“Your understanding of things is only so-so,” the priest says honestly, the cart just trundling around.

“Where are we going, and how long will it take to get there?” I’m trying to be productive and he wants to chat. He could ask about the event and go through my logs, but he sounds like I just hopped on the cart and asked if he’d just drop me off at the next town.

“We are going to the temple library to record some of your memories,” he says and I know he’s not just talking about the investigations. I want copies. “Oh, we’ll get you to organize your mind into proper volumes so that we can make better use of your strange Record ability.”

“Record? As in reports?”

That’s what Logs do… And anyone can access Logs once they rank up. I might be high ranking from my Devour whatsit, but I think I’m still barely touching the surface of it if there’s different ways to eat things. Does cycling count as consuming for Devour?

“Usually Records only pertain to whatever skill unlocked them,” he informs me. So what about notifications?

I recoil, the mule bays, and the priest who let out a fucking pulse of Qi for no reason continues with his coughing fit. A bubble of prismatic light slowly forms around me, spreading with my growing alarm, because now I know that he’s not just reading my logs, this bitch is seeing something. I didn’t describe, think, or say anything other than “notification”, my guy. Who are you?

The priest recovers, clearing his throat and straightening his robes, pretending like I didn’t just ask him a question, and I just keep staring at him, bubble expanding, wondering if whatever he was doing broke with his concentration. My bubble is pretty, not doing anything, and I’m waiting to see what happens when it connects with him. Not sure how the cart is fine, I’m not including it in my bubble, but the bubble isn’t expanding down.

Spring Cow snorts, reaching out and poking my bubble. The bubble bends, not stopping him at all as he manages to poke me with the bubble still intact. It literally just shifts and reshapes with things. I glare down at his finger poking my bubble which in turn is poking my robe. What’s the point of this?

“I’m not poking it with my finger,” he whispers quietly and slowly, eyes dancing as he smiles lightly.

“Nope! I’m out!” I shout, jumping off the cart.

I spend the next few minutes cursing and trying to wipe the ew off. I feel violated. What the fuck did he mean he’s not using his finger? What was he using? While I’m screaming and flailing a group of armed men dressed like the guys at my “trial” run and ride up, past me, and grouping up on the priest to form a protective cordon. They’ draw their weapons on me instead of the psycho who won’t stop fucking around, and he calls them off.

“I was demonstrating Qi manipulation, and it didn’t work well for the Cataclysm’s insect nature,” he says, laughing lightly.

Qi manipulation? I freeze, blanking as I realize he probably meant he had a much smaller, tighter, shield of energy around himself and he was pushing at my bubble with the part around his finger. I groan in disgust, dropping to sit on the ground in relief, and he just laughs. Asshole.

Now that I’m “defeated”, -- I glare at the priest who keeps laughing surrounded by self-righteous randos, -- the men wish the priest, -- he’s some kinda scholar, yeah, but is that just what he is, or is he like a priest who works in the library…? -- a strong spirit and a stronger hand in dealing with my disgusting, demon insect, -- ♪ not a demon anymore, ♪ -- self. Spring Cow gets well-wishes and rations, giving out blessings in return.

Some of the guards start slowly moving away, moving on while looking back at us. The ones that stay behind want to suck up to the priest or talk shit about me, loudly boasting that I’ll be put down, that they’ve no doubt I’m guilty, and the Golden Sun Empire isn’t some backwater like the Rising Sun Empire.

The priest is probably reading some very upsetting thoughts, because I’m just glaring quietly, and he’s suddenly very intent on getting the men to move on. The men do, slowly, still praising the priest while casting disparaging remarks my way. When he hops back on the cart in the driver’s seat I climb into the back, glaring at him as he laughs.

We ride behind the men, this area’s version of highway patrol and emergency response teams, and they try to look officious while taking turns lagging behind to talk to the priest and ask his opinion on a few things. Like I’m not here, and they don’t know all of this is being recorded.

I go back into my logs to go read what the priest was thinking while the guards were talking, and the cart rattles. I roll my eyes and keep looking, the vibrations growing worse, which is distracting, but not enough to break me away from reading. I’m in my logs but I can’t read as I swear the cart’s about to fall apart. I don’t care about the cart, and if we have to walk, I’ll just keep laying on the ground. They can threaten to drag me behind the horses, but if they do it’ll leave my scales all along this path, and I doubt they want that.

