The day around me seemed lathered into existence with a heavy dollop of surreal watercolor. In the wake of Sage’s departure, I remained still and tried to sort through my confusion and hurt.

“You have always been reckless,” Nightshade said eventually, waking me from my thought spirals. Yet he too looked at me with an extra bit of edge. “However, recently… it has seemed as though you will not hesitate even for a moment to throw yourself into the next dangerous toil. Sage and I… well, we are proud of you. But it brings us great stress, to witness.”

“I…” The sentence tumbled away as I reached for some sort of response and couldn’t decide how or what to articulate.

In retrospect, the recipe of Sage’s boiling jelly became obvious: she had mixed fear and anxiety with jealousy and potential loss. In my mind, I pictured the image of Mimi forever burned into the hippocampus, persisting across multiple lives. She lay on the bed in the hospital room, kept alive via a series of disinfected tubes. All of the fire with which she moved through life had been buried by metal and plastic in an attempt to prolong her life.

I felt angry and vaguely humiliated to be confronted like this, but I could at least understand how this could be a similar moment for Sage, as she landed on the mud beach and found me weakened in front of Mookt.

After my siblings had shoved the issue in my face, I felt quite a bit of tension in my body as I considered what could have happened, if they hadn’t arrived.

“Life and safety make contact only rarely. We understand this,” Nightshade continued. “However… please. You are our rock. While Sage and I struggled to understand our new circumstances, you reached out and dragged us to safety. You selflessly gave up some of your own body parts, that first night, to keep me alive. You led us safely away from Raccain’s Tower. And we don’t begrudge you the dream of building here; we are happy to be a part of it.

“Yet you give much, Brother Tallum. Sage is correct; none of us are infinite. Take care where you pour your energies.”

I looked at Nightshade. The former Maou looked at me with eyes slightly moist with concern. I had to resist a slightly deranged laugh. What a farce. Aren’t I chasing leisure in this life? And my Chimera Core siblings, those with a lifetime of monstrous experience, are staging an intervention to get me to take it easier, to give less.

My gaze hardened. Those little seeds of irritation sparked into true flames. But also-

“You make it sound so easy, but I… my previous life was different than yours,” I said. “For you two, understanding what are acceptable risks and what are not… you have a bank of experience. All of this is new. So it is quite a bit of bullshit-” My volume steadily increased. “-to say I should just ‘do less’ and be more cautious!”

“Sage rode her emotions; she went too far in her chastisement,” Nightshade allowed.

But now, a day of exhaustion, of being blamed for zombies, of fighting against zombies, and now being to taken to task for it had erupted into a genuine rant; Now was my turn to monologue. “My relationship with you two has kept me grounded as well. But it also showed me just- just how poorly equipped I am to succeed as a monster! Don’t you see? I need to take risks! I need to push the envelope, to explore, to figure out the rules of this place. How else can I earn my place, between the three of us?

“And another thing: in my previous life, I did exactly what you said, to the extreme. I took it easy. I isolated myself. I avoided difficult conversations and focused on what was convenient for me. And because of that-” Mimi’s gravestone flashed in front of my face. “Because of that, I made a horrible mistake. I lost the person I cared for the most. I had been losing her for years, by dint of apathy and distraction, but then all at once it was real, it smashed me in the face. And you know what I did? I pulled back even further. And after that, everything-”

Everything was hollow. I was not only alone, but worthless. I couldn’t say the words. My flesh trembled after both Mana and emotion were totally spent.

Nightshade looked at me for a while. All his head-limbs pivoted to regard me. “I understand grief, Brother. I understand how precious this second chance can seem, now that it has been given to us. I do not begrudge you the enthusiasm and intensity with which you approach this world. But can I offer you… a truth that might be somewhat uncomfortable?”

My tremors gradually calmed. I looked at Nightshade and nodded.

“You spoke of… ‘earning’ your place with us,” Nightshade said. “This, I think, is the crux of our impasse. Tallum… you do not need to earn your place; you are our brother. That is enough.

