The sensation of dozens of hands slapping at the sand to pull the Groper forward added up to a feeling not unlike a car at high speed. Wayne had a Ford Escort in his old life that could hit 120 miles per hour, but it shook like crazy when it did. That's what riding the Groper felt like at any speed, which would make riding this thing for miles and miles an uncomfortable experience.

But it worked. The belly of the Groper glided over sand, and its weight distribution kept it from sinking. The turning radius wasn't great, but there weren't many tight spaces in the desert, so that didn't matter all that much.

Wayne guided the Groper back to where the party watched the test run.

"Looks like the desert expedition is a go," he said.

The exact whereabouts of the dorcs were unknown. The desert was big, and the orcs were nomadic. Wayne held out hope, however, that they could avoid encountering them, at least for the first outing.

Their first stop was the point of interest for the elven kingdom. Located in the mountain range that separated the Bata Desert from the ocean, the Zeroes could skirt the outermost edge of the desert to get there. That wouldn't be possible for the other two points of interest, however. Traveling to those would require traveling through the inner sections of desert.

Thanks to their system unlocks, the heat didn't bother the Zeroes. Wayne was thankful for that because when the sun was high the surface of the desert looked like Tatooine, the blazing temperatures turning the space immediately above the ground into a roiling blur of heat.

Wayne kept an eye on his HUD, looking for enemies as well as buried spawners. If the Bata Desert was like the Forest of 10,000 Cuts, there was a good chance that mini bosses lie dormant beneath the sand somewhere. That meant potential danger as well as XP and possibly treasure, so part of Wayne hoped they would come across at least one.

They didn't, but the system drew plenty of monsters to the Zeroes. Most were sand worms, stubby fat creatures that Wayne said looked like "pigs in a blanket," a food he fondly associated with memories of game night sleepovers as a child. In the midst of explaining what that food was, hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll dough, Hector said that the sand worms looked like giant lumps of foreskin.

Which wasn't inaccurate, but Wayne disliked that pigs in a blanket were now connected with foreskin in his mind. He feared that link would never be severed.

Those Saturday mornings, smelling the fresh croissant around a hotdog, then dipping it in-

Nope. The beauty of that moment was gone for good.

In spite of that minor tragedy, Wayne used the encounters to test some of his newer abilities. Man to Man Defense from Pat Riley's Basketball was a strange sort of protection ability. Wayne could designate one enemy for each of the party members, himself included, to gain increased resistance from that monster's attacks.

No two party members could be assigned to the same enemy, making this ability far less useful in a boss battle scenario where there was one primary threat, and reassigning those enemies was slow and clunky. The menu required clicking and dragging health bars around to match party members up with monsters, and doing that in the heat of a battle was not feasible.

Objection from Argument Wars enabled Wayne to "reject a weak support card," but he never got it to actually activate. He tried using it right before an enemy attacked and as they were attacking, but all he felt was the vibration of a failed input. He began to wonder if the unusual way he acquired this game could result in an ability that simply didn't work. At all.

But Ramming from Centurion, now that was a beautiful upgrade. That ability made Wayne invulnerable for two seconds, enabling him to hurl himself into an enemy without fear of taking damage. Timing was crucial, however, and that was tricky when he combined it with Blitz. When he succeeded, however, he felt unstoppable. With a five minute cooldown, Ramming was likely a once-a-fight ability, which was somewhat disappointing, but that was far better than a skill that simply didn't function.

When the sun began to set, a chill cut across the desert. The Zeroes were unaffected, but they had endured the shaking of the Groper for several hours, so they stopped groping to rest.

"Every time we do this I wonder if the two-hour sleep buff on the train is actually worth it," Armond said as he tended the fire. "Switching back to normal hours hurts so much."

"It's our first night," Margo observed. "How is your sleep messed up already?"

"I am anticipating future pain."

"Complaining about how much it hurts before it hurts?"

"...Yes."

