Cassara screamed in rage, and Nemesis drifted closer to her. She shoved it back against the far wall, then rammed it into the stone several more times, willing it to either pass through or at least crack the stone to vent her anger. Rage was the only thing keeping her going at this point, and she nursed it lovingly.
Her partner winced, giving her a withering glare. He’d already complained that she was distracting him, but she didn’t care. It was insufferable that her foolish weakling of a sister had somehow acquired such a powerful ally. She had been defeated in only two blows. That was unacceptable. If she hadn’t already sent Nemesis away so she could enjoy her time tormenting her accursed kin she would have struck the stranger dead on the spot.
The Malconvoker had gathered up all his scattered papers. The board the man had used for his ritual, he’d referred to it as the Kan-ban, now had only a single note affixed to it, all the way to the right. Before him all the papers he’d produced were neatly stacked and organized.
Cassara knew about this part from her own training. The man was about to call forth a new daemon. These papers were collectively referred to as “the arguments” and he would provide them to the unborn daemon, providing it with the reasoning it needed to convince itself that it did in fact exist. The arguments were always convincing lies, circular references of logic, half-truths, and fallacious reasoning. To be a skilled demonologist one must be adept at the art of magical thinking.
This entire process was known as inversion of causation, because by injecting the arguments into the framework provided by the demonologist’s skills, a daemon could be caused to retroactively cause itself to exist, in a phenomenon called self instantiation.
The final part of the process would be coaxing the daemon forth from the primal discordance. In their natural state, if they could be said to have such, daemons were nothing more than a natural force similar to entropy. They were the opposite of reality and would try to annihilate it any time they found a small enough unprotected fragment of it. Her partner hadn’t brought any small animals with them that she could see, so he must… Yes, there it was.
The Malconvoker withdrew a small red gemstone from a pouch on his belt. Not the one he kept his greater daemon in. Soul gems were expensive, consisting of crystalized spirit attached to an otherwise disembodied soul. They were, however, one of the few ways to transport a raw soul without the creature it was originally attached to. He placed this upon the stack of arguments and spoke the words required by his skill.
“Create Lesser Daemon. Name… Havarati. Execute.”
Blinding light filled the room for a moment as the soul gem cracked and the stack of papers glowed with fell energy. When it faded, a creature stood in their place… No, that was wrong. The creature had always been there, she’d simply failed to notice him before, so blinded by rage and the need to complete her mission that the unobtrusive little thing had simply slipped her notice.
Now that she thought about it, she remembered seeing it for the first time when she’d first contacted her partner, and it had accompanied him everywhere he went since then. It hardly mattered, now that the man had completed whatever it was he’d been doing they could get on with their mission.
She looked at the small daemon that he had said could help them avoid the effects of the event and move safely through the undercity. It looked a bit like a spider, but the number of legs it had was wrong… Too few? Too many? She couldn’t tell, it seemed to change as she tried to count them.
It also reminded her a bit of a scorpion, but instead of a tail with a stinger a seemingly human arm and hand was poking out from where the tail seemed like it should be. It didn’t seem to have a head or a mouth, but as she looked at it, it waved a friendly greeting.
“How is this thing supposed to help us with the event?” she asked.
Her partner suddenly looked much more tired than he had previously, and before he could respond the lesser demon snapped its fingers a single time, then gave her a thumb’s up.
> System Message
>
> Area Alert
>
> The event affecting this dungeon has been concluded! Rewards will be distributed based on your contribution to the event when you exit the dungeon. Effects caused by the event will fade within the next 6 hours.
The demonologist blinked, then looked down at his creation. “That… was not what I’d had in mind. I suppose it works, but if anyone else has survived it might be noticed by someone on the outside when living prisoners start showing up at the other entrance days before they’ll be expecting them.”
“It doesn’t matter, we can proceed with our mission now, they won’t have time to stop us.” Cassara said, moving towards the trap door in the floor.
“Hold it!” her partner commanded. “The event is over but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to open that door just yet. Be quiet for a moment and listen.”
Cassara was about to snap at him for the delay, but she schooled herself. She had to remember that this man was very knowledgeable. She forced herself to stillness and listened.
There was a strange sound coming from the sturdy door in what had once been a ceiling. It had been going on so long that she’d stopped hearing it, but now it returned to her perception. It was a strange repetitive scraping noise, and there was something behind that too which she couldn’t quite make out.
