A swig of bottled sleep, a deep draw of meal replacement, and it’s all washed down with filtered water. Repeat that every six hours for almost two days, and then finally get the begrudging approval of the shark-wolf that’s been training you all that time. That’s how my life’s been going for the last forty-eight hours. The time limit still hangs over my head like an executioner’s axe, but Illumisia insists that she’ll be able to send me to the right place.

Pearl, who decided to join us about twelve hours into this whole ordeal, is firmly on the side of her old friend. But she’s also firmly on my side at the same time, which creates a really weird dynamic when I argue with Illumisia; she constantly justifies both of our sides, leading to us sort of agreeing that we’re both right and wrong at the same time? I can’t really describe the vibe that it gives off, but we somehow end up moving on every time with no lingering hard feelings.

Sure, Illumisia might make sure I get a few hits to the stomach afterwards. And I mean, I did make sure she had to work much harder for everything that should’ve been easy, but there definitely weren’t any hard feelings. So when I finally gathered all my stuff, bruises and tiny cuts and teeth marks reminding me of just what I’d gone through, I definitely didn’t have fantasies of trapping Illumisia in a shield and getting Pearl to take responsibility for it. Nope. Definitely not.

I heft my backpack onto my shoulders after I pull out the knife and personal amplifier, strap the knife to my thigh and hang the amplifier over and around my chest like a beauty queen’s ribbon, and sigh in not-exhaustion. There’s not much time left until the deadline, but that time limit’s the least of my worries. It’s the Worth that I really need.

“How are you feeling?” Pearl whispers into my ear now that we’re out of Illumisia’s earshot. “Not many people can keep up with Illumisia, even when she’s super weakened like this, and she went particularly hard on you. Should we take a break before we move?”

I pat the knife on my thigh and shake my head. “The bottled sleep does way too good of a job. Besides, I actually feel… pretty good. Not great, by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I feel better than before I came here.”

Pearl frowns deeply and crosses her arms. “Do you mean before you started training, or before you came to this world as a whole?”

“This world as a whole. My brain’s not fuzzy, my muscles only hurt because I’ve been using them, and I can breathe right.” I adjust the coin holster on my forearm, then trade out two skeletons for regular ghost quarters. “Whatever you and Illumisia did to me, it made me a whole lot healthier than before. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if all my allergies were gone.”

“Allergies? What are those?”

“They’re something you’re… allergic to.” I say slowly as I realize I don’t really know how to explain an allergy. “Like, when you eat something, it can make your throat swell up. Or if there’s too much pollen outside, it makes your nose run like crazy and your eyes itchy and burny.”

“That sounds like it sucks.”

I nod in agreement. “That’s one hell of an understatement, Pearl. Especially for people who’re allergic to, like, penicillin or peanuts.”

Illumisia bumps into my hip as I slip out of the hidden room. “You left nothing behind?”

“Just the sand and the scratches.” I confirm. “So, if I was a complete failure a few days ago, how would you rate me now? Barely passable?”

“Barely–” Illumisia starts, then narrows her eyes. Pearl giggles, and doesn’t stop when Illumisia’s glare turns to her. “Yes. That. I am confident you won’t die easily if you run out of Worth as long as the enemy is within your clearance range. Now take out your power core and beacon.”

We need the beacon to find the machine? This is news to me. When did Illumisia learn about the beacon, any… right, Pearl. I keep eye contact with the shark-wolf as I pull open my Class Card, withdraw the power core, and swipe over to my quests. Where I stare at the beacon’s description, along with the shovel’s, completely clueless as to how I’m supposed to pull it out.

…Probably shouldn’t have deposited the shovel, now that I think of it.

“Well? What is causing a delay?” Illumisia asks as she walks around me and jumps up on her hind legs, planting her forelegs on my shoulders, to get a look at my screen. “Oh, you don’t know how to remove a quest item from your inventory. It works much like withdrawing a regular item, but you need to reference the quest itself instead of the item’s name.”

