Seras laid against the wall for an hour until the fire finally burnt itself out. In the end all that was left was soot and some withered vines.

Seras once again summoned her metal board and unfolded it, she and Athena worked together to collect all the monster parts and ash. Seras wasn’t expecting much with so little of the monster left, but every bit counted.

While digging through where the plant had been rooted Athena found a huge green orb. It looked like an emerald colored pearl, but the squishy give to its surface reminded her of rubber. It was probably where the monster core was situated.

“And you said collecting the ashes was a waste of time.” Athena said with a cocky smirked.

Seras rolled her eyes, “I’ve been wrong before, quit smirking.” She grumbled.

Once a majority of the monster parts were together Seras poured the ritual salt.

“How come this circle looks so different?” Athena asked.

“Plant monsters need a different circle than animal monsters, same with elementals, constructs, and goops. The magic matrix forms a different sort of geometry in plants than others, one that sort of mimic's plant cells.”

“Plant cells?”

“Cells are the tiny little things that make of living creatures. But animal cells and plant cells are different.”

“How small are they, these cells?”

“Microscopic.” Seras saw the blank look of her face and sighed “for scale, you would have an average of thirty trillion cells. Likely more since your taller than some men.”

“That’s a lot. What becomes of these cells at higher ranks?”

“No clue, haven’t found an answer yet.” Seras finished pouring the last line and stepped back as the rainbow smoke emerged.

75 Iron spirit coins have been added to your pocket space

7 bronze spirit coins have been added to your pocket space

24 bronze rank plant quintessence has been added to your pocket space

1 bronze rank monster core has been added to your pocket space

1 awakening stone of Greed has been added to your pocket space

Seras pumped a fist into the air “fuck yeah, free awakening stone!” she cheered.

Athena quirked an eyebrow, “and all it cost was a near death experience and some skin.” She said sardonically.

“Bah, that’s a pretty cheep price if you ask me. Do you know how much these cost?” Seras quipped back.

“No, what kind of awakening stone was it?”

Seras pulled out the awakening stone and checked.

Awakening stone of greed. Two star. Unlocks the power of greed.

Would you like to convert it into an appropriate form, Y/N

“It’s a greed stone, two star.”

“That’s not bad, I’ve heard good things about that one. A higher chance for mana and health leeching.”

Seras nodded in agreement as she checked the registry. “That’s mostly what I’m seeing, its got a good chance of bonding with my metal essence and giving me the power to suck metals out of the ground. That’ll cut down on cost, and I might be able to synergize that with Shape metal to act as a bootleg conjuring ability.” She looked up and considered Athena, “unless you want it?” she said hesitantly.

Seras didn’t want to give up on a free awkening stone, especially given what she saw. But she knew how hogging all the pay could create bad blood.

Athena shook her head, “No, my parents said it would be a bad idea for me to use any awkening stones right now. My last one was nearly three years ago.”

Seras blinked, “why’s that? There an issue with using these too fast?”

She shook her head, “they didn’t go into the details, just that I wasn’t ready to complete my power set. And with how disappointing some of my powers are I’m in no rush.”

Seras frowned. “Alright, well, I guess I’ll use it then.” She said awkwardly.

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She looked back at the stone and selected yes. The little yellow stone turned into a small shard, with lines of golden light inside it. Seras slotted into the shard slot on her neck and gritted her teeth as power rushed through her.

It wasn’t as aggressive or painful as essences were, but it was still a lot. She felt her fingers prick, and the sensation of avarice filled her mind, drying out her tongue. It was like the feeling she got after a big pay day.

You have awakened the potent ability ‘bounty of greed’

Potent abilities 2/5, awaken all potent abilities to advance speed attribute.

Bounty of greed, spell.

Channel your sense of greed through a fallen opponent to steal mana, vitality, or stamina. With an added benefit of looting magical materials.

“Dead gods dammit all!” Seras cursed.

“What?” Athena asked in alarm.

“It’s a loot power.” She said bitterly.

