The next five days were pretty mundane. Almost boring, to be honest. Physical combat practice with my apprentice, Life Nova baths with the clones, Life Nova infusion with the egg. Rinse. Repeat. If I had to hit something with a stick one more time I was going to start a riot in the middle of a crowded city just to break up the monotony.

The one singular upside was that my friends cleared out their stockpile of wish scrolls, and then cleared the new stockpile I built up over the intervening days (minus five for emergencies). Ninety four scrolls in total, and I’d apparently grown enough to get seventeen points per wish out of them, netting me more than fifteen hundred. On top of that, my showing in the trial had impressed my competitors, and a hundred plus D-rankers apparently gave some decent rep.

All in all I’d acquired a whopping forty eight hundred points from the trip and wishes both, and I was pretty blown away by the windfall. It would only get more impressive as we went too. Stories about my feats would grow and spread, snowballing as I gained in power.

I was really feeling the crunch now. It was easy to understand why people fought so hard for the Wishmaster position. Imagining the passive income of being THE Wishmaster was making me salivate. I forced myself to focus on the egg, pushing past that.

The egg was starting to react. The formerly ash grey shell was cracking, emerald flames flickering inside. Life Nova was taking root, and my crow was going to be born soon. Hopefully today, and even more hopefully, NOW, because I was about to leave for the next trial, and I would have liked to have it as backup.

In fact, I’d even skipped my healing bath today in order to infuse it for some extra time. I’d recovered enough not to be in real danger without it. In fact, I could recover the rest of the way without another Life Nova, it would just take MUCH too long. The crow might be able to shrink that time though.

I focused on the egg, pouring in the power as usual. It was pretty tedious, or at least, it had been every other time.

It took me a minute to realize that it was actively pulling on my power instead of just passively accepting it. The pull didn’t overtake my input speed right away, slowly ramping up, but after a short wait, I finally caught a hold of the slight suction that was slowly overwhelming my own input.

“Well hello,” I grinned down at the egg. “Waking up hungry, are you? Good thing I decided to skip my bath. Drink up.” I pushed slightly, flooding the egg with more Life Nova flavored energy.

The heat of the flames inside the cracking egg exploded upward, the warping air beating at my skin. Not just metaphorically either. It was literally beating, like a pounding heart. I could feel the flex and surge of the flame inside as…something built around us. Impact, significance, fate. Who knew. I was currently experiencing the BIRTH of a D-rank entity. A hundred plus points of Impact coming into existence all at once.

I’d never considered how singular this experience was going to be, but now that I knew, I focused every ounce of my attention on the egg, Eye of Revelation cranked as I watched it slowly shift and change.

The changes weren’t large or obvious. Just a little tweak here or there, in things I wouldn’t have even be able to see before I hit D-rank. I had no idea how to describe the alterations occurring within the egg right now. Just that there were millions of them happening too quickly to track, changes in the metaphysical structure of the world around me.

I had to shut off Eye of Revelation because I wasn’t able to process what was happening. My soul damage was interfering with my perception of metaphysical elements somehow, which was a whole OTHER can of worms I’d need to open later, but that was nothing compared to the flare of power on my skin.

Triggering Mornax, I thanked the gods that Callie had mandated two forms max, because in just Zagan I’d have been in trouble.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, I felt a sort of…shift, in the air. The Impact around me started to condense in a way I’d never felt before, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt what I needed to do next. I threw the egg straight up into the air like a fastball, staring in wonder as it exploded in a conflagration of green flame.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Even in Mornax, I had to step back, because the sheer intensity of that purifying fire was beyond anything I’d ever felt. It was actually healing me as it bathed me, but it was so fucking powerful that my physical body would have been a briquette if I hadn’t been defending myself with my most durable form.

When the light faded, I stared down at my hands in awe. It was gone. The soul damage was gone. The birth of my new companion had washed away all of it. I kind of wished Felicity was here, because it probably could have cleansed her too.

Not that I suspected my new friend could do that at will. That was a one time occurrence. Still, I practically glowed with health and wellness as I stared up at the bright green flaming bird gliding down from above me. He was smaller than I’d expected, but he looked more like a small falcon made of green fire than a hatchling.

I raised an arm and he settled on it. His flames didn’t even make me feel a little warm. He was controlling them now, or they couldn’t hurt me with our bond, whichever.

“I know what you are,” I told him with pride. “Life Nova Phoenix. A completely unique creature. And you are breathtaking.” I could see him on my stat sheet now, details and all. Bonded companion: Life Nova Phoenix. “Welcome to the world…Archimedes.”

My new friend chimed like a bell, a trilling, echoing noise that no normal bird would ever make, and just like Jessie could understand Randall, I understood Archimedes, or Archie as I was calling him in my head. A song of welcome and harmony and joy that scorched my soul in a much more pleasant way than terrible lake cauldrons of boiling misery.

