[Your relationship with Eris has progressed to Intimate!]

[Blood of the Sacrificed has been improved. New Subskill: Corruptive Peace!]

[Corruptive Sanctuary: In addition to all other effects, Blood of the Sacrificed will damage the offensive abilities of enemies for the duration of the Dream, scaling with Dream Potency and Dream Manipulation. If offensive abilities fall below zero, the effect may affect other abilities instead. This damage will produce linear reductions towards zero.]

[Beast in the Blood has been improved. New Subskill: Decaying Malice]

[Decaying Malice: All Subskills held by “Blood of the Sacrificed” will also enhance the Beast in the Blood. “Beast in the Blood”’s subskills will scale with “Beast in the Blood”’s power, and therefore will be more potent than “Blood of the Sacrificed”. Both effects will stack linearly with one another.]

---

The new skills from Eris were a nice upgrade. [Corruptive Sanctuary] wasn’t terribly effective, but it wasn’t nothing, and in a long fight it might be the thing to bring down an enemy. Unfortunately, it didn’t scale that well. I wouldn’t be winning fights by zeroing someone's ability to hurt me very often.

[Decaying Malice] was much more effective as a buff. [Beast in the Blood] could now be used to layer a more potent debuff on an enemy, or to seriously heal a single ally. However, the latter would have several drawbacks. The most significant of them was that it would submerge allies just the same as enemies, and blood was not a breathable fluid. It wouldn’t kill them, it would heal them fast enough to outpace the harm of suffocation, but it would be deeply traumatic. In short, it would be a major hindrance to healing them. I might be able to save someone in a true crisis, but if they wouldn’t die without it, I should save the skill for use on enemies instead.

Once I was done looking through my skills, I looked around the room.

K was tapping at the air, or rather, her system screen, in a corner. I rose to my feet, and she turned to look at me.

“Hey.” she said.

“I wanted to talk to you about a few things.” I said, “Logistics, mostly.”

“Ah, lovely.” K said, sarcastically “You are absolutely qualified to tell me how to run a city. You have an abundance of experience in this field and a glowing track record."

“Fair.” I said, “I genuinely don’t have that much experience, but you are preparing for the Wraiths and Planar incursions, right?”

“Of course.” K huffed, “Do you have anything to tell me that wasn’t on the wiki?”

“Marie was one of Paradise’s.” I said, “She was early.”

“Damnit.” K said, “I’m guessing they’ve moved up the schedule.”

“Somehow, they have.” I said, “Be careful, I don’t know how long we have.”

“You first.” K said, “You’re the one who’s flaunting Eris’ sponsorship.”

“I’ll try.” I said.

“If you die, I won’t forgive you.” K said.

I grinned at her, “Thanks for the support.”

“Don’t be stupid.” K sighed, “Damn, face-to-face meeting in five. Bye.”

“See you later!” I yelled at her back as she sprinted towards the door.

With K gone, I sat down for a bit and drafted a letter. I wanted to have the first draft done before I asked Copper for feedback, and I wanted it to be done as soon as possible. After an hour of writing, I had a passable draft, so I headed out for breakfast.

Today’s cooked breakfast was eggs and a choice between canned fruit, fresh fruit, and juice, with the usual free access to water. It was nice having some amount of civilization, rather than needing to live on preserved foods exclusively. That was a benefit of Sanctuary that didn’t matter when everything was a game. What your character ate barely mattered, as long as it wasn’t poisonous, but the difference for my personal quality of life was substantial.

Once I was done eating, I messaged Copper.

---

Ashlyn: I’m up, and getting breakfast.

Ashlyn: Want to meet up?

Copper: Got to finish this shift on Guard Duty.

Copper: It’ll be another hour or so.

Copper: I’ll message you when I’m free.

Copper: I got your commission done, and I’ll bring it with me.

Ashlyn: See you then.

---

That left me with nothing to do. I didn’t have quanta to spend, and trying to shop before I was actually able to buy things was a waste of time. I didn’t want to sell anything until I was free of Eris’ contract, which left nothing to do except browse the internet.

I started with the campus forum, looking through the “Sharing information” threads to begin with. They’d found most of the early dungeons, eighteen out of the twenty-to-thirty I expected had spawned. They’d also cleared at least a few, though only one more portal had been located.