“You seem to panic anytime you are not creating, or doing, or improving. I will not say your labors are superfluous or unappreciated; due to your persistent efforts, I have no doubt that our latent defects as necrotic constructs will be resolved. Yet even if they are not, you will still our brother. That will not change. The bonds between us are strong not because of what you have done, but who you are.

“Do not sacrifice who you are to fuel what you may be able to do.” Nightshade hesitated. He waved a serpent head, almost bashful. “Far be it from me to paraphrase a Skyrage; I’m sure you can imagine how she would react if she heard me doing so, but that, I think, is sister Sage’s worry.”

Picturing Sage’s reaction to Nightshade explaining what she meant elicited a weak chuckle from me, as I suspect it was intended to.

From another lifetime, another memory floated to the surface. Mr. Gains, looking smug as always, tilting his head to the side as he regarded me. “Tallum, has no one ever told you that you are ‘enough’?”

A wind blew across the mud beach, causing my skin to tingle. While I still felt the effects of Weakened and Exhausted, the worst tremors had vanished. I stuck the point of my stained fang into the mud. “In this world, there is such a thin line between between surviving and thriving. Sometimes… I genuinely don’t know whether my actions will change anything.”

Nightshade clicked his tongue. “Hah, brother, you behave as though you are responsible for your life, not living it.”

I frowned at Nightshade. “What do you mean? Of course I’m responsible for my own actions.”

“No, no, my phrasings were inexact. Ahem,” Nightshade reconsidered. “You… well, it is indeed true that we’ve set off an arms race in the wetlands, by freeing the Kami. Now, as the shackles restricting their energies loosen, Levels in the area will rise. If we don’t ride the current, we will soon find ourselves at the mercy of another, more powerful force.”

My squirrel fingers twitched. “...have you been convinced by arguments? Do you suddenly agree we have no choice but to aggressively Level to stave off attacks from rival powers?”

Nightshade shook his head. “I have confidence in this body, Brother. And if anyone shows up that makes you waver, allow me to polish the floor with their skull, as penance for the sin of arrogance.”

Weirdly, the rumbling cadence of Nightshade caused the last of my anxiety to drain out of my core. Truly, when I was in trouble, I had two true monsters at my back, willing to help me.

“Ah, but my point has meandered. In regards to your ‘responsibility’ toward life…” Nightshade continued. “My intentions were to nudge you toward focusing on your motivations in life. We often have two cruel masters in life: necessity and desire. Brother Tallum… I suspect you sometimes completely discount the second, in your enthusiastic service of the first.”

I looked at Nightshade. I value necessity over desire? I mean, obviously. When you skip out on desire, you are disappointed, but when you skip out on necessity you usually end up dead.

And in this fantasy world, perhaps revived from death into a shambling necrotic thrall…

Yet I could also acknowledge his point. I had wavered in my pursuit of leisure as I tried adapting my philosophy to the shocking and dangerous environments of this world. But hadn’t I noticed my attempts wandering further and further astray?

In the end, sadness and grief killed me, for accumulating long enough it became a blood clot. I couldn’t help but wince. Am I now doing the same, except for existential panic born of feeling very out of my element in this world…?

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Okay,” I said out loud. I wasn’t willing to admit I was completely foolish for how I behaved. My actions had purpose, addressing the zombie threat and struggling to prove to the world that I wasn’t just another necrotic monster. But when my sibling Chimera Cores thrust the issue underneath my nose, I could at least admit that definitely, my current pace wasn’t sustainable.

Nightshade released a warm and affectionate jelly pulse. I responded in kind.

By now, the sun had completely risen; a heavy noon sun beat down upon the wetlands, driving away the clouds lingering after last night’s storm. I raised a squirrel hand and squeezed my cheeks. “Do you think I should go talk to Sage?”

“Our sister possesses positive attributes in immense quantities, yet… I think the implements of logic and reason will find little purchase upon the furious upheaval of her emotions,” Nightshade said, in a display of verbal diplomacy that had me wondering if I had completely underestimated my meat-head brother. “Rather, allowing those tumultuous storms to spend themselves upon other shores seems wise.”

