“BOUNCE!” The angry teardrop shifted from light blue to red as it slammed into Chibi Robert’s chest. He almost lost his balance. It hurt but only around the same as if he had been hit with a kicked football.

“BOUNCE!” It once more jumped at him. It struck on the shoulder, almost dislodging the arm from the socket.

“BOUNCE!” Before Robert could recover its bearings, the red teardrop hit him on the small of his back.

It was gaining speed with each angry bounce. Colored blood red, the teardrop vestige looked murderous. Two stubby protrusions jotted out of its forehead, reminding Robert of a devil’s horns.

When it came back at him, he punched it back. His hand hurt and he almost broke his knuckles.

“BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE!” Bubbles started to form inside the teardrop, increasing its volume. It seemed furious and the two stubby horns had grown into two spiral spears.

It would probably hurt a lot.

“C’mon, Robert, focus! You can kill this vestige without shedding a drop of blood if you give it your best!” Noah shouted.

Robert couldn’t see why. He also had no idea where all this confidence Noah displayed came from. Professor Actus was either a genius or a clairvoyant.

How could he defeat that bouncy ball without bleeding? One strike from those horns and he would become a goner.

He focused on it. “Mind Blackout!” He used his strongest spell.

“BOUNCE!” The vestige jumped at him, horn first.

Mind blackout did fuck all to the vestige. Robert could only dodge. The liquid inside the teardrop was now boiling and its size was increasing by the second. Stubby arms started to pop out of it.

“BOUNCEY!” It hollered. The horns grazed Robert’s leg.

“Goddammit!” He cursed. “Will you just stop?”

The armillary sphere rotated on its own and so did the clockwork mechanism with the hourglasses in the middle. They clicked and the red teardrop with buffy arms and horns was frozen in place but not in time. The fluids inside still bubbled and churned and the eyes tracked Robert’s movements.

The mechanism in the middle started to click. Robert knew it was a decreasing countdown without looking. As furious as the vestige, he ran and punched it. No longer did it bounce. The teardrop bubble popped in a shower of Ether and essence. All of it rushed toward Robert. Once the vestige was no more, the clicking stopped, the gears whirred back into position, and the rings of the armillary sphere loosened up again.

Noah clapped his hands enthusiastically. “Now that was something amazing!”

Amanda rushed forward and hugged Robert. Here in the Netherecho, they were all the same size but it was equalized by the lower denominator. The anglerfish shepherd’s crook was held in her left hand.

“You froze the vestige!” She squealed. “Who drew the short straw now?”

“None of you, that’s for sure,” Noah said. “Wow. Just wow. Did this ability cost a lot of essence?”

Robert nodded. “Yes. More than what I gained from the vestige.”

“Let’s find another one. We must test it. Try to make it stop right at the start. Do you think you can do it again?”

Robert grinned. “Only one way to find out.”

The next vestige they found was a floating rock with six arms. It represented the concept of hardness.

“Oh,” Amanda whined. “I could use that one for my granite bones tempering.”

“But someone neglected her training, and now is playing catch up,” Robert mocked playfully.

“All the more reason to keep at it,” Noah said. “Hardness is not too difficult to find. Robert, you’re up. Kill that one.”

Robert lifted his construct and pointed it at the vestige. “Stop!” He ordered. Essence flowed from him into the contraption. It whirred and locked in place. Since something hard was also not as easy to move as something bouncy, the time he had was bigger this time.

“I wish I had a weapon or something,” Robert complained. He checked his Ethercosm. Mind shield was a spell that could benefit from the concept of hardness. A harder, tougher shield, difficult to penetrate. But the spell was not yet at the point where it could capture a vestige and evolve.

He touched the rock and whispered. “Drain essence.” He didn’t need to say the name of his spell out loud but it was a courtesy to his allies to let them know what he was doing. The rock crumbled as its Ether became Robert’s.

But it confirmed Robert’s construct’s power. It stopped vestiges in place.

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“Next one is Amanda’s. Unless Robert can use it for one of his spells,” Noah determined.

They traveled for a bit more and found another vestige. No. It was a remnant. Noah conjured his pipe and inhaled. When he blew on it, flames came out of the pipe and moved to wrap around him. The remnant was a whirlwind of rocks and dust. As it moved, it picked up more debris while discarding ones in its whirlwind haphazardly. It represented the concept of disorganization.

“Amanda, it’s your choice. Do you want to give it a go?” Noah offered.

“Robert?” Amanda asked.

“It doesn’t fit any of my spells.” Robert shook his head.

Amanda held her crook with both hands and started to wave it as the orb glowed and shifted colors in a hypnotic pattern. The light was focused on the whirlwind. The remnant noticed Amanda and whirled in their direction. The spinning debris slowed down as the light soothed the remnant. It lost speed and mass as the heavier rocks fell down from lack of momentum and lift. Then the finer gravel, and finally, a few feet away from Amanda, the sand.

The remnant was nowhere to be seen. Yet Amanda gained no Ether. She approached and used the butt of her crook to sweep the sand into a pile. Some grains tried to move but she pushed these closer together anyway. Then she used her hands to turn the loose sand into a mound. The remnant lost cohesion and meaning as it was now organized.

“That was easy!” She cheered.

