Yip rebounded on the crater’s east edge like a bouncing ball, missiling towards the aliens once more. The two remaining foes did not stay still. The one flaring red hissed, and a spectral screech rang out throughout the area. At the same time, its tentacles rotated behind it like chainsaws.

The other creature opened its maw in Yip’s direction and fired off projectiles shaded black and azure.

“Yu!”

The bullets ricocheted off Yip’s rolling surface, but Yip’s trajectory diverged from its original path.

“Yip!” Agwyn called out anxiously, breaking out of Elrhain’s hold. Elrhain almost had a heart attack when the red flaring alien snapped its bulbous head towards them.

But thankfully, it returned its attention back to the rolling menace.

Yip, the fish gremlin.

It skirted along the crater's walls, dodging projectiles of manna and matter. In its path, it passed through the cloud which had once been the orange alien.

「What’s it doing?」 Elrhain wondered aloud, not risking physical speech.

He got his answer in the next second.

The aliens kept shooting into the cloud. But then, similar blue projectiles, a barrage of return fire suddenly blasted out from the cover of the orange cloud.

「Guerilla warfare!」 Agwyn cheered as she saw Yip’s bullets knock down the blue flaring alien from the air. The other dodged.

It strangely swung its tentacles, swimming out of harm's way with horizontal movements, leaving streaks of red light in its path.

However, its drift was slow.

As though Yip had predicted its course of flight, the spinning fish gremlin vaulted out from cover and drilled through the red alien without much resistance.

“Krrrrrrrrrrr!”

For the first time in the fight, the alien let out a cry. Its call clicked and clacked like two metal gears that fractionated against each other.

Only the blue flaring alien remained. It slowly pushed itself up from the crater floor with its tentacles, but the areas hit by Yip’s projectiles sparked and flared like its own internal wirings. The wounds were like melted metal, as though there were hit by superheated plasma.

Yip did not give it a chance to respite.

“Yip.” It barked, then slammed into the alien from above.

And so the battle ended, with nothing but clouds remaining of its enemies.

***

“Yip!” The fish gremlin bit Elrhain’s lab coat and tried to drag him into the crater. Once again, its button paws were not long enough to leverage enough force to move him.

But this time, Elrhain did not dare to look at the adorable critter with the same contempt as before.

It had just massacred three squids.

However, he still had a pride to maintain.

“Is it just me, or do you like dragging people along?” He rasped as he picked the critter up.

“Yuu? Ye?”

“Ah! A new syllable.” Agwyn piped, finally noticing her pet's extended vocabulary. She did not catch Elrhain’s rumpus eye.

Agwyn put a hand on the crater wall for support, with her legs hanging from the edges. Then slowly, she slid down, raising a small cloud of albedo dust.

Elrhain followed, putting Yip on his head.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

As he reached the ground, Yip jumped off and ran towards the dissolving clouds.

The clouds hung over the crater's surface like luminescent mist, yet the three distinct clumps did not mix even as they slowly dispersed. Not completely.

Yip scuttled under them and sniffed the ground until it found a familiar object. It picked the object up and dropped it near Elrhain’s boots.

“… So the obsidian stones were the gheist cores of these aliens,” Agwyn muttered, picking the core up before Elrhain bent down, much to her boyfriend’s chagrin. “Alien squid gheist cores.”

“Fuck.” Elrhain cursed involuntarily. Agwyn turned his way, her eyes shocked. “…. I’ll give it back.”

“Ah, sorry. I wasn’t… Look, as far as we know, the only way for me to make real progress in cultivation here is by feeding these obsidian cores to the Gladys spire. And if the only way to get the cores is by hunting….”

“Oh….Fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“So little fella.” Elrhain squatted in front of Yip with a severe face. The fish gremlin’s fluffy fur needled up and it hid the two remaining cores under its belly.

“Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

“Ok, don’t growl. I want to ask if there are other ways we can get cores.”

“Yu.” Yip rolled backwards, falling on its face. The cores were gone.

“It said no,” Agwyn replied to Elrhain’s question with a pale visage.

“Seriously, do you actually understand it?”

“I… I think so. I don’t know. But it said no.”

“… Hells.” Elrhain sighed, then stood up while patting the lunar dust off his lab coat. “Are you certain that your gun doesn't work?”

