“Cerill,” Rieren said. The thin boy with the unruly hair went tense at Rieren’s tone. “I’m going to use the Nerve Rods. Keep an eye out on things for me.”

“The what?” Cerill asked, gawking a little.

“The rods Essalina used to establish a connection with the Dungeon Core.”

Cerill nodded, but distractedly so. “But what are you going to do with them?”

“Call Serace,” Rieren said as she ran off. “Keep things under control here.”

She would have to make use of the same rods that Essalina had used, however. Since she didn’t have enough Credits to purchase them from the System Shop, she was hoping there were still some remaining outside the chamber.

“What’s Serace going to do?” Cerill called after her, probably too tired to give chase.

“He will destroy all the Abyss Rents.”

Rieren was fatigued too. The battle rage had kept the feeling in the far corner of her consciousness, and the momentary lull in the battle where she had been able to stand still without spending energy had the same effect. But now that she was running, she felt the full brunt of how much her body wished to rest.

“No rest for the ones who wish to win,” she muttered.

Rieren did her best to ignore all else that was going on around her. One look, one little glimpse of anything going awry, and she was well aware that her attention would then be diverted to try to fix things here.

That wouldn’t do. She had to bend all her focus to her main goal, to the real objective that would help them all.

Closing the Abyss Rents that kept on spewing out monsters.

Despite that, Rieren’s concentration was temporarily interrupted when she found what lay at the entrance to the chamber. There were some bodies there. Human bodies. A few disciples and guards she didn’t recognize. But one dead person caught her eye and rooted her to her spot.

Elder Saygren.

Much like the others there, his body had been torn apart as well. But unlike the rest of the little party, his head had been set atop a bony spike and stuck a few paces above the ground.

Rieren stared at it. Elder Saygren’s skin was sagging, his dead eyes were bloodshot, and the sparse hair was falling off. But the worst thing was that he still had his spectacles on, balanced precariously on the bridge of his nose but slightly askew.

Rage prickled all over her. The monsters. They had done this. They had prepared this grisly welcome for the invaders, who had clearly done their best to ignore and move past it, no matter what sort of effect it had upon their psyche.

Something seemed to snap within Rieren. For all that she was certain about her goal to save the Sect, to help her comrades, it all faded to the back of her mind.

In its place was left a cold, seething void. An emptiness that could only be filled with one thing and one thing only. The death of those who had done this. Nothing could redress the situation. Nothing in the world could bring Elder Saygren back. Abyss, she hadn’t even been that close to the man.

But the atrocity itself… it brought back memories of the past. Of the injustices they had all been forced to labour under in the previous timeline. Of how they’d had no recourse but to toil through unfair situations and desperately make the best of it.

Of how much they had sacrificed and lost.

All because of wanton cruelty. Because those who had power sought to lord it over others. Because the great and the mighty cared not a whit for those they trod underfoot.

Rieren had entered this timeline with the little bubble of hope that things would be different this time. Even when the Sect had seemingly fallen, when the accursed gods had destroyed Lionshard mountain, she’d still had some faith that they could find a solution.

Well, they still might. In fact, they would. Rieren’s hands had already balled to fists, and now her fingers felt as though they wouldn’t stop until they had perforated through the back of her hands. She wasn’t going to let any of this end without finding the answers she needed, without ensuring that the Sect survived.

No matter what.

It was good that Rieren found the rods and the dead automatons just outside the entrance. Here, the noise of battle and the chaos behind her felt so muted, she might have been a mere spectator. But it was still a reminder that the others were waiting. Amalyse was waiting.

Rieren picked up all of the rods as quickly as possible and threw them all into her storage ring. Then she hurried back.

Running through the centre of the chamber was only going to draw attention. She needed to move around the fighting. After all, her target was beyond the battlefield, at the edges of the large room.