Hector raised a hand. "I have a before complaint. This dungeon better not be as long as the Earth Temple."

Every Zero in the party agreed. That run was more of an endurance test, both physically and mentally, than a challenge of skill or wits. The monotony of the same hallways over and over and over started to meld together in your mind to the point that you wondered if you weren't repeating the same exact floor, never actually making progress.

"If the dwarves cut this content completely, there's a chance they weren't too far into development yet," Wayne said.

Fergus swallowed a mouth of jerky and washed it down with wine from one of the four bottles he packed for the journey. "Like Julian's Tomb? Yes, I wouldn't mind a nice stroll."

Armond laughed. "The guys I deployed with would beat you silly for talking like that. You're giving the gods a blueprint for screwing you."

"Good thing we aren't Heroes," Fergus said. "We are not so entwined with fate to have worries like that."

"Yeah, they definitely would have jumped you in your bunk one night."

From having his HUD map for much of this adventure, Wayne needed only the faintest flicker of red in his peripheral vision to set off a Pavlovian combat response. When that happened, his adrenaline spiked, and he felt himself mentally prepare for Flag Girl to activate. The problem with that habit was that lots of things in the world were red, and his brain was always scanning for anything close to that color.

His reflexes were not capable of nuance, so if a store sign swayed briefly in the breeze and had an accent of red paint, Wayne would spot it in his peripheral vision and be halfway to stabbing anything that didn't look like his party members.

That problem was a little less pronounced at night out in the wilderness, but his paranoia about a potential orc attack consumed any reprieve the calmer conditions might have offered. The desert orcs were out there, and they were violent. Those weren't mindless worries. Those were facts.

"Think we'll see dorcs tonight?" Hector asked.

Armond dropped his face in his hands.

"I'd rather we didn't," Wayne answered. "It'll be harder to convince them not to fight if it's dark."

"It's odd that these orcs made a treaty," Margo said. "I've never heard of that happening before."

Fergus nodded. "That's because it hasn't. This is a first."

Margo sighed. "Nice of the Mayor to let them know we're fair game."

Hector patted Margo on the back. His one hand was wider than she was. "Free XP."

Wayne stood. "I'm going to get some sleep if I can. Wake me when it's my turn for watch."

The Zeroes around the fire waved farewell. As Wayne wiggled into his bedroll with his back to the light, he felt the sensation that Armond feared. His body quite liked being fully energized in two hours every night. No restless tossing and turning. No waking up to pee. No feeling like your eyes had only just closed when the alarm clock buzzed.

Even now, Wayne attempted to explain to his body that such a boost was not in their immediate future, but he felt himself lying down with the expectation that he'd be up again soon and perfectly restored. His body would be disappointed come morning, and it would complain with all sorts of minor aches and discomforts.

Wayne stopped and replayed his last minute of thoughts and laughed to himself. He was crying that his unreasonable superpowers didn't also work anywhere and anytime he wanted. Life was so hard.

"Are you still awake?" Fergus asked via Voice.

Sitting upright immediately, Wayne referenced his HUD to get a read on enemy numbers and movements.

But there was nothing there. Only the green dots of his party members.

"What's wrong?"

"You need to see this."

Wayne needed a moment for his eyes to adjust. His party had stepped outside of camp without him hearing–so maybe he had fallen asleep after all–and he went to join them. As soon as the fire was at his back, he saw what had the Zeroes enraptured.

The mountains in the distance were gone, obscured by a fog so thick that it flowed more like liquid than air. The wave of gray rolled down the mountain slopes and across the desert. As it advanced on the party, the horizon of the world itself seemed to shrink, swallowing everything in its path.

Flickers of greens and blues and reds and yellows shown brightly beneath the fog in long pulses, but these weren't HUD indicators. These were colors in the fog itself. They reminded Wayne of Christmas lights beneath fake snow, and that nostalgia squeezed his heart harder than he ever would have thought possible.

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