Moving close to the door she heard the scraping sound increase in frequency and… fervor? It sounded like something was trying to get in. Behind the scraping was a burbling sound that she recognized as liquid draining out of something, but there were also occasional sloshing noises as things moved about in the liquid.
Cassara scowled, moving away from the hatch. “They know we are in here. They are trying to get inside. We’ll need to fight our way out.”
“Yes, and Havarati can help with that, but let's give it some time to calm down before we make our escape. I need to rest for a few hours and recover, the next part will be the hardest and we cannot afford to screw it up due to impatience.”
“I am not impatient,” she declared. “I am decisive.”
“I know,” he said, adopting that strange tone he sometimes used. “That’s why I’m sure you’ll understand the importance of taking our time and acting decisively when the moment is right.”
She nodded. She too was tired, but of course she couldn’t sleep here. She had woken up in Crucible face down in a pile of tar, barely able to breath, her head and stomach sore from the blows she’d taken.
By the time she’d cleared her eyes Nemesis had been hovering toward her from mere centimeters away. She had sent it off into the dark sky once more, but the close call had left her in a state of furious terror that had only been compounded when she’d realized that her only scarab token had been stolen from her.
She had screamed and pounded on the doors of the Fair Deal for an hour after that, only for her accursed sister to stand on the other side of the tinted glass, making faces and insulting gestures at her. Cassara had sworn then that the first thing she would do when she got her reward for succeeding as Host of the Ordeal would be to come here again and tear Rhelrya’s horns from her head with her bare hands, then use them to put her eyes out.
Nemesis had almost caught her once again while she banged fruitlessly on the doors. She had learned that it moved faster when out of your direct line of sight. That was the only explanation for how it managed to return so quickly on some occasions. Then what she had known would happen finally occurred. The magic of her scarab token wore off. Since it was no longer in her possession her time in Crucible had been limited.
Entry into Astra cost a unique soul, and when she’d been summoned to Astra that price had been paid. However, in order to avoid needing a sacrifice every time someone visited the Exchange, The Lord Adversary had created a little trick.
Any soul coming to the Exchange from Astra was stretched between the two realms by virtue of magic contained within the scarabs. When she’d come here the scarab had created something very similar to a dungeon entrance, a place where the two worlds were the same, and her soul was now flowing through that link from Astra.
Now that she’d lost her scarab, the residual magic was fading and the failsafe was drawing her back to Astra before the connection could close itself. This same sort of mechanism would draw her back to the Astra side of the dungeon entrance if she were inside it when it reset, though that was managed by the Divine System rather than The Lord Adversary’s cunning spells.
She had re-appeared, screaming in rage, and startling her companion. It was good that he had not laughed when she recounted what had happened. She would have killed him if he had, Ordeal or no.
Now she watched him sleep peacefully and apparently without worry. What a naive fool he was. She wondered who in the echelons of The Lord Adversary’s host this man had so annoyed as to be sent on a suicidal mission such as this.
It was of course not permissible to kill talented servants of The Lord, but one could always assign a disliked underling on a mission likely to kill them. This man was so weak he needed to rest after barely doing anything for days, and yet he’d been sent here, to one of the most intentionally lethal dungeons in Astra just to assist her.
Well, it didn’t matter. If he continued to serve her well she’d see him out of this mess he’d gotten himself into, but if not then it wasn’t a big deal, his aid wouldn’t be required much longer. Unlike him, she had wings, so she could get where they needed to go next with no issues. They only needed to get out of this building and it would be all over.
No one could stop them now.
***
I awoke confused and embarrassed from a rather graphic dream. Sex in this body was no longer a mystery to me, I had access to Tavi’s memories, and she been rather enthusiastic about the subject. If I wanted to, I could call up dozens of individual encounters she’d had with various men in her life.
It should be hard to be embarrassed by dreams of such things when I could literally remember doing them, but somehow, I managed it. In some ways dreams could feel more real than memories, especially second-hand ones. The memories I’d inherited were alien to me, the thoughts I remembered thinking weren’t mine. My dreams lacked that layer of separation.
Part of the problem had been Lucus waking me up. He’d shaken me awake and it had corresponded to what was happening in the dream rather well. Now I was muddled, tired, and horny with no good way to fix any of those things.
I understood Tavi better now than I ever had before, she was a part of me, and I think everyone has parts of themselves they find embarrassing. That wasn’t to say I was ashamed of her, far from it. I was proud of that part of myself in ways I couldn’t fully articulate. She had made me a better person than I’d been on my own.
