A huge pillar of light burst from Gi's chest. Poe, who stood over him, lit up like a god of dragonflies. The light spilled past him, illuminating the glass floor of the spire so that it looked like its own secondary light. The remains of Speckle, the elf turned monster, glistened like a pool of molten light. Gi's consciousness returned in fits and starts. An insistent angry hissing grew louder and louder like a teakettle forgotten on the stove.

"B-Boss!" Poe's voice trembled even as he yelled.

Leaning his head back, Gi followed the source of the hissing noise, looking back towards the stairs. Speckle's clan of glass diamonds had charged up the stairs after his death. Each of the lights at the center of the core shone with a slight red hue like anger had suffused their entire being.

The ones that continued up the stairs joined a handful that had arrived first. One of those in that first group glowed brilliantly before discharging a beam of light towards him. Poe shifted his stance and took the beam along his side and Gi watched as it scored a line in his exoskeleton. A loud hiss accompanied the attack and smoke drifted out lazily. Gi could literally hear both of Poe's jaws clenching from where he was.

That hissing sound he'd heard was Poe's body burning.

That realization brought Gi's mind back fully. For the first time since he'd lost the First One's will, his Heart was firm. Intent and anger flowed to action. He raised his palm and fired out a [Divine Bolt], but like with Speckle, it didn't do any damage to them.

The immunity to his strongest attack didn't change what he had to do. He grabbed his mace from the ground and rolled out from under Poe. Seven beams of light landed on him all at once. It only took seconds for it to turn from heat to pain and the longer they held, the worse it got. They were magnifying glasses and he was an ant.

And more of them were swarming up the stairs. Every single monster that been in the crater outside had apparently charged here to slay their Progenitor's murderer. His initial thought had been to fight his way down, but as his fur smoked under the combined weight of only a fraction of their number, he knew that was a mistake.

He'd have to take a different exit. Turning around, the beams now fell on the back of his robe, providing some relief, but he'd need to be quick to not catch fire.

"Shrink!" Gi yelled and wrapped an arm around Poe as he activated [Celerity]. Poe shrunk, but Gi's Aether felt strange and his movements weren't any quicker. Almost a full second after he'd activated. His body transformed into light and shot forward in the direction he was going. He reformed at the edge of one of the windows. His momentum hadn't slowed and he had to thrust his arm out to stop from tumbling over the side. His empty arm.

A scream came from where he'd dropped Poe while using [Celerity]. The glass monsters' beams were starting to get deadly.

"I'm coming!" He flung his mace as hard as he could into the mass of glass prisms attacking his friend and a few satisfying crunches provided a system popup. He ignored it and scooped up Poe, cradling the burned dragonfly in his arms.

This time he didn't use [Celerity] not sure of exactly what the changes were since he'd gotten his Heart of Crossroads. Without his movement ability, his robe caught on fire under the onslaught of light before he could reach the window, but he wasn't in a position to put it out.

So he leapt.

Air whipped past him, but it didn't put out the fire on his back. Gi yanked the rope that kept it closed. With the damage he'd done to it creating his faux shoes and from the fire itself, it fluttered away in the wind. That relief didn't last long as Gi had just enough time to notice the glass shard covered ground before he crashed into feet first.

He screamed. His makeshift shoes weren't enough to stop the shards from slamming through his paws. He started to crumple on the ground, but his Heart and grown firm. He weathered the pain and only stumbled a step, keeping Poe wrapped tightly in his arm. A beam from a glass prism at the bottom of the crater zoned in on his now unclothed back from one of the glass prisms, but since it was only a single beam, Gi ignored it.

With the brief reprieve he'd bought, he took a deep breath and tore off the wrappings from his paws. This had the added benefit of ripping out the shards of glass that had been embedded in his feet, but the downside of being excruciatingly painful.

Blood poured freely from his feet and if it wasn't for his D Vitality, he would have been dead in minutes. If it wasn't for his newly Upgraded Heart, the pain might have been too much for him. Instead of succumbing, he smacked one of his already bleeding feet into the glass prism that was attacking him.

Glassborn Sprite defeated!

1 Soul Orb received. Current Soul Orbs: 110.

He shoved the system message away. The Sprites were all pouring out of the spire, but a large number hadn't even made it in. They were all converging on his position and the moments that he'd taken to deal with his injured paws gave them time to catch up. Scorching beams started to fire out from all angles. Most were missing at the distance, but the closers ones started to heat him up on all sides.

With Poe under his arm, he couldn't take out another weapon so he ran. The glass on the crater floor hadn't bothered him on the way in with his careful steps, but now it ripped his already bloody feet to shreds. Each step sent pain lancing up through his legs and it was only through sheer force of will that he didn't stumble.

He couldn't let Poe die.

Racing up the crater, Gi realized that he could barrel right through the Sprites and charged through their thinned backline. Glassborn Sprites shattered as his body burst threw them, leaving even more glass on the ground behind him. Beams of light continued to scorch into him as he ran, the growing wounds attempting to rival the pain in his feet.

Gi dug his claws into the side of the crater as he climbed, and with a mighty leap, somersaulted over the edge and onto the hot volcanic rock of the Barrens, landing on his back. Burns covered his body, his fur was charred all over, and his feet were shredded beyond belief, but he couldn't stop yet. The Glassborn Sprites were still coming.

