After getting a look at Mr. Thrud’s map, I managed to figure out what street Shadow was on. Zindrith kept pestering me about the magic I used.

“The memories in the aspects?” He asked.

“Yeah. It’s called sorcery. Basically, I have a strong impression of the dark, so the shadows in my bind spell are twisted by my personal understanding of shadows and darkness.” I said.

“That sounds… familiar. You wouldn't happen to be an angel, would you?” He Asked taking a step back. All of a sudden it looked as though everyone was on edge. At least the NPCs were.

I was wondering if the NPCs could maybe grow stronger, if they implemented sorcery. It was worth a shot.

Zindrith would be the perfect guinea pig. I didn’t have the time to teach him properly, so I took a page out of Mr. Brutus’s book and simply planted the idea. I wasn’t expecting everyone to freak out.

“What do you mean by ‘angel’?” I asked.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief. Then Mr. Thrud jumped into an explanation. “Angel’s are beings that descend from the heavens whenever something terrible happens in the world that wasn't supposed to happen.”

Oh, they were taking about the devs. Was that all? And here I thought it had something to do with the angel my mom tried to turn me into. Now that I thought about it, it made sense you would call them angel’s.

I wasn’t and angel but it’s also not like I hadn’t been sent by them. Should I lie? If I tell them the truth they might be more inclined to help me.

“The truth is, I’m just a primordial. I died not that long ago and the angels brought me back to life. They gave me new abilities and told me to kill the demon. It’s not a boss. That things not of this world.” I explained.

“Why not come themselves? Why send just you?” asked Mr. Ganthor.

“That demon is preventing any portals from being made. The Devs… the Angels can't travel to this world. I was only able to meet with them and come back because I had a foot in this world and one in purgatory.” I explained.

“That's the biggest load of platypus shit I’ve ever heard!” said Boner.

I looked to my wife who immediately understood what I wanted. She snuck her way behind Boner then ran up to him, hopping up onto his shoulders. Then used her small hands to cover his mouth.

The guy tried his best to get her off of him but she had a bunch of levels in many different classes giving her both the flexibility to perfectly wrap her legs around his neck and the strength to hold on. It didn’t help that boners armor made his joints somewhat stiff.

“If what you’re saying is true lass, then the world magic should have summoned a seraph to deal with the demon by now.” Said the cleric. That was the first time he had spoken to me. I checked his name as not to be rude.

He was the only human in the group. World magic must be what they call the system. “Mr. Westley. Unfortunately the demon was able to get heavily restricted access of the world magic and it no longer sees him as a threat.” I explained.

“That’s unfortunate.” He responded.

“Fighting him is way more dangerous than you think. The people that die to the beasts get their souls eaten. This means there’s no after life for them. The angels will come, but the only place they can enter this world is several miles away. By the time they get here a lot of people will be dead. That’s why I need your help to stop that thing.” I explained.

“We were going to fight that thing anyway, but now you have our support.” Said Thrud. Everyone else agreed to it.

“Izzy, can I stop now? I'm getting dizzy.” Complained my wife as Boner ran back and forth while rocking his head around to try and throw her off. He was like an angry bull. Even going as far to sound like one.

“The way he's moving you might need to hold on until he tires himself out. We don't need you flying off and hitting your head.” I said.

“No, you better do something!” she cried.

“Aaarrrrrrrrgh!” Boner got his mouth free and began screaming into the sky in pure anger.

“Mini mana bolt.” I fired a low powered manabolt at his junk causing him to stagger. Alice used that moment to fall back into a backflip then zigzagged away upon leading. It was a solid maneuver and was one I'd used several times in the past.

“You assholes! I’ll fucking kill you!” raged boner, while eyeing me with murderous intent. His face was so red. You’d think he just licked a ghost pepper. He was still making angry bull sounds.

“Relax Boner. What did I tell you about keeping your anger in check.” Said Thrud slapping his back. He seemed to calm down a little, but was clearly still upset.

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I need to get back on track. What I really wanted out of Zindrith wasn’t to teach him sorcery. “Do you think you can trade these for something stronger?” I asked holding out the two empty mana stones I had acquired.

He looked them over. “Oh, I see. I do have a large one, but it isn’t exactly an even trade.” He said.

“Quit trying to steal from people. That’s clearly not a fair trade.” Said Boner lightly bonking me on the head. With only a single layer to my apathy aura my defense was garbage.

“Ow, I know that.” I nearly cried. “I’m sorry Mr. Zindrith, but I don’t have much else to trade. I don’t want to put you at a disadvantage, but a higher storage mana stone would be very helpful.” I insisted.

“I understand, in that case how about you promise to teach me more about how you cast magic.” He said.

“That’s not exactly helpful right now. What if those extra focus points are the only thing between life and death.” Insisted boner.

He had a point. Taking Zindrith’s larger mana stone could be what kills him. In that case I couldn’t take it. Moving on, I should get everyone on the right page. “Hey Mr. Zindrith! What type of magic do you mostly use?” I asked.

“Well, I mostly have shadow magic. I do have the Firebolt spell since lady Shadow says it is effective against bugs, however my job is mostly to de-buff the incoming monsters, so I usually only cast spells such as bind, blind, gravity well, slow, weakness, and thorns.” He explained.

