Robert fell on his butt, the blades of grass pressing against his pants. he stared at the ginormous snail shell. His mind was in disarray. Though he already associated the grayscale world as safe, his panic was slow to subsume. his heart didn't beat fast or at all. His breathing was ragged but it was a somatic effect. And he was glad he couldn't piss in the liminal void even if he wanted, else it would be a fait accompli.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he rambled.

Robert laid back and waited for his nerves to get back to normal. He had... more than two days before going back. The thought made him laugh boisterously.

"Fuck, I almost died there."

He almost expected Mickey to appear and say, "Oh, boy." Nobody offered any commentary or even showed up, though.

The tension left Robert's body, and then he fell asleep.

Subjective hours later, he woke up and rested. "Damn. I had this crazy dream that I—" Robert clamped his pie trap shut as he stared at the floating snail. "Not a dream," he gulped.

With a sigh, he stood up and examined the scene. The snail had retreated inside its shell but left its mouth at the opening. It was right about to bite Robert's head off, and then spin past him to separate it from the body. Then his eyes drifted to his party. Karla was reaching out, an expression of utter horror on her face. Xiao had one extended arm, a horizontal palm pointed toward the snail, and a burst of flames flying out of it. Liz was tracking the first snail, swords poised to stab at the monster. And Chris was focused on the earth ramp he made.

Seeing that they worried about him warmed Robert's heart. Could he become friends with these kids? Not that he was that much older than they but this was about to change rapidly. In a real-world week, he'd be two years older than he was now. His body wouldn't though. He checked his cheeks and chin, his beard hairs weren't even poking out of their pores yet.

Now, what should he do? Robert sat and thought about what he'd tell them after he returned to another place. What about the truth, limited to the bare minimum. He could say he used his talent to evade the snail. They wouldn't try to pry further than that as asking about an Arch's abilities was a major faux pas. No, he shouldn't link the evasion to his talent. That was too much information already. He would just shrug and say, "I was lucky to have the means to evade it." Yes, that was enough.

And evade he did. Robert thought he could avoid any attack so long he knew it was coming. He was still vulnerable to surprise attacks but that limited what his enemies could do by a lot.

Robert went to examine Liz. She was tracking the snail's rotation. By the position of her hands, she wanted to stab the snail while the opening with the soft bits was coming down. Her dominant leg was tensed to push her forward and her right arm to push the saber up. Satisfied, he moved away before it became weird. Robert had no intention of using his talent to become a liminal voyeur.

He sat down and gathered. Void wisps were scarce but he had nothing better to do. And plenty of subjective time to waste.

*

*

He was getting good at feeling when his stay in the liminal void was about to end. Robert moved to behind the snail and waited. He checked and found that his chosen spot would put him too close to Xiao's flamethrower palm. He moved ten feet back. Then all he had to do was wait until boredom settled in.

Color returned and everything resumed motion.

"Watch out!" Karla shouted and a wind blast roared where Robert was. Xiao's flamethrower struck the snail's carapace. And Liz's saber sank to the hilt in the other snail's shell. Both creatures screamed. The snail that was aiming at his head snapped its teeth but bit only wind.

"Bloody hell! Robert!" Xiao shouted and rushed along the last flames of his spell. "Hih? What? Where is he?"

The singed snail bounced twice to bleed its momentum and turned, springing from within with its huge axe in its hands. How it managed to put it inside its shell was easy to figure out. Space expansion. As far as Robert could tell, the inside of that shell might have a four-acre mansion.

The other snail bounced twice and sprayed white blood everywhere. Liz dodged the spray and took shelter behind Chris, who was showered with.. hot white stiff. Better not think too hard about it.

"Robert?" Karla stared at him. "How?"

Robert grinned sheepishly.

An arrow swished and thunked with a squelch. A silver blur ran past them. Meat was sliced.

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"Dude, did you teleport?" Xiao asked, excited as a kid after Halloween. "Damn, that's freaking awesome!!!"

"Don't pry too hard into other's abilities unless you are willing to open up yourself," Chris chided.

"Oh, right, sorry. Anyway, are you okay?"

Another arrow sang a song of death.

"I'm perfectly fine," Robert broke his silence.

"Hey, you boys don't mind if we split the second snail two ways, do you?" Karla asked.

"I hit it too," Xiao protested.

"And I distracted it," Robert added.

Karla glared at them. Then she broke out laughing. "I'm glad you are alive. That thing was about to bite your head off."

"Is anyone hurt," Liz asked.

"Nope."

"I'm okay."

"Good." She said. "We should gather the bodies. One of the shells is damaged by fire."

"Sorry. Was trying to save our healer!"

"No worries, no hard feelings," Chirs pit himself between the two. "What do you think of Rob's buffs, Liz?"

"Excellent. Really excellent. I had no problems."

"I can't believe we took six Mollusks that easily," Karla confessed. "And the speed buff was very useful."

"I third that," Xiao added.

