For the first half-hour, I just walk. Not quite alone with my thoughts, since Pearl’s still right here with me, but I might as well be. She says a few things every now and again, but it’s beyond obvious that she’s working through some things on her own. Things that she must’ve never gone through before and is really struggling with the implications of. Unfortunately, I’m an absolutely terrible shoulder to cry on, since the system censors out ninety percent of the specifics.

She never really ‘gets over it’, which I can’t blame her for. But she does pull herself together, and then the conversation turns casual. She asks me quite a bit about earth, I answer to the best of my abilities, and the more we talk the more she seems… well, both curious and horrified. Horrious? Currified? Eh, there’s probably a real word for it, but I’ve got much bigger things on my mind.

“So you worked for a company that trades in information, which has little to no physical wares to sell, and you aren’t being paid at all?” She reiterates in disbelief for the second time. “How can your clients trust information coming from people who aren’t properly compensated?”

I shrug, but she makes a damn good point. “I guess we’re just used to it. And I wasn’t the one making the info we sold–I just… organized it for the people who did.”

“See?! That’s entirely my point!” She exclaims. “How can anyone trust that you didn’t manipulate the information because you have no stake in its sale? If I gathered information and gave it to someone without paying them, I wouldn’t trust that it ends up in a usable state. Like… that’s pretty much a guarantee that a map would be made wrong or that a guidebook says a poisonous berry is actually a really tasty treat!”

“Just cultural differences, I guess. Don’t forget that I was doing it for free because I was trying to get a job after that, so there was a tangible benefit for me.”

“Uh-huh. Were you guaranteed a job at that company after you finished your period of free labour? Because from the way you talked about your education, it really doesn’t seem like you were guaranteed anything from anything you did. And I’m not completely sure about how your money works, but wouldn’t you have to work for at least… four years to pay off your education?”

I groan and cover my face with my hands. “God, don’t remind me. Just… let me have this little adventure in wonderland before I get ripped back to horrible reality.”

Pearl laughs, but there’s a bitter edge to it. “Wonderland. If that’s a combination of wonderful and… land, then you’ve got the wrong place. If the rest of the world is anything like what I remember it was, then this is the most peaceful place we’ve got left.”

“I said wonderland, not peace-land.”

“Oh, well, then yes. Our world is very beautiful, dangerous, and prosperous. Okay, maybe not that last one depending on what’s happened to the other races since I got turned into a quest item. I’d like to meet some of them again. Some of my old friends might’ve survived.”

“That probably depends on how long you’ve been sealed away for.” I prod. “Which is…?”

“A long time, probably. Or it could’ve been just a few months. The system put me in some kind of induced sleep when there wasn’t someone with a Class near me, and every time I woke up, it was… different?” She pauses to think. “Not, like, thousands of years or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. The first time there were a bunch of shellraisers with me working the place that you saw destroyed. Then the second it was all broken down, but in a ‘recently abandoned’ kind of way. All the times after that were pretty much just like now.”

Now I’m no expert in decay, but the kind of destruction and dilapidation in that cavern didn’t look like the work of a few years. It looked purposefully destroyed by something or other–and since the everdriftwood seems like it doesn’t actually decay, there wasn’t any easy way to tell how long since that was.

“Pearl, the first time you talked to me, you thought you were hallucinating. If you know that you only woke up when someone with a class was close to you, then why would you think you were hallucinating?”

She lets out a massive sigh and rests her cheek on one open palm. “Because I started doubting whether that was true after number four. It happened at completely random times, and every time it did, I was ignored. What kind of person ignores a quest item? Especially one that actually talks to them? It’s just… so rude!”

Her cheeks puff up in frustration, which is absolutely adorable. But she’s got a damn good point. Even if I wanted to ignore her when I found her, I would’ve at least checked out what was going on before I did. Anyone in my situation would’ve. Well… any human would’ve.

“When we were talking before I bought you, you said you couldn’t see anything. You should’ve just heard everything going on around you and nothing more. How could you tell what the market looked like if you couldn’t even see me?”

