This time, instead of color draining from everything around me, most of my surroundings dissolve into nothing. I see only a small circle of stone around me, and beyond that is empty darkness.

Gheraa appears before I can question it. "Back so soon!" he exclaims. "I was prepared for you this time. Got all the temporal bands lubed up and ready."

I stare at him.

"You're in a strange spot this time, aren't you?" he adds, looking around curiously at the darkness that surrounds us. "Best be careful. This sort of thing doesn't happen often."

"What sort of thing?"

"The Interface not being able to fully reproduce whatever environment you're in," Gheraa says mildly.

Now that's interesting. There's something special about the Fracture, then, possibly even beyond what Ahkelios had thought. Why does it interact with the Interface in such a unique way? Gheraa interrupts me before I can ruminate any further on it.

"So!" he says cheerfully. "I'm sure you want to know your options?"

"All of them, please," I say dryly.

"As you wish." Gheraa bows towards me and takes several steps back — my eyes narrow when I notice that he's limping ever-so-slightly. The impulse to ask him if he's okay rises, but there's something about his demeanor and the way he's trying to hide it...

The Integrators are always watching.

I don't ask.

Gheraa sweeps a hand forward, and this time, three options glimmer into existence before me. They're not nearly as dramatic as the Firmament Inspirations were — these ones glow with electricity, each one tinted a dim blue.

The first option is a small ball of electricity, occasionally flaring out with trails of energy. The Interface calls it the [A Primal Spark].

"All sapient life begins with a spark of intellect," Gheraa tells me. He wanders along with my gaze, playing with the spark and allowing it to dance between his fingers, like he's showing off its abilities. "What could you do with it in your hands, I wonder?"

The second option is, as far as I can tell, a blob of... numbers. It's almost dizzying to look at — I have to squint to make out any of them at all. This one is declared as [The Underlying Principles].

"Math!" Gheraa sounds almost unbearably excited about the word. I have an unpleasant flashback to a math teacher that was about as excited. "Access to the underlying mechanisms of the skills themselves. Quite the powerful Inspiration, if I do say so myself."

I don't disbelieve him, exactly, but I also think he might be a little biased.

The third option manifests as an eye, spinning rapidly around as Gheraa moves a finger around it. It tracks his finger no matter where he moves it, and he hums, as if delighted in playing with it. [The All-Seeing Eye], it's called.

...If it's all-seeing, it's not very good at it, considering how much it's struggling to keep up with Gheraa's finger. I almost feel bad for it.

"Interface skills often run much deeper than we think," Gheraa explains. "The Eye lets you see just how deep they run, and where they might connect. It's quite unique among Inspirations, I must say, although we have seen it before."

Is it just me, or is he... telling me what these Inspirations do?

He's not really being specific about it, but he'd told me almost nothing the last time. This time he's almost incorporated it into his show. It's not so much information that he's telling me outright what they do, but I can make informed guesses based on what he's told me.

The Primal Spark can be used to imbue a skill with its own intelligence, probably, allowing me to automate them. Powerful, particularly in combination with something like Temporal Fragment, but I haven't been able to use an Inspiration outside of its category so far.

Underlying Principles is very... abstract. If it's what Gheraa is implying, then I imagine it's an Inspiration that lets me directly modify the variables that go into any given skill. Powerful, though something that requires a lot of thought and understanding. It's definitely tempting.

And then there's the All-Seeing Eye. If I understand what Gheraa is saying correctly, then he's telling me I can use it to combine skills?

The trouble is that all of these Inspirations are useful, this time around, and I know enough about them that the decision is difficult. I frown a bit, then glance at Gheraa. "Will I be able to choose these Inspirations again?" I ask. "Once I hit the next milestone."

"Of course!" Gheraa smiles broadly, twirling a cane. I have no idea where he's gotten the cane from. "Your selections are always available to you. But I'm sure you'll have unlocked much better Inspirations by then."

Maybe. But these three Inspirations already seem incredibly powerful in their own right.

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"The All-Seeing Eye," I decide. If I have to pick one of them first, it might as well be the one that increases both power and versatility. Primal Spark makes my skills powerful utility skills, if I can have them running with their own mind in the background; Underlying Principles might allow me to tweak skills into more powerful ones, depending on my circumstance.

All-Seeing Eye is the vaguest of the three, but if I can combine skills, then I'll have better versatility and power, depending on the skills I combine.

"If you're sure!" Gheraa doesn't comment on my choice at all, but he does grab the eyeball with his hand. I wince a bit at the sight, and then my eyes widen as he approaches me.

"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit."

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

I wake from the Inspiration, groaning, one hand reflexively grabbing for my left eye. It feels completely normal, thank god.

