John was startled out of his meditation by a feeling of strangeness nearby. The same feeling the shadow gave him, but stronger. Stronger than he felt from the darker shadow when the two shadows merged, and the feeling was also clearer.

He assumed the shadows were Golds, but John wasn’t the best at sensing such, and the shadows were weirder than most things he had faced and seen. He wished he used his UI info function on one of them, but he had no chance to. He assumed the shadows were tied to the [Achievement] he got on rare-type dark ones.

The strange feeling caused John’s adrenaline to spike, and he felt fear in his heart. He clamped down on such feelings and checked his dantian. It was just under three-quarters full. Plenty enough to put up a fight. He felt a lot better. As he went to stand, he noticed his arm-nub had grown noticeably. Then he felt a Gold pass by a good distance away. A different one, without the strangeness of the shadows.

“Shhh! Stay still and quiet. Please,” said Lilly.

John froze. And waited. Soon the feeling of strangeness moved on.

Letting out a held breath, Lilly said, “Phew. That was too close for comfort. How’re you feeling?”

“Better. You?”

“I’m perfect. I’m back with my pretty little monkey, so my heart is content again.”

John looked around and noticed many more rituals were drawn on the floors and walls, and one was even on the ceiling over a table.

“Those are just in case. They’re like a large protection circle. But they work differently covering that radius. If we infuse them now it would only help them find us. I made two protection circles for us too. Again, just in case. And I don’t think they’d be much help against Golds for long, even when fueled with your essence. Smarter to run.”

Looking at Lilly, John felt the old affection he used to. He smiled at his wife, and when she smiled back at him, his heart lifted. She said, “My dear heart, how I love you so. Speaking of running, I think we shouldn’t wait for evac. We should make a run for it as soon as there’s a clear path out. If you’re up to it. You run a lot faster than I expected.”

Pinching the sides of it, John pulled off the heal-bug and offered it back to Lilly. She said, “You should put it back on. Leaving it on won’t hurt. That thing cost a fortune. It comes from a Tech 3 world and isn’t easy to get. Consider it a gift to my heart’s content. To make up for my big mistake volunteering you for this and all the trouble since. Go on, put it back on. I’ll help.”

“No, no. I feel fine now. I’ve had a tiredness I couldn’t shake, and it seems to be relenting. Hold it in your…soul, was it?”

Lilly frowned. “I’d feel better knowing you were wearing my gift and benefiting from it every time you cultivated.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine. And I’d rather not wear a giant bug around. It could be destroyed in a fight, and I’d feel horrible breaking such an expensive gift. I’m sorry I have nothing to gift you with. I will though, once we are back with my friends.”

Reluctantly, Lilly stored the heal-bug. While helping John put his armor and top back on, she said, “I don’t know their range. If we’re making a run for it, we should be extra careful and wait until we’re sure they’re out of range. What the hell are they doing? What a crazy way to search. You seeing this?”

John extended his senses as far as he could. He felt nothing higher than Silvers anywhere. “You can sense where they are now?”

“Yeah. Of course. They’re not veiled. I mean, I’ve always been sensitive and had better senses than others. Part of it’s the dark gift. Most of what marks my soul doesn’t do much without opened cores and channels, but having a Divine soul smooshed down to fit into a Wood vessel still has a lot of benefits.”

Curious, John asked, “What exactly do you keep? And…not keep? Lose? When you take a new body.”

“What goes on the soul. [Achievements], [Perks], all that’s tied to a body. [Skills] too, but I don’t lose the knowledge. I won’t generate harmony until I do something and ‘regain’ the [Skill]. I got it down pat now where I don’t waste too much harmony. Wasting some can’t be avoided. How’d it work for you? You must’ve lost a ton.”

“I think I did.”

“Figured. I always wished I could’ve kept my first body when Betrayal’s servant retrieved me. Would’ve been a huge leg-up. Well, maybe not. I think the first world Betrayal sent me to was a punishment for annoying him about you. I hated those people so much. Everything was ass-backwards. Nothing made sense. I had such a hard time adapting. Even being raised there I still didn’t get it.

“Know how being a girl is always better? For me at least, but I make sure I’m always hot for the species. Not on that backwards world. Girls are like guys there. They’re chivalrous and macho and all that bullshit. I got killed pretty quickly. And that’s where I had to learn how to self-cultivate. I got killed so many times it’s unbelievable. I finally had to be a guy and have a penis to, you know, benefit from being a hot girl. It was so gross.

“If I was sent there with my old body, I doubt I would’ve lasted long anyways. Man, I hated that place. And those people! Goddamn, those people sucked. I really hope one day, when we’re powerful enough, we can travel there and kill every last one of those cocksuckers together. They deserve it. You’ll see.

