I found myself at a loss for words. On the one hand… It was a rock. It looked like a rock, and it was even called rocky.

On the other, the description clearly said it was a Champion. It would seem Cosmo hadn’t been kidding, after all… I couldn’t believe I actually found one.

“What?” Aerion asked. “What do you see?”

“Not here.” I glanced at Richard, who was resting nearby, and ushered Aerion a few dozen feet away. “Just to be safe.”

“Is it really such a big deal?” Aerion asked.

“See for yourself,” I said, granting her access to the same screen I saw.

When she read the lines, she gasped. “What… What does this mean?”

“I honestly wish I could say, Aerion. Cosmo mentioned he’d been summoning rocks as Champions for the past several thousand cycles, but I didn’t honestly know whether to believe him. Now, though?”

“Order told you he summons rocks. Regular, ordinary rocks...” Aerion deadpanned.

“Seems like we have our evidence right here, don't you think?” I said, hefting the thing. “You think it'd make a good thrown weapon? It's got some serious weight to it.”

“He could be summoning Champions, to end the cycle,” Aerion fumed, ignoring me. “Real Champions. And instead, he summons rocks!?”

“I think he had his reasons,” I said cautiously, realizing I was treading on thin ice. “I don’t know, but lately, I’ve been feeling like Cosmo isn’t as incompetent as he so desperately wants everyone to believe. Almost wonder if there’s some method behind his madness.”

“You think Order has a plan? You think that god who has forsaken his people for millennia, has some grand vision he is attempting to accomplish? By summoning rocks?”

“Well, I just think it’s a possibility,” I said, suddenly a lot less sure of myself. “We shouldn’t rule out—”

“No,” Aerion said. “You’ve spent too much time around that twisted god. He’s corrupting you, Greg. I can’t believe you’re siding with him. After everything he’s done. After everything he’s done to you!”

“Look, I’m not siding with anyone here,” I snapped. “And I agree that Cosmo is an insufferable ass at times. Just, we need to consider all the angles. Or, what? Are you going to write this off as some extreme coincidence? That we just happened to find one of his prior Champions? Here, of all places?”

Aerion paused for a long moment. “You truly believe this was all Order’s doing? Us entering this dungeon, I mean. Fighting that serpent? All of it?”

“I… I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think he has that kind of power. At least, nothing he’s shown so far indicates he does. I have a hunch the gods can’t actually meddle that much in our everyday lives. I mean, if they could, why don’t they just accompany their Champions and kill off every monster along the way? For that matter, why don’t they just fight the Archon himself? As strong as the Champions might get, I don’t believe for even a second they’re in the same realm as those gods.”

“The gods use their powers to summon the Champions,” Aerion said. “It is extremely taxing for them, and so they do not have the power left to intervene.”

“But if that’s the case, why summon Champions at all?” I asked. “Why not just use that power to take out the Cataclysm, once and for all? Or hell, they could just swoop in every time and blast those Landing Castles out of the sky like those high-rankers did. Seems awfully convoluted, going through all this trouble to bring us over from different worlds, doesn’t it?”

“I… do not know,” Aerion replied, biting her lip. “Mortals cannot know the thoughts of the gods. We need only to do our part. After this, there will be no more cycles.”

“Right,” I said. “So you keep saying.”

“You distrust my words?” she asked, taking the rock from me.

“No, I fully believe that you think that’s what’ll happen. Just that… I dunno. Cosmo’s gone through an awful lot of trouble to keep me in the dark about things I can learn trivially easily. There has to be a reason for that. At least, that’s what I think. Just like there has to be a reason why we found this Champion-rock thing here.”

On a whim, I tried to Initialize it, fully expecting the process to fail. I mainly wanted to test if I could Initialize Champions. That felt extremely broken, so I was about to put the thing back down when a message popped up.

Initialize [Rocky the 423rd]? Initialization Cost: 9,433,855,172,409 Essence.

I scarcely had the time to read that ludicrous cost when the message disappeared, only to be replaced by another.

ERROR: Champion Detected. Unable to Initialize.

My hopes were about come crashing down when that, too, disappeared. What followed was a slew of nonsensical messages.

ERROR: Synergistic Essence detected. Calculating…

ERROR: Insufficient Compute Resources. Unable to converge. Consulting Covenant Core…

ERROR: Success. Determination: Combine Synergistic Essence Sources. Recomputing Essence Cost… Complete.

Initialize [Rocky the 423rd]? Initialization Cost: 33% Essence (Temporary). Essence consumption will be temporary and will transfer to the Champion’s summoner over time. Summoner: The God of Order (Hola Greg it’s me Cosmo! Teehee! No worries, amigo. I do so swear that all your oh-so-precious Essence will be refunded. Source: Trust me br—ERROR: Maximum personal note characters reached. In the future, please fit your messages within the allotted length.)

