I stood alone in the chamber with the dead dungeon guardian’s corpse, the still-steaming remains of the Eclipsed, and the massive bone tree. My eyes were still on the cavity in the center of the tree, but I knew I had a little more to do before I should approach and find out if the tree could upgrade one of my corestones like the others believed.

First, I needed to explore this new dark mana inside myself now that I had a bit of peace. If there was anything more to understand, I hoped to at least take a step or two in that direction. Then I could check my accomplishments. After that, I’d see if I was ready to advance to Iron. Then the tree.

I shifted my gaze inward, trying to better understand what had happened to me during the fight with the Eclipsed.

Before resting in the bedroll, I had the unsettling sensation of sharing my body with another presence. The other presence had wanted complete control and was ready to snatch it from me if I let my guard down for a moment. It wouldn’t have been possible to keep up that kind of concentration for any extended period of time.

With the cursed bedroll’s help, I felt normal again. But there was so much I still didn’t know. Was the burned man simply hitching a ride on the dark mana by some quirk of his prestige path? Was the dark mana his power or a foreign energy he had command over? Did my relative sense of peace and control now mean he couldn’t sense me or know what I was doing, or was he lying in wait, watching my every move?

I couldn’t know any of those answers, but I made a few educated guesses in other areas. One was that there seemed to be a difference between dark mana that was surrounding my cores and dark mana that leaked into my body. The stuff surrounding my cores felt almost dormant and harmless as if it was walled off from influencing me.

When I had begun drawing from the power and using it, however, it leaked into my body. That had not been harmless.

It seemed reasonable to assume I could learn to use this power, even if it was only in small doses. Drawing too much would mean risking a complete loss of self. Drawing small amounts I could tolerate exposure to might be a skill I could slowly master. After all, the bedroll would cleanse my body every night, giving me a fresh slate. All I had to do was keep my sanity until I slept.

I wanted to learn to wield this dark mana, turning it into another weapon in my growing toolbelt. If the burned man imagined I would be upset by this or surrender, he had badly underestimated me. If anything, all he had done was hand me a powerful new weapon. Yes, I suspected it wouldn’t be easy to learn to unleash its potential fully, but I would master it eventually. When that time came, he’d find that it was me using him and not the other way around.

Before attacking the Eclipsed, I had stashed Pebble’s Echo, leaving him with the knowledge that we might not make it through the fight ahead. I wasn’t sure if he kept any consciousness while unsummoned, but I still felt for the guy, so I touched the pebble in my pouch and nearly summoned him.

I hesitated.

Would I accidentally summon some sort of Dark Pebble if I wasn’t careful?

Leaning toward caution, I took a moment to probe around in what I had come to think of as the spiritual realm where I sensed things like my cores and mana.

My ability to grasp the details of the spiritual realm within my body had greatly improved since first equipping a Soul corestone back in Riverwell. Back then, I was more or less fumbling blindly, relying on instinct and intuition to guide me. I had the feeling that I was urging the mana to act and I relied heavily on visualization. It had worked, but more and more, the picture of what was actually going on had come into focus for me.

Now that I could better “see” into this realm, I understood something I had wrong.

My corestones didn’t have “walls” as I had been visualizing. Instead, I interacted with the class corestones by surrounding them in a cocoon of pure, condensed mana. I hadn’t fully grasped this until the dark mana reshaped those cocoons, changing them entirely.

People were like batteries, capable of increasing efficiency and power over time. Class corestones were like the machines that plugged into those batteries. Over time, they would change and evolve, but so would the individual using the class corestone.

This new understanding also helped me to see why someone like Krete hadn’t simply unequipped his “dark” corestone. It hadn’t been his class corestone that was touched by dark mana. It had been the cocoon of pure, condensed energy within himself that was Eclipsed.

Just to check my theory, I checked to see if I could still unequip my corestones.

I could, and neither’s description had changed when I inspected them. I equipped them again and closed my eyes, trying to prod my senses more deeply.

