The second thing I notice is the grim determination on Triss’s face as she stands amongst the vines with her arm elbow-deep into an open chest wound on one of the bodies.
She stiffens but doesn’t let my blank stare stop her from rooting around inside the cavity. She was already bloody when she went in, but now she’s more red than not. My gaze flickers to the rest of the bodies, all with identical slashes along their fronts.
With a small grunt, Triss pulls her arm free, her entire forearm coated in crimson. In her fingers is something small and round - a core. I can’t make out its color before she slips it into one of her pockets.
Triss finally meets my eyes, something burning in her green gaze daring me to challenge her.
I wet my lips and ask softly, “Weren’t they your friends?”
The moment passes and her eyes well up again as the flicker in them dies. She drops her gaze and drags a hand through her hair, not caring about becoming even further drenched in blood.
“I only met them today but they were… nice. They didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this,” she chokes, waving an arm at the scene around her.
I can think of a few people.
I ignore the hateful voice inside me as she continues speaking.
“The System made such a big deal about harvesting when Jack- when one of us died earlier. If I can do something with these cores that will prevent something like this from happening again, then I have to try. They would understand,” her voice breaks slightly on the last sentence, and I’m not sure if she’s saying it for me or for herself.
Regardless, I decide to move on. I sure as fuck don’t want anyone digging around in my corpse after I die, noble intention or not, but maybe they were nicer people than me.
“Did you loot the flower, too?” I ask, wincing at my choice of words almost immediately after they leave my mouth.
Triss doesn’t seem to notice, though. She nods, then crouches down for a moment. When she rises back up, she is holding a bowling ball-sized translucent sphere… with an arrow sticking out of it.
She gives it a look filled with an emotion I can’t decipher, then glances up at me. “It’s a lot lighter than it looks. Here, catch,” she calls as she lobs it.
I drop my bow, thankfully not into the moat, and manage to grab it. Upon closer inspection, it’s riddled with tiny holes along its surface. Through the clear surface of the sphere, I can see the holes leading into tunnels that warp the light and wrap around themselves to form a tangled knot at the center. The arrow I shot is stabbed into the sphere, piercing the nexus of whorls.
[Hive Heliotrope Heart] [Unique]: A body part evolved through the collective pressure of a hundred singularly focused minds to function as a mana heart binding them together. A gamble was taken, judging the power was worth the weakness.
* A bet that was ultimately lost, as the Hive Heliotrope was cut down before its prime. Adds the modifier [Damaged]
I study the description my [Analysis] gave me in confusion. The only other [Unique] rarity I’ve seen is on my [Split Second] ability, which is both powerful beyond my understanding and references a maybe god in its description. And why does the description say it was cut down before its prime?
Taking a firm grasp of the arrow's shaft, I try to pull it out of the heart. It doesn’t budge. I let go of the sphere, only holding on to the arrow, and waggle it around. There’s no give.
Great.
I now have a… mysterious ball on a stick?
Triss’s head pops up as she climbs out of the moat. Right, we have a mysterious ball on a stick.
She sees me waving the heart around like it’s an oversized wand topper and blinks a few times. “Do you not have [Analysis]? Wait,” she asks, a note of alarm creeping into her voice, “are you not level five yet?”
I drop my arm awkwardly. It’s weird, I can practically hear the inflection she used on the skill name.
“Oh, no, I hit level five when I, well, when I shot the arrow into this thing. I used [Analysis] on it, but it wasn’t really helpful. Just a bunch of dramatic flavor about the cost of power and what some flowers thought they were willing to lose. Nothing about how to use it,” I tilt my head at her. “Did you get something different?”
Her eyes slide off mine and onto the heart. “No,” she answers, her voice sounding like she’s far away.
Well, that’s definitely not sinister.
After a beat, I try to focus on Triss, channeling the same mindset I used when going over my items.
[Human] [LVL 5]
In this case, the lack of information is what I was looking for. She doesn’t have the [Badge of Participation]. Which is only to say she hasn’t exhibited any murderous tendencies so far.
