We hunted down more creatures within the city walls. One after another, sometimes many at a time, we killed more usurpers of stranger and stranger shapes and sizes. Hiveminds and swarms. Soldiers carved from stone. Creatures as tall as houses with more limbs than you could count.

But we could never fully clear the city. Not with the rift open. Every day, more usurpers poured in. Sometimes, I would feel it. Wake up in the middle of the night, a shiver running down my back as I felt a new, tainted fragment resonate with the gateway inside my soul.

It was wearing on me. The exhaustion and all. However, we did also receive a dropped item for the first time.

The “items” were also not quite normal. In the “network” section of the gift - a list of people currently connected via my network, which let me read some of their information, as well as listing the empty slots - there was a subcategory of “Transference”, which listed items and owners.

Since they were bonded with the system, it was a bit different from regular armor, or even bound weapons. I could summon my spear anytime, anywhere, near instantly. It also grew more powerful alongside me.

These… didn’t work quite that way. Summoning one took a bit, a handful of seconds to call it forth, as the magic essence would manifest. It was like liquid glass spilling from the air, then coalescing into the item, then gaining colour, in an altogether strange process.

Our first item was received by Ann. Which made sense, she killed a lot of creatures with her spells. I could read it in Transference.

[Treasure: Burden of Lordship

Owner: Annabelle Belleflamme

Description: To be a ruler is a heavy weight. To be a tyrant is easier. The previous owner of this item chose the easy path,and was crushed by his own choices - Make better decisions and your enemies will be crushed.]

That was all it said. Ann had summoned it, and the Treasure wove itself into existence on her forehead. It was a thin, regal looking diadem, a purple gem inset in the elegant, silver frame.

Its effect was similarly simple; when injected with mana, it would cause gravity to press downward heavily on whoever Ann deemed a target. She guessed there were more hidden conditions to the power, but that was the long and short of it. The Treasure was still useful, though, since she could keep it summoned permanently, and the effect initiated near-instantly.

We used it liberally to hunt down more creatures. It was also possible to trade them, however, that needed a half hour of focus and somewhat close physical proximity - no more than a couple metres apart.

When summoned by someone else, the Treasure also took a different shape. For Emilia, the crown was thicker and wider, as well as having the sides extend downward farther, almost turning it into a steely headband. When Matt wore it, on the other hand, it wove itself through his hair, making him look a little like an elven prince or something. Chris, strangely enough, could summon the item on any of their shells separately.

In the end, Ann got to keep it. There’d be more in the future, after all. It also looked incredibly pretty on her, so I wasn’t complaining.

By then, a few days had passed, and my gateway had grown further. It felt powerful. I didn’t quite know how to describe it; it wasn’t like an engine the same way my cores felt, nor did it give me energy in the same way food did or anything. It just felt… real. Like I belonged, no matter where I went.

It felt right, I guess.

I took a deep breath. My fingers clenched around the shaft of my spear, the nascent spirit in it chirping at me. It had grown so much, too, fed by the fighting and Qi pouring through it. I was confident it would awaken soon, and it was already showing its worth. The spear seemed to almost magnetically right itself in my hand.

Another deep breath of air filled my lungs.

“You feeling ready?” Marie asked.

I looked at the rift. It was tall and imposing. A gate into another world, but not at all like the gateways we used. It was less like a sealed doorway that opened and closed for anyone who stepped through. There was no decontamination in between.

It was a tear. One that allowed free flow of energy. Qi and Mana from here leached out of this world, and those from the other side flowed in. It was a troubling sight. Around the rift, things were more desolate.

Plants from here could not withstand the altered atmosphere. Different air, different blend of energies. They wilted, and crumbled to dust. That was a part of why the frontier had become so messy. The rifts bring together things, where neither were fundamentally wrong, but they were incompatible.

So they caused destruction.

I breathed, tearing my eyes from the alien world on the other side.

Looking at Marie, I nodded. “Yeah. I… think we should tackle this.”

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She smiled. This had not been her idea, but we had decided we would do it. There were ways to close rifts, or at least prevent them from growing further. My master had burned one, once, so that worked.

They could be overwhelmed, but brute force was not the approach we should be taking. Instead, Ann would do it. She knew a ritual to close it, but it would require some time. She needed to draw the whole thing out, after all.

In the meantime, we would hold back the monsters. That much should be easily possible for us. We had been handling anything that crawled out of it well enough, after all.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Marie agreed. “Hopefully we should be able to do it.”

“The divines seem to think we can,” I said. “This one is weakened. The archmages just aren’t coming because the other cities are still facing the hordes. Some of those are from here. So, by closing it, we’ll be relieving some pretty significant pressure.”

I nodded again. “Yeah.”

Matt gave us a look. There was a faint smile playing on his lips. He breathed, too. Then, he swirled his hand through the air, playing with a thin stream of pink blossoms. “How much longer?”

“No longer,” Liam whispered. “The way is clear. Let’s go.”

Not needing any more words than that, we all walked, towards the tear in reality that had doomed this city.