Sure, her sex drive was a little annoying, but that was probably mostly biological. I could fix that eventually. If our situation had been different, I might have even enjoyed it. There was nothing wrong with it, not now that we’d fully merged, but this place was a real mood killer, and of course my relationship with Lucus was very firmly in “it’s complicated” territory.
Lucus had woken me because it was my turn to take watch, but my tired brain finally picked up the fact that he hadn’t actually gone back to bed himself. Instead, he’d sat down nearby and was obviously waiting for me to collect myself. He wanted to talk.
I walked over and sat beside him, resting my head against him. I knew I needed to stop thinking of him as a prospective lover and more like a brother, but it was hard. I genuinely liked the guy. He was big and soft spoken, but he was obviously intelligent and loyal beyond any reasonable metric. In my former life he’d have been exactly the sort of person I’d have liked to be friends with. Now it was a little more complicated, and I kind of hated that.
Tavi’s memories didn’t make it any easier. Not only did she definitely not think of him as a brother, she didn’t really even have a firm grasp of that concept. Her entire perception of family was skewed compared to what I was used to. Goblin communities raised kids communally, and nobody really knew who was related to who. Their method of sorting who you should and shouldn’t sleep with was based on smell and didn’t really apply outside of other goblins.
Tavi hadn’t been raised in a goblin society, but she’d heard enough about it over the years and even met other goblins who had been raised traditionally. The only other large settlement in the area was goblinoid, and trade passed down river between there and Altria. It was likely where Tavi and Ryke’s parents had come from.
She was therefore aware of how things normally worked for her species and also more cognizant of how humans and many other species thought of it. Her brain just wasn’t wired quite the same way. It also didn’t help that she really had a thing for big burly guys of almost any species, which even she thought was a little weird, all things considered.
I sighed. She was never any help on stuff like this. Still, I could sit here for a bit and enjoy the firm but gentle presence beside me, and his pleasant warmth. Until he figured out what he wanted to say at least.
“You know, when I’m not thinking about it, it’s so easy not to notice the differences,” he said. “But when I am, it’s not quite night and day, but more like seeing Tavi if she lived to be thirty years older than she is now.”
I glanced up at him. “It’s not too far off. I was in my mid-twenties back in my world,” I told him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? How long do goblins live in your world? Or… you weren’t a goblin, were you?”
“Nah, vanilla human. We didn’t have goblins in my world, only humans. No subspecies either. It was very boring.”
He shook his head, bemused. “Tell me about it. What was it like there?”
I sighed. “It was wonderful and terrible in equal measure. We had technology that rivaled your magic, but no actual magic. I’ve been planning to see if I can figure out why that was. Everything was very impersonal, which had its benefits but could also screw you in ways you wouldn’t believe.
“We used games and entertainment to escape from the crushing weight of responsibility and pressure we felt from every direction, but some people thrive under pressure. We’d turned society into a machine, or maybe a ‘system’ but it was too big for anyone to comprehend. For some people that fact broke them, and they tried to simplify it with convenient self-deceptions. It was an insane asylum, but I wish I could show you our art. You’d weep to see it.”
We sat in silence for a long time, just enjoying each other’s presence. Finally, Lucus spoke again. “Tavi… no, wait, what do I call you?”
I pulled away from him a bit so I could look him in the eyes. “Tavi’s still fine. We’re the same person now. If you want though, I’ve been calling myself Nyx as a sort of alias for my shadow thief persona. There’s also another name, my true name according to the gods. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but of all people I don’t mind you knowing it… just don’t tell anyone else, ok?”
He nodded. “I’d like to know.”
“It's Infinity,” I told him.
“Infinity?” he asked. “What a strange name.”
“Agreed. I’m still not sure if I picked it, or if it somehow picked me.”
“Tell me more about your world. Who were you? What did you do there?” he asked.
“I was…” I trailed off. “I… “
Suddenly I was having a hard time remembering specifics. I could remember all sorts of general information, and even a bunch of things that felt very personal, but somehow weren’t. Facts about myself that felt almost generic.
I tried again. “I was a programmer. It’s close to what you’d probably call a wizard, but we worked on the technology that ran our world.”
That was all true, but why couldn’t I remember the name of the company I’d worked for, or even what kind of software we’d made? I started scanning my memory for other things. I had parents, obviously. What were their names though? I could remember having friends and girlfriends, but not what any of them looked like. What schools had I attended, and in what countries or states? What year had it been when I’d put on the nVR headset that had taken me to this world?
