Veronika's eyes widened as the surrounding space digitally formed with waves and crashes to create a vivid forest landscape of tall elms, pines and moss covered ground. Moist stone paths ran through evergreen trees towards a gigantic stone wall that ran up to the heavens, so the tops couldn't be seen among the magical effulgence of the green, pink and blue aurora borealis snaking about the starry evening sky. A mad rush of scrunching leaves and stabbing ground headed for her. She braced herself for her oncoming attackers. High-pitched shrieks and bellows flew toward her from the tree and bush covers.

“Holy!” She gasped at the enormous size of hairy golden spiders rearing their spindly legs at her. They towered over her head with ferocious beady black eight eyes.

[Golden Huntsman Spiders are native to the rainforest regions on the planets Sol and Earth of the Sol System in the adjacent Milky Way Galaxy]

System called up some basic stats about their anatomy, but nothing that would give her a clue to their strength and weakness.

“Hah. They just big hairy spiders.” Kami confidently grunted as he rushed for one.

The spider stamped its legs, which caused the ground to crack and quake. Kami ambled over the cracks to approach the spider's side. He barked to send a round of icicle daggers at it. Veronika's eyes widened with pleasant surprise when she saw stats for him.

Kami - Level 2

-Health points: 6000/10000

-Spirit points: 15000/20000

-Physical strength: 5 stars out of 10 stars

-Mental strength: 4 stars out of 10 stars.

-Warrior skill level: Ensign-peak

“Wait! How can the dog be at a higher level than me?!”

She glanced around at Scot, Simone and Creed and saw their stats popup as a small screen next to their heads. Smiley face emotes suffixed their level number, but a frown face was against hers.

Scot: Level 3😊

-Health points: 6000/10000

-Spirit points: 16000/20000

-Physical strength: 7 stars out of 10 stars

-Mental strength: 5 stars out of 10 stars.

-Warrior skill level: Ensign-peak

Simone: Level 3😊

-Health points: 5964/10000

-Spirit points: 18965/20000

-Physical strength: 3 stars out of 10 stars

-Mental strength: 7 stars out of 10 stars.

-Mage Summoner skill level: Ensign-peak

Creed: Level 3😊

-Health points: 7000/10000

-Spirit points: 16502/20000

-Physical strength: 8 stars out of 10 stars

-Mental strength: 5 stars out of 10 stars.

-Warrior skill level: Ensign-peak

“Level 3! Level 2!” Veronika was pulling at her hair at the digits she was reading of her companion's stats.

Veronika: Level 1☹️

-Health points: 4326/10000

-Spirit points: 6600/20000

-Physical strength: 5.5 stars out of 10 stars

-Mental strength: 2.5 stars out of 10 stars.

-Warrior skill level: Fodder-peak. Need to work harder.

“What?!” She huffed, feeling outraged by her lack of digits in her stats. System was messing around with her.

“Hah stats suitable for a Casey Fodder.” Creed laughed at the sight of her stats screen bumping her head. He whipped out his submachine guns and fired rounds at the beady-eyed bugs.

She shook her head to clear away the screen. Now wasn’t the time to gripe over numbers, she had bugs to hack and slash. The small timer clock screen in her inner vision was slowly counting down. A spider leg swooped for her head, but she was able to duck and evade-roll out of its path. It shrieked with fury as it took a step back to stamp its forelegs to the ground and cause a quake, which had her wobbling off balance. Another click and chiming noise came out of its mouth. Veronika cursed when her body was slammed to the ground by a strong gravity force. It reminded her of the Bioreshaper’s force field impact.

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“Level one my ass.” She gritted her teeth as she pushed against the pressure and pain to rise to all fours: no stranger to pressure force attacks. Well as Wu Chen she could handle it, but her body was easily caving. The spider was closing in for a final attack.

Her mind flipped through the skills she knew she could use to date. Whip out her rusty sword? She could just manage to keep her arms straight. Fire her gun? Still needed arms.

“Damn it!” she cursed.

“Shepherd. Hold still.” Scot coolly rushed before her view and blocked the spider’s swoop attack for her head with his wire-arm: it fluidly transformed into a longsword, which he wielded swiftly before the creature. The spider howled with anguish and fell back to the ground, dead. The body digitally dissipated.

He helped her up then went to attack the next oncoming creature. Veronika was determined to make up for her embarrassing moment of weakness. She took a step back behind the cover of a tree and watched the others battle the spiders, where their legs slashed and hacked at the air like swords. After some observation, she concluded that the sword-legs were used for close combat, but for field and crowd control they would release their gravity magic via sonic waves or try to make them off balance with quake stomps. A plan for their defeat surfaced to her mind. If what she remembered about sonic magic was still a common law in this universe then its antithesis was density. Should the air be muddied with terra magic, it would impact the sound waves and weaken the force impact. She pulled out her brush-pen and closed her eyes as she pictured mud balls forming in the air.

“Pathway to Askara, I call upon a being of magic and might!” Simone cried out as she stabbed her tungsten staff into the ground to open up an orb portal to another dimension.

