I stared in slack-jawed terror at the slyk titan with the knowledge that I’d have to kill multiple fuckers on that thing’s level before I could free Mortician. It was, quite literally, impossible. The last boss monster I’d fought had stats in the low high hundreds and low two-hundreds, and it was so dangerous that we still couldn’t fight it head on.

“I don’t know how to break this to you, Mortician buddy, but I think you’re going to be stuck here for a little while longer.” I eventually said.

“We have come to the same conclusion.” Mortician whispered. Their voice was equally scared and disappointed, and they clenched their fists at their sides as they glared down at the ground. “It will be decades before we can escape. But we will always have our connection to you, Envoy, so we will no longer be alone. Never alone again.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks, and everything in my body screamed at me to do something about this situation. But there was nothing I could do to change it. I stood with Mortician in silence for a few long minutes, watching the smaller slyk skitter along the seafloor or float lazily by above us. It was surreal, yet it was also the realest thing I’d ever felt.

“There has to be another way.” I muttered. “I’m not trying to make you a god, for God’s sake. You already exist ninety percent of the way, and all you need is a body and a core. There’s got to be some way to work around having to kill all the slyk titans.”

Mortician stayed silent for a long while. “We hope there is. But we expect that there is not. The strongest slyk need cores to survive. You and Juniper need cores to survive. It was foolish for us to think that we would not need one as well.”

“So you think I can still build your body, but without a core, you won’t be able to live in it. Is that right?” I asked, but I knew they were right from the moment they said it. The only things that survived without cores were thoughtless animals and plants, and Mortician was definitely not thoughtless.

“That is what we think, yes.” Mortician confirmed. “From what little we know about them, cores are not so easily created. The End created yours, and the spark of new life creates cores for all other core-bearing species.”

I furrowed my brow at what Mortician said, but I couldn’t quite place why it sounded wrong. The End had created my core, yes, but there was something else to it. It had created something like a temporary core for me, and I had to finalize it with its help. If I could get Mortician one of those temporary cores, maybe I could corrupt it into a full core and circumvent the slyk oil requirement in its entirety.

Of course, that all revolved around one massive ‘maybe’. {Can you do whatever you did to give me a temporary core to Mortician too?}

My question to The End hung in the air for a few seconds before I received an answer.

//NO; YOUR SITUATION WAS WHOLLY UNIQUE.

//WHY DO YOU ASK?

I explained to The End exactly what Mortician and I had just found out, and its next message came the moment I told it I was done.

//AH, I UNDERSTAND.

//MORTICIAN NEEDS A CORE AND THE CATALYSTS TO ACTIVATE IT.

//IN BIOLOGICAL TERMS, YOU NEED BLOOD AND A HEART TO PUMP IT.

//GRANT MORTICIAN ONE OIL TYPE AND OBSERVE WHAT THAT DOES.

//IF THE CORE NEEDS A PERFECT MIXTURE, THERE IS NOT MUCH YOU CAN DO.

//IF IT NEEDS A STARTER, AND THE REST WILL SIMPLY EMPOWER MORTICIAN, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO INTERVENE ON THEIR BEHALF.

Sounded like a ‘maybe’ to me. “Thank you very much. I’ll see what I can do.”

I reached into my inventory and pulled out a vial of leftover signaleech oil. Mortician eyed it with muted hope, but didn’t move to take it until I offered it to them. They gently cradled it in their fingers before opening their interface and physically pushing the vial into it, which it accepted with a wet slurp.

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My interface popped up without me summoning it. It showed the page with Jun and Mortician’s statuses, then forced open a sub-window with Mortician’s stats on it. Text bled onto it in glistening oil that crackled with electricity.

It read: mutated signaleech oil consumed. Progress towards core initiation: 1/3. Progress towards core function: 1/7. Progress towards core manifestation: 1/13. Progress towards core perfection: 1/22.

Each of the different ‘progress towards’ prompts were set in their own line, and each had a different amount of rock around the oil. The first one had no rock visible whatsoever, and they gained progressively more until the last didn’t have a single drop of oil to be seen. Thirteen types of slyk oil until Mortician had a core they could use. And I’d only seen two different types of core-bearing slyk if I didn’t count the titanic stingprey.