There’re shouts, I hear weapons being drawn, and when I back out of my Logs I’m in a snow globe with my own loose scales glittering around me. I sit up and look around, the cart is fine, the world is fine, but the air around me is rattling. The priest stops whatever he was doing, -- fucker was using some technique on me, not the cart, and now I’m going to be punished for it? -- and he tries to talk the guards down, but they’re no having it.

“You shake my scales loose and they try to punish me? How’s that fair?” I shout at him even though he’s less than a meter away before I hop off of the back of the small cart. “Come at me, and see if I show you any kindness!” I point at the men as they start spreading out.

“The Cataclysm has done nothing,” the priest tries to wave them down, but I’m surrounded by prisms, which still isn’t my fault even though they’re trying to make it my problem. He turns to me, making encouraging pushing motions. “I’m sorry for teasing you, but please reabsorb your scales, so that we can be on our way.”

“Reabsorb my scales so they can attack me for your prank!” I shout at him in annoyance before transfering to my void. See if he can interrupt my reading here.

I nearly fall off of a short cliff, scrabbling as loose stones slide free under my feet. What in the hells? I’m on a rocky promontory looking down at a forested area, a roiling lake in the distance to my right, a small burb before me once I get down, and farmland off to my left. This isn’t the forest, plain and lake I left, but I can see where it used to be. Did I just rebuild my void’s borders or did my spawn-in change to someplace I hadn’t paid attention to?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

There is a boundary of mountains with cliffs facing my little domain. I swear the place takes longer to walk than it looks… As I scan around the world warps like there’s a magnifying lens in the center of my vision. I stop focusing on the ground, and just scan, and the effect goes away. Concentrate, and there’s a zoom. Handy…?

I fly over to my lake, still in hunan form, and try to see if anything’s changed. There’s what looks like a barricade of giant caltrops in the trees near the shore on the way to the burrows from my shack. My shiver thorn hedge looks torn up, the lake bed around my shack looks dug up, there’s blood around my mills, and I don’t know whether to be concerned or angry.

“Bears…?!” I call, the word ending in a desperate shout as I transfer to the burrows.

I stand in the middle of the burrows trying to figure out how to figure out who’s in trouble and how without just transfering to someone. I know it’ll piss them off, and I don’t want to have to fight them to help. Not because I’ll back down, but because I know I’d rather kill and eat them than put up with any nonsense.

“Requests!” I shout, going to see what petitions have been lobbed to me with my auto-denials on.

Bendy needs healing, I drag her to me instead of transfering to her, focusing on her and getting a weird abbreviated status screen. She’s dying from shiver thorn. So this is the culprit behind the fence being vandalized. I bend down, getting on all fours as I bend down and shove my face into her short fur around her neck to reach her hide. I remember Persephone shoving her hands in my mouth, I remember banking miasma from inside someone, and remember as I inhale the things that need to come out of Bendy, -- the toxins, the splinters, the accumulated poisons, -- that I have mouth markings on my hands that I could have used.

I sit up, picking fur out of my mouth while trying to blow and spit it out as I read over more recent requests. The Naturalists are here, but I’ll deal with them later. Burial for Wide Oak. I bring his body to me as I move away from Bendy, and a twisted discolored mass appears before me. Poison or miasma, I don’t know, but he’s dead, or probably wishes he was, so I bank him. I pull Red to me and he’s screaming, a bloody shredded mess where one arm used to be, blood spraying into the surroundings. I dump Qi into healing him, consume some spatial storages after emptying their contents into my bank, then start pounding fish cakes and a bowl of boiled down black tea.

Fack! Forgot to check the pots.

“Whoo!” This shit is strong!

I cough, dumping water into the pots through my bank and void interface, then pull Guts to me. Guts is twitching and foaming, seizing, but differently from Bendy. I move closer, pressing my palm to their palm and banking the foreign materials I manage to suck out of them. Qi to recover before I head back to Bendy, -- I just removed the toxins, I didn’t actually attempt to heal her, -- then I pull on Big Bertha.