She also saved your life. You’re being suspicious for no reason.
Right, right. Of course.
I think I’ll keep the heart with me, though, just to be safe.
I look down at myself and realize that I have nowhere to put it.
“I figured you’d want one,” Triss’s voice reaches me. She’s holding out a backpack to me and has one of her own on her back. Mercifully, she took the pink one for herself, leaving me with a black one. I thank her and take it into my hands. It’s… wet.
I ignore the smell and feel, instead focusing on sticking the heart inside the backpack. I pick up my bow and backtrack to where I left the wooden System chest, then pack it away next to the heart before slinging the backpack over my shoulders.
Triss doesn’t object to me taking the heart, instead facing the opening to the hedge. I check how long we have until the challenge is over.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
[00:00:39:50]
There wasn’t a 1 hour alert, was there? I check my notification log in case it somehow muted itself again, but there’s nothing there I haven’t seen. I glare at the timer, then check my mana and time levels.
Mana: 10/59
Time: 16/56
If I want to try and fill up my bars as much as possible before the next challenge, I should stay here and meditate. Triss, on the other hand, is itching to get out of this place, not that I blame her. A small guaranteed reward for staying here versus a chance of a larger one for venturing out.
The idea of meeting the waterbender again, of having to watch her lifeless eye dissolve, makes the decision for me.
“I think our best bet, for now, is to try and find more Obols. Ones that preferably aren’t underneath any more monsters,” I say. After I finish speaking, I cringe internally - I just assumed Triss was coming with me. I glance at her, but she’s simply nodding.
“I saw a good spot earlier, when we… before I knew something was wrong. The group thought it was too risky to go in, but now I think the flower was just trying to get them here faster. I’ll lead the way,” she begins walking, heading out of the hedge circle.
I follow along. When I get to the boundary between the hedge and the forest, I turn back. The light of the flower’s glow is gone, but the candy scent is still heavy in the air. The scene at the bottom of the pit has been scarred into the back of my head, even before Triss’s amateur dissections. I shudder, then hurry after her.
The first few minutes of silence stretch on. Triss doesn’t seem to want to start up a conversation, and small talk has never been my thing. I study her side profile out of the corner of my eye as we walk.
We’re both relatively the same level of filthy, with Triss being far more bloody. In all honesty, she’s taking things better than I would have when I was her age. My grandpa used to say I was like a clockwork mouse - when I ran out of energy or everything became too much for me, I would shut down until I could be left alone to ‘rewind’ or recharge.
I sigh, shaking the ghosts of the past out of my head.
I haven’t been able to fully test out my [Improved Mana Manipulation] yet, so I should take advantage of this momentary calm and play around with it. I’ll cut myself off at five points so I still have some in case I need it.
Warm mana pools in the palm of my hand as I summon it from my core. Triss doesn’t seem to notice the ball of green, which fits with me not having seen anything that looked like mana from either her or the waterbender.
The opaque sphere I’m currently conjuring holds its shape much better than the first attempt I made, with far fewer wisps of mana curling off into the atmosphere. I extrude a tendril of mana from its surface, then slowly whittle it down. I manage to get it to about an inch wide before my control slips and the mana collapses on itself.
I switch my vision to [Unbound Eyes of Time] and watch the coating of gray sand on my sphere. There is a point of saturation to how many of the fine particulates can stick in a given surface area of mana, after which no more sand is pulled out of the air.
Gray sand continues to collect on the ball of mana I’m holding until it is reminiscent of a strangely fat, gray powdered doughnut. The rate of precipitation isn’t quick enough to leave areas of sped-up time around it, unfortunately. I recall the pain I felt when half of my body was moving faster than the other. If I could weaponize that, I could turn my opponent’s own momentum against them. Even if I can’t throw that much mana at someone from a distance, the experience of having your arm or leg move faster than you’re expecting it to is jarring. A second of disorientation might be worth more than a few points of damage in a fight.
