“You have decided to detonate the stone, then,” Edgar said, watching the three of us as we strode into his lab.

“I have,” I agreed. “It’s a risk, but I need to be strong.”

In the end, Ed’s talk about the assassin had been what had convinced me. I needed strength if I was going to face her. Up to this point, my clashes had only been won through circumstance. In a head to head, as I was now, I would lose. This would hopefully be a small step towards fixing that.

But she had gone after my family. My brother, and worse, my father, who had no combat magic to protect him. I wasn’t going to take that lying down.

“But we’re doing what we can to minimize that risk,” Kene said. “I’m going to preemptively lay some spells on Malachi to stop his spirit or body from breaking, and Dusk is going to be prepared to pass power to him, strengthening his body immediately after the ascension. And, of course, we’ll have his plants ready for ascension. Then, we have healer’s heart, which should help reduce the strain on his body.”

I withdrew three leaves from the small healer’s heart shrub as Kene spoke.

“And finally,” I said. “I have three alter-truffles. Breaking open my death mana to third gate should trigger the one placed in my death gate and the connection point, at least to some degree. That will better help me.”

I wasn’t going to try and crack open the petrified omnieye egg – that could wait for space or time or life, when I wasn’t under so much pressure.

“I see,” Edgar said. “I am glad that you have given this decision the gravity that it deserves, Malachi.”

I flashed him a cheeky grin to hide my nerves.

“I like to think I’ve learned something from all of my fighting,” I said.

The massive tortoise just studied me, then inclined his head. As he did, things began to shift and float up into the air, weaving together in a strange mix of alchemy and enchanting. The ink from the inkstone vein served as a base, and Edgar’s magic wove through it, tapping into something that reminded me of when Dusk manipulated reality with her legacy. His mana forged into shapes, which dissolved into the swirling ink a mere moment later, then the leaves from the Healer’s Heart spun and rotated in.

A thin plate of shed scute from his shell floated up next, breaking down and mixing into the glowing blob of ink, followed by a flow of what felt like knowledge, life, and death mana and energy in concert, braided together into a strange purple construct.

The ink in the air began to roil and churn, spinning into a potent power, and I watched with fascination. This was what a C bought me? How much more could I have managed with an A?

But it was too late for me to improve my grade.

Dusk let out a wind-rustling-in-trees sound, and opened a portal into her plane, near the field of flowers we cultivated. All I would need for this would be the blood carnations, so I made sure I knew where they were before I took a seat in a chair, rolling up my sleeve.

The tattoo gun lifted into the air, and my own personal inkstone rose up as well.

“I’m going to detonate it,” Edgar announced gravely. “That power will flow into the ink, and I’ll lay the mark on you. When the pain becomes too much, or when the ink runs dry, you should draw on your plants and advance. Don’t take more than you can handle. It’s better to have a powerful, incomplete mark than to die.”

“I understand,” I said, then cast a quick spell, attaching myself to the carnations, though I didn’t draw on their power yet. Kene took my hand, and Dusk patted my shoulder.

The inkstone I had received started to glow, then it exploded into a massive wash of gray, almost colorless fire that was somehow also ink. The power rapidly condensed, sliding into the ink, and the tattoo needle touched my upper arm.

The pain from the tattoo itself wasn’t too bad – I’d had far worse in fights. All the needle made me want to do was let out a hiss.

But the power flowing into me was a lot. It was unstable, wild, chaotic in a way that I couldn’t describe. As the needle continually stabbed into me, millimeter after millimeter, it started to build.

It was unpleasant, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Edgar continued working, and slowly but surely, the pain started to build.

At first, it was like the spiritual equivalent of the pain that I’d felt when the drakes in the cave had crushed my hands and snapped the bones in them, or when the revenant had burned me and stabbed me at the same time.

That was only the beginning. I gritted my teeth, and Kene put a bit of leather in my mouth for me to bite down on instead.

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That helped.

The pain started to build higher and higher, and I could feel my spirit starting to quail before the weight that was crushing down on it.

I felt the weight stop growing, and spat the leather out of my mouth.

“Keep going,” I said.

Kene put the leather back in my mouth, and a moment later, I felt the weight on my spirit start to increase. It began to bridge across into my body, and my arm started to tingle, as if a thousand hot needles were stabbing into me.

It expanded out, moving through my body and spirit, and it felt like ten thousand fire ants were biting onto every inch of flesh. I must have started screaming, because I felt the weight stop a second time and could faintly hear someone screaming in the background.

I choked down the scream.

“Don’t stop,” I whispered.

It took them longer to start back again, and when they did, I was no longer able to hold in my screaming. I heard it echoing through the cave, until I didn’t hear it any more.

Everything went black around me then, save for the faint green and amber color of Kene’s spells.