That’s good to know and all, but I’ve got exactly no idea what quest the beacon is a part of. And… why is Pearl in my actual inventory instead of this one, if she’s a quest item too? Is it because she’s half-out of my inventory and half-in at the same time? Or is she different somehow? It seems like she’s given me more than her item description says, that’s for sure. Like when she overwrote the requirements for my system upgrade… manual…

That’s it. I know exactly one shellraiser-related quest. Maybe it’ll be the same one I’m already working on. …Problem is, I don’t really remember what it was called. I know it was in the upgrade manual, and the completion of it was one of the requirements for using it, which probably means it wouldn’t actually be the quest I’m working on.

“Shit. But I guess it’s still worth trying.” I mutter and swipe over to the info tab, then stare at the cover of the book that’s been integrated into my system. “Pearl, what was the quest called that showed up when I upgraded my system?”

She purses her lips and taps a finger against her chin. “The one that I bypassed?”

“Yup, that’s the one.”

“I think it was… something of shattered shells. Another ‘S’ word, for sure, but I can’t remember exactly what it was. Showdown, maybe? Ooor… sanctity? Illumisia, do you know?”

We both look over my shoulder at the shark-wolf. She just shrugs. “How would I know what the system calls a specific quest that obviously hasn’t been completed before?”

“Hey, you know a lot of other random stuff, so it’s not that much of a stretch.” I say as I swipe back to the quests tab. “Let’s try Saga first, since that was the name of the book.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I reach my hand toward the beacon. Nothing. So I just start going over every half-impressive ‘S’ word I can come up with. All the way from salute to syzygy, but definitely not in alphabetical order. I’m not that much of a word freak. At some point Pearl loses interest and starts up a conversation with Illumisia, both of whom decide that my shoulders are the best place to talk loudly over someone who’s trying to focus.

Soliloquy, savior, second, scratches, servitude, sundown, sunrise, serenade–

My interface flashes once, and the oystershell beacon appears in my hands. It feels delicate and powerful, but I know better.

“Which word worked?” Pearl asks, her conversation with Illumisia completely forgotten. “Was it shoreline?”

I shift the beacon in my hands to look at the bottom of it, then reorient it again. “I’m pretty sure it was serenade. Serenade of Shattered Shells.”

Illumisia snorts. “That sounds like the kind of pompous mockery the system would assign. Set the beacon on the ground and touch it to the power supply. Pearlescence, you can take it from there.”

Pearl nods as I kneel down and set the beacon on the ground, then roll the power core over to it. When it’s an inch away from the beacon it snaps to it like an extremely strong magnet, and the surface of the shells starts to glow. It’s barely colourless at first, but slowly and surely, tiny droplets of water begin to form on the surface of the shell. I almost reach out to wipe one away, but a memory of the beacon nearly mummifying my arm cuts that desire out of the picture.

“What’s it doing?” I ask as Pearl runs down my arm to stand next to the power core. “Don’t we need water for it to make water?”

“There’s plenty of water in the air, silly.” Pearl giggles. “And a whole lot of other stuff, too, but that’s floating away instead of condensing. We just need to configure this marvelous piece of work into a compass, follow it to the teleporter, then Illumisia can send us where we need to go.”

I snort and wipe off my thighs as I stand up straight. “Easy peasy. Is all that info in the blueprint?”

She nods. “It is.”

Oh. Alright, then.

“All I have to do is get under here…” Pearl squeaks as she condenses her body into a thin disc and slides under the beacon. “Then I can switch the input to a general machine identification code, set it to look for the closest example of that thing… and there we go!”

She slides back out and springs up while dusting off her hands. The beacon’s glow fades out to nothing for a second, but is quickly replaced by a green glowing bar that points off into the distance. Not a hologram, no–that’d be too convenient. It’s more like a stripe painted onto the surface of the shell itself. One shell, to be specific–none of the others so much as glimmer.

“Does that mean it’s working?” I pick up the beacon and spin it around. The line stays pointing in the exact same direction, traveling over each of the different shells in turn. “Nevermind, it’s actually pointing the way we need to go. So how do we know if it’s above or below us?”

