Jun took off running towards Walkalong, and I followed as best as I could. My battery was almost drained, and my armor’s integrity was dangerously low, but the eerie silence combined with the dark clouds gathering over the distant settlement spurred me on.

//SYSTEM MESSAGE INCOMING IN [300] SECONDS.

//SEBASTIAN, SOMETHING HAS GONE TERRIBLY WRONG.

//A TENUOUS PEACE HAS SHATTERED, AND THE BLOOD SPILLED WILL SOON WASH OVER YOUR CURRENT STATION.

//DO WHAT YOU MUST, BUT PROMISE ME YOU WILL SURVIVE.

The End’s message through the errors caught me off guard, as it was the first I’d heard from it in almost a week. Ever since I’d asked about my emotions feeling faraway, all I’d gotten in return from my questions was silence. So I’d stopped asking.

{What’s happening?} I asked The End as the clouds belched smoke that burned with a wicked inner fire. {Is it the Embodiments?}

//YES, BUT NOT THE ONES YOU ARE EXPECTING.

//HUMANITY’S EMBODIMENTS REPRESENT A POSSIBLE CHANGE IN HIERARCHY, AND OTHERS ARE ACTING PREMATURELY IN AN ATTEMPT TO BEHEAD OR SPUR A RESISTANCE.

//BUT BE AWARE THAT IT IS NOT AN ATTACK BY YOUR PEOPLE, NOR YOUR EMBODIMENTS.

//I AM TAKING A MORE DIRECT VIEW OF THE SITUATION AND WILL ASSIST YOU TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITIES.

//FOLLOW JUNIPER TO THE BURNT PORTION OF THE FENCE.

//YOU WILL NEED THE UNORTHODOX AID OF THE PERSON YOU MEET THERE.

There was a short pause between two messages, and when the final one finally came in, I could feel its importance even through the plain text.

//ENDURANCE’S CHOSEN MUST NOT FALL.

I thought back to Nia’s message, and I knew what The End meant. The attack was aimed squarely at Matra Persephonia, and if I knew anything about Nia, she was going to try and protect each and every person in Walkalong before she protected herself. I finally caught up to Jun, who waited for me just outside the chain fence. Or what remained of it.

Large holes were burned into the ethereal chain, smoldering and popping as the fire slowly ate away at the fence. Any hope that this was going to be a peaceful negotiation died at that moment. A lance of fire exploded from a stifling black cloud to crash into the ground just behind us, carrying with it the heat and smoke of a wildfire.

I grit my teeth and turned to face the smoking crater, a blackened rock curled up in the direct center that reminded me of a burned corpse. “Go find Nia.” I ordered while I watched in horror as the charred corpse-rock began to uncurl, revealing a suit of armor that looked as if it had been roughly chipped out of a coal seam and set to burn. “Make sure she lives.”

“Abyss dwellers, all of them.” Jun spat, sparing one glance at the monster I was about to fight before darting through the fence. I hoped against hope that I hadn’t just sent her to her death, but //ENDLESS had just finished recharging, so I stood a better chance against whoever the hell this was.

The coal-armored person was now at their full height, standing a handful of inches taller than me even from the crater they were in. Their eyes blazed to life, four pinpricks of dark red dirty fire that was full of impurities and smoke. “Walkalong is now under control of Addia’s chosen. Stand down, recruit. You don’t need to die for your superiors.”

Fucking hell, this wasn’t looking good. I raised my hands in surrender, a luckily universal gesture that made the invader’s shoulders tense up in suspicion. I knew I couldn’t kill them in a fair fight, so I either needed to create an unfair opening or stall them so Jun could reach Nia.

“You don’t have to tell me that.” I snorted, trying to put as much disdain into my voice as possible. It seemed to work, as the tension bled away from the attacker in an instant. “Is Addia’s chosen here now?”

I had no idea who Addia was, but I could gather that they were the Embodiment that The End had warned me about. I needed as much information as I could get, and if I could get any from this invader before I killed them, then great. The horrible realization that I could hear again hit me like a ton of bricks, and suddenly I felt far less confident in my chances.

“Of course.” The coal-armor laughed, stepping out of their crater to loom over me. They were fucking tall, the eyes of their helmet boring into the top of my head while I was stuck looking at the middle of their chest. “Turn around, recruit. Present your wrists for detainment.”

//SYSTEM MESSAGE ARRIVING IN [15] SECONDS.

//ONLY YOU HAVE THAT INFORMATION, SEBASTIAN.

//USE IT WELL.

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My sword was at the tip of my mind, waiting only for the command that would bring it into existence and hopefully end the attacker’s life. If it didn’t, there was a real chance that I’d just be ending my own. But being captured would also eventually end up killing me, so there wasn’t really a choice in the end.

//SYSTEM MESSAGE: The Staura Embodiment of Addiction had declared war on the Staura Embodiment of Endurance.

My attacker flinched at the intrusion for the slightest second, then froze as my sword appeared between their eyes. Their reactions were better than I’d hoped, so I didn’t completely run them through, but as they stumbled back while clutching their split face in obvious agony I knew they were dead meat. Somehow staying alive while your brain was made into jelly was an extremely disorienting and terrifying sensation, and the battery drain that happened to force life into something that was so clearly supposed to be dead was insurmountable. Like being shot in the gut, it was a slow death accompanied by an orchestra of searing pain and hopelessness that could only be stopped if someone extremely competent caught it before it went too far.

