Stone dust flew away from the ruins that formed in the middle of the cave, blanketing the floor in a thick fog that prevented the group from seeing each other. But even through that, Victor kept moving. He took small steps to not push his beaten body, but it still ached with every moment.

[Ability Unlocked: Strength Boost]

[Ability Unlocked: Speed Boost]

[Ability Unlocked: Recovery Boost]

“Lillie! Amadeus! Ashley! Everyone alright!?” He asked. Not a single bit of attention focused on his new gains. For a few moments he got no response, and he feared that he’d crushed his friends along with his enemies. That he’d have to spend another ten years alone before he could ever see them again.

“Me and Loki are here!” Amadeus shouted back. He coughed as he spoke, but sounded fine besides. Relief flooded out of Victor like a dam bursting, and he wiped a few tears from his eyes.

“Ashley!” Leo shouted for his sister from behind Victor.

“I’m here, stop shouting!” she quipped back.

“Now, I’m not so sure I should be glad,” Leo grunted. But behind the anger, Victor knew he cared.

“Let’s gather up around the Angelo’s corpse!” Victor shouted.

“Wait, Vic, what about Lillie?” Amadeus asked, reminding him of the worst of his fears. He stopped for a moment, hoping that her cries would fill the interim. But an eery silence instead overtook the place.

“L-Lillie!” He shouted. It echoed off the walls without a response. The others joined in too, shouting and moving around. Victor saw them as silhouettes in the dust, and they never stayed too close together. They instead scrounged every inch of the battlefield, searching for her until the dust finally settled.

Victor was the first to find her. And he did so with a horrible scene. Lillie was sitting on her knees, Daphne’s head in her laps as she cradled the old woman. She looked up from it towards Victor, eyes red from tears.

And those eyes widened, like she saw something in him that had been absent before. The appearance of a hero, someone to despise, or a stranger, he couldn’t tell.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, but that only put more dirt into them. Lillie sniffled and Victor crouched next to the woman with a cloth in hand.

“Clean yourself up with this. Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No… not at all, even. The lights… I used them to protect myself,” she told him. “I just… couldn’t use them on her.”

“We can’t save everyone, Lillie. I’m sorry about that…” he would’ve offered, in better times, to help with the body. But what was the point of such kindness when it would just slow them down?

“We need to move, and quickly. Who knows how many more of those they sent down here,” Victor said.

“Would you know?” Lillie asked him.

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

He helped her up and towards the Angelo’s body. The wings were twisted, bones piercing through the feathers with the body red and purple all over. It twitched even after dying, making the others keep their distance.

Loki even had his hand up to fire another cut, despite how wrung out he looked. Victor would’ve called him pale, but that was probably just his natural colour.

He left Lillie in Ashley’s hands, and walked over the Angelo’s red and silver armour unceremoniously. It clanked under his heavy footfalls, right up until he came up to a glow in the centre of the chest.

With Amadeus and Loki’s help, he removed the chest plate and looked inside to find two Seeds for the taking.

The first of them looked to be a tesseract, a cube within a cube. It was an illusion of a thing, looking like it was stuck in a transition between the two sizes. Though he’d never seen its ilk before, Victor could already tell it to be the source of his size-changing powers.

Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. He picked it up and pocketed it before looking at the next one.

That one was much more common looking. It was a piece of stone chiselled perfectly and glowing orange along the lines. That one he threw right towards Leo.

“Absorb it.”

He ordered and Leo obeyed. Victor followed suit, savouring the feeling of power returning to his fingertips.

[Seed Integrated: Ant-to-Man Tesserract]

[Ability Unlocked: Unlock Sizing]

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[Ability Unlocked: Enlarge]

[Ability Unlocked: Shrink]

A new tree popped into view in front of Victor. The red glow of the notifications was a boon, and he enjoyed seeing another of his Seed slots filled again. The first of his new abilities was self-explanatory.

Every Seed gave a new avenue of strength. It was like giving a new dimension to a person, with how they went. His Timewalker Seed let him sense changes in the timeline, and his new Sizing stat would tell him how large or small something really was.

Victor did think it a bit dull, but at least it wasn’t one of the other kinds of stats. He knew some fire Seeds that would turn the person they bonded with into a living furnace, too hot to ever touch the people around them.

Compared to that, he’d take the ability to measure things. It almost reminded him of his Weaponsmith Heart in a way.

The next two were of much more interest, and brought with them more questions.

[[Enlarge]: (Requirement: None) You gain the ability to temporarily enlarge any object that you touch. The reach and duration of this enlargement depends on your Sizing stat. Maybe with enough of it, you could even match the forces rallied against you.]

If he could grow his own defences and throw things only a catapult should’ve, the ability would prove to be majorly useful. The next was much the same.

[[Shrink]: (Requirement: None) You gain the ability to temporarily shrink any object that you touch. The reach and duration of the shrinkage depends on your Sizing stat. I have met a fair few who’ve escaped due to their small stature and quick reflexes. One of those was Adam, so fond of his form as he was.]