The question hangs in the air for a good long moment. I fully expect her to scramble for an answer, but more than anything, she just looks… confused. Like she hadn’t questioned why she had those memories but also couldn’t see anything at all.

I shake my head and gesture down the tunnel. “Forget I asked. Can you tell how far away the leaking room is?”

“No, I won’t forget you asked. Because it doesn’t make any sense.” She mumbles and scrunches her forehead in thought. “How did I know what happened? I can’t remember what any of the Class-holding people looked like, how many shellraisers were still alive, or anything else. But I can remember what the market looked like every time I woke up.”

“Maybe it had something to do with the stand you were on?” I offer. “It could’ve connected you to the market every time it activated, or something.”

“I don’t know. It could also be that my quest involves the market somehow, and that I was supposed to tell you all this without questioning anything at all.” She huffs in annoyance. “I don’t like this. There’s a chance I’m leading you down a really dangerous path without knowing it, and I don’t want to do that to you. …Speaking of paths, we’re about fifteen minutes away from the room. I haven’t felt anything at all, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there.”

I raise an eyebrow at that. “You’ve got invisible monsters hanging out around here?”

“Not technically invisible, but immune to my senses. At least my hyper-weakened senses since I was put in quest jail.”

“Noted. I’ll be careful.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You better be. I don’t want you triggering the healing backlash in the middle of another super important moment.”

Neither do I, my shell-confined friend. Neither do I.

----------------------------------------

Almost an hour later, a small-ish room in the tunnels comes into view. Before I can get excited about anything, I notice that the trickle from the ceiling’s got a very… sandy look to it. I jog to get in close enough to confirm that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, and unfortunately, I’ve got pretty good eyesight.

Where there was supposed to be a pool of sweet, sweet water now lies a mound of coarse, dry sand. I share a look with Pearl, then sigh in exhaustion and let my pack drop to the floor. I follow a second later, positioning myself so the side of my head with Pearl on it doesn’t touch my backpack.

As I lie on the warm glass, head resting uncomfortably against a backpack full of things that could be called anything but soft, one thought rattles through my head like a marble in a metal mixing bowl.

I really should’ve bought a sleeping bag.

----------------------------------------

Morning comes. Or… however long I slept that gets me feeling at least sort of rested. I swish my mouth with what little water I’ve got left, glance down at the sand-filled pit that was supposed to be overflowing with water, and lament at what could’ve been.

Pearl stares down at the sand and sighs. “Sorry it’s not as cool as I made it out to be.”

I spit the water onto the ground, then shrug. “Not your fault things change over the years. What scares me is that this is what my skill called the ‘better’ way to go.” I turn and stare back down the way we’d come. “Wonder what kind of monsters were waiting for us down the other path.”

Or, in the much weirder option, if that one would’ve had a functioning reservoir. One that–somehow–would’ve been worse for us than having no water at all. Maybe it’d give me hepatitis, or tuberculosis, or the magical version of either of those. But I have a water bottle that magically purifies that shit. So probably not.

But what if it was? What am I missing by being here? I pull my meal replacement potion out of my pack as I return the bottle, then take a few quick gulps of tasteless slurry until my throat won’t let any more go down. It doesn’t help me think, but it does curb my hunger

“Your skill said it gave you the best outcome, right?” Pearl asks as I heft my pack back over my shoulders. “Did it tell you what its definition of ‘best’ is?”

“No, it did not. Why? Do you know something?”

Pearl taps her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe. I don’t know a lot about skills since they’re purely system based, but I knew a lot of people that complained about their skills not working the way they wanted them to. But they were very consistently not working that way. Like… someone wants to mix red and blue together to make purple. But instead of mixing, they swirl together to make really pretty spirals. And no matter what they do, any colours they mix turn into spirals.”

“Sounds like that theoretical person needs to learn to adapt.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. But what if that person’s skill said ‘any paints you mix will be perfect’? In their opinion, a perfect paint is one that’s completely different from the ones it started as. But in the system’s eyes, the mix itself is perfect–a swirl so equal and proportioned that anyone would look at it and go ‘how’d you get it so perfect’?”

