I sat with Jun in a plain room, horrified by what she’d just told me. It was exactly what I’d expected, but actually knowing it had turned out the way it had was just… horrible. Neither Ambus nor Gloriosa’s lovers had had their armor on, and they couldn’t access their inventories while they were in that vegetative state.

“Maybe grafting them would work.” Jun reluctantly agreed to a theory I’d just thrown out. “But they wouldn’t be the same people. They’d have to be completely rewritten if it’s actually as deep as Archivist’s analysis says it is.”

“Yeah, It’s just… there’s no good option here.” I sighed, gently cradling my helmet in my hands as I stared down at it. “At least he’s dead now. And Archivist’s still researching the real copy of his core, so maybe they’ll eventually find something.”

Jun nodded ever so slightly, but I knew what she was feeling. It was hopeless unless by some miracle we came upon another way we hadn’t even thought about. Like… forcing a brain-dead person to open their interface. It just flat-out didn’t work.

Jun held up a bullet she’d carved her God-Pen symbols into and sighed. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. We kill Scalovera, get Okeria control of the city again, and then we can start working on all our drowned problems. But if we don’t do that, nothing happens.”

I agreed one-hundred percent. I knew Okeria agreed, since he was still working on a plan even after he’d heard the news. But it looked like we were down Ambus and Gloriosa for at least a few days. That would greatly hinder what we could do.

“We just need to be stronger.” I decided, swiping through my interface and dumping out everything I’d gotten from Dylan. Most of it was junk, or things like gemstones and gold, but there were a few things that’d caught my eye.

Jun went right for one of them. She plucked a thin diamond-shaped canister from the pile of knick-knacks, staring at the shimmering sandy-coloured gas inside. “This looks like a blessing. And there are two doses in here.”

She twisted the diamond, and it cleanly came apart in two pyramid-shaped halves.

“Yeah, I didn’t have any time to check this stuff out at the scene of the crime, so you now know as much about this stuff as I do.” I chuckled weakly and accepted the half Jun offered me. “What’re the chances this is an antidote to Dylan’s core function?”

“None.” Jun shook her head. “I’ve seen this gas before; it’s from Sotrien. It bubbles up from the shattered sea from time to time, and it’s so toxic everyone has to take shelter for the few hours it’s in the atmosphere. Then the gods get rid of it, and everything’s fine.”

So a suicide pill. I frowned at it and summoned my armor just in case something started to leak, and identified the mystery blessing that was supposedly extremely deadly.

//Sotrien’s Sin. (Depleted, Mythical).

//Effects are greatly reduced when consumed by someone of core mastery 30 or less.

//On use, the user’s highest leveled piece of gear is reduced by (1) level. Their lowest leveled piece of gear is then increased by 100% of the experience lost by the first piece of gear.

“That’s… less than useless.” Jun said in disbelief, looking at the description she saw in her own interface. “I thought a Mythical grade consumable would be stronger. Especially since this one has a level requirement.”

“I think it’s supposed to be for power-leveling. For example, if I had a sword that I always used, it’d be a higher level than anything else I had. If it hits its highest upgrade at item level 50, then the bonuses from getting any higher than that would be pretty minimal.” I mused, watching the sandy gas sparkle like miniature fireworks as it caught the light. “With this, you could effectively transfer the experience you get from your sword to something you might not use as often. Like a powerful trinket or something.”

Jun frowned and put the blessing in her inventory. “Maybe. But it only works for one dose, so you’d need a whole lot of these to power level anything. You’ve got unlimited doses of it, but your weapon’s function already does a better version of what this blessing does at any time you want.”

“Not exactly better. It only makes drops from stuff I kill turn into experience. Anything I actually use still gets normally given to my gear.” I clarified. “So right now I’m not actually earning any experience from Endless. If I use this blessing, I’ll start earning experience from it again. I wonder if I can double-dip in the experience with experience increasing effects.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Okay, yeah, that would make it a whole lot more valuable.” Jun agreed. “Put it in Endless and let’s see if it works like that.”

That was exactly what I had been planning on doing. I swiped over to my inventory and pressed on Endless, scrubbed away the recovery blessing for a few potential points, and designated Sotrien’s Sins to be consumed. One of the ribbons on my shoulder shriveled away, and in its place, a tattered strip of cloth formed. I activated it right away, and a notification showed me exactly how I wasn’t going to be abusing the hell out of this thing.