Sprinting solidified just how large the place was. It wasn’t surprising. Lionshard mountain covered an enormous amount of ground, easily capable of holding several cities on its broad sides. That such large areas could be hidden within it made sense logically. It was awe-inspiring more in the sense of the power needed to carve such chambers out of the mountain’s rocky innards.

The awe didn’t last long. As she ran, the battle once again claimed her attention front and centre.

It wasn’t going terribly, Rieren was relieved to notice. With the help of the Elder and the Arteroth soldiers, the disciples and the guards of Lionshard Sect were still keeping the worst of the Abyssals at bay. Their numbers were still unending, however.

Not for long, if Rieren’s plan worked. She just hoped the process would be fast enough.

Rieren reached her destination in a few moments. The nearest earthy root jutting out of the chamber’s wall was no different from the ones she had observed so far. It looked like a tree root but made entirely of dirt, little green spots like moss marring its surface here and there.

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She pulled out a rod and stabbed it into the root. There was no overt reaction. Rieren would have been at least a little unsettled if that thing had wriggled in pain or something.

Next, she focused on her Essence. The Awakening realm allowed her to emit it, which was necessary for the use of the rods. She directed much of her Essence through the rods and into the root, trying to see if she could form some sort of connection with the Anachron’s Essence, just as she had done with the Fellserpent.

When she focused Essence into her eyes, she had no trouble seeing that there was strange Essence within the root. It was a sludgy, dark brown like freshly tilled earth. That had to be the Anachron’s Essence. No, Serace’s Essence now.

It was interacting with her silvery-blue Essence, though it was hard to tell what sort of interaction it was. Rieren peered further. Later in life, she’d had a level of control that allowed her to fine-tune Essence to form specific shapes instead of just an amorphous aura that went where it willed. That wasn’t possible right now, sadly.

“Rieren?”

She froze. The voice ringing in her mind was Serace’s. A part of her was elated that not only was he still alive, but he had also responded to her. Her connection had worked, just as she had aimed.

“Serace?” she said out loud. “Can you hear me?”

“You sound very… far away.” Serace was halting and uncertain, like someone who had woken up after a long sleep. “Where are you? What is happening? I… I can’t remember much…”

That was a little concerning. A distant part of her recognized that Serace’s interactions with the supposedly dead Anachron had too many unknowns about it. But they had a far greater problem at the moment, so Serace’s ones would have to wait.

“We need your help, Serace,” Rieren said, putting as much urgency as she could into her voice. “We are in a great deal of trouble, but you can save us. You have the power. I know you do. Can you help us, Serace? Can you make sure the Sect will live to see another day?”

“What… what are you talking about?” There was a slight hint of panic in his voice now. Confusion and chaos. “I don’t even know what’s going on. Why won’t you answer me?”

“Serace. Serace!”

“What?”

“Serace!”

“What?”

“Remember who you are. Do you recall? Stop thinking and start recalling. Who are you? What are you?”

“I…” He paused for a while. “What am I? What am I? I… I’m a monster. Fitting, since I’ve lost everything. I’m nothing. I’m—”

“No! You are Serace. You are a—”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve lost the friend I cared for the most. I’ve failed the Sect time and time again, failed to secure the Anachron’s Beast Core. Failed to do anything I set out. This… this timeline was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be better, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” she found herself saying slowly. Quietly. “I was hoping it would be better too.”

“Then what was the point, Rieren? What does any of it matter? The same rigmarole. The same monsters. The same fighting. The same desperation. We’re still no better off than we were before, are we?”

Rieren wondered what Serace would have looked like then, had they been having this conversation face to face instead of separated by an unknowable amount of space. She couldn’t lie to him that things indeed hadn’t turned out much better than the past timeline.

No. Rieren shook her head. She couldn’t let the depressive torpor claim her. Not now. The others were counting on her to end the Abyss Rents once and for all.

And to do that, she was going to need Serace.

It struck her then, that to counteract Serace’s words, to prove him wrong, she had to prove herself wrong. It didn’t matter what her brain thought.

That was, if one looked only at the big picture and closed all eyes to the more specific truth.