My apologies, Sage’s bird minions. I thought. And rather abruptly, I remembered their commiserating touches, when I had visited her yesterday to examine her core. My expression shifted toward grimness. Ah… they tried to warn me about Sage’s dancing methodology. Nightshade suffered through it this time, but didn’t she enthusiastically say I would be her partner for the next practice session…?

Perhaps she will be mad enough to forget about those sessions for a bit…?

In the end, Nightshade and I parted on the beach. He intended to head West across the river and clean up any remnant zombies and I need some time to think. I moved through the reeds toward the spiderling zone. The confrontation had given me a lot to consider.

Well, that wasn’t true. Maybe a lot to feel about, but really, I didn’t have a good grasp on how to change my behavior to be a better-

“Well that’s the mistake, right?” I spoke to the reeds as I waded my way forward. “Being better... That’s not the point. The point is to just accept-”

Accept that being me is enough. I don’t need to be perfect. To stop excluding what I want in order to serve what I think I need. Don’t chase leisure, but lean back, sip on my Anima Mai Tai, and allow the world to deliver itself to me.

Almost without conscious thought, my squirrel fingers floated up to rub my temple. “Ugh, this is giving me such a headache. Do real people really act like this?”

I arrived at the spiderling area with such concerns swirling around in my mind. And immediately, several other issues presented themselves. The amount of nutrient rich muck had multiplied, so there was an entire bank of the glittering mud hunched over behind the expansive web system. Spiderling excavators, even now, used branches and woven silk sacs to haul newly filtered muck and put it on the growing pile.

On the far side of the spiderling area was a stretch of land now dotted with weak necrotic seeds. The spiderlings, having learned from the revival of monsters from their corpse pile, separated the little obsidian chips so that their energy didn’t accumulate to the point of a dangerous reaction.

I slapped my cheeks before my mind rushed down the path of what I needed to do to solve these issues; instead, what did I want to do?

While I was considering, spiderlings came up to me in their wheedling way, wondering about more Sacred Oils. I shooed them away; actually, the Statuses that kept my regenerations low and Stats weak were an advantage. I couldn’t possibly even consider feeding the spiderlings my secretions at the moment.

The small spiderlings slumped over and returned to their work.

“When was the last time I was genuinely excited about something in this world…?” I said out loud. “As excited as spiderlings about oils?”

Then I remembered the flame of anticipation I felt when we had been planning to excavate the surrounding land and make the beginnings of a settlement.

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 25(+31).

“Not even sarcastic?” I muttered, but my passive-aggressive stance toward the System quickly melted as my mind began running through the plans. Plus, building up this place could help solve the issue of the accumulating muck. Perhaps a terraced expansion of the farming area would be feasible.

For about another half hour, I stood next to the spiderling area and sketched in the dirt, drawing up new plans. As my little squirrel fingers became dirtier and dirtier, I could also feeling myself grow more excited. Yes, this would definitely work. And also, this was what I wanted; the home I would build would solve all of my problems.

Okay, so my methods actually aren’t that leisurely, I admitted. But I think this is a good start.

By the time I looked up, I felt a shock of guilt; in my excitement to do my planning, I hadn’t even thought about the huge stretch of land now covered in weak necrotic seeds. I slapped my cheeks; working on desire is all well and good, but I definitely needed to prevent another zombie horde from clawing its way into existence.

Yet as I walked up to the Weak Necrotic Seeds, I noticed a very strange substance growing, almost like a white mold, across the ground between the seeds.

Your Skill (Earned) Innate Mana Attunement has grown to Level 3.

“What is this?” I asked the spiderlings as I hunched closer. At first I felt alarmed by the strange substance, wondering if some horrible necrotic sickness had spawned. A plague would be really bad optics right now. Yet my Innate Mana Attunement found the substance curiously inert. My energy sonar barely even noticed it.

