Mia's shapely bare legs looked like something out of a runway. Her hips swayed as she walked, her arms swinging by her sides. She'd pulled her blonde hair into a tight ponytail, and it looked soft to the touch. Stray bits of hair outlined her graceful, elegant neck, her skin clear of sweat, no freckles to be found. Gorgeous. Wafting from her was the faint scent of lavender, drowning out the smell of burnt plastic around them.

Logan didn't know why he'd ever thought she was odd. He'd do anything for her to spare him a glance, a kind word, a smile. Logan followed her like a duckling following its mother, his mouth dry, his gaze glued to her ass. Although it was just as hot and humid, he spared no thought for transforming his armour into its flexible exoskeleton, for nothing touched him. Not while he was in Mia's presence. He could be walking on hot coals, trekking over a mountain with an exploding volcano at the top, and he wouldn't have cared. It was enough to be here, to know her. She was everything.

"Mate," hissed Lachlan next to him, jabbing him in the side with his elbow. "What's wrong with you?"

Logan gave him a dreamy smile. "Hmm?"

Lachlan shot him a worried frown. "You look drugged."

Voss tugged Lachlan to the side. "Don't bother," he said in an undertone. "Once she gets her claws into someone, there's no escaping. He's a dead man walking."

Lachlan stumbled to a stop and then quickened his pace to keep up. "Can't we do something? The man saved your life."

Logan took in the conversation, but it went in one ear and out the other. It was like they were talking about the weather for all he paid attention, since every fibre of his being was focused on Mia.

She was everything.

Everything.

Everything.

"If you try to interfere, you'll be next. She's probably listening to us right now."

Mia suddenly came to a stop and turned around with a wide smile.

Lachlan and Voss froze.

"Mia…?" Logan breathed.

With a little laugh, Mia turned back around, and Logan tripped over his own feet, hopelessly enchanted. Even her laugh was like trickling bells. The bells of an angel.

Charlie crossed his arms, his biceps bulging, and he cut Logan with a glare, but then he turned and followed Mia, stomping his feet and being especially loud. "Do you have to play with them like that? It's disgusting."

"Who doesn't want to be desirable?" said Mia. "Besides, I deserve a bit of fun. These meatheads are always so convinced that a woman would never be any match for them. When they come to their senses and realize that I've led them by their dicks, it's all the sweeter."

Logan stumbled again, but this time for a different reason. Something she'd said had cut through his fog, something… it… it…

It didn't sound right.

Mia came to a stop again and then turned around, giving Logan a careful glance. "Come on, you're doing so well," she crooned.

What…?

"Just a little further, there's a good boy. There you go."

Logan swallowed and blinked, feeling dazed and like his vision was out of focus, like he was wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. He'd just had a thought, but it was gone, and no matter how hard he tried to grasp it, it was like fighting against an oncoming current.

But it was weird.

Why had he been struggling in the first place?

There was no reason to struggle or think about anything other than Mia and to bask in her radiance.

Next to him, Lachlan had taken a pen from his suit pocket and was scribbling on a business card. Logan felt fondness shoot through him. The man was out of shape; yes, but he had tried his best, and to carry around things from before the Integration made him seem even more out of touch. Once they returned to the complex, Mia, in all her radiance, would find a place for Lachlan, and put him to good use.

Logan looked down.

That was odd.

Lachlan had sidled next to him again, but he wasn't saying anything. Instead, he pushed his business card against Logan's arm, almost jabbing it. Giving him a fond smile, Logan grasped it and looked down. What, was he trying to advertise his accounting services? Accounting in the apocalypse!

On the card, Lachlan had written in messy handwriting, 'Think of your family. Remember yourself. Remember who you are. You've been drugged. DRUGGED."

Drugged? Logan peered down at his hands as if he'd find it grasping a bottle of beer. But he'd last had alcohol on his dock when the System invaded and transformed their world. There was no way he was drunk. As for drugged, he doubted [Regenerate] would let drugs put him down for long. He'd been infected with venom during the fight with the flying snake swarm, and he'd managed to brush off the effects.

No, the only time he'd been affected by drugs was in the perception trial, when he'd jumped into the stream full of that System generated purple water. He'd used the water to help revive Asthea, but Logan turned his mind away from that memory like closing a door on a room. He couldn't think of Asthea without pain, and although he'd mentioned to Lara that he had regrets, he'd need time to get through his Build an Empire Quest before he could truly sit down with her and explain what had happened to him in the last two weeks.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Logan blinked.

Wait.

A quest.

Lara.

Mia.

Why did these things seem contradictory? His thoughts felt like everything had gone sideways, up was down, right was left. It was as if his mind—

Mind. Oh fuck. If Logan knew anything, it was that his lower constitution attribute meant that he was vulnerable to mind attacks. Everything seemed fine, but there was something bugging him, like a word at the tip of your tongue that you couldn't grasp no matter how hard you tried.

He looked down at Lachlan's business card again, grasping it in his armour covered fingers so hard that it was in danger of tearing. 'DRUGGED.'

"I… I don't…"

"Shh," Lachlan hissed.

Holy fuck, the fact that he was stuttering meant something was really, really wrong. With a gasp, Logan removed his facemask and helmet, letting the sandstone fall to the ground. Then he willed out the bucket of drugged water he'd taken from the perception trial. The bucket sloshed over the brim with violet water, but Logan paid it no mind as he tipped it towards his mouth and took huge gulps.

Although he'd never ingested the water before, he knew it wasn't toxic, since he'd used it to help revive Asthea. He had no idea if it would do anything, but all he knew was that something was wrong, and he may have only seconds to understand that anything was off before he was swept away into nothing but a drugged bliss.