I didn’t know.
I realized that I was shaking, and that Lucus had put his arms around me, holding me tight, trying to comfort me. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear it. Was this something that merging with Tavi had done to me? Something about being turned into a gemstone? In the back of my mind I could hear screaming. Was it Tavi screaming, or me? Who was I? Why couldn’t I remember the name I’d been born with?
Lucus finally put an end to the dark tempest of my thoughts in the most expedient way he could. He kissed me, right on the lips. I had been hyperventilating I realized, but the sensation of being kissed so startled me that it blew all other thoughts out of my head. It was like a drowning person being thrown a life raft, and for a brief moment I clung to it with desperate need.
Then just as suddenly we pulled apart. I was dizzy, but no longer spiraling down a dark pit that had no bottom. My thoughts were racing, but now they were going in a completely different direction.
“Sorry,” Lucus said. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
I laughed, and it was tinged with more hysteria than I would have liked. “You know, my very first memory in this world is of you resuscitating me. You really need to come up with a different way of saving me. It’s really sending mixed messages.”
Now an awkward silence stretched between us. I pushed myself back against the same wall, but we were no longer touching. This time I broke the silence, speaking when I’d gotten myself back under control.
“Sorry. I know it’s hard for you. I didn’t mean to make light of it.”
He shook his head and gave me a grim smile. “See, that’s something Tavi never would have said. She’d be kicking me and telling me to stop moping by now.”
I had a different opinion, but had no desire to correct him, so I just plastered on a smile and hoped he took it for assent.
“I…” he took in my pained expression. “That’s not what she would have done is it?”
“Let’s just say it is and move on?” I begged.
“Right. Of course,” he sighed. “Yes, this is hard for me, but I can see it’s hard for you too. I don’t blame you for it. I think I might even like you… but it’s impossible for me to separate those feelings from my memories of Tavi.”
Lucus rubbed a hand across his face, his eyes squeezed shut for a moment as he obviously worked to keep his emotions under control. “Maybe it’s not really replacing her, but it sure feels like it. I don’t think I can get past that. Not any time soon at least.”
I didn’t say anything for a while as I tried to sort through my own thoughts. It had become weirdly important to me to start trying to form my own opinions about things rather than basing everything on how one of my soul-donors had felt. I felt like I wasn’t a full person, just a collection of parts, and I needed to become one.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Tavi stood between the two of us like a wall. My opinions of him were too grounded in the memories and emotions I’d inherited from her. His attraction towards me was at least partially because I looked and acted a lot like her. It wasn’t fair to either of us, but it meant that for now at least the most we could hope for was to be friends.
From that perspective it would be better for me to put him in my past. Just someone Tavi knew who I’d briefly accompanied through the dungeon. But dammit, I liked the guy. Yes, he was Tavi’s type, but he was also my type, one of them at least. I didn’t want to force him away just because my feelings toward him weren’t entirely my own. I wanted to at least stay friends and companions, but maybe someday it could be more?
“If I weren’t in Tavi’s body, would you feel any different?” I asked.
He looked down at me, surprised. “Can you do that? Leave her body?”
I waggled my ears noncommittally. “I’m not entirely sure yet, but I think I can at least change how it looks. Valera told me I’d be able to get new bodies eventually but didn’t explain how it works. I’ve got this massive species penalty to pay off, and when I do, I’m pretty sure it’s going to unlock the ability to get new bodies. It hasn’t been a priority yet, but it’s high on my list of things to do when we get out of here.”
Lucus blinked at me several times, then ran a hand through his hair, obviously thinking. “I… I don’t know. I think I’d have to see it. Not to say that looks are that important! I just… I mean, goblins aren’t exactly that attractive by human standards anyway… Fuck! That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I just meant I was always more attracted to who she was as a person than what she looked like.”
I was trying very hard not to laugh. Lucus stopped talking, visibly composed himself, then said. “What I’m trying to say is that I think it will depend on if it just feels like her wearing a really good mask. If it feels like you, and doesn’t look like Tavi… then yeah, maybe that would work. I’d be willing to try it at least.”
I let out a huff of air that turned into a slight chuckle. “Yeah… I don’t know if it will work for me either, but one way or another I’m done pretending to be Tavi when we’re out of here. I need to work on finding out what it means to be me.”
***
Lucus went to sleep a little while later and I finished my watch. We’d agreed to talk about all this more once we’d gotten out of the dungeon. There were still a lot of things I needed to tell him, including that some part of me had once been male, and my own desire to acquire a male body again so I could figure out where exactly I now stood on the spectrum of gender and sex.