“The colour of the arrows. Red means it's below us and purple means it's above us. Anything between them is just varying degrees of close to us.” Pearl waves for my arm, and I bend down to give her a way back to my shoulder. “Green pretty much means it's on the same level as us. Which is nice.”

“Really nice.” I agree and turn to face where the line points. Which is directly into a wall. “Uh, what if the tunnels don’t align with where we need to go?”

“Then we explore until we find one that does.” Illumisia says as she walks towards the tunnel closest to where we apparently need to go. “We’re going to be jogging for ten minutes, system-born, with a two minute long jog afterwards. Then we will repeat that cycle.”

“Until we find a tunnel that works?”

“Until we find the machine.”

I nod and cradle the beacon in my arms, adjusting it until I find a fairly comfortable way to hold it that won’t screw up my running. Pearl reaches down and helps a little, stabilizing it against my body’s movements as I try to find the best way to do this. Eventually I settle on a football carry that Pearl can constantly watch for line changes.

“Prepared?” Illumisia asks as she breaks into a jog.

“All good.” I confirm and speed up to match her pace. “Pearl, you’re on line duty. Tell us every little change, okay?”

“Okay!” She points off into the distance and strikes a pose. “Let’s get that malicious malfunctioning mechanical monstrosity!”

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

The line doesn’t change for almost seven hours. And Illumisia doesn’t let us slow down to less than a leisurely jog, which makes eating and drinking all the more difficult. But after the first few times, I get used to it. Probably because my ‘eating’ consists of barely chewing a very thick drink–if I had to stuff a sandwich in my face, or even an energy bar, I’d definitely have to stop.

Only for, like, three minutes. But no, apparently that’s too long of a break. Not like it’s less than a hundredth of the total time we’ve been running. And I mean, who cares that my legs are starting to look like a long-distance cyclist’s? It’s definitely not going to hurt like hell when we finally stop, and it definitely isn’t burning like hell right now.

Definitely not.

I keep my grumblings to myself, but make it just loud enough that Illumisia can overhear. Even if she likes hearing me be miserable, I want her to know that she’s the reason I’m miserable. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, sure, but it feels like something I have to do. Or else the misery will stay inside me and bubble up later. Probably at Illumisia again, but whatever.

Just as I’m about to say something scathing under my breath, Pearl’s hand taps against my sweaty face.

“It changed.” She says loud enough for all of us to hear. The first time she spoke in seven hours. “It’s yellower now, and it’s pointing a little more to the left. Look for a new tunnel to go down.”

Illumisia growls confirmation. “Understood. Keep a lookout for more new changes.”

Pearl nods and goes right back to concentrated silence. I crane my neck a little to see what the beacon’s reporting, and sure enough, the line is very slightly yellow. And pointing off to the left, which is a little weird thanks to how I’m holding it. But Pearl’s obviously reading it just fine, so I leave it to her and go right back to running.

Deep black lines my awareness. I unconsciously run my tongue over my teeth, then lick my lips as thick black outlines of vaguely animalistic things fade into the edge of my mind. They don’t feel like any painted dane I’ve seen, and from how they’re lazily moving about, they don’t feel threatened by us at all.

“Do you feel that?” I ask, to which Illumisia just nods. Her fur has taken on a very slight steel grey tint, so that must be the colour of her awareness. “Are they enemies?”

She closes her mouth, then growls through her teeth. “Always assume an unknown is an enemy and prepare accordingly. If they are an ally, or at the very least a neutral party, you should be skilled enough to alter your assault before you kill them. Do you trust that you’re skilled enough for this now?”

I want to say yes. I want to prove myself. But the reality is that I don’t know. If I approach without the intent to attack, then one hundred percent yes. My shields will keep me safe, and I can launch a projectile with barely a thought. That’s not the case at all for if she wants me to attack first, and divert when I can see clearly. I don’t have that kind of control over my spells yet.

Reluctantly, I form the words I know I have to say. “No. I don’t have the skills or the tools for that right now.”

“Then you lose the advantage, but not the battle.” Illumisia says seriously. “Ready yourself. This will be your first real trial with your improved flesh.”