Athena looked confused, “aren’t loot powers really nice to have. Adventurer teams are always looking for some who can loot.”

“Do you have any idea how long I spent learning looting rituals, how much I spent on all this equipment. Some of its specialized just for harvesting rituals and can’t be repurposed. The shop that sold me all this had an express no return policy!”

Seras was wildly gesturing around with her hands, and knocked over the mana excluder. She jerked and caught it before it could fall, and then sent it back into her pocket space.

Athena looked exasperated, “so sell it to another adventurer at the guild, I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time. Sometimes essence abilities make old equipment useless. You probably got a looting power because you spent so much time and energy learning harvesting rituals.”

Seras frowned, “wait, what I learn effects what powers I get?”

Athena hesitated, “In a way. It’s not a guarantee, but generally yes. For people who don’t have weapon specific essences or awakening stones there’s still a chance of gaining a weapon for a more esoteric stone. like if you train a lot with a sword but don’t have the sword essence, you might get special sword attacks, or even a sword conjuration ability. Part of the reason essence powers are random is because your own abilities can influence them.”

Seras considered this, “that’s why I got a bullet control power from my Avatar essence.” She murmured. “Does this mean I’ll get a gun power later?”

“Maybe, I have no idea what kind of essences would work well with guns, but it’s a possibility.” Then she paused “unless you have crafting abilities.”

Seras paused, “I have two so far. My first essence had a crafting ability I can’t use yet, and my I got Shape metal from an earth awakening stone. and now that I think about it I have a racial trait for designing things.”

Athena grimaced “that might mean you get a more crafting oriented powers, unless you’re really careful about the stones you pick. Unless you want crafting abilities?”

Seras frowned and summoned her revolver, “back on Ruin I was always a bit of a gun nut and tinkerer. I used a variety of weapons and custom crafted my gear. Having the right gun for the right job was how I operated. I had entire armories hidden around Mantel, dive bar basements, abandoned warehouses, bricked up subway tunnels.”

“So maybe that’s the way you want to develop your powers?” she said probingly.

“I don’t know, it’s hard when you have no info on which way your powers trend. One of my Essences isn’t even on the registry.”

“Which one is that?”

“Tech… Technology. I’m told its analogous to the magic essence, but for tech.”

“And what’s tech?”

“Eh… last time someone asked I gave them a pretty text book definition, but now that I’ve been here a bit longer… Imagine all the cool things magic lets you do. Skimmers, flying ships, mirage chambers. We have a version of all that, but its done without any magic. Its like simple machines, you know how an ordinary pully can lift things more effectively by using simple mechanics. That’s what tech does, we have Bikes and Cars that are just like skimmers, but instead of being magic or essence powered we use a different sort of energy you can get from anywhere. We fly through the air with stupid ease, we can go around the world in less than a day, and do that with a thousand people crammed into a jet. For mirage chambers we have headsets that link up to your nerves and make you think your somewhere else.”

“So it does all the thing magic does, but differently.”

“Almost, we also do some things better than magic. I can’t even properly describe how much data and info we have at our fingertips. The net is so vast and complex that its like a whole world of its own, some people even use those headsets I mentioned to dive into the net and zip through it like another reality. We regularly fly into space and have entire private stations acting like the most exclusive private communities. We’ve got exo-miners on a nearby planet to supplement our need for metal. We have towers that are so tall they effect the weather on a macro scale.”

Athena considered everything Seras had said, “that sounds extraordinary. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen you reattach a metal arm. I wish I could see it, it sounds fantastic.”

“Yeah, I wish I could show you some of the recordings I’ve got.” Seras said. Its something she had wished she could with Dustin’s crew, it would make things so much easier to just show them her world.

“Like recording crystals?” she asked.

“Sort of. One sec,” Seras muttered as she popped her arm open and pulled out a thumb sized shard. “This is a shard, made of hard light for more compact storage. Its got the full length of hundreds of movies… plays from my world. Thousands of hours, Tens of thousands. But it doesn’t work with recording crystals or the image projectors you’ve got. And I can’t remake the same kind projector here since you don’t have micro chips to read it.”

