Okeria threw a gun barrel at the trawler, which stuck fast as if the ship wasn’t made of solid rock. He turned to us and saluted before grabbing on to the barrel, which shot him up in the blink of an eye to the flat top. Another barrel appeared under his feet for him to push off, and he disappeared over the edge.

“That wasn’t as cryptic as the abyss at all.” Jun shook her head and muttered. “Even if we manage to destroy this, we won’t get anything for it. So what’s the point?”

I didn’t know. “Maybe Okeria’s trying to show us something, or maybe he just wants to distract us while he goes and kills the bigger slyk. I still have no clue how we’re supposed to level up here, but I guess we have to trust him for now.”

“Only until Rootia shows up.” Jun corrected me. “She has to know way more than he does, since she’s the literal start of my family’s name. And I think she’s Moricla’s actual daughter, too, which means she’s really, really old. Like, at least eight centuries old.”

“That’s… yeah. That’s old.”

I shifted my sword to a hammer before calling it to me, the eel-bone armor staring at me in uselessness from my inventory as my weapon weighed down my hands. Jun could use that armor so much better than I could, I realized, especially if her core gave her a flat +1 bonus to the .25 bonus it normally gave. I’d give it to her once I found a way to repair it, or when I had enough potential to make a few more pieces.

{Do you think your core consumed the thing that let you swap between different pieces of the copperbound set?} Jun messaged without turning to look at me. She stepped aside to let me at the crack Okeria had made, then sent me another message. {We should talk while we’re messaging so Okeria doesn’t get suspicious. Well, any more suspicious than he already was from watching what you did to Nia’s core. And from us barely talking while we did it. Skies above, we aren’t very good at being sneaky, are we?}

Honestly, I wasn’t used to feeling the need to be sneaky. There wasn’t a lot to hide in my old life, especially not from my old friends. {It’s something we’ll have to learn. And maybe, but I didn’t get any notification that my core had done anything to the copperbound gear. I’ll have to scour my interface for that later.}

Jun nodded, then walked around the rock and braced herself against it. “I’ll push it the other way, even though the oil will probably do that for us. Just in case, though.”

“Just in case.” I repeated, consuming the bloodcoral ribbon from //ENDLESS as I readied an overhead smash. “Hopefully this doesn’t end up being a huge waste of time.”

The first blow on the Slyk barely left a dent. It rippled up my arms and shook my entire body, but it didn’t do anything more than produce a massive puff of dust. Jun looked over the rock while fanning the dust away from her visor, then ducked back down when I informed her of how little damage I’d done. The next handful of strikes did a little more damage, with tiny shards of rock splintering away on each and every impact, but it was like trying to cut down a redwood by making toothpicks out of the trunk. Sure, it’d eventually work, but Jun and I would be weak and exhausted by the time that happened.

Still, we went on. Blow after blow, break after break, tiny shatter after tiny shatter. I leaned against my hammer more than once to catch my breath, only to return to the tedious grind again and again with my battery getting lower and lower each time. Eventually a warning about vital systems being on the verge of shutdown snapped me out of my primitive focus, and I signaled for Jun to take over. She took my hammer and I took her place on the other side of the rock, my shoulder pressed up against the slyk’s home as Jun’s rain of blows began. It was strangely calming to feel the vibrations course through my body, and my mind drifted off to the sound of Jun’s grunts of effort and tiny splinters of rock tumbling to the platform below.

So I did something I probably should have done a few hours earlier; I swiped through my interface and found the mass of documents and videos that I’d inherited from Nia. I swiped through all the pure text first; hundreds of messages ranging from one sentence to multiple pages worth of text spread out over fourty-three separate years. I raised an eyebrow when I got to the last message and saw that it was a fairly new addition, whereas all the others had been in chronological order, but it wasn’t from the time Jun and I had been in Walkalong. And it had a little notification next to the message that, when pressed, told me that it had been marked for deletion after it had been originally sent.

It was sent about two months ago, and the title read: Message of Apology to Keratily Keratily the Left Eye of Moricla. But an apology for what? I didn’t think Nia had done anything to spite Jun’s grandma. I tried to think back to everything I’d seen Nia do while we were in Walkalong, but there wasn’t anything that stood out to me. It took about three seconds of looking further back for me to realize that this letter was about Jun going missing in the Floodforest. My curiosity got the better of me before I could convince myself to keep skimming through the rest of the inheritance.

//Matria Keratily; it is with my deepest regrets that I inform you that your descendant, Juniper Keratily, did not appear at the transfer point along with the rest of the new recruits. I have questioned the group for her whereabouts, but the seven who were transferred along with her have next to no memories of the hazard they temporarily found themselves in. A message has been sent out to Grand Warden Okeria Perek for assistance in the investigation of the hazards in a five-hundred kilometer radius of the transfer point, but we have reason to suspect foul play was involved.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

//Recruits Harvester and Scalovera know more than they are letting on, but I cannot discern a reason for that. We will be greatly slowing down the training process until the fate of your descendant is known. If you feel the need to exact retribution for Juniper, I ask that you wait for the results of our investigation before bringing it to the justices. I am aware that this is a huge ask for someone of your stature, but violence only begets violence, and ensuring that only the ones responsible are punished will keep chaos from spreading. I thank you for your time, and know that whatever decision you make will be wise.