They’re screaming, covered in blood, rocking and wailing, and I don’t want to get bitten or swatted. ♪ No, thank you. ♪ I sidle over to Red, who is staring at their arms in shock, think better of it, and try to see if Bendy or Guts are up yet. N~nope. They’re out. ♪ Recovery coma! ♪

“Ooh!” I can’t see where they’re hurt, so I need to get rid of all the blood, so I just blast them with water to see where the blood starts coming from.

The sudden deluge shocks Bertha into coughing, -- unless I just accidentally almost drowned her, -- and she recovers shakily.

“I can’t get close to you. Or won’t, rather. Tell me where you are hurt,” I say loudly, hoping that she’ll process what I’m saying instead of just lasering in on me and come in swinging.

Bertha continues coughing sporadically, looking around and sniffling to see the others. I’ve no idea what the fuck happened, and I’m going to ask, and then compare their responses to my notes later. I still get information from my void when I’m not in it, right?

“You did this!” Bertha growls, all teeth and righteous anger as she climbs to her feet.

“Fuck you, I wasn’t even here,” I point out. Fuck! I almost saved all four. “I was out trying to figure out who was trying to convince you lot to kill yourself.

“You’re in my void. All that coal you were producing draws on me, and was worth a fortune. If you weren’t getting paid Kings, at the least, you were risking being absorbed to recoup the energy and essence used to produce it.”

“Liar!” Nope. Not going to tolerate that. “You’re a trickster! You made this happen!”

“I set up many reasons not to go to the lake, not just because I claimed it.

“I made it dangerous to dissuade you all from destroying anything I set up. Someone went there anyway and attempted to destroy my home. Why?”

“Enough!” Bertha shouts, arms up and claws out, and I transfer the bears out, walking out with them to introduce them to the priest.

“I will not protect them any more. I think they’re actively trying to kill me,” I tell the priest, moving away while giving Bertha a wide-eyed glare. ♪ Looks like someone fucked around and found out. ♪

“Oh?” The priest looks at me in surprise before turning to the four with interest.

I climb into the cart, settle in, and then remember my tea as someone runs up, hops into the cart, and tries to stab me. They miss, misjudging where I was going to wind up, and I just roll my eyes and transfer into my void to work on the wine.

So I didn’t chew up the leaves, but I have the tea boiled up. I add shiver thorn brambles, uncooked, just dumping them in, cap the jars, and set them off to the side. More tea on before I head down into the kitchen to find out that I’m not making anything, because I don’t have the fish. That’s actually pretty cool. It’s not just making plain cake or draining my resources when I don’t have the necessary items. It’s not substituting, not draining me to create. It just stopped. I just stopped.

I repair the hedge, repair the ground, find out that my bushes were left planted, but someone had taken a shit on a few of them. I leave it, it’s free fertilizer, then try to remember the veggies and fruits I liked the best. Speaking of fruit. I head to the Golden Nectar tree to see if it’s producing, I don’t have any in my bank, but there’s fruit growing on the tree. So it’s not producing but it will, and it’s not being forced.

This feels satisfying… I reduce my tater farm and add some greens, then remember that I used to have nuts, and berries, and random shit. And I’ve still got poisons to sample. I pull up the tea bushes and plant them in the gaps in the shiver thorn. That’s the backyard. Front yard fence is fruit vines, -- poison berries grow on brambles? -- and a nut tree.

I’m standing staring up at a tree wondering if I can find a way to get it to produce different types of nuts. Which draws my attention to the berry brambles, which gets me to look at the shiver thorn bramble. Can I get berries to grow on the shiver thorn? Then the doorbell goes off.

“What?” I ask after I transfer back to the road, storming over to the priest, ignoring the patrolmen, ignoring the four, and glaring at him. “I was in the middle of something.”

“We’re ready to go to the temple if you’d like to come out now,” the priest says politely.

I can sample poisons and think about what else to plant while we travel.

“Alright,” I say, hopping into the back of the cart before remembering that someone tried to stab me earlier.

“It’s been dealt with,” the priest waves his hand, patting the air to encourage me to calm down. “They were reminded that about the tragedy in Green Rivers.”

“What tragedy?” Bertha asks, glaring at me, eyes full of judgement.