That was something to deal with later though. I didn’t want to concern him with it until I had a better idea of it myself. It might not even matter to him if it turned out we couldn’t put the shadow of Tavi behind us.
I used the rest of the time to look over everything I’d gained from the final boss fight, and review some of the things that had led up to it. I opened my Achievements first, wanting to take another look at the one I’d gotten for using Devour Essence on the Boundless Inferno. It was a weird one, and I wasn’t sure I’d fully grasped all its implications.
> New Achievement
>
> Game Over
>
> A hidden truth of reality has been revealed to you. All your skills and attributes are abstractions, created by the Divine System to help you tap into primal forces. You have discovered something that goes beyond the limitations of the System, so now the training wheels come off. To progress along this path will require a strong will and deep knowledge, and there are no safeguards.
>
> Great rewards may be found by those who walk untrod paths, but proceed with caution, for the risks are just as great.
>
> Rewards:
> +10pp (Universal)
> New Trait (“Ascendant”)
> Unique Title (“Soul of Fire”)
> New Skill: Fires of Creation
The one I’d gotten for crafting the Reality Shard was also interesting, but much more standard looking.
> New Achievement
>
> Magnum Opus
>
> Congratulations, you are the first Traveler to craft a legendary item. Such items are the foundation of dynasties, powerful and beautiful. In recognition of your achievement, you will receive the standard rewards given to all who manage to craft a masterwork or higher quality item, plus an additional reward for being the first Traveler to accomplish this feat.
>
> Note: You do not possess a dedicated crafting class for your skill Soul Forge. You may choose between a generic Orb of Comprehension or a personal Muse Visitation.
>
> Rewards:
> Title Unlocked (“Artisan”)
> Orb of Comprehension (Tier 5) or Muse Visitation Coupon
> Artisan
>
> Title (Tier 4)
>
> You are a recognized master of your craft. While this title is equipped you have a 20% chance for crafting components to not be used up in the process of crafting. When this occurs the tier of the component will be reduced by 50% (rounded down).
When prompted I’d selected the Muse coupon but hadn’t messed with it yet. Identify had told me its purpose was to summon a spirit that would offer personalized advice and ideas. It had managed to sound weirdly like a tele-doc therapist.
Still, I was content with my choice. Orbs of Comprehension were good, but boring. I was still more interested in finding out all the different possible rewards the system could offer.
By comparison the achievement I’d gotten for clearing the dungeon was absolutely mundane.
> New Achievement
>
> Dungeon Defier
>
> Congratulations! You are the first Traveler to defeat a dungeon boss and clear a dungeon. This achievement replaces the generally available achievement for clearing a dungeon for the first time.
>
> Rewards:
> 3x Silver Loot Box (Tier 3)
When I’d mentioned I had a bunch of loot boxes to open, Savas had let me know he knew people that would buy unopened loot boxes if I didn’t want to risk gambling on them having stuff I could use. Silvers apparently always contained crafting supplies and minor consumables, and he had said you could get pretty good prices for them from crafting guilds.
I had decided to hold off on opening them for now and maybe toss them in with the general loot. Due to the flexibility of Soul Forge I didn’t think I had a lot of use for pure crafting supplies. I suspected that unless a component was particularly rare and valuable I’d be better off selling it.
Soloing the Houndmaster ghoul patrol had also netted me a new achievement and title, but I’d immediately broken it to help pay for an extra slot.
> New Achievement
>
> Solo Artist
>
> Well done! You have managed to kill an elite of your level or higher without help from anyone else. This is a difficult accomplishment that no doubt required significant planning and risk. Either that or you totally cheesed it. Either way, congratulations!
>
> Rewards:
> +10pp (Universal)
> Title Unlocked (“Lone Wolf”)
> Lone Wolf
>
> Title (Tier 2, Broken)
>
> While you are not in a party you gain a +2 bonus to all stats so long as this title is equipped.
Meanwhile the achievement I’d gotten from crushing the dragon with my pet rock was interesting, as it revealed the existence of a type of reward I hadn’t seen before.
> New Achievement
>
> Rocks Fall, You Die
>
> You have defeated a much stronger enemy by using a trap or environmental hazard, dealing more than half its maximum health in damage in the process.