Adam? He knew the name. First of mankind, at least according to the Abrahamic religions. And as it turned out, the screen knew of him too. But the text boxes usually only mentioned the monsters from the other world. Was Adam one of those too? And if he was… how long had they been around?

“We should go now, Vic,” Lillie said. It caught Victor off-guard, hearing her say his nickname. She smiled at him sadly, and he clicked his tongue.

So caught up in his powers he couldn’t even notice that she’d been suffering. Victor cleared his throat and turned to the rest of them.

“Lillie’s right. Grab whatever you can find of use and let’s head back,” Victor told them. though he hoped he knew where ‘back’ was.

They gathered up the various guns and bags that had fallen off in the fight, stitching the packs together with knots so they wouldn’t fall apart. While they did so, a sudden sound of skittering legs seemed to grow around them.

Victor looked up from the centre of the cave, towards the ridges that held holes in them. There were blobby, fleshy creatures there, but that had the shape of balloon animals given human form.

Beady little yellow eyes stared at them, and Victor watched as they winked open and shut, like they were drawn on their faces.

“Monsters!” one of them shouted from the top. Victor’s eyes drifted over to their leader, a blue-hued one of them that reminded him of the mushrooms in the caves.

“What…?”

He could’ve consulted his bestiary, but that would’ve given him nothing. He’d never seen this type of monster before. They were so harmless, so…. Defenceless looking.

“How could you kill a Star! Why would you?!” the main one of them kept screaming.

“He attacked us first…” Amadeus said under his breath. His sound was drowned out by the screaming masses of those same balloon-like people, as they came out of the holes of the cave system.

“Let’s not stick around for the end,” Victor told the rest of them. the opinion of an invader had never mattered to him, why should it now? That was the consolation he gave as he started to move.

But it seemed that the ones in front of him wouldn’t let him go so easily.

“They’re trying to escape. Don’t let them!” One of them said, picking up a rock. Another hefted a pickaxe or some other tool for mining. They started throwing them at the group, and only Lillie kept them at bay. Victor growled in anger.

“You attacked us first!” Victor shouted at them.

“You invaded our homes! Killed our best! You’re animals!” they screamed in response.

“YOU INVADED OUR HOMES. MY FAMILY IS DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!”

But the shouting match led to nothing. It only angered him further, and he had to be physically dragged away from the crowds.

“Nothing worth arguing with them about!” Ashley told him as she took him by the arms.

Amadeus and Loki cleared the path ahead of them and guided them into another tunnel, where they kept proceeding.

“Down this path. The Gate should be close,” Lillie told them. Behind them, Leo was doing his best to shift rocks and keep the monsters at bay. They ran and ran, with Victor smouldering all the way.

How could they have the gall to talk to him like that, after all their kind had done to him. He stewed in those emotions until the bright beam of light that indicated the portal came into view. They stepped out of it to a sight familiar.

Victor didn’t take it in. He even managed to gloss over the entire trip back to Angel Heights, and the tearful reunions the others had. The only person who thought to talk to him was Amadeus, placing an arm around his shoulder in the infirmary.

They were both patched up and waiting for Audrey to return. That left them in the quiet presence of their doctor, who had better matters to tend to, and each other, which made for awkward conversation.

“Vic, you’ve been quiet the whole way. Something wrong?” Amadeus asked him.

“Nothing…. What do you make of those monsters we found?”

“Didn’t seem much like monsters to me. Goofy, yeah, but more like… bystanders?” Amadeus replied. He picked up an orange from a tray Leo had left them, peeling it and offering a slice to Victor.

The other man didn’t notice the gesture as he was busy staring away at nothing.

“You should eat something. Ever since we’ve been back you’ve been sitting here scowling,” Amadeus spoke up. That got Victor’s attention, and he plucked the orange slice out of his hands.

Before biting into it though, he decided to try something. He channelled his new Seed. Every one of them felt different, and his newest seemed to expand and retract in his heart whenever he stopped focusing on it for more than a moment.

Funnelling that energy into the slice in front of him, Victor found it expanding. And not just expanding, the heft of it increased, until it was bigger than an apple.

“Great. You’ll never go hungry again,” Amadeus chuckled. Victor shook his head.

“Not happening. This thing’s going to get smaller again, and I’m not letting that happen while it’s in my stomach,” Victor told him.

Amadeus popped another slice in his mouth, but that didn’t stop him from speaking.

“So if you were to get it strong enough, could you send it through your whole body, in and out, without it turning back small again?” Amadeus asked.

“Something tells me-”

“That screen you mentioned?”

“Something,” he reiterated, “tells me it would cause some issues. Those nutrients would probably get hella small again, or something in my bones would shrink….. why don’t you give it a try?”

“Nice sales pitch, but no. Want another?” Amadeus asked.

“Think I’ll just hold onto the one for now.”

There was a release of something in the air, and Victor felt a load loosen off of his shoulders. He and Amadeus sat in the infirmary for a bit longer, trading childhood stories and eating rations much better than the ones in the future until Audrey finally arrived.