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Chapter 85

In the wake of the turmoil, I was not in a good place. In a slightly less fraught situation, I’d have probably texted Henry and asked to talk to him. Given the possibility of compelling him against his will in doing so, I just wrote fifteen drafts and deleted all of them. They were getting weirder with every new attempt to make them as neutral as possible.

As evening fell, I checked on the farm to see if I’d gotten a reply from Mina and Hetcha. I was rewarded with a piece of paper pinned to the door.

Hello 42,

I’m Mira, a seer of the Oracle tower of western Strom. My companion is Hetcha. Our gratitude to you for liberating us from the items enslaving us goes beyond words. If we can be of service to you, you need only ask.

We will stay in the valley for the time being and hope to meet you so we might express our thanks in person.

With all our gratitude,

Mira & Hetcha

The very polite note made me feel a little more at ease. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do but this gave me time to figure it out. With refresh and the server transfers complete fast approaching I made up my mind about something else.

[Henry,

I don’t know why you're upset, but I respect that you are. How we go about this is up to you, but I’d like to understand what's going on. When, if ever, you feel like talking, I’ll listen.

-42]

I wrote out finally. Short and simple. Definitely an improvement compared with some of the multi-paragraph ramblings I’d composed earlier in the day.

Not tagging on that I missed Henry took actual effort. It was true but the sentiment felt manipulative at the moment. That did nothing to quell the roiling anxiety I felt about what I’d written coming off too impersonal.

After our earlier... whatever it was... it was painfully easy to imagine him taking it the wrong way. That he wouldn’t understand how I cared and wanted things to work out between us. I hit send before I could second guess myself into further choice paralysis.

With that done, I only had one practical concern left to deal with. I blocked off the forest side entry to the dungeon. The valley one was technically at more risk while I was potentially incapacitated by whatever was about to happen, but better guarded.

Mira and Hetcha weren’t likely to try their luck in the dungeon and new enemies would have to traverse the stone maze. That would buy me a couple days to recover from whatever I was about to go through.

As an experiment, I also blocked off the primary entrance in the valley. I hadn’t tried this since connecting the forest side with a thin band of surface purchases. I was relieved to find it didn’t put the dungeon into a build alarm state. It seemed like the small entrance accessible through my look out spot was enough to satisfy the need for an accessible path to the core.

With everything meaningful I could accomplish done I laid on my couch and waited for the transfer timer to run its course. Not an easy wait but since I wasn’t sure what would happen I didn’t want to be working on anything.

“42?” Henry called from the entry chamber. I looked up in surprise, there was less than a minute left on the timer.

“Henry-” I started, not sure what to say. This was not an ideal moment to start a conversation. Henry walked over and handed me a letter.

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“My server transfer is about to start,” I explained, switching to share mode so he could see the timer. He just nodded, offering me his hand as he sat down. I took it as I quickly stashed the letter in my inventory.

When the transfer timer hit zero, everything shimmered like heat haze. There wasn’t a feeling to it per say, but a sound like a rain stick full of broken glass. Runes flashed and fade, disorienting but less severely than the prior times.

It took a moment for me to realize I could remember the times I’d first integrated with my core and upgrade sickness now. As that hit me so too did the memory of what exactly had happened in my moments of missing time.

Kings played chess on fine green silk with the fates of thousands or a single life riding on the game. Neither knew what would happen, only that the patterns of fate would wend around their play. Neither cared, the game long since losing its savor. They carried out the motions, fucking a dead horse in hopes of the memory of pleasure. The world bled and pulsed, and I knew there were too many eyes.

The flash of my prior experience merged seamlessly into the blind madness of the new. I wasn’t assailed by visions but by sensation.

Sinew, bone, and blood. The wet grinding horror of my human body rang in my ears with each unneeded breath. Flesh on the tips of my fingers felt a burning cold as needles danced across my skin. I was complete. What was, what is, and what might yet be, tangled and thrashing.

“The journey isn’t the destination, but I’ll grant you a wish in exchange,” A voice whispered in my ear. I grasped blindly for it. I found void, bone, fire, and flesh writhing in my grasp. The promise would be kept, but only if I slew myself and returned whole. The answer and the question were the root.

I woke up from the experience clawing at the ground with my throat aching. The unfamiliar pain was the first thing I noticed. The second thing was that I was on my back with a pair of skeletons looking down at me. Dawn and Chris.

I shifted and realized I was being held. Henry, he’d come just before the transfer started and had remained. I felt relief and let myself melt into his embrace. Thankfully not quite literally, but I definitely relaxed.

“H-hey,” I said, throat protesting my attempt at speech.

“How are you feeling?” Dawn asked in concern.

“Fine...ish,” I offered. Chris just rolled his jewels at that.

“You were screamin and thrashin for like hours,” Chris growled. Like he was talking to a child too dumb to know how bad its lies sounded.

“A few m-minutes,” Henry corrected.

“Oh. Well, I don’t feel any pain now. Not more than I was earlier anyway,” I explained. I still felt like a wet rag instead of my usual floaty self, but that was all. Especially since I’d forgone the use of my mouth to communicate that time.

I was also losing some of the details of what had happened during the transfer. Like a dream, it wasn’t fixed in my memory and I was fine with that. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad and just accepted that it was happening.

I checked my interface and let out a sigh. The entire thing was greyed out and full of incomprehensible runes. I’d been hoping to get access to my store back, not end up even more deeply screwed.

“A moment, please,” Henry said. Dawn nodded in understanding while Chris just crossed his arms, not going to budge. Henry and Chris locked in a staring contest, Chris’s glare a clear challenge. I didn’t want them to fight but before I could say anything Dawn grabbed Chris by his neck and just started dragging him.

“Fuck!” Chris hissed as he scrabbled like a puppy caught by the scruff. Dawn was a couple inches taller than him, but I hadn't really thought much about it before. Now it occurred to me that her skeleton was larger than others in the dungeon. If she were fleshy she’d probably have been pretty scary size wise. I knew she also had a higher strength than most but couldn’t recall the exact value.

“What's wr-wrong?” Henry asked me gently once we were alone.

“I’m just… processing things,” I said, half honestly. I’d taken my interface out of share mode so no one had seen what was wrong with it earlier. I didn’t know enough about what had gone wrong to say anything meaningful and was too tired to have a freak out about it yet.

“Ah, well…,” Henry trailed off, pulling me closer and kissing my hair. A message alert dinged as a prop appeared.

[Server transfer complete]

[Final Reintegration with Core Commencing]

A loading bar started ramping up toward a hundred percent. When it filled a wave of pain and weirdness shivered through my body. Like a flashback to my upgrade experience that hit like a jolt of electricity and disappeared in the same instance.

There was no bizarre vision but I felt like I’d seen some IT dude wave cheerfully at me while it happened. Really that was pretty fucking weird in its own right if I let myself think about it more than I probably should. Much like how said IT guy had seemed familiar.

Looking through my interface I found it changed but comprehensible and responsive again. I felt a thrill of joy as I bought a tile just to prove to myself that it was in fact working again.

“Oh thank fuck. Everything's working again,” I said in relief.

“I had sus-suspected,” Henry replied, amused. I looked at him in confusion then realized I was looking down at him despite the fact that he was standing. I had started hovering again and my body felt basically normal.

“YES!” I shouted in glee. I spiraled around him, drawing him into my twisting inhuman swoops of joy.