Noah clapped again. “Right, right. Congratulations. Keep in mind this, both of you. There are several ways to defeat an ether construct other than violence. This dimension is conceptual. Let’s go back, we spent enough time out here already. We don’t want to find any of the nastier critters that roam around here.”

*

*

Noah left the Netherecho after his pupils. Something strong was prowling that conceptual dimension. He had his talent pitch the three of them against whatever he sensed and got absolute defeat. These caverns and tunnels weren’t very popular because only slimes and aquatic monsters lived there. But new passages opened all the time. Something or someone who shouldn’t exist here wandered in. Perhaps it was time to move on and leave these caverns and move on to the next realm.

He didn’t want that. Now that Robert and Amanda were learning how to kill slimes, this was a perfect place to grind and grow strong. His plan was to get both to ascend to two stars before leaving but he couldn’t risk meeting the intruder.

His projection vanished as he returned to his body.

*

*

The sound of crashing waves greeted Robert upon his return to his own body. It seemed that the lake above them was getting restless. But they were in an enclosed cavern. The sound had nowhere to go, causing this everlasting reverberating effect. He stood up and went around the tree. A shadow was approaching.

“Freddy?” Robert called.

“Woof,” Freddy appeared next to him.

“It seems we have a big one coming,” Robert pointed out.

He crouched and looked up. Since the glow came straight from above, shadows were exactly underneath whatever was casting it. He saw an elongated fish with centipede legs underneath its body instead of dorsal fins. Sense life placed it somewhere in the high two or lower three stars. Robert felt a pang of jealousy at Amanda for soloing one of these giant monsters. Would this centifish be enough to push him to the point where he could safely ascend his star?

He really didn’t like the feeling he got from all this suppressed energy inside of him. He felt like a caged beast, begging to go wild. He promised to himself. One more big fight, and he would ascend.

“Wow, that thing is ugly,” Amanda said, standing next to him. She startled Robert.

“I named it centifish,” Robert said.

“I bet that thing can run on the ground, fast. It is a bad matchup for us.”

“We’re not fighting it. If that monster leaps out of the lake, we’re running.”

Noah groaned as he stood up. “What’s going on?”

“Robert found a centifish,” Amanda said. “Can we fight it?”

Noah raised his head and stared at the centifish. “Sure. Do you want me to bring it down here?”

“That’s a three-star monster.”

“With the brain of a goldfish. Have some confidence,” Noah retorted.

Noah walked out of the tree’s shade. He drew a rune made out of water this time.

Robert wondered what Noah's affinities were. He so far used Fire and Water. No, not Fire. Magma, a rare affinity with some overlaps with Fire. Did he have all the four basic elemental affinities and then more?

The teacher finished drawing the water rune in the air and then struck the floating rune with his open palm. “Natural disaster: Whirlpool!”

The lake's surface began to churn and rotate. The centifish was already going toward that area, now it was being sucked faster. The spinning water caused a change in the usual swimming-pool-esque light pattern. It now became a swirling light show. Some minutes passed and a tube of water descended from the lake. It pushed centifish down and out of the lake proper. It would also spawn hundreds if not over a thousand slimes.

With a massive wet crashing sound and an earth tremor, centifish joined them on the cave surface. The water that came with it had already transformed into slimes, a few hundred of which were crushed by the fish monster. It must’ve felt pain because it emitted a blood-curdling screech.

“Use whatever you want except for those forbidden seeds of yours, Amanda. I’ll be here watching. Have fun, you two.”

*

*

Amanda was afraid of another fight with a giant monster but now she had Robert by her side.

“What’s the strategy?” She asked.

“We need to clear the area of slimes first. We can’t fight the boss with them bouncing and trying to eat us,” Robert said.

“Agreed. Or maybe the fish will do the job for us. Look?” Amanda pointed.

The slimes only devoured meat but they weren’t picky about what meat to eat. And since centifish was already around, they weren’t out hunting for the humans. Every second, dozens of slimes pounced on centifish and another dozens of slimes died.

“It’s stealing our kills,” Robert jested with a comically shocked face.

“We can always pull more slimes to us.”

“True. Let’s wait and leave the centifish to fend off the slimes.”

They waited for one whole hour. At this point, centifish was so pissed at the slimes the monster was going out of its way to pop these annoying balloons of pain.

“It’s already getting tired,” Robert said.

“I didn’t see it use one essence spell,” Amanda said.

“Not all essence use is external or visible,” Noah broke his silence.

“Thanks for the advice, teacherman,” Robert said.

Because of the speed it moved on those tiny legs – tiny if compared to the monster’s body – Robert believed it was using some acceleration spell. It could be haste or any of its lesser, major, or normal strength variations. It could be a berserking ability. But definitely, it was using its essence for something.

Finally, the monster seemed to have killed all the slimes in its vicinity. Another important fact was that it wasn’t showing signs of asphyxiation. A few stragglers remained a bit away from the centifish.

“I think it picks its targets through sound,” Robert told Amanda.

“Those milky fish eyes don’t lie, right?” Amanda nudged his

“Yes, something like that,” Robert replied. She drew her sword. He went for the boar speed. “Let me test its defenses first,” he said before jogging toward the giant monster.