Speaking of which, I checked my scan ring. “Shit, we gotta go buddy. We’re going to be late.” I checked the location on the map, cursing as I dropped Zagan and Mornax and triggered Mephistopheles, Waltzing forward for all I was worth. Archie let out a challenging trill and then…did the same.

“How the fuck is THAT fair?” I demanded as he started vanishing and reappearing in a series of flame bursts. “You have fucking WINGS and you can still somehow immediately use my techniques?” He trilled again. “Yes, I know I made you with a technique. Does that mean you can use any of the ones I have?”

The response this time was more of a long, warbling song. It took me a second to parse. He COULD use my techniques, but only their forms. His only energy type was Life Nova. Cosmic Collapse, my Waltz, and a few others, he could use Life Nova variations of those, and any new ones I created he would get too.

He could even, apparently, use a Life Nova version of Abomination Engine, which I couldn’t even do, and couldn’t figure out the mechanics of no matter how hard I tried.

It was a good distraction for our trip, which took about an hour even at top speed. The directions this time led us to a new place, a weird flat topped mountain temple complex kind of place with a circle of pillars surrounding an empty platform.

Elena was standing with Mnemosyne off to one side, so I met up with them, figuring whatever we were doing having someone to talk to couldn’t hurt. Plus they might KNOW what we were doing, since I was pretty sure I missed the explanation. “Hey, sorry I’m late. They tell us what’s going on?”

The older woman smiled at me warmly. “You’re certainly looking better than last I saw you. My compliments to your healer.” I was a bit embarrassed, given what I knew of her. I’d made the decision to try to pass her a scroll, claiming it wasn’t mine, but I wanted to wait until she was out of the trials. I felt like a failed candidate was less likely to be watched.

“I heal fast,” I shrugged. An annoyed trill filled my ears and I snorted. “This is Archie by the way. Short for Archimedes. He’s my new bonded companion.” The bond was actually weird. I didn’t have a Skill for beast bonding. It was more…natural than that.

Elena laughed. “Hello Archimedes. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Elena. Anyway, Mephistopheles, you asked about the trial. This one is a bit different than the last. It’s more cooperative, at least at first. The Boot of Atlas. A flat descending surface is going to crush us all. Last person standing wins. No prize this time. Presumably to encourage us to band together.”

Looking around, I saw that indeed, people were forming groups. Which seemed dumb because if it was a uniform surface everyone inside the platform was going to be helping whether they liked it or not.

Mnemosyne snorted. “Bullshit. They’re just making cliques to study each other’s abilities. Let’s be real, this working together stuff is probably a one off. Knowing what everyone can do is a huge strategic advantage. I’m surprised there’s not more of them over here hoping to get a look at what last trial’s big winner can do.”

“One win is a fluke,” I corrected. “Admitting otherwise would mean admitting my superiority, and Ascendants don’t do that unless there’s no other choice. They’ll be treating me like a lucky moron unless my results this time are similarly impressive, and even after that it might take another trial to really cement the idea.”

She snickered. “You’ve got them pegged. Dipshits and their dipshit pride. Whatever, I’m standing behind your giant ass, I’ll just take a nap and let you two deal with all the pressure.” She winked, showing she was just teasing, and I laughed at the brazen shit talking. It felt nice to be around someone who just said whatever they felt like. It made me miss Benny.

Before I could actually respond though, we were cut off by a burst of noise. Everyone turned as an eruption of ghostly pale flames consumed the center of the platform. When it cleared, a man stood in its place, white clothes, white hair, dark skin, white animal ears on top of his head, and nine bushy white fox tails waving behind him.

“Hello Rackham!” crowed the enthusiastic…Kitsune? I mean he had to be. “I am Darian, and welcome to the BOOT OF ATLAS!” He threw his hands up in triumph, clearly expecting applause…that didn’t come. His foxy ears drooped. “Every time,” he muttered under his breath. “Well since you all INSIST on being downers about this, fine. Welcome to the Boot of Atlas. As was already explained you’ll be crushed under a flat platform. Work together to survive and the last one standing gets bragging rights. Also points. There’s a point system. But we don’t tell you what it is or how many you have or what it's for. So…now you know.”

“They’re not supposed to know!” shouted someone from the crowd outside the platform. “That’s why we don’t tell them anything!”

Darian glared. “Well then maybe YOU should come up here and do the announcements CHAD!”

“I’m good!” came the same voice. “You’re doing fine!”

Rolling his eyes Darian turned back to us. “Whatever, don’t get crushed.” Then he vanished in another burst of pale flame. Above us, something shifted, and I grinned as I took up a defensive stance and triggered Mornax. This one actually seemed like it might be fun.