They gathered the bodies and the spear tips. Apparently, the black glass-like substance was valuable.

Since none of them had overlapping affinities, everyone sat down to gather wisps

"We should get bags of holding," Liz commented. "Delving and going back after a single group is wasteful."

"We should be glad we are coming back with six corpses and no resources expended. You guys got your projectiles back, right?" Chris said, getting nods from both Xiao and Karla.

"Besides, we are splitting the haul five ways. But I'm down to another delve."

"Tomorrow?" Xiao suggested. "We should take the new guy out to drink."

"We haven't yet tested his healing," Liz said. "No offense, Robert."

"None taken," Robert said. "We can keep it as a temporary job until we see if we are really a good match."

"Works for me," Karla chimed.

"We can twist it right now," Chris suggested, stealing a glance at Liz, who became annoyed for some reason.

She drew one saber. "If you want to get cut this bad…"

Chris grinned and extended his forearm, the back of his hand facing up. Liz grunted and slashed it. The cut was shallower than Robert expected but then he reminded himself Chris had an Earth affinity, one of the best when tempering for defense. Of all affinities he knew of, only metal had a better defense.

Robert hurried and waved a hand above Chris'wound. It closed with slightly discolored skin.

"Not bad. Normal quality healing," Chris said as he poked the healed wound.

"You weren't expecting supernatural, right?" Liz asked.

"A tank can dream," Chris grinned.

"Dream on, then. If Robert had that kind of healing, he would not be on the LFG." Karla stated.

Healing had five major categories of quality. Minimal was a stopgap to stave off death, then first-aid quality could treat minor injuries and keep worse ones from aggravating. In the middle, average healing closed the wounds and sped up the body's healing process but couldn't fix anything the body couldn't on its own. It was akin to a good surgery procedure. Supernatural healing could regrow lost limbs or organs, and mend broken nones even with missing pieces but wasn't perfect. Finally, supreme healing could fix the whole body to perfection. Even old wounds, missing limbs, scars, or birth defects were thoroughly erased. Some said it could reverse aging.

"I might get there one day," Robert said.

"That's the spirit. Let's go sell these carcasses, then.

*

*

"Here's your cut," Chris told Robert. "Three hundred and fifty dollars. I know it isn't much but we spent only three hours in there."

Robert accepted the bank transfer. "It's good."

"Great. The team is saving for a bag of holding, so we can carry more bodies each trip. Say, are you good to delve tomorrow at ten in the morning?"

"Sure."

"Awesome. Meet you here, then?"

"Yeah."

The four teens went on their way. Robert checked his funds. He still had over ten thousand because his shopping spree at the bookstore was cut short. He decided it was time to fix that mistake.

*

*

Once inside the mall, Robert went straight to the bookstore.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"Yes. Itsy brother's birthday next week, I wanted to buy some scrolls and manuals for him."

"Certainly! What kind of manuals, and what affinity?"

"A spear combat manual, and…" Robert lowered his voice, "what do you have on the Time affinity?"

The attendant nodded. "This way, sir." They led Robert to the restricted book section.

Robert bought two weapon manuals, one for spears and one for swords. For his Time affinity, he got scrolls for the foresight and premonition abilities and a couple of guides. To misdirect his intentions, he asked about several other rare affinities, including Void. They had nothing for that one.

Back to the normal bookstore, he bought dozens of normal books. It reached a point where he had trouble carrying the box. They offered free delivery but he was forced to refuse.

He then went to a weapons shop and bought a good sword for four thousand and a steel shaft spear for three. Both had a minor self-repair enchantment to help with maintenance.

He also bought a brigandine armor set that was reinforced on the back and came with a gorget and aventail to protect the neck and throat.

The idea was that, so long Robert survived without any mutilating wounds, he could fix himself. The neck protection would take some time to get used to, which, for Robert, meant he'd be an expert by tomorrow.

Carrying all that stuff was awkward. Balancing the stack of boxes, Robert walked until he found an empty alley. Making sure nobody was watching him, he entered the liminal void. Then he carried his boxes back home one at a time.

*

*

Robert entered his Ethercosm. His star was at five percent full, a pittance but still very good progress for the days. Or almost ten months counting his extra time.

The shells for his apella and techniques were still the same. With his inability to recover essence in the liminal void, he couldn't practice them that much.

The newest addition was foresight. It gave him the power to peek into the most probable future. The further he looked, the bigger the costs and the more diffuse the impression and knowledge he would get. But he wanted to use it as a combat ability to sense enemy attacks and, more importantly, detect ambushes. Danger sense was a passive version of foresight that would warn him of surprise attacks and traps but only if said enemy or trap wasn't well hidden. The scroll promised him that proficiency with this technique would increase his ability to detect threats but the only way to train it was to expose oneself to said threats.

All in all, Robert was quite satisfied with his new set of tools.

He needed to find a primer on the Void affinity. Without it, he couldn't complete the void punch shell, nor develop the affinity further than the bare bones starting point.