“And I’m not bloodthirsty for wanting to either. They truly deserve it, my dear heart. Just keep an open mind until you meet them. I know you’ll feel the same.”

Lilly patted John’s leg comfortingly and gave him a reassuring smile. “Well, it seems I get sidetracked easily with this young mind. You can probably feel the [Titles] I have. The ones I don’t have hidden. Most come with me.”

John tried to feel for what [Titles] Lilly had. He felt nothing. He hoped sensing [Titles] was something he was supposed to be trained to do, and he wasn’t just lacking some sense others had.

“I can’t believe you have the [Record Holder] [Title]. You should probably hide that. I’ll teach you how once you ascend high enough. Same with the [Ptagmog] [Title]. Those’ll just cause you trouble, especially [Ptagmog], but some people will see through it no matter how good you are at hiding them.”

John had no idea [Titles] could be hidden.

Lilly continued. “Any runes and glyphs, the NCS ones from the [Runes] [Stat], I keep. All of them, each time. I have a ton of amazing ones. Extremely OP for Mortal, but most of them I can’t use until much further up the climb.

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“Oh, I can usually see what’s true or not, and most things that cause a negative effect to the mind I’m essentially immune to. Depending. I still have my Mind Palace, but I won’t have access to it until I open my upper core. I’m stuck with the soul refinement I did the first time I hit Diamond. Wish I knew then what I know now. Soul refinement is very important.

“What sucks is the soul kind of gates itself or mine wouldn’t be just big – it’d be a real Divine soul. Well, it is, but just forced to be less. The ‘gates’ are removed as I ascend. I get to skip all the soul-related bottlenecks. That’s about all I can think of right now, but I haven’t slept. Sleep wouldn’t be so important if I had an adult body. Sorry if I’m rambling.”

John grunted. “I can sense if anything dangerous is near when I meditate. And when I sleep. I feel bad you stayed awake. Or were you drawing these rituals the whole time?”

Smiling, Lilly leaned back and struck a pose. John thought she was trying to look sensual, but a child doing so just looked foolish to him. “No. I knocked those out quickly. I already put you in enough danger. The least I could do was lose a little sleep to keep my dear heart safe as he cultivated. Are you hungry? I already…”

Lilly froze and a look of concern was plastered on her face. She slowly lifted her hand to her mouth, index finger raised high, and shushed her finger, her eyes locked with John’s own the whole time. Slowly, she got on hands and knees and crawled towards him. Halfway to him she stopped.

“It’s gone. What the hell was that? I couldn’t place it. Was it…I can’t…wait.” Lilly closed her eyes and became still for a couple minutes.

“They’re going room to room.” Lilly’s phone appeared in her hand and disappeared again right after. “Shit. Dawn’s a long way off. Those shades must be weaker in sunlight, right? Like us.”

Lilly looked so nervous that John started to worry. He wondered what she felt. She said, “There’s just no path. I couldn’t tell what tier that other thing was. I never felt the like. It was…bad. Strange.”

After a moment of reflection, Lilly added, “There’s no way we’re making it out. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

John grunted. “It’s okay. I was always going to fight them. You know my feelings on running. If I had to flee to get you to safety, I would come back and finish the battle. We’ll just adjust the plan. I’ll keep them occupied while you escape.”

Lilly looked at John like he was insane. “You truly are a fool. You have to start realizing you’re not the top dog anymore. This isn’t the old world. You need to fear the things beyond you. You couldn’t even kill one of those shades. Now there’s at least four. And four other Golds. And some other things. Something worse. We’re boxed in. And I’ve seen you run a thousand times. I know you, the real you, and don’t you forget it. And this body is weak, how would I even escape on my own?”

Anger flared up in John he had a hard time suppressing. “You saw me run from fights to avoid killing mobs of peasants, not out of fear. Very few times have I run to avoid the cold-dark, but the cold-dark must be avoided. Now that it is no longer my fate. I will not run.”

“Ha! You told me just yesterday you ran from the Diamond. The demon you robbed.”

“I did no such thing. We never fought. I avoided his mindless rampage. That isn’t running from a fight.”

Lilly half chuckled and half sobbed. “The dark ones are mindless. And they rampage. The same rule should apply. Running from a fight you can’t win isn’t dishonorable. Being smart isn’t dishonorable. Smart men only fight when they’re sure to win. And guess who decides what’s honorable? The winners.”

Lilly’s shoulders shook as she started to sob in earnest. “It doesn’t matter anyways. We’re dead. We can’t win and we can’t escape. It’s over. I just got my crazy husband back. I fought so hard to get back to you. I missed you for so long and getting back was so hard. I finally had everything I wanted. I finally had a chance to be happy. To make you happy too. And now I’m going to lose you. Forever this time. I don’t want to go on without you. I can’t do it again.”