Weight crushed down on me, and I felt bones snapping. I didn't know if it was real, or if it was my spirit and mind trying to account for what I was feeling.

The power kept coming, and the light of Kene’s spells started to waiver, flickering like a candle on its last breath.

I felt the weight stop growing.

“More,” I managed to grunt out.

The weight increased, and my heart was being torn apart by knives that glowed like the surface of the sun, my skin was being peeled off by vegetable peelers, my eyes were being sliced to ribbons with razors.

I felt something start to strain, then Kene’s spells snuffed out.

The pain doubled, then doubled again. I could see it, floating in the darkness of the void overhead, bearing down on me like the wrath of an angry magi, and I threw my power and will up to meet it. I slammed into it with my body and spirit, and I was crushed. The weight was simply too much for me.

I hung on anyways, pushing back the weight with every scrap of willpower I had. I just needed to let them finish.

Light flickered in the space around me, more green and amber, and the weight lessened some. The silver leaves of the healer’s heart manifested, and I felt the weight stop growing.

It was still crushing, bearing down on me, destroying me, body and soul alike, but it wasn’t growing.

I tried to tell them to keep going, that I could take more, but I wasn’t sure if they could hear me. I wasn’t sure I could hear my own words.

I tried to tell them again, but it was all I could do to stop myself from exploding into a splatter of blood and soul against the weight. It might have stopped growing, but it was still heavy, far too heavy. I didn’t think I could last another hour, let alone a week.

I drew my power and will up, gripping the leaves and lights, and spat out a command for them to continue.

Instead, I heard Edgar’s voice ring out in the darkness.

“It’s done! Bond it now.”

I reached out for the thin connection to the blood carnations, and tried to focus on my mana-garden. There was something wrong, the pressure was there too, but the mana-garden seemed to float up around me, spinning like I’d been running in circles.

I clenched my fist and tugged, and death mana started to fill me. I marched into my first gate death mana, but the world kept spinning and spinning and spinning.

I fell to my knees, but I kept clutching onto the mana, not allowing a single trace of it to dissipate, even though I was overflowing with more power than I could handle many times over.

One hand.

The other hand.

Inch by inch, I crawled out of my first gate, and under the massive mushroom that was the Beast Mage’s Soul. It was practically raining spores, and the weight somehow seemed even stronger here.

My body gave out, leaving me laying flat on my stomach under the pressure.

I reached out with my hands and grabbed the mycelium tendrils.

I forced myself to move forwards with nothing but the strength in my arms. This wasn’t physical, it was spiritual. I could move. If I didn’t move, I would be crushed under the enormous pressure.

My arms grew weak, and I pulled myself along with nothing but the grip of my hands, then my fingers, then… there.

My fingers brushed the cool wrought iron that was my third gate. I could barely even breathe, but I had clutched onto my mana with a death grip. I slammed it into the barrier to my third gate, yanking for the power that would be there.

It didn’t open. I felt a moment of despair.

Then I felt Kene’s spells crack for a second time, then explode.

I was going to open my third gate, or I was going to die.

I brought the mana in for another hammer blow, then another, and another.

It wasn’t the fifth strike that finally did it, but somewhere in the battering rain of mana, my third gate blew open, and for just a moment, I felt another wind, one I’d touched on for a few moments, flicker. I thought I even heard faint snatches of laughter on the wind, but then it was gone.

Strength rushed through me, flowing through my death gate like the cold wind of midnight slipping through a graveyard.

With it running through me, my eyes snapped open, but I still couldn’t stand up, the pressure was too great.

But it let me see the changes in my mana-garden. A shimmering blue-gray light shot up from the mushroom of Beast Mage’s Soul, as well as from the ungated mana, where mycelium met roots.

Beast Mage’s Soul exploded upwards and outwards, until the massive cap was covering everything in all four gardens, everything except for the distant tree in my life garden. Something in my body was changing too, though I couldn’t tell what it was.

The power that my death gate could express was… So much. I had received a tempering in the drops of destiny, fortune, and resolve, as well as a golden soul elixir, and they’d let my second gate mana keep up with third gate mages. But now that I was a third gate mage…

Everything was different.

It was like I had spent my entire life with a noose tied around my neck, strangling me half to death, and finally I could breathe.

And somewhere in me, beneath my mana, a slot carved from my spirit opened, a space begging to accept power into it, to help me grow and connect to all things. It manifested in my mana garden over the gate that led to my third gate garden as a socket for a gemstone atop the gate, but with nothing there to fill it.

It was surprisingly intuitive to connect that space to the pressure bearing down on me, and the power flowed in. The pressure started to lessen, and I felt Kene’s spells flicker back into place, helping heal me.

Slowly, I dragged myself to my knees, and tried to stand.

Then the pressure slammed back down on me, and I was in the void of darkness again.