I sensed something promising. If I imagined the whole structure like a jawbreaker candy with layers of overlapping spheres, I could picture splitting it in half and looking at the cross-section. In this way, the dark mana would be a thin, oily-like residue on the outermost edge. After that, it was the thicker blue wall of pure, condensed mana—the “cocoon” I grew in size and ability as I trained with meditation. Finally, the colored glass orb at the center was my class corestone.

Both my Heart and Soul stone had identical cocoons around them with the same oily dark mana coating.

I sensed there wasn’t much more to understand for the moment, as my ability to visualize the spiritual realm was still limited. For now, I carefully began trying to use Forge Echo on the pebble in my hand.

After a few minutes of careful experimentation and prodding, I was relatively certain that the dark mana was somehow dormant. It didn’t seem to latch on to threads I extended through its oily surface or try to influence my half-formed abilities. If my memory of using the strange new power was any indication, I suspected I would only have to open that dark “door” again and release it into my body. Once free, it would act on its own will and improve my spells at the cost of wrestling me for my sanity.

That was both comforting and terrifying. On the positive side, it meant I could probably keep using my normal spells without worrying about dark mana. On the negative side, it meant learning to master the new force would likely be very dangerous and complex.

I was still working with guesses and assumptions about things I didn’t fully understand but decided there wasn’t much more I could do about it right now. I held my breath slightly as I finally summoned Pebble, fingers crossed that I wasn’t wrong about any of this.

Pebble’s ghostly form appeared, rolled around as if he was taking in the scene, then turned to face me. Okay, he was kind of featureless, but he rolled toward me and stopped, so it felt like he was facing me.

Pebble softly bumped into my shoe, so I scooped him up. “Do you feel… dark?” I asked him. “Like some evil mana is touching you or anything?”

He gave an uncertain wiggle, then made the number of hops for “no.”

Good. I was ready to put the worries about dark mana behind me and focus on the more exciting things staring me in the face.

“I’ve got some accomplishments to claim. Want to watch?”

Pebble very much did want to watch.

Smiling, I moved my attention to the pulsing accomplishment notifications I had been ignoring. After that, I would look into the other thing—the sense of readiness I suspected was connected to advancing to Iron, should I wish it. Then, it was tree time.

The list of things after tree time were a lot scarier and less exciting, so I was choosing not to think about them for now.

It was tempting to try advancing right away, but I knew advancement was something I needed to at least think about. Yes, I wanted the power, but I also knew what Circa had implied: there were benefits to waiting and stacking up experience before moving forward. Those benefits came in the form of powerful boons that could reshape my body in permanent, powerful ways.

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But could I really afford to wait? Rake and his allies were surely waiting for us somewhere beyond this chamber. I could greedily hold off my advancement in hopes of gaining more boons, but it would be wasted if I got myself and my friends killed for being too weak here and now.

I could at least afford to put off the decision until I was done checking my accomplishments, so I pulled up the first one, jaw dropping when I noticed its rarity.

I read the words aloud to Pebble, who was on the edge of his seat.

[Legendary Accomplishment] Defeat an Eclipsed at least one rank above yourself and/or your entire party. [Reward - Legendary Personal Space Upgrade Token] “Woohoo! This is your first legitimately earned legendary accomplishment, not that anyone has been keeping track. Also, I don’t want to diminish your other accomplishments, of course. Getting lucky with the bow upgrade and all that was great. Excellent work! And the whole stack of accomplishments for being in stasis was great, but come on. We all know that was a gimme. You can’t pick up women in taverns by saying you hold a record for time spent unconscious. At least… I don’t think you could.

“But wow, you really just keep surprising everyone, don’t you? For what it’s worth, I think your bedroll is kind of cute, too. And I was sad, because I was so sure you were going to have to ‘divinely smite the shit out of it,’ as you so elegantly put it. But now? That little guy is your best friend with this whole dark mana business! Right? He gets to stay, doesn’t he?

“Anyway… I do have some bad news to share, and it isn’t technically something I am supposed to share. So if you could avoid telling my boss, that would be amazing, thanks!

