"Why is this so hard?!" Vindicost exclaimed.

I looked up at him. "Why is what so hard?"

"[Hazard Shaping], why is it so hard?!"

Seliel stopped whatever she was doing and looked over at him. "What's hard about it?"

"Well, of course you think it's easy, you have at least three times as much experience as I do!"

Seliel narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you trying to say?"

Vindicost looked back in utter confusion. "I'm not implying anything, it's just a fact... why does that bother you?"

Seliel looked back at her viewer. "Never mind, let's just drop it."

Vindicost clearly looked like he was a bit out of his depth with what was happening at that moment.

After a long pause, he spoke again. "Would you help me make a Nemesis? I just managed to get enough points to do it for the second time."

She glared back at him. "Are you sure you want my help?"

"Why would I not-" Vindicost began.

"Listen, if she wants to treat you like this, she doesn't deserve to help you." Jyn interrupted.

"That's rich coming from you Jyn!" Seliel countered, venom dripping from her words.

"What did you just say to me you little-?!"

Our [Worldbinder], who was about twice as tall as almost anyone else in the block, stood and pointed at both Seliel and Jyn. "Both of you stop that now! I'm not going to tolerate this level of bickering!" She tapped on her communicator a couple times and then looked back up at them. "I'm transferring a little money to each of you, both of you cool off and get some drinks."

Both of them stood up at the same time.

"Separately please." Our [Worldbinder] stressed.

"In that case, I'm going first." Jyn announced.

Seliel sat back down in a huff and exhaled. "What was his problem?"

"Yeah, he can be a bit abrasive at times... like a lot of the time... but he's not a bad person at heart." Vindicost excused.

"Whatever, I don't want to think about him right now." Seliel dismissed.

"I get that..." Vindicost rubbed his mandibles together awkwardly for a moment before he continued. "So, would you be okay with helping me with the [Hazard Shaping], or is that off the table?"

Seliel inspected Vindicost, searching for an ounce of ulterior intent. When she found none, she sighed. "Alright, but I'm not a very good teacher."

What followed was Vindicost and Seliel slowly getting into [Hazard Shaping].

If there's a single admirable trait in Vindicost, it's his meticulous ability to create and test theories for this game; so it wasn't long before he thought of the most broken thing I'd ever heard of.

"What is the minimum requirement for something to be considered a valid Nemesis?"

Seliel looked at him, balancing a stylus on her beak all the while. "Why do you want to know that?"

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"Well, I was thinking about how [Regeneration] worked, and I wondered what would happen if you put multiple creatures together." Vindicost explained.

Seliel let her stylus fall to the desk. "I'm not following."

"So when you cut off an arm of a creature, usually it just disintegrates right?"

"Right."

Vindicost rubbed his hands together. "So what would happen if both the main body and the arm both counted as alive?"

Seliel thought for a moment. "I've tried something kinda similar with one of my Nemeses, he was called 'The Voracious Stalker.' I made him have a brain for each of his limbs. He had limbs removed, but it didn't do anything interesting."

"Well, it's possible it wouldn't, but it's also possible that you just happened to not quite have the right conditions for success. For example, if the limb fragment didn't have the brain in it, or had the stem torn, it might not count."

"I mean, we can try... I have a lot of points right now."

Vindicost chirped excitedly. "I was hoping you'd say that."

----------------------------------------

Andrew

[Nemesis Created Nearby]

That was an ominous thing to wake up to.

I leapt to my feet and readied Hole Puncher, just in case worse comes to worst.

Nothing happened for a long time, and I couldn't hear anything strange with Insight.

"Huh... actually, I never found out how far away that broadcasts from did I? For all I know, it could be a mile away."

Sydui sat up and rubbed her eyes. "What's happening now?" She asked with a yawn.

"Nothing at the moment, but a Nemesis just spawned."

All at once, Sydui was awake. "Where?"

I shrugged. "That's just it, I have no idea."

Sydui sighed. "Perfect, an extreme threat we can't identify is somewhere we don't know of."

"Just like the old days huh?"

Sydui just stared at me.

"...Too soon?"

Both of us walked out of the tent because we were too awake to go back to sleep at that point.

Juohen looked over at us, it was his turn to watch the camp it would seem. "Oh hey there you two."

"Hey Juohen, bad news... we have a new Nemesis around here somewhere."

"Oh yeah? I'm sure we can handle it." Juohen replied, putting his feet up.

"Probably, but it doesn't pay to be careless."

"Yeah, yeah, but until it gets here, there's not even anything we can do to prepare. For all we know, it could be immune to whatever we set up."

I tapped my forehead. "That's why we create redundancy."

"That's why we do what now?"

I stared at Juohen for a moment. "Have you really not heard of the engineering concept of redundancy?"

"I'm not an engineer, I'm a poisoner."

I rubbed my temples. "That... okay, what I'm trying to say is that having more than one thing that works in the same system makes it more likely that something will work. For instance, if a single strut fails, you don't want the tower to fall, so you make more struts right?"

Juohen shrugged. "I don't know if people do that, I'm not an engineer as I said."

"Surely you've looked at a building before?" I asked, exasperated.

"All of the functional components tend to be behind plating, so I can't just look at them Andrew."

"Interesting, not even like bridges or electrical towers?"

Juohen looked at me intently. "Are you telling me that you leave stuff as important as electrical towers and bridges exposed?"

"I mean sorta? They tend to be made of just the structural parts to reduce weight and reduce the likelihood of a collapse."

"You guys are insane you know that?" Juohen leaned forward. "I mean, what if your competition figured out your designs?"

My eyes widened. "Are you saying that bridge-building techniques are... proprietary?"

Juohen's expression changed to a confused one. "Are they not supposed to be?"

I let that sink in for a second before replying. "I really have to take you to Earth after this is over, like you've really got to see it."

"Well I can't go back to Fissifa, so why not?"

I smiled. "Bringing us back to the main topic at hand, we need to figure out if we should hunker down or leave quickly."

"Well, either is fine for me, frankly I'm not even sure my poisons work on anything here except us."

I nodded. "Yeah, true... leaving it is."

Over the next half hour, we woke everyone up and started moving away from our location.

It seemed like that was a good option, because a lot of nearby champions started moving all at once a little bit after we left.

We didn't stop until we had to rest again, but I still felt uneasy about it.

That's when a letter appeared.

"As much fun as it would be to leave you to your own devices and see how you no-doubt solve this issue, it's becoming too much of a threat to ignore."

"A few other Gamemasters created a monstrous Nemesis which is practically immortal, which is the same one you had just fled from.

"The reason it's so dangerous is because when you attempt to kill it, it divides into more of the same creature, please be careful not to only injure it when it eventually finds you.

"Signed, Lviyr The Gamemaster."

I sighed. "Damn it."

The next thing I did was gather everyone together to break the news.

"Yeah, so apparently we have a hydra on our hands." I announced.

"A what?" Polyu called back.

Right, different mythologies.

"We have a Nemesis that splits if you try to kill it by, assumedly, dismemberment. I've called this meeting to discuss methods of killing it that leaves nothing to regenerate. The first is fire, fire spreads and won't leave anything behind; the second is poison, if the body is still intact when it dies, it shouldn't split; third is crushing, if it has internal organs, there's a chance it can't survive without one or two of them, crushing reduces the risk of splitting while attempting this. That said, you can't cut or tear them, that will just make the problem worse."

"So, what's the next step?" Sydui asked, clearing seeing where this was going.

"The next step is threat assessment."