The anger fled John. He stood, then said, “I’m sorry. I should be strong enough to protect you, and I’m not. You should always be safe around me. It’s my duty as your husband, and I failed. But this melancholy and sulking helps nothing.

“We’re not dead yet. If I am to die, I’ll do so in battle. Do not give up yet. I just may win. Many have underestimated me, and they’re all dead now. And if I can’t win, I can tie them up for longer than you assume, so try to escape as I do.”

John went over to comfort his wife, and Lilly held him tightly as she sobbed. Suddenly, she yelled out, “That’s it!” Smiling, she added, “We don’t have a chance as you are now, so we make you stronger. How’s your harmony?”

Surprised at his wife’s sudden change in mood, John replied, “It wasn’t near full last I checked, but I didn’t check after my recent increases. Oh, and I could train some in my mind. Avatar considers training talking to me a lot, so I’ve been avoiding it, but she also lets me cast spells and I enjoy that. I have to do it in the real world for it to apply. The spell casting. I’m not sure about the talking way.”

Lilly’s eyebrows furrowed as she asked, “How do you train in your Mind’s Eye with a Tech 1 NCS?”

“Mine is the fourth. I can train [Skills] up to Journeyman with it, but there is a daily limit.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes. Of course. Well, that’s what Avatar told me. She wouldn’t lie though. I haven’t done much training. The talking training. But spell casting training works. I hardly cast [Flashburst Pulse] and it’s already at four.”

Angrily, Lilly said, “How? How did you get a Tech 4? I only ever got Tech 3. Their universes are cordoned off. It’s impossible for you to have one.”

John told her how, and Lilly’s response was, “So, the Tech 5s are watching you? I’d say that was bad but maybe they’ll upgrade mine. If you’re listening, please upgrade mine. Maybe help us out of this jam?” John noticed she said that with a coquettish smile, disturbing to see on a child’s face. Then she batted her lashes.

Lilly continued. “I’ve seen some groups others said were Tech 4s. Real monsters, usually really high-graded races. Everyone avoided them. There was this one guy everyone thought was a Tech 5. He tended to kill anyone that talked to him, so I didn’t. Well, your NCS should make things easier. Lift me up.”

John picked Lilly up, and she put her arms around his neck, and her forehead on his cheek. “Okay. First thing, rank up. I know your foundation isn’t settled and you don’t have the time to fill your core. You said you cultivate fast, so if you can get it to half, you can rank up. You need more power right now and that gives you some. Every small bit of power we can get you is important, but if you can’t fill your core enough in about two hours, we’re skipping rank up.

“Then, you train in your Mind’s Eye. I don’t care if it bores you. Being bored is better than being dead. No. No smart aleck response. You train until your harmony is full. Then you’re getting the best body [Perk] we can pull off.”

John sighed and became a little nervous. He didn’t want a lesser body than the one he was told to get. “I qualify for [Sunfire Body of the Slave-Empress], but I don’t have the harmony capacity for it yet. I really…”

With a surprised look on her face, Lilly interrupted. “Shut your cock holster! Sunfire’s not real. Is there even a real body formation named that in the NCS? One sec, I’m checking. Holy shit! It is real. A refinement. I’ll be goddamned. The ritual’s strange. And those requirements! How the hell does anyone meet those? Are you toying with me?”

John laughed and said, “No. I meet the requirements.”

“Well, I got some good news for you, cowboy. The NCS lies about shit all the time. I shouldn’t say lie. It does its best to make sure no one fails a ritual, but rituals are an artform and what works for me might not work for you. Some people need more of X and less of Y. Some need more Y than X.

“The NCS measures errors per million. Its info on rituals aims for less than one person in, like, ten or twenty million failing when getting any given [Perk] or whatever, so most requirements are higher than they need to be.

“With a little less harmony, this type of ritual would never fail. It would just have lesser effects. How to explain? Just as an example, if Sunfire’s body is rated one hundred, having a little less harmony than the ritual requires would result in a body rated at ninety-five or ninety. Negligible loss.

“But don’t worry about that. It gave me some ideas. Yours’ll be better. Stronger and better. If her story is true, she wouldn’t know shit about rituals. This one’s all requirements. The only real component is sunlight. Easy-breezy.”

Lilly’s phone flashed into her hand before disappearing a moment later. “We got to rush though. I really hope you cultivate as fast as you said you do. We have a little less than three hours until dawn. Just hope they don’t arrive before sunrise.”

Smiling wider, Lilly said, “Can I ask for a big favor, Adon? I fed on one of your wounds as you cultivated. Before it healed and closed. I could use some more. Would you mind opening a little wound and letting me feed a tiny bit? Cultivating replaces a little vital essence so you’ll barely miss what I take.”

John nodded his consent and opened a wound.

Lilly put her mouth near the wound and said, “Thank you. Now go on, get to filling your core my pretty little monkey.”