The spiderlings replied that it was Blight. I had a hazy recollection of the lifeless ground around Raccain’s tower being afflicted with patches of similar material. I squinted at the substance, prodding it with my stained fang. The spiderlings hadn’t been very exact in their placement of the seeds, so there were places where seeds were a little more densely packed than others. In the loose areas, the blight almost really was a moldy white powder, which could be scrapped from the mud. I created an ooze tentacle to touch it, but again, there wasn’t even the slightest energy reaction.

Your Skill (Earned) Innate Mana Attunement has grown to Level 4.

My focus shifted. However, in other areas, where the seeds were more densely gathered-

I tapped the tip of my fang against the densest stretch and received a solid clack in response. The dense area had meant the Blight glommed onto itself and created a solid, plasticky substance.

My mind began to spin with ideas. My jelly wobbled back and forth in the beginnings of a dance. The smoothness, the solidity… Isn’t this… almost like pavement?

Suddenly, I pictured gleaming white paths becoming the veins through my imagined home. Monsters and animals walking arm-in-claw down the roads to the marketplace, the theater, the commissary, etc. Obviously, the process would require some experimentation-

“No time like the present!” I said to myself, scooping up a solid amount of weak necrotic seeds and marching over to the stump. I hesitated a bit (after all, we hadn’t yet cleared out the reeds as I intended), but figured it would be safe to start the first blight path from my stump home to the Kami’s temple.

I laid out a few careful experiments in a stretch toward the beginning, making minute adjustments to the distance between the Weak Necrotic Seeds. After all, the paths would need to be quite a bit thicker than what the spiderlings had casually created, to support the weight of individuals walking back and forth.

Step on a crack, break your Kami’s back, I hummed to myself as I nudged the necrotic chips. After all, hadn’t we Chimera Cores almost doubled in size after our first Growth Threshold? And we were rapidly approaching the Second, with all the Experience provided by our anti-zombie crusade.

Wow, how quickly I’ve set aside environmental concerns, I dead-panned to myself as I stuck Weak Necrotic Seeds strategically into the mud. It’s probably a bad sign that I have so much empathy for the frontrunners of the industrial revolution… yet why can’t I deny this anticipation in my heart…?

Your Skill (Species) Lesser Array Knowledge has grown to Level 23.

Your Skill (Earned) Innate Mana Attunement has grown to Level 5.

Your Skill (Species) Lesser Array Knowledge has grown to Level 24.

My new Earned Skill made it quite simple to feel the progressive change in roiling necrotic energy as I put the Necrotic Seeds in the ground. Too close, the energy would begin to boil and multiply in what was definitely a dangerous reaction. But at a certain distance, it just created a necrotic energy-rich environment. The real breakthrough came when I started twisting Mana nodes on top of the seeds, so I could disperse the influence in a slightly larger area.

Halfway through my path creation, I paused and ceased my expansion efforts, instead going back to observe the start had I made. Honestly, it might display a little bit of lack of caution, the kind which my siblings had warned me, to throw my efforts wholeheartedly into this project without understanding how this blight was formed.

So for a while, I watched my first attempts, examining the result.

As I did so, my confusion only deepened. “Actually, the blight isn’t from the Necrotic energy, at least not directly. If anything, after Necrotic energy crowds out and corrodes the other energies, blight is created by physical substances, to protect itself against the necrotic energy… But how…?”

I had no clues about investigating the phenomenon, but for my purposes, at least confirmed I didn’t need to worry about the blight being particularly dangerous.

“Nothing like a new day and a wonderful new project,” I said to myself. I looked up at the sun. The zombie problem hadn’t been vanquished, but for the first time in a while, I felt a lot of optimism about my life.

I flinched almost immediately. Damnit Tallum! You know what sort of System is watching your every movement! When you plant flags like that, the world-

The reeds around me rustled… but it was only a warm afternoon breeze. The sun shined overhead. A few birds flew ahead, casting normal and un-monstrous shadows.

My eyes narrowed. How suspicious.