“We tested it a million times.” Agwyn snapped out of whatever confusion she felt before pulling out the plasma pistol harnessed to her exo-gear.

“Pew! Pew!” She shot with her mouth, the gun pointing at the crater wall. She manually nudged the vibrio knife, Omni jet, force shield, and other modules.

Nothing.

“Let’s head back.” Elrhain shook his head and climbed up the crater wall. Surprisingly, he had no difficulty scaling the ledge. But as he rose, he saw a couple of blue crystals sprouting from the crater wall.

‘I’m sure there weren't any before the battle started. Wait, those are the projectiles Yip fired!’

“Hey! Stop daydreaming.” Agwyn sprinted up the curved wall with her superior athletics and grabbed the edge before jumping up, reaching the top before him. She then pulled the absent-minded Elrhain up by his hand. “Yip! We’re leaving!” She shouted.

The fish gremlin stopped playing with the two cores it had brought out again. It yelped, then rolled up the crater edge like gravity was a joke.

After flying up in a trajectory because of momentum, it landed near the boulder Agwyn and Elrhain had initially hidden behind.

Yip took out one of the cores and ate it.

Elrhain panicked, 「Huh? What? Is it finally your jinxed boss fight?」

Agwyn grabbed his arm and dived behind a second boulder, 「Where’re the aliens?!」

But even after a few seconds of breathless waiting, no enemy appeared. Agwyn huffed in relief.

「Yip?」

She called out to the critter as she peeked out of the boulder’s corner.

“Yip???!!!” She cried outside their link, sounding distressed… and for some reason, annoyed? “Bad kitty! BAD KITTY!”

“What’s happening?” Elrhain was utterly confused, still shoved against the boulder by Agwyn’s herculean strength. He was about to look through her vision but,

“Bad fish gremlin! Don’t poop in public! Why are you making such a mess?!” Agwyn rushed out, incensed beyond reason.

“Pfft! What?” Elrhain’s sense sharing fumbled. He followed out and saw a fantastic spectacle.

Yip… was pooping.

And it was nibbling on the final of the three cores as it discharged its… bluish golden faeces all around the boulder as though marking its territory.

“By the gods. Annie!”

“This is why you gotta potty train before this becomes a habit. Its previous owner was so irresponsible!” Agwyn huffed. That previous owner was probably the person who made Yip a moderator of the Gladys time capsule.

“No! Look, there. The poop trail.” Elrhain pointed at a particular spot along said trail of waste matter. There was no other way to describe it.

Agwyn gasped in shock. “Bloody Hells?”

If it was any other scenario, Elrhain would send her a rumpus eye calling her ‘Rude~,’ just as she did every time he cursed. Yet he’d allow the transgression just this once.

Because manna.

It gathered in shades of blue and golden and clumped at that spot. Elrhain assumed it was where the indecent fish gremlin had first done its business.

The incredible energy swirled ever so slightly. Elrhain doubted he could have even noticed the change without his paranormal eyes.

Yet the sight grew freakier. The gold hues from the… poop… separated from the blues. They combined with the manna. Part of it turned into near-invisible threads and attached itself to the boulder-like anchor.

And the rest… turned into runic chains.

“Discs above. It poops magical formations!” Agwyn could not, in good faith, believe what was happening. But reality cared not for her doubts. Elrhain could only pat her shoulder and point to another spot in the trail.

After the golden hues had morphed entirely into chains, the anchoring threads disappeared as though they never existed. But the remaining blue matter still gathered manna at a slower pace.

This change was not instantaneous. However, Elrhain could guess what the end result would be.

Granules, blue granules like sugar crystals formed on the waste matter surface. They had a strange shape. They grew in clumps of multiples, each crystal stalk extending from the same root area. Hexagonal sides, small off-shoots like branches, similar to the main body of the crystals themselves.

They were Sagathan lamps. And the blue crystals that jutted out so abundantly from the grounds on this alien world.

Agwyn gulped, turning towards Elrhain with an incredulous expression. Yip had by then rolled near their feet. It had its eyes upturned, panting slightly with its adorable tongue sticking out.

“Well, what do you know.” Said his girlfriend, amazed. “Our pet poops panacea too.”