>
> Rewards:
> +1 Wisdom
> +1 Intelligence
I’d been wondering if investing points into stats was the only way to raise them. Tavi had thought so, but I was used to stats going up regularly with levels. I’d also heard of stat pills which sometimes dropped as loot, so perhaps the truth was something more in between. You had to either spend progression points or get lucky with drops and rewards.
The other rewards were nice, but the real prize was the rewards the Game Over achievement had granted. These were just as crazy as the achievement itself.
> Soul of Fire
>
> Title (Tier 7, Unique, Unbreakable)
>
> You have aligned your very soul with the forces of elemental fire. By providing an endless source of fuel for a divine fire to consume you have unlocked an aspect of creation itself, a way to deny entropy and put more into the world than you take from it.
>
> While this title is equipped, your skill “Fires of Creation” is considered to be twice the rank it normally is, ignoring caps. Additionally, your efficiency when Soul Forging is increased by 25%, reducing the cost of crafting all items as you are able to invest some of your own infinite soul into the work.
> Ascendant
>
> Trait (Conceptual)
>
> You can qualify for certain skills and classes that require command of forces beyond the scope of the System. Also unlocks certain non-standard prerequisite paths for more mundane skills.
>
> Note: Ascendant classes and skills are more abstract than is typical and may not behave exactly as indicated in all situations. Higher ranks and levels in such will typically improve their reliability and may even alter their System provided descriptions.
> Fires of Creation
>
> Active Skill (Tier 6, Ascendant)
>
> Prerequisites: Trait (Ascendant), Trait (Marked by Fire), Title (The Soul of Fire)
>
> Rank: 3 / 5 (+3)
>
> PP: 0 / 12
>
> Activation Cost: Effort (High)
>
> Activation Type: Sustained
>
> You can control the form and function of elemental fire. Utilizing your mastery of elemental fire you can shape objects of solid fire with your mind, or you may infuse elemental fire into existing objects and skills. The effect of doing so varies based on the target. Each rank in this skill increases the efficacy and reality of the creation by 20%.
>
> Special: You may activate and sustain this skill any number of times.
I’d gotten a free rank in Fires of Creation for discovering the skill, which I had to assume was created specifically for me by System, given that one of the prerequisites was my unique title. Then again, maybe there were other ways to get it which involved different prerequisites. I’d added the skill to my Trailblazer class, continuing the pun Tavi had made what seemed like years ago.
That class was officially fire themed now. Sorry Valera, I didn’t make the rules.
This was an extremely weird skill, and I had so far only used it in conjunction with Hands of Night to be able to control fire much like I could control shadows. I’d immediately bought two more ranks in it, wanting to get some real benefit out of the title, which I’d swapped to right before we’d fought the Duke.
I didn’t have an “Effort” bar though, and I hadn’t found any way to see what it was. I’d asked the others about it, and they had explained how Effort worked mechanically, but agreed with me that this skill was very odd. Effort was typically not directly referenced since it could be applied to basically anything. Having a skill use effort directly was almost redundant.
This had also finally explained to me how Hands of Night worked. I’d always thought it felt like I needed to put effort into using it, but I hadn’t realized that was an actual mechanic. Activating this skill took away some of my ability to control all my skills, but in turn it could be used to do some very weird stuff.
I had already made the mental leap between progression points and unallocated spiritual power, but now with this idea of Effort in my head I had finally realized something else that, in retrospect, should have been obvious. I had been using Effort unconsciously all this time - operation of my more active passives required it just to function - yet only once had I ever really felt worn out from skill use, and that had been an exceptional event requiring minutes of intense effort.
At the same time, I’d been maintaining a fairly large pool of unspent progression points. That was spiritual power that had no committed use. I’d done it to remain flexible with my build, and later for use with soul forging. However, I now realized I’d also been artificially boosting my pool of available Effort, and likely in a way that prevented Effort usage from immediately affecting my other stats and skills.
This realization had stopped me from going nuts and investing all my outstanding points into stats and skills before we entered the keep proper. My plan had been to blow all my outstanding points ranking up everything I could, because of course you don’t walk into a boss fight unprepared. Once I’d realized that they were themselves a combat asset, and one that I could more directly make use of than most people, my priorities had shifted.
We’d all noticed how vulnerable the ghouls and other fleshy undead were to fire. Since my new internal combustion engine seemed to produce divine fire, we’d based our plans around me torching the entire room while my friends hid inside the force field provided by the Bastion.