//Sotrien’s Sins consumed. //ENDLESS level decreased by 1. //OILBLOSSOM-GRIP level increased by 13. Cooldown until next use: 72:00:00.

I turned my interface so Jun could see the notification. She whistled in appreciation, and I had to agree.

“That’s a lot of levels, but a lot of cooldown. Did you have another blessing active for the experience boost part of //ENDLESS?” Jun asked.

A good question. I swiped over to check my buffs, and saw that I had four minutes of the Leech Tyrant blessing left. “I did, yeah. So those levels are with the boosted experience.”

“Well, at least you can make use of it.” Jun nodded happily, then went right back to fishing through the pile of ‘treasures’. She held up a necklace that looked both tacky and expensive. “Oh, what about this? It looks like you could corrupt it into something.”

I gestured for her to throw it over, and a quick analysis told me that it didn’t have any effects. “It’s just a necklace. We’d have to enchant it before I could corrupt it.”

Jun barely heard me, since she’d started digging again when she heard ‘just a necklace’. I sat back and let her hand me things over the next couple of minutes, most of which turned out to be completely useless unless we found an enchanter. The vast majority was valuable-looking, which spoke to Dylan’s tastes more than anything, but in the end we did find two things worth looking at. Not including the massive shield I was still ignoring.

//(Rare, Crafted) Airlight Bauble.

//Core Mastery requirement: 17.

//Reduces the weight of the wearer’s armor by 25%.

//(Rare, Professional) Mercurial Rebreather.

//Core Mastery requirement: 22.

//Completely eliminates the burden of breathing from the wearer’s armor.

The Airlight Bauble was a small pendant shaped like a string of bubbles, each of which glowed with a slight inner light. It wasn’t overly useful for me, or for Jun, since the weight of our armor was both a good and bad thing, but it could be useful if we got different gear in the future. The Mercurial Rebreather, however, was a complete unknown for me. The thing was a small cylinder of shifting metal liquid, with two black caps on either end, and it would be anywhere from useless to a lifesaver depending on where we were.

We decided to leave the Mercurial Rebreather untouched. And leave the Airlight Bauble for when we had some better materials to combine it with. Everything else was thrown into a pile for Okeria to take whatever he could use from it. Leaving us with the massive shield that I’d been subconsciously saving for last.

“Alright, looks like we don’t have anything else to stall with.” Jun smirked. She gestured at the monolithic shield and opened her interface.

I followed suit with a nod. The shield seemed to resist being scanned for a moment, but then gave in just as any other piece of gear would.

//(Depleted, Entity) Cruel World’s Partition.

//Hello.

//If you are seeing this, then you are the one that killed Dylan.

//Thank you for that.

//I made a terrible mistake in choosing him, and now I will have the chance to choose again.

//If you ever find yourself in need of the support of an Embodiment, I am on your side.

//Signed Voralk, Human Embodiment of abandonment.

Uh. Okay. I wasn’t expecting that. I looked over at Jun, whose expression was just that of someone looking at a strange piece of gear. Not of someone who’d just been talked to through an interface description of a shield.

“Hey, Jun?” I said concernedly, turning my interface so she could see. “What does this say for you?”

She looked away from her interface for a second, began reading, and opened her eyes as wide as they could go. “Is the shield talking to you?”

So I wasn’t crazy. “I think so. I thought Dylan’s Embodiment would want to tear me limb from limb for killing him, but I guess they saw how horrible he was too. I think that’s a good sign.”

“Probably.” Jun agreed with a slight nod. She was still staring at my interface, with her head right over my shoulder. She snuck a glance at me, then smiled and repositioned herself. “Well, I think we’re pretty much done for today. And since the shield isn’t showing up on your interface, maybe you can convince me to show you it on mine?”

I rolled my eyes and sent all my armor away, then leaned in to the kiss Jun was aiming for. She pulled me in to a tight hug, and I could feel the stress from what she’d seen today in her arms. I knew she hadn’t been completely unaffected, even if she wasn’t as traumatized as the others. I squeezed her back, one-hundred percent willing to be each other’s distractions for the rest of the day.

“Actually seeing the people was horrible. But it was Ambus’ reaction that really hurt.” Jun whispered. “She just… broke. I’ve never heard anyone scream like that, and then the sobbing… I just stood there, Seb. I didn’t know what to do. While Ambus’ world shattered around her.