I nodded. “I suggest investing in a stronger fire spell for when we get to the boss. Ice spells would also work, but if we don’t unify on one element we’ll only be hurting each other. I’m already really good with fire magic, so please invest in that.” I said.

“I understand Your logic, but just because you have a few fire spells doesn’t mean everyone will follow your lead. At the end of the day us mages are free spirits that thrive on creativity.” He said.

“I’m not asking you to forgo your freedom of choice. I just want you to pick up a fire ball spell.” I said.

He sighed. “Very well.”

“That goes for the rest of you too. Pick up fire based abilities. You don't need a lot, just one good one. Upgrade the cost, if you can. Fire is fire after all. Once it gets on you it’s hard to put out.” I insisted. Everyone else seemed to nod along.

It was too bad I couldn’t get a bigger mana stone. I’ll just have to combine these two in my crafting menu. I rolled them in my fingers like marbles.

You could usually combine two of the same and get it to go up in rarity. However combining the small one with the medium one would only give me a medium with a plus one. If I had another small one I could turn it into a large mana stone but that wasn’t possible right now.

Oh, what about… “Boner, have you ever crafted anything in your crafting menu?” I asked.

“I don’t mess with all those tabs. They got all these exclamation points and the last time I touched one I ended up going through a whole tutorial.” He explained.

If this was any other day, I’d probably be really upset right now, but this actually worked in my favor. “That’s great!” I handed him the stones, “Here! Take these and try to combine them in the creating menu.” I demanded.

“Sure, but why can’t you do that?” he asked.

“Just do it!” I insisted. He rolled his eyes before opening his menu.

A minute later I was handed back the greatly improved stone. “apparently the system said it was a great success. Whatever the hell that means.” He explained.

“Yes, I knew it! Whenever you combine something for the first time it always bumps it up an extra rank. It’s supposed to get the new players excited, but can be used as an exploit in most cases.” I said.

“You little shit! You made me waste it on something like that! I could have made something legendary!” he complained.

“Don’t worry about that. Your apart of the raiders now. Legendary items are a dime a dozen. Now powering them up is the hard part.” I consoled him. He still seemed upset about it, but what was done was done.

I checked the status of the stone.

Item Name: Mana Stone (Large)

Focus: 0/200

Rarity: Unique (U)

Type: Utility

Durability: 7,500/7,500

Effects:

1: Mana Storage III: Allows user to store up to 200 focus for later use.

(Authors note: I messed up. The small mana stone is ‘Common’ rank and the medium stone was supposed to be ‘Rare’ rank, but I put it down as ‘Unique’ which is the rank above ‘Rare.’ So the large one is now ‘Unique.’ Sorry for any confusion. I still want to fix many things in the future. Once this arc is done.)

“Hey Alice. Fill this up for me please.” I handed the fresh stone over to Alice who looked it over.

“Izzy cant you do it?” she asked.

“It would take me too long, also I’m not sure what would happen if I tried. The thing might just turn into something else.” I explained.

She looked confused and like she wanted to ask more questions, but she quickly decided to trust me and let it go. It took her a literal second to dump 200 points of focus into the stone. I felt a bit jealous. Stupid system.

She handed it back to me. I could feel the power vibrating inside. It felt so alive. That was odd. I could swear there was a little bit of my wife in the aspects. Was it because they were filtered through her body. Like how a concept produces 0 tier aspects.

Actually, Mr. Brutus said the aspects from my dantian were Aku shaped. I bet it was something like that. I think the aspects liked me. They seemed to dance and twirl the moment the stone touched my hand.

For a moment I swear my Qi sight made out a little Alice inside the stone. She was smiling and dancing. It was so cute—like I had a little snow globe of my wife. She was tickling my hand with all her little tap dancing. It felt like tiny painless shocks of static.

I shook the stone to see what would happen and watched as my aspect wife got all dizzy and fell on her butt. She looked mad and pouted up at me.

A moment later and she went back to dancing. Wait, that dance. Was that Caramelldansen? Oh, man, I could watch her all day.

Once I started feeling out the frequency, I started to hear the song, as if Caramelldansen was actually playing. I even bobbed my head along which was something aspect Alice really enjoyed.

“Izzy? You there? You got a weird look on your face again. What are you thinking about? Is it Boner naked? Cause I bet he doesn’t actually have that much muscle. Its just the armor that looks buff.” Said my actual wife.

“Excuse you?” said Boner eyeing my wife like she had just insulted his dick height.

She turned to meet his eyes. “Your muscles can't be real, because I was able to hold your mouth shut for a while.” She explained.

“Your higher level than me!” he yelled.

I really didn't want to continue fighting with this dude. Even aspect Alice was upset now that I wasn't watching her dance, so instead of continuing this argument, I conjured up a fresh air pillow.

“Okay, time to go!” Then I pushed Alice, as the fluffy green cloud popped into existence behind her. She tripped and fell over it, landing on her back with a cute sounding whimper.

“Sorry about my wife. I’ll make sure to educate her better in the future.” I hopped on the pillow making it fly into the sky. Meanwhile everyone just kind of stared at us, as if we had just suggested we eat at a tofu restaurant when it was clearly taco Tuesday.