It led to the Academy of Slaughter, which was good news. Half of the Scholomances would start causing problems almost immediately after the first incursion, and continue ceaselessly until neutralized. The Academy of Slaughter was more passive than that. It only ate those who entered willingly, and was almost safe to ignore. Of course, if someone did enter and survive, they’d be a huge problem, but that usually took months.

I absently copied down the dungeons and what folks had documented about their runs. The quantity and power of the monsters tended to scale with numbers, but the rest of the data was still useful.

By the time I was done reading through everything, Copper had arrived.

He placed the envelope in front of me with a grin. “What are you scheming with this?” He asked, “I know you’ve got a plan, but I’m curious to hear what it is.”

“I’m going to pick a fight.” I said, “Here, can you read this? I want it to be convincing.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Copper read it, and answered after a few minutes. “They haven’t had a plant blight, and they interrogate saboteurs, so they’d know you’re lying. You want to claim credit for things that the Endless Sun hasn’t actually done, right?”

“Yeah.” I said, “As long as half the claims are plausible, the other half will be read as exaggerating our actions, rather than blatant fabrications.”

“Give me a tick, and I’ll write plausible issues they might fall for.” Copper said, “This reads like an exotic faction’s declaration of war, not one of the Courts or Kingdoms. That’s intentional, right?”

“Yeah.” I said.

“Then as long as you change the issues to something on this list, it should suffice.” Copper said, “This feels like an odd decision, honestly. Picking a fight with a Fae Monarch is already dangerous, and that one’s worse than most.”

“I know what I’m doing.” I said, “I’m not expecting to beat her with violence..”

“If you’re certain.” Copper said, “Best of luck to you.”

“I’m confident everything will work out.” I said.

“Was there something else you wanted to do?” Copper asked.

“I’d like to visit the Goblin Market as soon as possible to mail this.” I said, “Once that’s done, I’d like to go dungeoning with you.”

Copper grinned, “Gladly.”

“In that case, give me a minute to finish this revision.” I said, “And then I’ll be ready to go.”

I rushed the writing a bit more than I ought to have, but I assumed it would still be believable for whoever read it on the other side. It wasn’t like she’d want to doubt it in any case, so I was relatively confident it could have much bigger flaws than “rushed handwriting” and still accomplish the task.

Once I was done, Copper and I left the cafeteria and headed out of the city.

---

The next thing I knew, I was staring at stylized buildings. It was a dream, but it wasn’t one of mine. The buildings were half abandoned and recognizably worn down in reality, but in the dream, only the hole in the left wall had been preserved. The stains and graffiti were conspicuously absent.

“Where are we?” Copper asked, “You’re not doing this, right?”

“I’m not. It’s a Dream, but I didn’t make it.” I said, “This is someone else’s fault. I’m not sure who did it, or if we’re being targetted. We should keep moving while we discuss.”

“Any ideas?” Copper asked, as we walked.

“You’ve been leaving the dome for guard duty, so unless this is absurdly recent, I’m what triggered it.” I said, “Whether it’s aiming for me, or for a specific type of people, I don’t know.”

“It’s definitely selective.” Copper said, “Nobody on guard duty has gotten snagged before, and shift change was recent.”

“Given that,” I said, “I think a Paradise was behind this.”

“Which means your alleged Endless Sun was an Abyss.” Copper said, “From your powers, I’m guessing Lust?”

“Can’t say.” I said, “You read the wiki?”

“Of course.” Copper said, “Even common knowledge can be priceless, for all that rare knowledge is easier to sell.”

We had reached a hotel, and I tried the door out of curiosity. To my surprise, it opened.

Normally, a dream didn’t flow through thresholds. Only very deep or very solid dreams could spread across a threshold, and even then, thresholds were effective barriers. Even if this dream was significantly more solid than anything I could hope to make, there was no way it had grabbed every building in the entire city. That would require more power than Eris could manage, and anything stronger than Eris wouldn’t exhaust themselves like that.

There wasn’t any urgent need to figure out the pattern, but there were two possibilities. The first was that the Dream had begun from here, and so this was a single exception by virtue of the Dream spilling out from this point of origin. The second would’ve been harder, but still would’ve been possible. If it were that, public and quasi-public spaces would be open. In that case, the hotel might be accessible, but the rooms and facilities wouldn’t be, since you needed a key card to get inside. Similarly, any area that required a key for entrance would be an unbreakable threshold.