I had the right idea when I tried to throw a ball of mana at the fox, but I didn’t understand what I was working with well enough to fully know what I was doing. I reabsorb the mana in my hand, savoring the invigorating feeling of Time running along my arms, so I can start over fresh.
Green mana rises from my palm again, coalescing into another sphere. My greatest period of sped-up time was when I created a barrier and sucked out all the sand in it, so why don’t I try something similar?
Instead of encapsulating an area and then working on removing time from it, I try hollowing out the ball of mana I’ve already made. It feels… weird. Like I’m digging my mental fingers into goop and trying to build a wall out of it.
As I get the hang of it, the orb of mana begins to inflate, transforming into a basketball-sized shell of mana with an opening of clear space inside it.
Clear, colorful space.
I smile, the entire world gray except for the green-tinted window of color I’m holding. I try and expand it, wanting to make the hollow space inside my mana even bigger, but I come up against a pressure that resists me pushing against it. I strain harder and the entire structure of mana begins trembling, mana curling off of its surface erratically, until it silently bursts open. Gray sand rushes in, snuffing out the glimpses of color, returning everything back to homogeneity.
Looks like I’ve found another limit.
I look at my tanks.
Mana: 7/59
Time: 18/56
Compared to blasting out waves of mana, making the balls is ridiculously cheap. They also require a lot more concentration and time, but I think I can improve my speed with some more practice.
In terms of combat potential… I get started on making another mana shell filled with fast time. Once I have it to a decent size, I cut off the connection that I’m feeding mana into it with. As I expected, the mana loss to the air increases substantially, but the hollow structure seems relatively stable.
I fall a few steps behind Triss and take aim at one of the lower branches swaying in the wind. I wind up my arm, then throw the mana shell upwards.
It flies through the air, hitting the branch - and then continues onward, going right through it. The branch, however, jerks suddenly when the fast time reaches it.
*SNAP* *SNAP* *SNAP*
The noise of a dozen snapping twigs reaches my ears. I watch, surprised, as all the thinner offshoots of the branch and the leaves that crowned them come crashing down as if a hand reached out and wrenched the entire structure to the side. The main, thicker branch doesn’t appear to be damaged, although it looks like it was stripped in the area where time was sped up. Having sailed a few feet beyond the branch, the mana shell holding the sand at bay finally dissipates.
“What was that noise?” Triss’s voice interrupts my experimenting. I turn back to her - and immediately feel guilty.
She looks haunted, eyes wide and dagger unsheathed as she stares into the forest.
“It was me. I just- I was testing an ability out,” I wince. Triss relaxes slightly out of her stance and meets my eyes again. There is a hesitant curiosity on her face. She opens her mouth and-
You have [00:00:30:00] left until the end of your first SAD challenge. System records show you have already completed your [Thrive] objective. The System congratulates you for taking to the SAD process so well! You are truly an example to the rest of your species. Now all you have to do is [Survive]!
Both of us divert our gazes to the blue boxes that appear. Well, I assume that’s what Triss is looking at since she’s staring at the air right in front of her face.
“We’re almost there,” she says instead, before clenching her jaw and beginning to walk again.
I fall into step with her once more, slightly conflicted. Was I just saved by the bell? Triss has shown she’s very willing to harvest people’s bodies, and she keeps saying things that seem slightly off-kilter. I can’t exactly judge her for not telling me what her affinity is, considering I recently decided I should be tight-lipped with that info. The fact that she almost killed herself to save me makes the situation even stranger. Have I done something to make her not trust me?
…
I have kind of been hoarding the loot so far.
It’s not entirely my fault, though, since she keeps giving shit to me. What, am I supposed to say no?
We continue walking, the questions swirling around inside me not giving any kind of clarity and only serving to make me tense.
An increase in the amount of moonlight filtering through the trees makes me look up. Triss has stopped too, on the edge of a small gap in the woods.
In the center of the clearing is an old, rundown well.