We were now sitting back near the newly lit fire that Esther prepared for us. Somehow Risible and I had combined into the same person physically, but we had our own personalities and minds intact.

It looked like we could both control the body, and as for right now we couldn’t separate.

I put my right hand to my chin in a questioning manner.

“How did we even combine in the first place?”

“It must have been when we were sleeping.”

My left shoulder shrugged, my left eye closing as he talked. Risible and I were now sharing the same physical state so we both had to take control of the body.

It felt like I had a stronger connection to the right side of my body compared to my left, it was most likely since my core was on that side as well.

“Well we can’t let this slow us down.”

I got up and tried to stretch, but only my right half reacted.

“Risible?”

“What?”

“Stretch.”

I felt my body get even more sluggish.

“C’mon man, you can’t be this lazy.”

“Fine, fine~”

He decided to go along with me as we stretched. We tried syncing our movements since it’s better if we work together… Though we were completely shit at it.

After packing up our tents we started back down the dirt path, we still had a few days until we got to the fishing town. During that time we tried to figure out what our combination actually did for us in terms of abilities.

It seemed that we were now able to use each other's skills which meant that what I originally thought about combo spells would be even more overpowered, since it would now be a singular entity mixing things together. I couldn’t really use Risible’s [Air Manipulation] skill and he couldn’t really use [Spell Creation]… So maybe there are certain proficiency levels making it impossible to just steal skills temporarily.

Also on one of the days we came across a dial post. Esther went and made a call to someone… not really sure who, Risible and I kind of just stayed near the road and watched out for her.

Oh- right…

How are we supposed to get off of this continent? I was wanted across it for a bare minimum of ten platinum coins. Plus whatever else Deadeye added to that bounty with the fort. So it’s not like we could just take a ship over to Chroterr… Ehh. We’ll just figure it out later.

After a few hours Risible decided to go back to sleep for a bit, my left eye ended up getting closed off because of this, but I had slightly better control over our body now so fair trade I guess. I turned to my left to look at Esther.

She had been relatively quiet since I destroyed Noyade.

“Esther?”

“Hm? Yeah…?”

“You good? You’ve been pretty quiet for a while now…”

She smiled while looking ahead, we kept walking before we entered this forest-like trail.

“Yeah, it’s just that I’m going back to Chroterr after such a long time. It’s a little stress-inducing y’know?”

She tilted her head as she looked at me. I understood what she meant…

“If you don’t mind me asking, how long has it been since you were last there?”

“Hmm… well it would be about eleven years now if I had to guess.”

“Eleven years huh?”

“Yeah… I was thrown out of the continent when I was six and I’ve lived here ever since all because my ideals varied from theirs. Oh- I only got to Noyade about eight months ago though~”

Esther smiled at me again as she spoke.

So she was six when she was thrown off of Chroterr and she lived eleven years on the human continent… wait so she’s-

“Wait- you’re seventeen?!”

She turned around and faced me as I stopped in my tracks.

“Yeah?”

Really? I thought elves were usually hundreds of years old… Well I guess you can’t really assume those things directly.

“What about you Cyn? How old are you?”

Esther seemed pretty intrigued after she asked.

“Well… I’ve only been in this world for roughly three weeks, and I was a little older than sixteen in my previous life… so nearly seventeen?”

“So we’re close in age then?”

I paused for a second before responding.

“Yeah… I guess we are-”

Suddenly we heard a loud roar from deeper in the forest, Risible woke up and regained control of the left half of my body.

“What was that?”

The ground rumbled slightly as we put up our guard, I made a slime sword and Risible prepared wind magic. Esther took out her staff as she readied a blazing purple fireball.

I quickly saw a wind current zip out from beneath me.

“What is it Risible?”

“Large. Very large…”

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Ode looked at the screen to see Risible and I combined along with giant cracks in the ground forming around us.

He turned his chair around as he whistled a little, playing with his fingers in the palm of his hand. Deadeye, Six and Four were all sleeping since all of them weren’t morning people. Which was kind of odd since almost none of the variants found so far liked mornings much.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

“What’s with Ode- usually he’d help out in a situation like this!”

“I don’t know, he’s been like this since I met him!” I exclaimed.