“Your friends didn’t earn this accomplishment. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but they pretty much didn’t do any real damage to the Eclipsed. They more or less got tossed around, nearly killed, and tickled it. They didn’t even break a single one of those power roots. Unfortunately, their combined efforts were not enough to give them participation credit on the kill. There was an even better reward if you had soloed the Eclipsed, but the rules are double unfair. You didn’t technically “solo” it since they helped distract it, and yet their help also didn’t qualify to get them a reward. Mean, right?

“Anyway, I share all of this to say maybe you should keep this one quiet or make up a reason you got it. Just tell Lyria it happened when you were off by yourself. No need to upset the others, right? By the way, I think she’s starting to like you. Keep in mind that my opinion on the matter of humans liking humans is questionable, at best.”

I guessed my secret messenger didn’t remember that I was supposed to turn in my accomplishments to the guild official outside the dungeon when this was over.

In fact… how was I going to explain an accomplishment for killing an Eclipsed a rank above my own? Maybe I could bypass the system entirely by not checking with the naidu or reporting my accomplishments to the guild official. After all, I didn’t remember her implying it was mandatory to report back. But I wanted the points she talked about. There were rewards within the guild based on the quality and number of achievements we earned on commissions. And, this was only a minor, totally unimportant side matter, but there were also embellishments for our badges if we earned enough points. And who was to say those points wouldn’t lead to things like trophies? There was probably even some kind of ranking list within the adventurer’s guild where I could compare my score and position on the list to other adventurers. Maybe there were even color-coded cloaks for people with enough points for their rank!

It was, of course, all just a bunch of gamer nonsense that definitely shouldn’t influence my decisions in any way. Still, I decided it would be the sane and logical thing to report my accomplishments and reluctantly accept any points, trophies, or awesome rewards that would come from doing so.

I’d just think of something to explain how I managed them, like a convenient cave-in that knocked the Eclipsed unconscious. It wasn’t out of the question, right?

I read the next accomplishment.

[Epic Accomplishment] Clear the dungeon heart chamber of every last living defender. [Reward - Epic Dungeon Diver’s Token] “Normally, this accomplishment comes from beating the dungeon guardian, plain and simple. If it’s the same rank as you and your group, it’s an epic. If it’s a rank above you guys, it's legendary. Solo kills bump both rewards up a tier. Like I said… Plain and simple. But you don’t like plain and simple, do you?

“I can almost hear you asking, ‘but, lovely, informative, best friend who speaks to me in my accomplishments,’ that Eclipsed was a rank above our group, and you just said my group didn’t even help! Where is my max tier reward?’

“This is what happens when you do weird things, Brynn. You didn’t kill the guardian. You got the leftover accomplishment that comes when something within the dungeon kills the guardian, and the reward for that is simply less good. THAT is plain and simple. You should try it sometime.

“See, in rare cases, the dungeon guardian gets killed by the inhabitants of the dungeon itself. A few years back, a dungeon was full of these super-aggressive pig people. Actually, that was more than a few years for you guys. Maybe… two thousand years ago? Anyway, they formed a small army, banded together, and staged a raid on the dungeon guardian. By the time adventurers arrived, the dungeon was already a bloody mess, and only a few wounded piglings were left. This accomplishment exists for situations like that, uncommon as they may be.

“Between you and me, that giant baby spider thing would have wiped the floor with you guys. You’re lucky the Eclipsed took him out for you. Even he cheated. That big bone tree held the baby thing down for him. Makes you wonder why the tree didn’t help him fight you guys, doesn’t it?

Ahh! I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting to say, and if I forget, I’m going to have to wait until your next accomplishment to say it. You made me wait so long this time, and I feel like I’ve got so much to tell you. This is so frustrating. It’s on the tip of my… no, I don’t have a tongue, actually. Well, technically—”

I frowned. Had the message just been cut off? I wasn’t sure I had ever seen that before.

The thought had crossed my mind plenty of times, but I found myself wondering what the hell my secret messenger was. I was increasingly sure it wasn’t human or even something remotely human. Was it one of those things I had briefly glimpsed in the dimensional boxes where I had claimed personal space rewards? Or was it one of those massive creatures I saw floating around dimensional space when I activated Abyssal Step inside my personal space? It could be something different entirely.