//Matria Persephonia Persephonia.

That explained why Jun and I had met Okeria when we’d gotten out of the Floodforest. I swiped across the page, expecting to be taken back to the mass of stuff that was Nia’s inheritance, but another page came up instead. A short response to the original letter from the desk of Keratily Keratily.

//Dear Matria Persephonia:

//My granddaughter is not dead. I have ensured this through a familial blessing, but she is somehow trapped within a hazard. If you would be so kind as to direct mister Perek to me when she is found, I would love to come and meet you and my granddaughter for myself.

That was it. Nothing else, just a vague and slightly threatening letter from what I now assumed was one of the most powerful people in this new world. The response was a little less emotional than I’d expected, but it was good to know how Jun had managed to survive for so long in the Floodforest without me. I swiped to the left half expecting the correspondence to continue, and was pleasantly surprised when there was another letter from Nia.

//Matria Keratily; Okeria Perek just contacted me with news that he has located your granddaughter, though it also comes with a frightening unknown. A man who claims to have lost his memories in the transfer of worlds accompanies her, and she has knowledge far beyond what we teach in the first few years. Warden Perek ensures that this man is of no threat to us, but insists that I look into the current database for any armor signatures that match his. I have enclosed a copy of the data if you wish to look into him yourself.

//The man is a massive question mark for our outpost. The two of them managed to take down a monster that should have, without question, killed two recruits of their experience and power. I have given Okeria permission to store the remains of the vulnerable creature’s remains in my own personal storeroom, and I fully expect it to be missing by the time we have more knowledge of this situation. Your granddaughter won’t have its death on her record, as the creature will be filling the bellies of the rich, the shelves of the crafters, and the labs of our biologists within three months’ time.

//Finally, there are the whisperings of a new species being introduced to this world. The Embodiments know something we do not, and Endra had been strangely active for the past handful of days. I fear for the worst, but as I have not lived through the intrusion of another species, I may be overreacting. You need not reply to this portion, but I would appreciate it if you could dissuade or verify my fears so I know how to properly proceed. Thank you again for your time, and I formally extend an invitation for you to visit Walkalong at any time in the future.

//Matria Persephonia Persephonia.

Another swipe, and another response. But the right side of this one had a slight blue and white glow to it, as if there was something else entirely after Jun’s grandma’s response.

//Dear Matria Persephonia:

//Thank you for the update on my granddaughter. If the man you spoke of is not in control of my Juniper’s interface, then I would recommend trusting him. It either means he is telling the truth, and has lost his memories, or he had the chance to take power over her and did not. A man who wants to learn is an ally in the waiting, and a kind man who knows is already an ally, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

//I wonder if you have too little opinion of Warden Perek, or if you value him exactly right. I’ll request for him to return to Rainbow Basin when he reaches Walkalong and keep him here for a few days with menial tasks while you get the situation with the unknown man sorted. I can’t tell you if the rumors of a new species is true or not, since I don’t have any connection to the Embodiments, but I would proceed as if the rumors were true. You won’t be burying yourself if you prepare for nothing, but if the opposite happens… well, someone else might be burying you.

//I wasn’t sure whether I should include this or not, but I’ve decided to anyway. The last time a species entered the collective existence, the Embodiments went to war with each other. Truces were broken, new deals were bartered, and the hierarchy shifted overnight and didn’t stop shifting for a good few years. Expect chaos, and you’ll never be caught off-guard.

//Your ally Grand Matria Keratily Keratily, Left Eye of Moricla.

I looked down at my interface in silence for a good handful of seconds, the sound of my breathing only beaten out by Jun’s slow yet constant strikes on the slyk. I had no idea what I’d see when I swiped into the blue and white of the next page, but from what I’d read, Nia had really been on my side since the beginning. I almost didn’t want to read any more, so I wouldn’t tarnish the memory by seeing her at her worst, but I knew I had to. There was too much knowledge here to be forgotten.

A quick swipe covered my interface in blue and white staticy swirls, like a collection of hypnotic disks overlapping and shifting as I watched. In the static, I recognized a symbol. An ornate raindrop with a keyhole in the middle. And as I went to look closer, I felt a weight settle against the palm of my right hand.

I looked down and saw a small black key nestled in my fingers. Its head was the shape of a flattened raindrop, with a short and stubby cylinder that ended in a complex maze of bright orange teeth. If this key wasn’t meant for this hole, I’d eat my helmet.

The static grew louder and louder as I pressed the key to my interface, and the sound became something real as numbness shot up my arm and into the right side of my chest. I grimaced and grabbed my wrist with my other hand and began turning, the static mounting to a crescendo as the key ground its way to a deep click–

//ARCHIVIST HAS INTERVENED ON BEHALF OF [SEBASTIAN CORMIER PERSEPHONIA].

//THE KEY MEMORY WILL BE SHOWN IN WHOLE, INSTEAD OF A TRANSCRIPTION.

//ACCEPT PERSPECTIVE SHIFT [Y] OR [N]?

//[Y] SELECTED.

//INITIATING…