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The ground in front of us imploded as we jumped back, there was this massive basilisk sitting there. Its eyes gleamed a slight red as it stared at us hungrily. It looked like an oversized snake, with dark green scales that seemed highly defensive.

“It’s a… what even is that?”

Risible asked while pointing at it casually, its tail swung sideways slamming us through a few trees.

“It’s a basilisk, an A-Rank monster.”

Esther replied quickly.

“Why is it all the way out here though, it shouldn’t have even escaped the island-”

The basilisk’s tail swung around again, Esther shot the fireball and then tried using wind magic to lighten and shield her from the blow. She went flying back into a tree, she coughed up a bit of blood and slumped down, her eyes were shot wide and watery from the sudden impact. The wind was completely taken out of her lungs, if she hadn’t attempted to lighten the blow she might have died instead.

Risible and I started to stand up again, I grabbed a nearby tree for support as I looked over toward them. The basilisk’s mouth was wide open as it slowly approached Esther. Its sharp fangs reflected in the sunlight as it got closer to her breathless body. Some form of acid fell from its two front fangs as its tongue slithered around.

Risible and I worked in unison, almost like we were one body. The mixture of his wind mastery and my… okay he might have been doing most of the work, but I still had my sword.

We quickly closed in on the basilisk as its aggro relocked onto us instead, the monster’s tail flung up and around at us. I deflected it barely, my sword was launched out of my hands and lodged into a nearby tree trunk. Surprisingly the monster was super agile and moved out of the way, its tail swung again cutting our body in half down the middle. Our body split and fell as we laid there on the ground.

The basilisk seemed to almost laugh at our defeat, though it didn’t seem smart enough to even recognize that we weren’t dead.

The slime on both Risible and I’s halves started to react in our colors. New halves forming and replacing the split ones. Our forms were slightly unstable since we didn’t revert back to ‘normal’, but we looked like two directly split copies of each other.

“That’s much better~”

I cracked my neck and looked into the basilisk’s eyes, mine glowing a vibrant red. Risible’s eyes glowed a light blue color as we got closer to it. The basilisk rushed forward toward me, I instantly created a claymore sword and slashed down its left eye.

The basilisk screamed in agony as Risible created this tornado-like vortex which lifted it off of the ground and sent it far out toward the mountains.

I quickly rushed toward Esther’s side as she tried getting up.

“Hey, take it easy.”

She looked up toward me and smiled gently before closing her eyes. She fell asleep while leaning against me. Risible started setting up our camp while I watched after Esther to make sure she stayed in good condition.

My form reverted back to how it originally was along with Risible’s after around an hour or so of us being split apart. My guess is that it did this since we were forcefully split apart instead of finding a way to separate ourselves.

I guess we merged in the first place because we slightly distorted our bodies since both of our cores were near each other while we were unconscious. Kind of like a natural attracting pull since we were technically the same.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

The next day I carried Esther on my back as we continued walking, we still had roughly a day until we would reach that fishing town.

“How are you feeling Esther?”

“Better…”

She closed her eyes and sighed.

Esther had [Healing] which was a side variation of [Heal]. Though it only recovers exterior damage done to the body, so her internal wounds were still present. Once we got to the fishing city we would visit a doctor there who knew [High Heal], since that spell was kind of like a cure-all.

We rested for an extra day before finally arriving at the fishing city, Derecho.

“Why does this city look completely different as well…”

The city was vast and it had different architecture throughout the buildings. You could immediately spot the part of the city that would be labeled the ‘slums’. The walkways were cluttered and hovered right above the water, there were rigid wooden bridges that had loose rope railings. The water was more murky, almost like a swamp and the boats were relatively run down.

On the opposing end of the city the water was crystal clear and a brilliant blue color, there were fresh wooden docks leading into the city's canals. The houses varied in warm colors and were made of limestone and bricks. There were some outliers that were made of marble, but they were more inland than directly on the water. The streets were lined with these lamps that used some sort of orange crystals surrounded in a somewhat bright flame.

We walked through the streets pretty easily, for some reason this city unlike the others didn’t have guarded checkpoints. Though I noticed some form of authority closer to the ocean around the fishing boats.