She stared at and considered, “you said your first Technology ability was a crafting one though.” She said probingly.

Seras shook her head, “not that kind. It’s called Inscribe circuit/Rune, a Magitech crafting ability.”

“Then can you not make a rune circuit to read the, uh, shard was it, read the shard.” She said hesitantly.

Seras shook her head “Wouldn’t work, can’t get them to talk to each other, they speak different languages.”

“Then use a translation rune. There’s a wide variety of them, some work on even body language like hand signs. Theres even a light based one, apparently some summons from the Astral have a light-based communication.”

Seras blinked, “really, but wouldn’t it need to know what language the shard spoke to translate?”

“Why would it?”

“So it could translate. You know, pull from a word bank and compare languages.”

“Is that how your world does it, that sounds so tedious. Translation powers just translate, it’s not that complicated.” She explained patiently.

Seras was dumbfounded. It just translated? It just did the action with no rhyme or reason. Would it really be that easy? “I’m going to file that away for later. But we got way off topic.”

She nodded “right, where were we?”

“The way my power set will develop.” Seras prompted.

“Yes, so what are your other essence abilities?” she asked.

“Metal, potent, and Avatar.”

She grimaced. “Avatar’s a hard one to pin down, especially with an unknown essence. There’s so many kinds of Avatar power sets, from summoners, to conjuration, castors, defenders, and even mobility specialists.”

“Yup, and I don’t really have enough of my abilities to really guess which way thing will go. Though Dustin says with Astral affinity and Pocket space I’ve got a higher chance at dimensional powers, and since Astral affinity evolved to Astral wellspring, I might get some mana hungry powers. But that can range from rapid low-cost spells to big finishers.”

“Oh, that’s a good evolution. Its considered second to the magic affinity Elves get. Though there’s some debate.”

“Yeah, got it from an awakening stone of the celestial book. Knowledge said it made the stone give me that evolution.”

“What’s the celestial book?”

“Some sort of Astral super god. Dustin called it an eldritch power from beyond space and time. It apparently took a liking to me as I passed through the astral.”

“So its like a divine awakening stone?”

“Nah, I looked it up at the magic society. Astral beings don’t have as much control over their stones, they can’t revoke them or use them against you like a god might. But they can specifically craft the power inside.”

“What power did you get then?”

“A summoning power, it’s called Spark of Madness, I’ll probably never get to use it because the cost for summoning is absurd. Dimensional quintessence, just to name one rare ass ingredient.”

Athena grimaced. “Yeah, that’s a tough one. You’d need a really rich backer to summon it. Maybe the magic society might be interested if they get to study it in the process.”

“Thought about that, didn’t like the sound of it.”

She nodded in commiseration, “from everything you’ve told me it sounds like you have a really difficult path ahead of you. And that’s not counting your soul condition.”

Seras sighed, “it wouldn’t feel right if things were easy for me. Speaking of which, the rainbow smokes finished filtering out the hole, now we need to figure out how to get up there.”

They looked up, and Athena made a little jump while reaching upwards. Seeing as the ceiling was at least two stories up it was comically pathetic.

She looked to Seras, “I don’t suppose you have a ladder prepared in your pocket space.”

“What do I look like a lunatic, who carries a two-story ladder? All I’ve got is explosives, a ritual board, thirty pounds of white salt, thirty pounds of pink salt, some trail rations and seasonings, lock picks, magical garrots, Heidel care equipment, a spare saddle, and a small dining table and chairs.”

Athena looked back up, “think we could stack the chairs on top of the table?”

Seras used her optics to compare the distance to the furniture in her pocket space, “Maybe, no, we’ll need to stack up a few rocks under the table legs. Look for nice flat ones.”

Athena sighed, but obligingly pulled the remaining vines out of the way to expose the stone floor. Seras started combing the wall for stones.