"Am I... dead?"

The last thing Lucius remembered was blinding pain coursing through his body, after using his free attributes. Now, he couldn't feel his body at all, all he could sense was darkness. He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. Lucius thought that, if he was dead, it wasn't so bad. In fact it was kind of nice—no anxiety, no monsters, just peace.

At some point, the empty void covering Lucius's vision was broken, and he thought he could see just the tiniest hint of purple light. Over the next few minutes, he would be proven correct, as the light grew larger and larger, until finally, Lucius could make out the shape of an immaculate crystal palace. The palace continued, on its journey towards him, until it seemed at last like it would overtake him. Then, it stopped.

The whole scene in front of him seemed impossible. Lucius couldn’t help but enjoy the view, while the palace lingered in his vision. At the very front rose a gigantic drawbridge, that appeared to be made of crystal-clear glass, with intricate, rune-like characters engraved across the entire thing. The inscriptions swirled, branching off from each other in different directions, growing smaller as they moved, like living fractals. Perfectly uniform bastions jutted out from the walls, made of a shiny, glasslike material, but with a purple hue rather than clear, like the drawbridge. Ornate battlements, looking more like art than tools of war, lined the top of the palace walls.

Without warning, the drawbridge began to lower. There were no chains connecting it to the palace walls; it appeared to move on its own, descending all the way down, until it nestled gently onto the ground. The entire process was silent—even when the massive bridge touched down, Lucius couldn't hear a sound, until...

"Such a STUPID boy!"

The sudden voice came out booming, carrying so much power that Lucius thought he might die, just from hearing it—if he wasn’t already dead, he supposed.

Lucius looked up and down, left and right, trying to locate the source of the soul quaking voice. "Who is it?" he tried to yell, but he didn’t have a mouth. Still, it seemed his message got through.

"Wouldn’t you like to know! Hmph!" The voice was entirely different now—it had suddenly become feminine and no longer caused him pain to hear it. More importantly, it was coming from right beside him!

"Where?!" Lucius looked toward the sound of the voice, and finally caught sight of the being that was speaking.

A small, pink cat, with a luxurious fluffy coat, and large eyes the same color as the palace walls. The light reflected off the cat’s eyes in the same unique way as it did off the palace, as if they were both made of the exact same material.

"I, am the great Twixolotl! Master calls me Twixy!" The creature seemed very pleased with her own name, "But...But now, Twixy has NO master, he's dead. He died to protect YOU weaklings, and how do you repay him? Huh?!?" Twixy gave Lucius an angry glare, "The highest-leveled human on your planet, goes and tries to kill himself, with mana poisoning!" The cat berated him, swatting at him with her tail. She was obviously unhappy with him about something, but her voice was so charming that it had the opposite effect, Lucius found it quite enjoyable. As long as she kept talking to him, she could say whatever she wanted, he thought.

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"So. What do you have to say for yourself? Speak!" the magical creature demanded.

"Am... Am I dead?" Lucius asked timidly.

"You should be! If Twixy hadn’t stopped your soul from burning to a crisp, you would have already ceased to exist!" she explained. Now that she was satisfied, that Lucius had been sufficiently reprimanded, she began to calm down. Walking in a circle around him a few times, she came to a stop right in front of him, took a seat, and began to lazily clean her paws. "Say thank you, stupid boy."

"T-thank you." Lucius was still quite bewildered. He had never spoken to an animal before—never mind a magical, alien animal. "Will I be okay?"

"The danger of mana poisoning is, almost entirely, in the domain of the soul. Native souls can’t handle that much power, not that fast. Right now, I am protecting your soul from all that mana you just pumped into your body. The problem is, if I put you back, poof, you’ll die," she explained cheerfully.

"So... Are you going to keep me here forever?" Lucius asked.

"Don’t flatter yourself. If master didn’t care so much about helping you people, Twixy would have just let you die, like master should have. Then master would still be here with Twixy!" Her voice broke towards the end of her sentence, and she began to quietly sob.

"I’m sorry." Lucius didn’t know what else to say; he had never lost someone he loved. Had he ever loved someone? He might have loved his mother, when he was still a small boy, before all the pain could smother that small ember of love in its cradle. "I've seen this palace before, in a vision. There was a man here, he was fighting something, was that man your master?"

Twixy nodded her head gently, still unable to stop the tears from flowing, by now her perfect fluffy fur was all matted below her eyes from the wetness.

"Thank you, I guess this means that you and your master have saved my life twice now" Lucius wanted to change the subject, he didn't know how to handle this much emotion. "What will happen to me now?"

Twixy wiped her eyes with her tail, regaining her composure, as a devilish grin spreading over her face. "Well, we need to acclimate your soul to all the magic that you, so greedily, pumped into your body. Twixy can admit, what you did was impressive. You gained levels so fast, you actually earned enough attributes to poison yourself, before your planet’s mana levels rose enough to protect you! Twixy never saw such a thing before, it’s so rare the system doesn’t even have a safeguard against it! Normally, as the mana levels on your planet rise, every soul will become acclimated to those higher levels, automatically. If you had simply waited a few days before spending all those attributes, or just used them more slowly, you’d be fine."

"I think, I understand." Lucius replied. "So then, how will you acclimate my soul to the higher mana?"

The magical creature turned away from him, she began inspecting the nails on her paws, as if she found the topic of conversation entirely too trivial. "By blasting your soul with mana, until you almost die. Again, and again, until you've adapted, of course." she explained.

"What? Won't that be painful?" Lucius asked. He was starting to feel his heart race—even though he didn’t have one.

She looked up from her nails, the glee was evident on her face now. "Oh my, yes! It will be terribly, unbearably, painful!" She smiled, as she rose to her feet. "Well, we’d better get started!"

"W-wait a minute! Could you, maybe, slowly acclimate me? With smaller doses of mana, so it’s less painful?" Lucius pleaded.

"Of course Twixy could!" she replied evenly.

Lucius felt a wave of relief wash over him, as if he had just been pardoned from a death sentence. "Thank you, I was really scare-" Before he could finish his sentence, the cat continued speaking.

"But that would be so boring, don’t you think?" She giggled as her body rose up into the air, suddenly glowing an ominous red, she pointed her paws at Lucius.

"AHHHHHHHHH!"

Through effort, you have unlocked a hidden attribute! Your Magic Resistance is now level 1!