A giant breed of part mole and bear jumped out of the portal with a mighty roar. It grabbed at the pair of spider forelegs that had intended to slice off its head, and toss it about the ground to make it roll into some trees. Before the spider had time to recover, a mud ball flew into its mouth to block sound. Veronika laced her cannon gun with her spirit energy and fired bullet rounds that hit the creatures’ eyes. This would stop its magic force attacks, but the creature still had strength to stand and make physical attacks.

She stepped back to Simone and Scot. “We can counter the force magic, but those legs are still able to hack a head off.”

“Leave that to me.” Kami smugly said and barked to release a folly of ice daggers that flew toward and sliced through joints to cause the spider legs to wobble out of control.

Simone’s mole-bear followed through with strength attacks that made five of the spiders digitally dissipate before them. Everyone nodded with a clear plan. Veronika released mud balls in mouths with her brush-pen. Creed would shut down the eyes. Scot and Kami focused on shooting out the limb joints, where the mole-bear would make the final blow.

Veronika saw ten minutes were remaining on the clock when they faced the final five spiders. Her confidence soared at seeing their success in sight. But just as she was about to release her mud balls, the five spiders made an odd howl that disrupted the landscape simulation. The forest area instantly changed to the scene of a vast circular arena lined with stone columns.

They found themselves standing on a narrow stone bridge that was about fifty tiles to the center. The entire arena stone floor was covered with a hexagon pattern. An array with five outlines of sigils forming unworldly spells. Veronika recognized the sigils from the Power of Life and Space volumes she had accumulated over her lifetime as Wu Chen. Her mind slipped into one of her soul memories, which teased on the words Edict Array. But the inner rim held unfamiliar sigil patterns.

“I suspect an unintended simulation phenomenon.” Simone gulped.

“How is it possible for an Edict Array to be found here?” Veronika frowned and held out her gun before the five spiders, but they had stopped their attacks.

The spiders began to warp and distort in view until they dissipated into digital bits. Rather vanish, the bits rearranged themselves into a new image of a man in gold body armor and eight arms. He glowed brightly with a gold-white aura, which swelled with blinding intensity.

Veronika yelped when she felt her mind go through a shock attack. Her vision was nothing but formless white.

[This device ran into a problem and needs to restart. Collecting error data. Reboot commencing…]

System's voice rebounded around her senses and faded from her consciousness. She felt her being being detached from her physical body.

[Rebooting into Partition 2 Realm…]

The blinding white light eased into an image of the white marble vestibule within her Soul Library.

“I apologize for intruding upon your space,” said a young man with a gentle voice.

Veronika blinked in the image of the eight-armed man in the gold body armor. His amber-blond hair was cut short where the fringe was styled up so it resembled the peak of a stiff cap. But she didn’t sense anything aggressive from him, rather he stared at her with a serene and considerate expression.

“How did you get here? Who are you?”

“I connected to your soul essence and traveled with you to reach this place using the Power of Null. But this is just a one-off occurrence due to various factors that were met. One of them being the activation of the Mystical Lotus Enlightenment and a few other spells on my side.”

Veronika sighed with some understanding. After all, nothing in the cosmos was completely sealed off.

“It must’ve taken you a number of conditions to reach here. My soul library isn’t easy to hack into.”

The man chuckled. “No it wasn’t. But it seems the Great Light Fate has drawn us together from two different star systems for starters.”

He bowed before her as he introduced himself as Small Cap. He glanced around the space wonderstruck by the vast scope and vivid colors of her library. “I’m sure you were an even greater cultivator of immortality than my brother.”

Small Cap didn’t elaborate further as he got down to business. Veronika listened with interest when he said that he was instructed to pass on knowledge for the Power of Law when the time presented itself.

“My brother said that an Edict Array would activate when the one carrying the essence of the Law of Wisdom was around.”

He moved his eight arms and hands in sharp and purpose driven flourishes that activated a small portal of gold light. The light eased into an image of a silver scroll covered with cosmic sigils, which he caught and handed the scroll to her.

“The scroll should carry the Virtual Path, which will guide the way to the inheritance path.”

Veronika frowned at the scroll. “Why are you giving me this?”

Small Cap heaved a sigh. “It's likely you don’t know it, but a cosmic shift has occurred in both the Starway and Milky Way galaxies. And I feel, at the eye of this shift is you. Either way, you will need this I suspect.”

A gong echoed around them. Small Cap nodded. “I think it’s my time to leave.”

Veronika stowed away the scroll within her spiritual sea and activated a portal for him to safely leave through.

“It has been an honor to meet you.” Small Cap bowed then stepped through the portal.

She chuckled then moved her body in a motion that reaffirmed her soul essence to her library, to stabilize the energies. Then lowered herself in a mediation pose and willed herself back to her physical body and environment.

“Shepherd!” Simone’s voice carried across her senses.

Veronika groaned as she came to the sight of the cretarian’s head hanging over hers. The Junkyard Town’s night sky formed a backdrop. She groaned louder as she sat up and saw herself back at the spot where they had discovered the portalator.

“I need a drink.”