- - -

It was kind of surreal walking to the town after hunting in it this last while. It felt longer than it really had been. My hairs stood on end every time I turned a corner, expecting some kind of abomination to jump out of me. For Liam to have missed something, but it was quiet.

We had tinned the horde here, and now, the streets were walkable. Somewhat. Our path was winding, taking us along the edges of territories, and through contested bits as well as streets we’d cleared. We avoided all the most powerful creatures, slowly making our way forward.

Steadily, the rift grew in our vision. It hurt a little to look at it, the alien shapes seemingly unfit for my mind. Like something about me was insufficient to witness it. So, instead, I focused on each step forward.

Seeing my feet move was so mundane it was calming. Placing one foot in front of the other was something I could do. Not worrying about the monsters quite yet.

The feel and smell of the air changed. Rather than the smell of dust and rubble that permeated most of the ruined city, here it also smelled of… things she couldn’t quite parse. Unpleasant.

It was like rot in its early stages, as well as the sharp smell of ethanol, mixed with that of sulfur. But even all that didn’t do it justice. It made her head spin a little, like inhaling gasoline fumes.

There was Qi in the air still, which clearly also existed on the other side of the portal, but it felt the same way that the frontier felt in Eden. It was wild, and unsafe, downright dangerous. Rather than the milder effects though, this was aggressive.

Like liquid acid, it hummed through the air, the unmistakable buzz of power turned dangerous and sinister. I drew my cloak of Qi tighter, shutting it out and the feeling faded, reduced to a dull heaviness and thickness of the air.

All of it only got worse as the rift approached. It felt so clearly hostile that I wondered how the usurpers lived over on this side. They must either be supremely adaptable or specifically prepared for invasions.

Not that it mattered.

Once the feeling in the air grew even heavier, and there even seemed to be some kind of ethereal heat spilling from the other side, making my skin all itchy, Ann stopped us. “Here. I’ll have to start drawing the circle.”

We all gave a short nod, and she pulled some chalk from her inventory. The skies were clear, so it wouldn’t wash away. That was good.

Ann kneeled down, and drew the first line. Then another, and another. Only after a dozen swipes was there any response from the atmospheric mana. It began to gather towards the ritual.

“Okay,” she said. “Clock is now ticking. I can’t stop anymore. I’ll also need to chant, so get ready to fight.”

A moment later, we all nodded, and Ann spoke. The first word that left her mouth was one that I did not know, and one that the Gift did not bother translating for me. I felt it, though.

The word slammed into the air with such force I felt a shockwave and my hairs stood on end. Another word flowed forward, smoothly and instantly, and Ann chanted with cadence, melody, and incredible speed.

I’d seen her practice, of course. Doing vocal drills and breathing exercises, but never liked this. Her hands… one moved across the floor, drawing perfect lines of smooth, white chalk. The other one flicked from sigil to sigil, arcane symbols that seemed to burn into the air for a moment before settling.

Her voice rang out in tandem, and the atmospheric mana stirred. First it moved slowly, imperceptibly. Twitches and small shockwaves, but then it roused.

Like a sleeping dragon, it moved.

First, there was a pullback, then a push. It ebbed and flowed, higher and higher. Every word Ann spoke, every sigil, every line and shape pushed it a little further.

I now understood why the ritual did not need to be centered on the rift. It couldn’t be centered on it. Because if it was, it would stir that hostile, horrible energy, and given the way Eden’s mana was already beginning to hiss against my skin, I bet that usurper-based mana would be intolerable by now.

Ann was gathering a tsunami of energy to burn out the rift.

And the rift noticed.

The energy swelled, reaching new heights every moment. Ann’s voice crashed into the mana like a song of thunderclaps, the ritual only speeding up. That’s when the howls pierced the air.

Screeches of usurpers came in, and Ann moved towards them, drawing more of the circle. Emilia moved in tandem with her, flattening the ground, pushing away rubble and debris as the cobblestones turned into a smooth sheet of grey. A canvas for magic.

I looked to Liam, and he nodded, indicating a direction. I turned towards it, and pulled back my throwing arm. The nascent spirit of my spear whispered to aim a little higher, and I adjusted, then waited.

The air was thick. With mana from Eden, the eroding power of the usurpers, the screeches of monsters, and Ann’s chants… but for a moment, none of that mattered. I had the rift in my field of view, but the headache was pushed aside by my iron focus.

“Little to the left,” Liam whispered.

I adjusted.

“Go.”

At his command, every muscle in my body tensed. Qi coursed through me so fast it heated up. Sweat evaporated around me in the form of steam, the power so dense it almost turned visible.

I directed power through my legs, into the turn of my hips and rotation of my upper body, then forced my shoulder, elbow and wrist forward.

When the spear left my hands, another thunderous boom split the air. My spirit sang with raw emotions, soaring, like a bird spreading its wings for the first time. The golden Qi enveloping the metal turned even brighter, as if the air around it burnt.

The first creature came from in between the buildings, and was instantly smashed to bits by my throw, a hole carved through the middle of its body.

In the next moments, carnage began.