Mia turned, her eyes narrowing, but it was already too late. Logan felt his perception shift, like blinking his eyes and suddenly realizing everything around you was night when you thought it was daylight. He lurched to the side, feeling drunk. A surge of pleasure made his senses surge, his surroundings becoming more acute. From the fluttering of wings from the seagulls far above them, to the trees rustling in the breeze, to the plastic that crinkled underneath his feet. It must have been the effect of the water, but it had the added benefit of interfering with the mindfuck that woman had just subjected him to.

Her lips thinning, she gave him a look of deep annoyance. "Now what have you done? Only another block and we would have been there, Idiot. Now we'll have to make do with my weaker array."

Logan was still blinking away the effects of the water. Everything around him was moving in slow motion, his thoughts too slow to grasp. Now this, this was drunk. Stumbling as if his feet were weighed down by iron, he grasped the air and tried to hold onto something to steady himself.

Next to him, Lachlan grabbed his hand. Logan gave him a grateful look.

"We're fucked now," muttered Voss behind them.

Mia had something in her hand. It looked like a Rubrik's Cube, but it was black, its sides gleaming like polished metal. With a frown, she flipped a button on the cube and then sent it flying. It flashed. There was a pressure in the air, a feeling of an immense aura, but other than that—nothing. It was as if the cube had disappeared.

"Come here," she said.

Like hell. It was too late, lady. He'd figured out her—

"Come here," Mia said again, but this time there was a complexity to her voice that made him want to obey. Screaming inside of his head, everything within him rebelling, Logan bit his lip and forced himself to stay in one place.

"COME HERE," she said, leaning towards him, her eyes glued to him without blinking. This time, the command blasted through his head like a bullhorn, and before Logan had a second to process, he'd already taken a step forward like his feet were on fire. Logan rushed towards Mia, taking one step, two, three, before he forced himself to—

Aww, crap.

His vision flared as if he'd walked through a beam of light. He felt heat sear, passing over his bare face and head, before panning over his armour covered shoulders and back. It had been invisible before, but now that he'd walked through it, he could clearly see a wall of light behind him and in front of him, as if he were staring at an invisible forcefield or an alarm with lasers.

Logan turned around and tried to back up, but it was like trying to step through a solid wall. He tried the wall on his left, only to have the same effect. Looking up, he could see a solid forcefield about three feet above his head.

Oh shit, he was in a box the size of a storage shed. His breathing growing shallow, adrenaline shooting through his system, Logan deployed [Threshold Shift] to take him out of there, only to be hit with the mother of all headaches as thousands of ice pricks pecked away at his brain. That was the same feeling he'd had back in Pied's Kingdom when he'd tried to rescue Lara from the cells. Retching, he leaned over and dry heaved, his chest heaving.

Whatever Mia had done to him had stopped, and he could only blink, amazed at himself. He'd been under her spell, so deep that he would have followed her off a cliff. Although he'd known that his low constitution stat had been a weakness, until now, he'd never known how much of a weakness.

Forget a high strength attribute or a large Karma pool, if he were vulnerable to shit like that, he would have no chance against someone his own level who had a mental manipulation skill. As soon as he got out of here, he needed to grind away at monsters so he could make improvements and shore up his constitution attribute.

But first he had to get out of here.

All right, he couldn't use [Threshold Shift], but perhaps Mia hadn't accounted for his high strength attribute. Rolling his shoulders, Logan ground his teeth. Using every ounce of strength at his disposal, he pounded the invisible wall like hitting a punching bag. For a second, a bright, blue light flared, the wall illuminating, before going back to normal. Bracing his feet, Logan went at it in earnest, hit after hit, plummeting the thing like no tomorrow. If this had been anything but System generated, he would have cleared a hole through the wall and out the other side, but no matter how many times he hit it, the effect was the same.

Nothing.

Fuck.

Backing up, he ran a hand through his hair and paced. He felt like he couldn't get enough air, the invisible walls closing around him. Logan had never been claustrophobic, but this was doing a number on him. He'd never been trapped by an invisible barrier before! Worst of all, he could see through the invisible wall as if nothing kept him from the others. The wall might as well not be there.

An array. She'd mentioned an array. That had been the same thing Pied had given him to protect Lara.

Logan blew out a breath and then approached the invisible wall and peered at Mia. She had gone back to reading her book, her mouth in a grin, while Charlie stood behind her with his hands on his hips, his mouth in a scowl. To the side, Lachlan kept pulling on the sleeves of his jacket, his face pale. Voss was slumped next to him, cradling his injured hand, his gaze unfocused and inward.

"You're reading a book?" said Logan. "You've got balls, I'll give you that. But you shouldn't have fucked with me. Either you're crazy, or you have a death wish."

"Finally finished your useless punching? Meathead." Mia looked up from her book and then closed it before tucking it back into her waistband. Rubbing a hand over her chin, she gave Charlie a playful smile. "Should I?"

Charlie snorted. "I'd like to see his face when you do."

Tugging on the collar of her shirt, Mia took out a long necklace and pulled it over her head. It was silver and at the end, a ring with a red gem gleamed, something with an aura all its own. It had to be System sourced.

She handed it to Charlie. "Scan me with [Identify]," she said to Logan.

Logan narrowed his eyes, a trickling of unease sloshing through his stomach. She didn't know that he had a different version of the skill, but he scanned her with [Idiot's Inspect] all the same.

[Mia White: Level 128. A human being.]

[Highest Stat: Wisdom. Characteristics: Skilled in mind arts. Hidden name: Damsel Fuck You.]

Oh shit.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.