To that end, I had maxed out Hands of Night and combined it with Fires of Creation to create burning shadows I could funnel the fires of Boundless Inferno through. I’d otherwise refrained from spending my progression points so that I could be more confident that I’d have the Effort necessary to wield Hands on that scale without exhausting myself.
In the future I wanted to use Limit Breaker on both Hands of Night and Fires of Creation. Both skills added flat percentages to effects. Fires was going to be way more cost effective to do this with, but Hands seemed like it might be the real killer skill.
The normal maximum treated all my attributes as 50% effective, but if I could bring that up to 100% I’d be able to use skills from anywhere my shadows touched at full effectiveness. Raising it beyond that point wasn’t going to make sense, as at that point I should just be boosting my attributes and over-ranking Dual Nature.
All that was going to cost a painful number of progression points, sadly. For all that my build was based around generating progression points, I still managed to feel starved for them. It particularly didn’t help now that I also had a mechanical reason not to spend them all.
I started making plans and taking notes. The depth of this system went far beyond anything I’d seen in an actual game, but that made sense if every part of it mapped to some facet of pre-existing reality. The more I considered it, thinking of this like game mechanics felt wrong. If anything, System seemed to be acting more like an operating system for reality itself.
It made me wonder what the point was.
Unfortunately, I was all too aware that I was just distracting myself from what had happened earlier - what had happened several times since I’d woken up on Astra. It had not escaped my notice that directly considering certain things caused me to have an almost physiological reaction.
The problem was it felt dangerous to even think about. Even considering it this much was making me uneasy. Was this another defense mechanism I’d made for myself? I’d proven remarkably adept at self-deception. If so, what was I protecting myself from, and how was I supposed to figure it out if it really was dangerous?
“That way lies madness…” I muttered to myself in the dark.
There was a different sort of darkness just behind my eyes. It was always there at the corners of my vision. I could pull back and look any time I wanted. I didn’t understand it, and that scared me. Worse, even though I knew it was there and could remember having gazed into it before, I couldn’t quite remember what I’d seen there. It was difficult to even think about. Did I dare try to look deeper? What if I couldn’t find my way back?
Suddenly a new message interrupted my dark musings.
> System Message
>
> Area Alert
>
> A dungeon raid has begun! Join your fellow adventurers in the core to participate in this event! If the raid is successful, all participants will earn rewards based on their contribution towards defeating the raid boss.
>
> Warning: Raid encounters are extremely dangerous. Unprepared participation in a raid is not recommended.
What the fuck? Someone was raiding the core? How?
“Yo! Everybody wake up!” I yelled. Then I kicked Savas in the ribs lightly when he muttered something about needing a few more minutes.
There was a round of groans, but everyone rose quickly once they’d remembered where we were. We’d camped out in a side room off the main hall, and the first thing everyone did was check the two doors leading into the room to see which of them was under attack. When no obvious threats presented themselves, I told them to look at their notifications.
“Crucible’s pits! Someone is raiding the dungeon?” Dorian said what everyone was thinking.
“We have to get over there. They’ll be killed for sure. This must have been an accident, someone hiding from the event like Tavi did,” Arven said.
“Hold up. Can we even do anything? It’s a raid boss, we’re supposed to go in with at least two full groups. For all we know one person might have tried to hide in the cathedral and been seen by the boss. They might already be dead,” Savas said, putting a damper on Arven’s eagerness.
“They aren’t dead yet, but they might be soon. If a raid fails there will be an announcement and the core will seal until the next reset,” Arven told us. “I think we should at least try to get over there, we’ve searched this place already and we still haven’t figured out what the deal with our quest is. The next most logical place to search is the cathedral, and if we’re going to end up fighting the raid boss anyway it will be good to have help.”
Lucus still looked a bit groggy but nodded in agreement with Arven. “If they’ve failed by the time we get there then at least we tried.”
I nodded, thinking. “How do we get over there though? Dorian and I can fly, but I don’t think we could carry you or Lucus…”
Dorian stepped forward. “I think I can get us there, but I’ll need to borrow one of those scarabs of yours again for a moment if we’re to make it in time.”
I immediately saw what he was planning and tossed him the scarab I’d gotten off the devil I’d accidentally beaten up in the Exchange. “Do it.” I told him, and he vanished for the length of three heartbeats.
***
Less than two minutes later, all six of us stood at the gates of the keep, looking out into the courtyard. Together like skydivers we each launched ourselves out into the sky and caught ourselves on six pairs of draconic wings. Dorian sang as he flew, and we all watched his stamina with nervous trepidation. His class was truly something else, but the man himself had limitations.