Unfortunately for the coal-armor, I wasn’t competent enough to save them. I swung low and removed the source of their pain in one clean swipe, silently thanking the fact that they’d been too surprised to scream in pain. But I reasoned that they had to be communicating with someone, so I prepared myself to leave as another prompt appeared on my screen.

//CREATION HAS ACTIVATED; CONSUME THE CORE IMMEDIATELY? [Y] OR [N]

//CORE MASTERY HAS INCREASED TO 10. ADDITIONAL EFFECTS ADDED.

//ENDLESS MASTERY HAS INCREASED TO 5. ADDITIONAL EFFECTS ADDED.

I could really use the battery and integrity boost at the moment, so I pressed [Y] and closed my interface. Everything else could wait for a time when I wasn’t at risk of ambush, and hopefully leaving the dead attacker with their core would confuse whoever showed up enough to think that I was strong enough not to need it.

I shivered as vitality surged through me, checking the message once more to ensure I hadn’t missed anything. It turned out that I hadn’t, and that it was a simple system-wide declaration of war on the Matria. Nothing fancy.

“Gods, that’s one sharp blade.”

Fuck.

Heat slammed into the back of my head, and the Scorched Bloodcoral Concoction that ran through my veins was all that kept me from blacking out from the intense pain. I staggered forward and spun around flourishing my spear, catching the coal-armored attacker across the chest in a spray of smoke and dust.

“Skies above, you’re a tough one.” They muttered, but there was something else in their voice. A sort of admiration, but also a mania that spelled danger. They were interested in me, for better or worse. “No way I’m sending you to the abyss so soon, even if it’s the Matria’s orders. The name’s Inopsy, and if you survive long enough to pose us a real challenge, I’d be happy to die by your hands again. Or the other way around.” Inopsy shrugged. “You never know what’s gonna happen. So get going and try to save your Matria. A war’s no fun after you win it.”

The man was a fucking psycho. But he’d given me an opening, and he didn’t know my secret, so I took the opening and ducked through the constantly widening fence as fast as my feet could carry me. I turned my head back for a parting glance as I got to the first house, and Inopsy gave me a small wave before he turned around and marched into the coral forest.

“I really hope that was a general or something. If they all have revival cores, I’m fucked.” I muttered, then resumed my run. There was no fighting in the streets, no corpses to be found, and the sounds of battle seemed to be muted and far in the distance. But in the same vein, the town was completely deserted. Shop windows were shattered, doors were torn off homes, and everything was smoking. Not burning, but billowing with chokingly thick black smoke that hurt my throat by looking at them.

The attackers had quite literally smoked everyone out. I scanned the sky for the biggest plume of smoke, as I had assumed that was where all the fighting would be, and found two that were far larger than all the others. One came from far off in the distance, on a side of the town that I’d never left through, but the other rose from the huge circular building that hid the training grounds. And as I got closer, it was as if I’d suddenly stepped into a colosseum.

Sounds of battle met my ears where only silence had been, but after moments went by without something exploding or the sky lighting up with a high-level function, I knew it was all low-level stuff. If Jun was there, she’d be more than a match for anyone that couldn’t use at least a mastery fifteen requirement function or had gear far beyond hers. And I highly doubted that.

So I ignored it and ran towards the far more dangerous smoke signal. The one that I could hear from the middle of the city, where dirty smoke and blackened fire rained from the sky only to be met by obsidian black scales and bright orange bursts of light. That was where I’d find Nia, and where I’d hopefully be able to do something to stop her from being killed. Whatever the hell that might be.

//ORGANIZE YOUR THOUGHTS, SEBASTIAN.

//DEFEATING INOPSY HAS GRANTED YOU A WEALTH OF POTENTIAL AND NODES.

//THE ARMORY IS OFF TO THE LEFT; TAKE WHAT YOU NEED TO SAVE PERSEPHONIA.

The End’s messages made it clear that I didn’t currently have what it took to save Nia, so I hooked the nearest left and made my way to the armory. I’d been in there once before, and it wasn’t much of anything to look at. It was an armory for a frontier town that specialized in the earliest years of training, after all. If The End wanted me to go there, though, then maybe there was something that I’d missed.

//ON THE TOPMOST SHELVES, YOU WILL FIND A WALKWAY.

//TAKE IT UNTIL YOU REACH A VENT INSCRIBED WITH PERSEPHONIA’S CREST.

//WHAT YOU SEEK IS HIDDEN THERE, THOUGH IT IS NOT YET WHOLE; IT REQUIRES POTENTIAL TO TAKE SHAPE.

The doors were locked for a split second before I pulled them from their hinges. A security system built solely on the trust that no one would disobey. Weapons of all types along with trinkets of varying use dotted the walls and shelves, among which I saw the sturdy poles of support that led to the walkway The End had described for me. They creaked under my weight as I climbed up, but didn’t shiver or shake as I got to my feet on top of everything. The vent was easy to spot, a glass plate above it blazing orange with Nia’s crest. I pressed my palm to the keyhole and the grate fell away, a wave of vertigo washing over me as I suddenly realized that the armory was far too big to be only a single room.

The rest of it had been hidden behind the Matria’s power. I ducked into the extra room and recoiled at the stench of rot, swiveling around to look for the putrid source. It wasn’t hard to find, and I recognized it immediately.

“So this is where Okeria stored the meat.”