I… gawked.

“What? What is it?”

“I, uh, don’t really know,” I said, sharing my messages with Aerion. For some reason, I had to manually share these, unlike the others.

When she got done reading, Aerion had the same expression I had. Confusion, and disbelief.

“What does this even mean?” she asked. “And what's this at the end in parenthesis?”

“Uh, Cosmo being Cosmo, I assume? Just ignore it.”

“I shall,” Aerion said, smoothly accepting my explanation. “And the rest?”

“I honestly wish I could tell you.” I said, running a hand through my hair. “One thing’s for sure. We’re onto something here. There’s no way we just happen upon something like this by coincidence. Not with those error messages. Did you see that initial cost?”

Aerion nodded.

“You know how you said it costs the gods a lot to summon Champions?”

Aerion nodded again.

“Well, call me crazy… But I think we just got a glimpse as to exactly how much. About 9 trillion Essence. I… get the feeling we weren’t supposed to see that.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Agreed,” Aerion replied, her face going pale. “Do you think we will be punished?”

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “If the gods were gonna do something like that, I feel like they already would have by now. Just, uh… Let’s keep this to ourselves?”

Aerion nodded furiously.

This… This was some heavy shit.

I let out a long breath and reached into my inventory, activating [Aim]. A bar of rations shot out, and I caught it in midair.

“Did you have to do that?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

“No. But I can,” I replied with a grin as I took a bite. It tasted like bland, salty crackers. There was a ton of other stuff packed in, most of which I didn’t have a clue about. But it was energy dense, packed small, and preserved well. Not that the last point mattered all that much for me.

I’d wanted to pack some actually tasty food, but the math just didn’t work out. For as long as we might be gone, we had to stuff in as many calories as we possibly could, and this thing fit the bill.

I handed her a bar of her own, which… didn’t cheer her up at all.

“Anyway, sounds like we have to take this thing with us now,” I said. “At least until I work up enough free Essence to Initialize it.”

“About that,” Aerion said, frowning as she reread the message. “What does this bit about ‘transference’? It’s quite confusing.”

“I could be wrong, but I think it means it’ll eat up as much Essence as you do, at least initially.”

“Eat up?” Aerion asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Hey, don’t look at me. It is what it is,” I said, throwing my palms up. “Just that, unlike you, I think its cost will reduce over time. Maybe even to zero? I don’t know if I can trust Cosmo there...”

“Is that even a question?” Aerion asked. “You should never trust him. Nor does it say how long the process takes.”

“No, it does not,” I agreed. “Could be years, for all we know. Still… It’s too tempting not to try it.”

“Do you even have that much Essence?” Aerion asked, navigating to my stats.

“Definitely not,” I said, saving her the trouble. “It’ll have to wait until I rank up. And if Rocky doesn’t end up being worth it, I’ll just uninitialize it. Maybe I’ll find some other use for it,” I said. Even if it’s just as a paperweight, I didn’t add.

Maybe it’d sit on my wall, collecting dust. A memento of my adventures, just waiting for the day some young upstart came into my home and asked about it decades later. Then, with a twinkle in my eye, I’d take a puff of my pipe, and begin the tale with, “Well, you see, I was a Champion, once…”

Or not.

“Looks like there’s just enough space in my inventory to fit it, thanks to the food we’ve been eating.”

We hadn’t actually touched our water rations yet, thanks to all the snow and the surrounding ice. We had plenty of food reserves, so even accounting for feeding Richard, we were in good shape.

Speaking of, I glanced at our slumbering friend. “Think it’s time we busted this popsicle joint, don't you?”

Aerion stared at me, ration bar halfway to her mouth, looking downright disgusted to be in my company.

Maybe she was right. Maybe Cosmo was rubbing off on me.

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

Our march out of the valley to the chasm on the other side took us through the devastation that had been the scene of our battle. Wherever the snake crashed down into the ice, or sprung up from it, had turned into small ponds, and the area now resembled a mini archipelago, making navigation complicated and annoying.

That gave me plenty of time to ogle our recent upgrades. And boy, oh boy, were there upgrades galore.

Congratulations! Vigor has increased from 48 to 49 (Max: 49)

Congratulations! Dominion has increased from 46 to 48 (Max: 83)

Congratulations! [Steel Mace]’s Ability [Bleed] has leveled up from Foundation - 9 to Emergence - 0.

Congratulations! [Steel Mace]’s Ability [Bleed] has ranked up to Emergence!

Congratulations! [Light of the Fearless]’s Ability [Light of the Fearless] has leveled up from Foundation - 7 to Foundation - 9.