"The bastard shoved the eye into my eye," I grumble. I don't want to think about how that had felt. For all that that was an Interface simulation, the sensation of my eye being replaced had felt very much real. It didn't hurt, thankfully — either Gheraa or the Interface must have suppressed the sensation of pain — but that didn't stop it from being deeply uncomfortable.

Ahkelios, to his credit, looks concerned for me. "Who did what now?" he asks, and I take a moment to calm my pounding heart before I elaborate. The mantis looks appropriately disgusted, shivering at my description of what he'd done. "I hope I never meet an Integrator," he declares.

I decide not to mention that he probably already has.

I glance around. The Fracture is still relatively silent — there's no sign that any other golems are activating. The occasional crack echoes through the chasm, and I wince a little every time I hear one, but it doesn't look like the entire thing is on the verge of collapsing. I try not to think about it; it's not like I'll be able to do much if it does collapse.

Instead, I focus on the Eye. I need to test it out. Inspirations are exhausting to use, but trying to figure out how to use one in the middle of a battle outside of a friendly spar is asking for trouble.

"You have any idea what the Eye does?" I ask. There's a feeling of strange Firmament settled over my left eye, and I'm pretty sure that's the new Inspiration. I just have to nudge at it...

"No," Ahkelios says, but he looks vaguely uncomfortable. I wonder why, before I remember what his corpse had looked like.

Right.

"I'll figure it out," I say. Hopefully whatever was done to him is reversible. I don't even know if he has his full eyesight right now, and I'm not sure how to ask, but all of that is a question for later.

For now, I activate the Eye and use a simple skill in conjunction with it.

Barrier.

The skill flows out of me — but it's slow, moving like a glacier instead of the lightning-fast activation that usually occurs. For a moment, I'm afraid that I've been tricked — that the Eye is nothing but an Inspiration that worsens my skills and makes them nearly useless.

And then I pay attention to the way the Firmament is flowing, and I frown.

It's not that it's slow. It's more like it's waiting.

Barrier Firmament is tricky. The skill is a rapid one, as it has to be in order to be effective at defending me from anything — and it usually moves so fast that unless I prepare myself ahead of time, I don't get much opportunity to shape it. Now that it's slowed down, I can actually see how open it is to manipulation. It's a basic skill, and the Firmament feels almost like it's eager to accept anything else and twist it into its form...

Anything else. It doesn't even have to be a Reflex skill.

On impulse, I choose Crystallized Strength, for the simple reason that I need stronger barriers. The skill flows out of me, and the two twist together in a way that I hadn't seen was possible before — but with the Eye, nudging them together with just the slightest bit of Firmament Manipulation is almost child's play. Individual segments of Firmament lock together like pieces of a puzzle.

In front of me, a shining disc of Firmament materializes.

Intuitive Analysis stirs. The crystalline barrier in front of me is a Crystallized Barrier, a result of combining Strength and Durability skills in a way the Interface doesn't directly support.

[ A new Skill Fusion has been found. Would you like to log the results into the Interface? ]

The Interface chooses this moment to pipe up, the text flaring brighter than usual in front of me. I stare at it, my jaw tense; Intuitive Analysis is still working in the background, and through it, I get a sense of what the Interface itself seems to think.

This is a new result. It's eager to log it and categorize it into a database. That database will make the skill available to everyone that uses it, which on the one hand will make it available to all the other humans going through the Trial, and on the other...

On the other, it'll also place the skill directly into the Integrators' hands.

Not that it matters. Crystallized Barrier is an upper Rank C skill, Intuitive Analysis says; the Integrators will have much more powerful skills up their sleeves. They already know I have the Eye, considering Gheraa facilitated my selection of it, so it's not like I can hide the fact that I can combine skills from them.

"What will logging the results do?" I ask warily. I half expect the Interface not to respond, but Ahkelios surprisingly pipes up.

"It makes it so that you can just use the skill," Ahkelios says. "That way, you don't have to use your Inspiration to get it every time."

Then he blinks, looking confused. "How did I know that? That's not a memory."

Because you're connected to the Interface. Intuitive Analysis supplies the answer. I stop myself from actually saying those words out loud, promising myself to talk to Ahkelios about it later, and focus on what to do with Crystallized Barrier.

Crystallized Barrier is a skill that gets stronger the more I use it. The Crystallized part — that's true for Crystallized Strength as well — refers to the skill being a culmination of all past uses of the skill, layered on top of itself.

That means I want to use it as much as possible. That won't be possible if I have to use it via Inspiration every single time...

Fine.

[ Crystallized Barrier (Rank C) obtained! ]

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