Dorian had spent hours in the Exchange, speaking with “his muse” and writing a Spellsong capable of granting us all the “On Leathery Wings” skill. Defeating the Duke had given him enough progression points to fund the creation of the song, so he’d just needed the time to come up with a song that would work for it.
I just had to wonder if Rhel’s face still resembled roadkill when she’d been doing all this inspiring. Either way it had worked, and now Dorian was bellowing out a song he’d called “On Harrowed Wings, Respite.”
The difficulty in making a Spellsong turned out to be that it needed to tell a story with at least some historical accuracy. Dorian could take artistic license, but for the song to work it had to be based on real events and stay true to the original themes.
That was what had been so remarkable with what Dorian had done during the fight with the Duke. He’d gotten achievement for essentially creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. His words had freed Arven, but he’d only been able to use them like that because if they worked, they would have retroactively been true all along.
I had likely been wrong when I said Arven’s lack of belief in what I’d told him had caused the song to not immediately work. It had probably been because reality itself wasn’t sure if the song should work at all until I’d tipped the balance of fate with Null’s blade.
Dorian hadn’t paused to tell us exactly what historical event this song was based on, but in the still air of this dead world I was able to catch a few lines that made me think that the original subject of the song had been avians of some sort, not dragons. It seemed to be close enough for the skill to function, which was all that mattered.
Dorian’s stamina dipped dangerously low as we flew under the river of death and flew one after another through a broken skylight that probably contained a beautiful stained glass mosaic in the real world. I was leading the way and had picked this particular entrance because I thought it might lead into a different room than where I’d seen The Unholy before.
It was a chamber connecting the main entrance to the cathedral’s grand hall. The doors to the hall were open when we entered, but we were not yet inside the core area so we couldn’t see within. The haze of congealed possibilities hung over the large double doors like a fog. Dorian let his song expire as we all touched down, then sat down on a fallen podium to catch his breath.
Arven had come in last, and he paused at the lip of the entrance we’d used, taking a moment to swing both his swords, one after the other, in a lazy arc that nonetheless sent a visible shockwave of air back the way we’d come. A moment later the corpses of a few winged Unmakers fell through the skylight and landed on the ceiling with wet thuds that reminded me of birds flying into a window.
Dorian shuddered, but Arven didn’t even hesitate before turning to us and beginning to give instructions. “I’ll lead. Lucus, you’re behind me. If I dodge you let that shield take the hit. Dawn, Dorian, wait three seconds before coming in. Savas, wait a full thirty seconds after them and then sneak in. Stay out of the fight until you can do some damage. Tavi, I want you to circle around to a different entrance and flank. Go now, we move in thirty seconds.”
Lucus started using his Tactician abilities to echo those orders and turn them into boons for us even as I scampered back out the hole we’d flown in. I spiderclimbed around to one of the windows I thought would open up behind where The Unholy had been napping. I double checked my loadout of titles, then slipped inside, activating Hide as I did so.
What I saw inside was anything but what I’d been expecting. The Unholy was here, yes, but it was bound in black chains of un-light not too different from what Arven’s curse had looked like when I’d wreathed it in shadow. Standing in the middle of the room was a devil, wings outstretched, a frown of furious concentration on her face as she stared into the black heart of Nemesis as it hung just above her.
The sphere of utter night was the source of the chains binding the Unholy, and to my ever increasing horror I saw that they weren’t just binding it but sinking into its bloated and disgusting flesh link by link. Sometimes the chains would move more quickly, sometimes slowly, but always they advanced, as inexorable as death itself.
“Excellent, it’s nearly there,” said a man I hadn’t even noticed until he spoke.
He was uncomfortably close to The Unholy’s elderly face where it hung down from the ceiling. Beside him a small black figure stood holding onto the leg of his pants. Its features were humanoid, but melted and disfigured as though it were made of wax that had been left out in the sun. An unearthly, child-like voice came from the thing.
“I want a new doggy daddy. Can we play with it?” the thing said.
“Soon, soon,” the man said, reaching down to pat it on the head.
Scan informed me that I was looking at “Unknown, level ?? Malconvoker,” and the thing beside him was apparently “Telvarn Licane, level 8 Best Son in The Whole World Forever.” Somehow, I doubted the accuracy of either entry. I turned my attention back to the devil wielding Nemesis. “Agent Cassara, Host of the Ordeal, level 63 Infernal Warrior.”
To my shock, I realized I recognized her.