He hauled himself to his feet and realized that the illusion had died with Speckle. As flat as the Barrens was, Gi could see for miles. Volcanoes spewed ash on the horizon, and off in the distance, he could see a dark shape flying through the air. After the attack on the way here, he'd recognize that silhouette anywhere.

A Spiked Eagle.

"Fuck," Gi said. He started sprinting across the Barrens, eyes out for some method of hiding that wouldn't make him a sitting duck for the Sprites or some cover that would protect him from the Eagle.

There was nothing.

"Poe, can you use [Web Shot] to stick yourself to my chest?" A glance down saw that his companion was out of it. His eyes were open, but unfocused as he tried to tried to look up at Gi. Charred lines crisscrossed all across Poe's body, each scored at least a quarter inch into his shrunk body. With only an E in Vitality, the beams had hurt him so much more.

"Poe... Fighting," he mumbled and vomited out some web onto Gi's chest. He then spun himself around like he was tucking himself in before vomiting another layer of web on top of himself.

"Hang in there, little buddy. We'll get through this."

Gi increased his speed, leaving a trail of bloody footprints for the Sprites to follow, but there was nothing he could do about that. They poured out of the crater beams blasting out wildly as they did. Even with his injuries, he was starting to outpace them and their shots weren't damaging him anymore at this distance.

It only took a few more minutes for the Spiked Eagle to close on him and despite the entire army to attack behind him, it had zeroed in on him.

"Fuck you, you stupid stone chicken!" Gi yelled to the sky as he fired out one [Divine Bolt] after another into the air. The Eagle simply banked left and right to dodge them and Gi had only managed to barely slow it down.

As it narrowed the distance, he had an idea. He could probably take it out if he waited to fire the [Divine Bolt] until it was right on top of him, but that wouldn't stop him from getting smashed from the mass of its body. He'd learned a lot about the physics of falling the hard way recently.

But the second way...

The Spiked Eagle started its dive. A half second later, Gi activated [Celerity] hoping that he'd understood how it worked and timed it right. The feeling of his body turning to light kicked in right as the claws were bearing down on him, but they hit nothing but the cracked ground of the Barrens as he launched forward instead.

Poe groaned at the sudden pressure of the momentum, but they'd made it through. The Spiked Eagle had carved its claws into the ground like a chef taking a spoon to butter. A cry rang out in frustration from its gravely throat and it shot back to the sky, banking back towards him.

Gi didn't want to injure Poe any more, but he needed to get some hefty distance between himself and both of his enemies. He activated the new [Celerity] again, and this time, he could feel the changes in its activation.

Aether spread through his whole body and it didn't change him to light so much as give him the properties of light before shooting him forward. If something was in the way or if another monster was much faster than him, he could still be damaged.

It was a damn good upgrade. Even with the delay in activation, he could still travel much faster than before and it gave him the ability to continue to frustrate the Spiked Eagle that tried constantly to dive down on him. Eventually even the Spiked Eagle had enough, and turned back towards the Glassborn Sprites for easier prey.

After over an hour of running at near full speed, Gi collapsed back against a rock. His stamina and Aether stores had been run dry. The bleeding on his feet had finally slowed, but there was probably a trail of bloody footprints all the way back to the glass crater.

He tapped the web bundle on his chest. "How you doing, buddy?"

A groan came out as the web moved a bit until Poe's head popped out. "It hurts..."

"Sharp pain? Burning? How's your head? Feel clear?"

Poe's jaw worked as he tried to answer his Boss's barrage of questions. "Burning... but not sharp? Thinking... fine?"

Gi sighed. He wasn't a doctor, but he could tell that Poe was still out of it. If he wanted him to survive, he'd have to push the pace back to Igna as they were days away. He took out some water and used it to roughly wash his feet. Running had abused them into numbness but the cold water brought a sharp intake of breath from him before he secured it with a tight wrap again.

Hauling himself back to his feet, he started trudging through the night. After his wild run, his feet seemed to drift forward on their own despite all the aches in his body. His Heart of Crossroads thankfully helped him focus only on putting one foot in front of the other and not what would happen if he failed. It wasn’t until he finally had gone too far that he found an empty crevice to sleep him that his mind started to reflect on what he’d done.

Most of the monsters in Igna that he’d fought or killed generally tried to kill him. Or kidnap him. Or kidnap Jalx’s weird kid.

The last few times… he’d been the instigator. He’d killed Slice-Slice because he wouldn’t give him money. Sure, his clan needed that to stay in their position as Ground Clan, but still… it was different. Earlier that day, he’d killed Speckle, a creature living a cursed existence who’d actually asked him for help first. Speckle’s life had made him just a little bit stronger before heading into the Dungeon. That’s it.

Despite that, Gi felt… okay about it. Yes, he felt a little guilty, but not that it was the wrong choice. In the vision he’d seen after upgrading his Heart, he’d been shown two paths: the brutal path of The Father and the kind path of Danna.

To Gi, as heartless as his actions had been, he felt they fell under both paths. He could take the path of kindness with his own family. That was Danna’s focus after all. For everyone else? They were fodder to grow, not just his own clan, but Danna’s power as well.

For the first time since the Child Stage, he felt more certain in the steps that he needed to take for the future. Satisfied, his eyes slowly shut and he finally fell into unconsciousness.