Congratulations! [Light of the Fearless]’s Ability [Shadow of the Fearless] has leveled up from Foundation - 7 to Foundation - 9.

Congratulations! [Basecrest City Guard Gauntlets]’s Ability [Snap] has leveled up from Foundation - 3 to Foundation 4.

Congratulations! [Initializer] has leveled up to Emergence - 9. Max Essence Increased from 290 to 310. Essence Utilization: 276/310. Would you like to reclaim Initialized equipment?

Now that was what I called a haul. Between that and Rocky, we’d made away like bandits.

Most of the gains were incremental, but those incremental gains had still gained me a level. I was just two levels away from Divergence Rank, and the windfall that would bring. With the inevitable final boss still ahead of us, I was growing more and more optimistic that I’d attain it by the time I left the dungeon.

As I reveled at my list of advances, I found a couple of surprises.

With all the chaos, I’d almost forgotten I’d used Snap a couple of times to accelerate my strikes. While it did little, it was part of my mission to level my less useful abilities. Both to make them more potent, and to aid with leveling up my Blessing. I forgot to activate my Cuirass’ [Hidden Dragon], though, so I still had some ways to go in that department. I’d have to make a habit out of that, just like I had with [Snap].

It wasn’t all good news, however. My Steel Mace’s Condition had dropped to 22 from its maximum of 50. Being a [Common] Weapon, its Condition dropped faster than my higher tier gear, so I would really have to baby it until I got it repaired. Especially since it had the first ability I’d ever ranked up to Emergence. It must have happened when I was bashing in the damned snake’s skull. I couldn’t wait to test out what the rank up had done to the ability’s potency.

Aerion’s upgrades weren’t anything to scoff at, either. She’d leveled her Blessing from E - 0 to E - 1, granting her 10 stat points to spend, and both [Reave] and [Shock] had made similar jumps to E - 1 as well. Her Vigor and Dominion had seen similar gains to mine, jumping 2 points to 36 and 41, respectively.

But the most impressive jump of them all had to go to Aerion’s newest ability, [Fading Fury]. It had jumped all the way from F - 1 to F - 6, thereby proving my hunch that higher level enemies power leveled lower ranked abilities.

That was a great thing, since it meant that despite all new abilities starting at F - 0, we’d be able to rapidly level them to our current rank. I wouldn’t be surprised if fights in the future ranked them up in a single fight.

It was a corpse in the middle of our path that broke me out of my daydream. A frozen corpse, freshly de-iced after being buried for who-knew-how-long?

“These bodies… Do you think the serpent was responsible for them?” Aerion asked.

“You mean like an ant, hoarding corpses away for later?”

Aerion nodded.

“Creepy thought,” I said, looking down at the frozen blonde woman. She still had her plate armor on, and her green eyes were frozen open in an expression of shock. The color had vanished from her face, making her look ghastly, but she didn’t look a day past twenty.

Who was she? What sort of life did she lead, and how long had she been here? A hundred years? A thousand? Ten?

As if killing and preserving them wasn’t enough, the damn serpent had mimicked their voices, tricking us into believing they were still alive.

Was it just a trick, though? It’d felt so real. The pleas for help. The screams of terror. There had been so much emotion in them. Was it just copying the intonation and replaying them? Or was the truth even darker?

“Y’know what?” I said. “I initially thought Axius was full of wonder and beauty.”

“And now?” Aerion asked, glancing back at me.

“Now, I’m beginning to think this place might be even more fucked up than where I come from,” I muttered. “Just… In different ways.”

Aerion… Didn’t respond.

We moved on, neither of us talking until we got to the chasm on the other side. I couldn’t speak for Aerion, but I felt like I was fumbling around in an endless labyrinth that was lit only sporadically. Every time I learned something new, I got a glimpse at the bigger picture, but never enough to conclusively grasp the full image. A handful of pieces in a thousand-piece puzzle.

The most frustrating part was I had no source I could turn to, or even a lead who’d spill the beans. Cosmo was the closest thing, and his lips were tied, and rather than him just being an ass, it was starting to feel like he couldn’t tell me. Or wasn’t allowed to, for whatever reason.

I could only hope this dungeon shed more light on things. Maybe I’d learn more when we reached the core. We weren’t far now.

I knew because when Aerion and I exited the chasm, it was onto another ledge, like the one that led into the previous canyon.

Except here, instead of another canyon, it overlooked a giant, pulsating ball of light, so bright I could barely stand to look at it. Something in my gut told me that this wasn’t another portal.

No, we’d reached the core. And the only thing in between us was a vast, sprawling maze that stretched for miles and miles in every direction.

A maze… made entirely of ice.