She gestures back at the sandy reservoir, grains still slowly trickling down from above, for emphasis.

“We need to learn what the system defines ‘best’ as before we can really trust your skill.”

I rub the back of my head, tangling my fingers in matted hair with a sigh of reluctant agreement. ‘Shield’ didn’t work exactly as I was first shown, and my skill somehow doubled a non-Worth coin, which wasn’t in the initial explanation. Maybe I’d get enough info when my Mind was high enough, but that didn’t stop me from dying to the ‘best’ scenario on the way to getting that stat.

“You know what the worst part is? I don’t even know how to trigger it. It didn’t force a coin to land the right way, it couldn’t point me in the right direction when I tried to randomly decide where to go, and then it somehow triggered when I did both of those at once. Maybe… it’s got a more complicated activation trigger than I thought.”

“Or much stricter activation confines.” Pearl suggests. “Its definition of ‘likely’ could be something like… an event that has at least a forty percent chance of happening.”

“So when I tried to randomly walk into the desert, it could’ve seen a one percent chance of that thing happening. So even though there were only two results–I find the thing I was looking for or I don’t–it was extremely unlikely I actually chose the right way. And if we expand on that… a ‘better’ option could mean a whole lot of things.”

Like, for example, throwing me into the path of some monster because it gives me Worth and materials. Or shoving me at something that’s easier to deal with, even though it’s not where I really need to go. Hell, it could even look at literally everything I have–potions, Worth, spells, skills–and put it into some kind of complex algorithm that changes on the fly based on what I’m equipped to deal with at the moment.

If I knew how it worked, I could work around it. But flying blind makes it just as much a liability as an asset. Problem is that we don’t have much of a choice. But I've got to make a decision, and I think I’ve settled on one I’m pretty happy with.

“I’ll try to hold off using it unless it’s for a choice we’d otherwise be flying blind on. I’m pretty sure that tossing that coin is what triggered it, so none of that from now on.” I decide, then look to Pearl for confirmation. “You see anything wrong with that logic?”

She shakes her head. “It seems solid to me. Um, watch out. There’s a pretty big hole in the ceiling up ahead that’s partially caved the tunnel in.”

“I thought you said these tunnels were clear.”

“I said they were clear up until the reservoir. And… they’re still pretty clear from now on.” She says defensively. “Just keep a shield in your hand in case something pops out of the sand, okay?”

I roll my eyes and pull free a single glass lone. “I’m working with real money here, Pearl. Don’t know exactly what happens when I run out, but there’s one crispy prime example I’d be willing to… wait, am I stupid?”

With a flourish that’s a little too grandiose, I summon my Class Card and flip over to my spells. If I’m actually going to use real Worth for these things, then I need to be getting the most out of it. A quick flip and call doubles the glass lone, preparing it for a spell I haven’t gotten the chance to try out yet.

Shoreline Risemutation.

Convert something into its equivalent in; ghost quarters.

I flick the coin through my fingers, then hold it between my thumb and forefinger as I concentrate on it. There’s no tutorial for this puppy, but if it’s anything like projectile or shield, it should be simple enough.

“Risemutate.”

The coin shivers as power flows into it from my fingertips. But the exact same sensation as trying to use my coinbound shield for the first time halts my progress. The spell wants another command–but the description says I can only make ghost quarters. Luckily for me, I’ve got someone who knows about this particular one.

“Pearl, can this spell only make ghost quarters?”

She goes to do something, but my vision goes white. Her voice meets my ears in a series of toneless blurts of noise, completely indecipherable into anything close to useful. But that itself is useful to me.

A smile rises to meet my eyes and I spin the coin between my fingers. “The system censored you there. But in trying to hide something from me, it just confirmed that whatever you said was too important for me to hear. Unlike you simply saying ‘yes’ would’ve.”

“I’m not going to say anything else, then. Looks like you found your answer all on your own.”

Indeed I did. Now all I need to do is find out what that answer means.