I wondered if my ability to hear the voice was connected somehow to my previous status as a god. Was the voice like some kind of divine liaison privilege we had earned with another realm? The voice certainly seemed to “work” in the space where all the item rewards and accomplishments came from. Maybe they were just a glorified customer service representative I had been assigned?

All the questions hurt my head, and I had too much to worry about to get lost in the topic for now.

I looked down at Pebble, who was waiting patiently in my palm. “That’s a legendary and an epic on top of all the others I’ve already earned in here so far,” I said. “That means I have a common, two rares, an epic, and a legendary dungeon diver token. And then there are the solo tokens, too. I’ve got a common and an epic for those. Best of all? I’ve got that legendary personal space upgrade.”

As usual, Pebble didn’t really say much, but I could sense he was happy for me.

“There’s just one bummer with all these accomplishments,” I said.

Pebble looked attentive.

“So I’m Wood rank, which I think means everything I’m earning is still going to give me Wood rank rewards. Not to sound ungrateful, but I’m pretty sure my days of being Wood are about to come to an end in like… a few minutes? So I’m going to have to hope using Wood gear at Iron rank doesn’t come with some kind of penalty, and I never thought to ask anyone about it.”

Pebble looked somber.

“I know,” I sighed. “It kinda sucks, but I guess the penalty would have to be pretty bad to stop me from using things like my Silver Scream Bow, the Ring of Protection, and my Amulet of Escape. And I already wasted my net trap thing in the cave, so no need to mourn that one. Most of my other gear is kind of meh anyway. That doesn’t include you. Your pebble, of course, is rankless and highly valuable to me.”

He seemed to like that.

I grinned, pursing my lips in thought. “But the legendary personal space upgrade won’t be tied to my rank. That’s a big plus. I really hope it’s a training room. Or maybe like… some kind of alchemy station? Actually, a portable, magic bathtub would be pretty awesome, too. Hey…” I said slowly. “I don’t remember my Ring of Protection ever triggering against the Eclipsed. I should check the combat log Voidgaze keeps. Yeah, I never told you about that. It keeps a running list of the name of what I killed, accomplishments, and when it resists poisons and effects. I usually just look at it to reread accomplishments and remind myself how many rewards I have coming.”

Pebble waited patiently as I scanned my combat logs for an answer about my Ring of Protection not triggering. I saw a few notifications of Voidgaze resisting something called “Umbral Toxin,” and wondered if it had been on the weapon the Eclipsed had hit me with.

Then I went far back enough to see that the Eclipsed had “resisted” my Ring of Protection.

Huh. So my bubble forming depended on an enemy's resistances? It was an interesting bit of knowledge that made me think about my Elemental Body passive, which raised my resistance to elemental effects. Presumably, that would mean raising my own resistances could, in a way, improve my offensive capabilities against defensive spells.

“He resisted it?” I said. I doubted Pebble was really following any of this, but it felt kind of nice to talk about the things I usually tried to keep quiet from everybody else. I knew I could trust Pebble to keep quiet, after all. Unless he really was Dark Pebble, and just pretending to be normal.

Nah. He was just regular Pebble.

“So an Iron enemy can resist the effect of my Wood rank ring. Maybe that’s part of why it isn’t as worth it to use low rank gear as you advance. You might just start running into less reliable results? But neither Rake or the Eclipsed resisted my Silver Scream effect. Then again, it didn’t detonate on either of them. Maybe the detonation can be resisted? Ugh. I’ll have to keep that in mind…”

With my accomplishments read and a fresh set of questions, I turned to the feeling I had noticed since killing the Eclipsed. When I reached level 50, there had been a distant sense of emptiness that I couldn’t reach for.

“Any chance you know about advancing to Iron, Pebble?”

Pebble did not know.

“It’s alright. We’re going to just… give this a shot. If I figure this out, I’ll tell you what boons I get, assuming I can figure that out. Deal?”

Pebble gave me a bump of affirmation. We had a deal.