Which I didn’t.

Now, the question was if I could artificially inflate that number. “Mortician, can you go get a sample of the razorleaf? We should get you as many different oil types as we can before I try to do anything.”

“Of course!” Mortician said readily before they bounded off to sample the dead slyk. We’d walked for a good few minutes since we left it, but that had been at such a slow pace that I knew I only had seconds before Mortician came back. Just enough time to check up on how Jun was doing.

Her stats were fairly stagnant, so they had to be in a lull. {How’s everything going?}

{No problems yet. We’ve beaten four waves down and seen two trawlers come through, but neither of them had what Okeria’s looking for. Oh, and we managed to find a few more of Mortician’s pieces.} Jun replied. {I took all of them from Okeria for safekeeping, so you don’t have to worry about that. How’re you keeping up?}

{I’m doing fine. We just found out that Mortician needs to sample a whole bunch of slyk before they can get a core, though, so that puts a damper on things. If you find any named slyk with cores, can you take a sample of their oil for me?}

{Of course.} Jun sent, then there was a short stretch of nothing. {Seb, did you do something? I have an option to send you something that’s in my inventory, but it'll cost you potential to accept it. Should I test it out?}

{No reason not to.} I replied.

A notification followed shortly after. It was on the same screen as Jun and Mortician’s current stats, and when I swiped over to it, I saw that there was a tiny glowing yellow envelope next to Jun’s name. I pressed on it and waited as an animation of the envelope opening played out, then spat a warning box at me. Apparently it would cost me ten potential to accept whatever Jun had sent me, which felt like both a small cost and an exorbitant one at the same time.

Small because I could just consume empty nodes to get more potential, and huge because it was charging me for something I could just do in person anyway. The real test would come when we were far apart or when Jun tried to send me something huge, to see if that cost scaled up with those factors. As it was, ten potential was a small price to pay to sate my curiosity.

I accepted the cost, then felt a weight settle on my mind as things appeared in my inventory. I swiped over to see what Jun had sent through, and found myself with five more slyk pieces and an oil sample from a loneswarm.

{Well? Did it work? Because I don’t have those things in my inventory anymore. … Which could have been a huge mistake, now that I’m thinking about it.} Jun sent, and I could feel her worry in that last sentence.

{I got five slyk pieces and some signaleech oil. Is that everything you sent?}

{Thank the skies above it all went through.} Jun sent, and before another message came through, I saw her battery dip just a little. {Sorry Seb, but I gotta go; another wave’s starting. I’ll send you any new oils and slyk pieces we find when I can justify costing you potential to do it. See you soon.}

{See you soon.} I echoed, then summoned the sample of loneswarm oil and another vial of signaleech oil before I closed my interface. Then I reopened it, since I’d forgotten to ask one thing from Mortician, and they were already out of earshot. {Bring back as much of the razorleaf oil as you can. There’s something I want to try with it.}

{Understood!} Mortician replied. Which left me with nothing to do but wait for them to come back. It took all of ninety seconds.

“Here you go!” Mortician said proudly as they shoved what looked eerily like a hollowed-out head at me. “It was difficult to gather the oil, so we eventually settled and took all of the razorleaf with us. There should be no shortage of oil any time soon, so do not hold back on whatever you are attempting.”

I didn’t plan on holding back, but it was good to know I had backups. “Did you take a sample for yourself?”

Mortician nodded. “We did.”

“Good. Here’s a loneswarm sample.” I pressed the vial into Mortician’s hands, and they accepted it without question. “Now, let’s see if this works.”

I opened my interface and swiped over to my core, then offered it both the signaleech sample and the razorleaf sample. I didn’t expect it to do much, since I was offering it a material instead of a piece of equipment, and I got exactly what I was expecting. My core offered to turn both of them into piddly amounts of potential, but not to combine them into something new like I’d hoped. Had it worked, it would’ve been a very convenient shortcut.

With that plan down the drain, I removed the samples from my core and stored them away. Now it was time to see what Mortician’s ‘core initiation’ would entail. And if I could somehow speed it along.