I blinked as the hail of burning splinters evaporated; I’d never seen a sword sublime before.

There wasn’t even a hilt left, the entire thing was just gone.

I shrugged and pulled out Boreal Wood Sword, a weapon barely superior to the plain Wooden Broadsword.

It went out the same way as its predecessor, so I skipped a few stages and pulled out a Tungsten Broadsword. …which started glowing with heat and made ominous cracking noises. Returning it to my inventory, I noticed its Quality Modifier had changed from ‘Strong’ to ‘Broken’. At least it hadn’t broken. I skipped another few stages to the Bone Sword.

When I started moving my lifeforce into the Bone Sword it started to produce smoke, the smoke from the blade black and malevolently twisting, the smoke from the pommel a ash-grey colour that gave off a feeling of sterility. The black smoke streamed towards the closest Gem Sapling; I stopped my lifeforce instantly, the black smoke giving me a bad feeling. The smoke dissipated, but its leading edges had reached a couple of the Sapling’s leaves, leaving them withered and dead. A moment later, they crumbled to dust.

“Note to self: do not use around people.” I winced just thinking about it.

I ran through (and damaged) a number of swords, discovering, to my delight, that Phaseblades and Phasesabers functioned the same way as lightsabers, the blade springing from the hilt when a button on its side was pressed. The Mythril Sword was the first that allowed me to run my entire supply of available lifeforce through it, and even then it buzzed ominously.

I stopped when the aura and effects they were giving off started causing significant damage to the room around me, which was at the Death Sickle, small pieces of the purple energy blades it would produce when swung shooting off uncontrollably and corkscrewing through everything in their way, even leaving light scratches on my skin.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

I manifested the pieces of Solar Flare Armour that were integrated into skin in the areas I was hit, finding matching scratches on it too. It seemed that, when something hit me hard enough to damage my armour when it was integrated into me, I was hurt too.

“Hmmm… guess I should manifest my armour when fighting dangerous bosses then,” I mused.

I patched the holes in the room, replanted the two destroyed Gem Saplings, then returned to the podium and sank back into meditation, re-establishing the counterflow aura suppression then immediately shutting it down again, practising generating and dismissing the reverse current. The faster I could do it, the faster I would be able to unleash my full power if required. Ideally I would be able to cancel the counterflow in a few seconds, but that was a long way off yet.

When I finally returned to the Tower, I was utterly frazzled, but also fairly satisfied. I’d managed to reduce the time needed to create and dismantle the reverse flow by a solid 5 minutes. Which still put it over an hour, but it was progress.

Dinner was Breaker Bear steaks, fried and breaded with a batter created from processed Slime Gel combined with a number of spices, the sharp tastes of which contrasted with the smoothness of the Gel.

It was very tasty and both Tear and I went to our beds satisfied.

Did the rain get heavier?

“Dammit,” I sighed. I hadn’t even got out of bed, instead using my depth vision to bypass the outer wall of the tower. I glanced down through the floor; Tear was still asleep.

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed so I just lay there. Idly I wondered if my Cell Phone had Terraria installed. I pulled it out of my Inventory and started flicking through it. It did indeed have the Terraria app, but what drew my attention was the app immediately below it.

“’Titles Menu’,” I read, opening it. Row after Row of names, icons, requirements, and effects- “Passive and Active effects? The heck?!” I immediately went to the help icon, finding information on each of the sections.

“How did I not find this before?!!”