I took a moment to properly look around. It was a luxury hotel, apparently, with a fountain, very nice chairs, and several needlessly elaborate beaded chandeliers. I paused to stab one of the throw pillows with [Mirrored Night], just to see which rules the dream was playing by. My knife failed to even scratch it, which was an interesting data point.

I made the mistake of looking into a mirror, even though they didn’t work right in dreams. It began to flash between images rapidly, each one breaking into rainbow static. I saw a beautiful girl my age sitting in a sleigh on a roof, Marie standing with a woman holding a tiny twig, and a man with a spear. Then it flashed to show us from behind, and then the hotel we were in from above. Then it cycled again, flashing red between every image this time.

Copper grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the door.

“We need to move! They know where we are!” Copper said.

As he said that, we both left the building, and he took flight, hurling himself into the air with his crafted wings.

As I looked down the street, three of the four figures in the dream were visible, approaching from opposite sides of the road. Only the girl in the sleigh was missing.

I grinned at Marie, and shouted, “Marie, you finally here to take me down?”

Marie grinned back, walking closer as she did, “Of course. Copper, you don’t need to get involved. Stay out of this.”

Copper grinned sharply, and fired a shot at Marie, somehow shattering her helmet.

“No, I can’t.” He said, and fired another shot at Marie, “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Gladly.” The woman made a gesture with her tiny stick, and a ball of blue fire as big as my head flew at Copper. He dived clear, but the woman responded by throwing more fireballs, in rapid succession.

“Matches, don’t!” Marie said, “We can still talk him down!”

The man dashed forwards, with absurd speed. His spear smash into the newest fireball, which covered his spear in a two-inch layer of ice. Then he smashed the spear into the twig.

“Don’t stop me, Hector.” Matches said, pulling a new matchstick from her pocket, “He’s the enemy.”

“Copper, get away!” I shouted, “They’re only after me!”

Without waiting for a reply, I took off down the street. I slammed down “Blood of the Sacrificed” and grabbed Matches with “Beast in the Blood”. That wouldn’t hold her long at all, but she was the only one I knew had a ranged option. I expected the others to give chase, but they didn’t.

An instant later, I was trapped in the center of a blizzard. The blood on the ground hadn’t frozen over yet, but the blood mist was completely blown away. Then I felt a surge of power through the blizzard, and a dozen snowy figures formed in the storm, surrounding me on all sides.

I cast [Unpredictable Detonation]. The explosion was a wave of force, hurling everything away from me, clearing an entire two blocks of both snow and blood for an instant. I ran, hoping I could reach the nearest building that wasn’t already surrounded.

I could guess who was trying to fight me, but I hadn’t run into the Snow Queen in many runs. With my enhanced [Dream Durability], I could stay in the blizzard longer than a normal person, but it would still harm me. To make matters worse, I suspected the blizzard was supernaturally damaging as well as naturally, so I couldn’t gamble on even managing an hour of survival, and the Snow Queen’s [Kiss of Winter] ability meant that Marie, Hector and Matches would be completely immune to the storm.

In short, she was outdoing my favorite tricks, and I didn’t appreciate it.

In theory, I might’ve been able to take her in a fight, as her toolbox exclusively contained support abilities and ranged attacks, but in practice, I knew she could fly away at ridiculous speeds. I wouldn’t be able to catch her, and she could kite me with impunity. Instead, I ran for shelter. In a dream, no ability would be able to cross a threshold. If I was inside a building, she’d have to choose between waiting outside and letting me recover, or chasing me inside and reducing her own mobility. Both options were preferable for me, even if it meant I would be pinned down.

I was actually heading for what I called “The Long Mall”, which covered multiple blocks of the city through a network of skywalks and tunnels. With multiple ways to exit and enter, I might have options for running away that weren’t just running out into the blizzard. If I was very lucky, and the blizzard very small, I might even be able to completely slip past it, but that seemed unlikely.

Surprisingly, making it to the mall was easy. While the Snow Queen continued to summon the Snow Spirits, they tended to go down in a single strike of [Mirrored Night] if they got close enough, and when they didn’t I could just keep running. Before long, I had stumbled into the mall itself.

---

[You have slain 15 Snow Spirits! +1500 Potential, +150 Net Quanta!]