“Risible could you go on ahead and find us a doctor? Esther and I will wait over on those benches.”

“Got it Boss~”

Boss?

After that he ran off as I lowered Esther onto the bench. I sat down next to her and sighed.

“At least we made it now…”

I slouched back on the bench, completely submitting to my laziness that had built up over the last week.

“Yeah I guess we did huh?”

She gave me a warm smile before Risible reappeared in front of me again. That was pretty quick…

“I found one about three blocks from here.”

“Perfect.”

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

After that we brought Esther to the doctor- well I guess he was more of a ‘Healer’ or ‘Priest’ than a ‘Doctor’, but that’s the terminology I’m used to.

She was now sleeping on this bed while we talked with the Healer.

He had this white robe-like thing on and he had this purple cincture. He had a purple-blue stole around his shoulders along with a form of dark gray pants and he appeared to be on the older side, maybe around his late forties to early fifties.

“She seems to be quite injured internally… Can I ask how she ended up like this?”

“We ran into a basilisk on our way here.”

“A- A BASILISK?!”

Risible and I flinched and took a step back, the Healer’s voice was loud.

“Um… is that a big deal…?”

“That’s an insane deal! Basilisk’s usually don’t even come to Dynanimus! Even if there was a break on Hellion’s Purgatory they would go to the beastmen continent not here!”

“Oh-”

“Yeah that seems quite big if you say it like that.”

I straightened myself out and looked into the Healer’s eyes.

“So can you heal her?”

“I- I can… but we- have a bit of an issue.”

“An issue?”

The Healer sat us back down and began to explain. One of their main sources for gathering medicinal plants had been taken over by this catastrophic lightning storm. Anyone who got close would start seeing electrical currents, and if they didn’t step back they would be fried.

This wasn’t super close to the town, but a little north of us near this lake. The Healer showed us a photo that someone managed to capture and we could see this sort of blue and white blur in the water. It was almost like there was a tornado made of electricity coming from it, spiraling upward. I don’t know where he got a photo from though…

“So what do you want us to do?”

“I’ll treat the miss here if you remove that problem.”

“What? Can’t I just pay you?”

He looked into my eyes and I could tell almost instantly. That he wasn’t going to just simply take our cash.

“Tch- fine.”

I crossed my arms and glared at him.

“But you better keep your end of the deal. You know what will happen if you don’t… right?”

My eyes started glowing a bright red as a cold shiver went down the Healer’s spine.

“Y-yes…”

“Good~!”

I smiled widely.

“Let’s go Risible, we’re taking that thing down.”

Risible and I traveled north at a high speed using his [Air Manipulation] to remove the air resistance. We left Esther behind since her condition wasn’t good enough for now, plus it was safer to keep her back with the Healer.

We suddenly felt the atmosphere around us shift and seemingly get heavier.

The wind around us began to pick up and the sky grew covered in dark gray clouds. We broke through into an opening before slowing down. In front of us was this massive electrical vortex spiraling up into the sky, using the lake as its center. The lightning was a light-blueish color with some white sparks in between.

“So that’s what we have to take down huh?”

“Yeah I guess it is.”

“I’ll go ahead and test it.”

I walked toward the electrical vortex, as I approached the lake I saw this blue and white blur rapidly going in circles.

These bolts similar to bolts of lightning started rising from the water and connecting to the vortex. They had this white-like glow to them before it shot at me. I tried stepping to the side, but my arm was hit and went flying out toward Risible.

The part where my arm disconnected had smoke coming off of it as another bolt started climbing up the vortex.

||SPELL CREATION||

The cyan gears formed, I immediately duplicated [Fireball] and changed some of its traits. My hand moved quickly as I slammed the gears together, I smashed my fist through the mana cluster and the gears reformed into circles on my arm.

“Fire Wall!”

I threw my hand out, the circles activated and created this wall of purple fire. The bolt shot out from the vortex and pierced straight through my wall. It slammed into my chest and my body filled with electricity.

“GahA kE- W…h-at the– fu..-ck”

The lightning stopped and I fell back against the cold hard ground. My body twitched as the remaining electrical currents tried exiting.

…