“Are we not better off than before?” Rieren asked. “You are forgetting to look at the specifics. That we all have the system now. That we can use the knowledge from our previous experiences to do better. That we still have a chance.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t think it ever did. All these little things we improved, and look at us, still stuck without having gained anything worth mentioning. Nothing is really better.”

Despite the distance between them, despite the somewhat tenuous connection established by the rod, Rieren felt like she could see Serace then. Hunched over, facing the ground, burdened by the weight of power he hadn’t ever truly sought.

But what sympathy Rieren might have had for him had long fled at his words.

“That’s enough.” The anger, brimming within her since the moment she had seen Elder Saygren’s corpse, now threatened to burst out. “Forget your feelings, Serace. Forget your circumstances. Forget all your thoughts. Just pay attention to the truth that we can come out of this with something worth having. Something worth struggling for.”

“Why does that matter? Why should I care when I have nothing to work towards?”

“The truth, Serace. The truth. And that truth is that the Sect is still alive, still struggling against its enemies. The truth that we are all still alive.” She paused, realizing that her voice had become ragged. “So, let me ask you one more time, and this time, try to answer with the truth. Who are you, truly, Serace? Who have you been for the greater part of your life?”

For once, Serace didn’t answer immediately. Perhaps, just maybe because of Rieren’s words, he was taking a moment to really think before he spoke again. “A cultivator. I’m a… a disciple of Lionshard Sect. A… friend to Kalrace, to you, Amalyse, and… and everyone else.”

“Yes. That’s who you are. You. Are. Serace. And we need that Serace. So, are you ready to listen and do what I say?”

“Go… go on.”

“Good.” She kept her sigh of relief to herself. “Listen close.”

Rieren didn’t tell him everything. She couldn’t. There was too much going on and she didn’t have the time. But she gave him just enough of a brief gist to let him understand her motivation, all the while emphasizing that they didn’t need him to think or even feel. They needed Serace to act.

“You can control the Anachron’s power, Serace,” Rieren said. “I know you can. You know it too. Even if you think you cannot, you can. And we need that power to help us. You need to use it to destroy this chamber’s ceiling. As fast as you can. Immediately, if possible.”

Serace was silent. Rieren had explained about the Dungeon Core, about their battle in the dungeon’s main chamber to secure it and ensure the continued safety of the Sect.

“The Abyss Rents can be stopped with Divine-Aspected Essence,” she continued, hoping her words would enforce the urgency she needed in him, hoping to spur him to act however he could in his condition. “The water raining down from above has it. Now, we just need it to flood the entire chamber, and the most effective way to do that is by bringing the roof down.”

“Will that be all?”

“No. Just Divine-Aspected Essence is not enough.” She explained how the Arteroth were using a specific, drill-like technique with their weapons to apply the Divine-Aspected Essence in a manner that could harm the Abyss Rents. “You will need to attack all the Abyss Rents together with your roots. They are close enough. Can you do it?”

“I think so.”

Rieren smiled. “I know you can. How much time will you need?”

Serace was silent again. That he could calculate such things like time in his condition and for a point in space so far removed from him without being able to see it was a lot. But it was part of his new existence as part-Anachron that his awareness was much greater than before.

“Not long,” he said after a moment. “Prepare the others. The ceiling will be coming down shortly. And then the Abyss Rents will die.”

“Thank you, Serace.” Rieren paused, recalling Elder Saygren’s head. “I promise that we will find and bring you back once this is all over.”

“I am… content where I am, Rieren. There is no need to… find me.”

Rieren’s fist tightened even more. “We will speak again when there is time. That is when we shall decide. For now, we both have important jobs to do. I am counting on you, Serace.”

He didn’t answer. There was a twist in the Essence in the rods as they released the connections.

Rieren let go and stepped back. She didn’t have to wait and wander about Serace for long. All the roots started wriggling now.

She smiled. Serace was well and alive, and he was making his presence felt.