The world around him was changed. Still greyscale and otherwise lightless. Still a mostly flat wasteland full of cracks and splits as far as he could see. Still a broken moon hanging eternally motionless in the sky.

Ok, so, it hadn’t really changed much, but it had changed. The change was mostly in the irregular, jagged spiderwebbing of deep gouges which had been ripped through the surface, spreading out from his location. He had to ‘climb’ out of a small crater, which, thankfully, he could do, thanks to a gentle enough slope perhaps. Beyond that blast center there was a clear spread of damage, the ground far more broken than it had been before. The further away he looked, the more the damage blended back into the same and familiar pattern it had started out as. In the distance, even, there were the bobbing, slowly moving balls of Chaos and Shadow. As they reached the boundaries of the damaged area, they flinched back from the new cracks and splits. One pressed on and a small flash of lightning impacted it.

A little Chaos vented, though it wasn’t destroyed, just lessened. The smidgeon of energy joined a waiting swirl attempting to get into his core.

Only his core was full, filled to the brim once more with Mana. He would need to do whatever it was he did the last time. Hopefully he’d be offered more knowledge. More spells. He needed it, because for one, his Arcane Spark was broken. In his mental library, the volume was there, but the spell pattern that he could previously draw from it almost absently like a motion he’d done a million times, was incomplete. A large section where the energy buildup had occurred was missing, along with some of the output portions.

He should be grateful, he supposed. He had been, was still absolutely convinced that it would have destroyed him. It turned out that while the modification had probably blocked the energy from flowing into the usual release patterns, there was one for touch contact which had still worked. At least, that was his theory. He’d definitely felt the trigger when one of Them had touched him. The evidence of the amount of energy that had been stored was around him. That he’d destroyed everything for what seemed like close to a quarter of a mile away, though distance was tricky to estimate without any real variation in the landscape, spoke to the raw devastation that Mana could wreak.

Here he was hoping to compress his core a second time, gain more power. All to survive? To endlessly grow and fight? Something told him that right now, all of Them that he’d faced were just the tip of an iceberg he could hardly fathom. Just how powerful would he need to become before there was nothing more to fight? Nothing more to take his life?

Then what? Be alone, trapped, on the dead remains of some glassed planet?

No. That couldn’t be what he fought for. Mere survival would not be enough. He would have to grow strong enough to find others. If you alone existed, did you really exist? He wouldn’t die, so that he could find others, for only when surrounded by life could he be alive.

He felt the pressure build up around the Mana in his core. It trembled and with it, so too did he. Shadow rippled as it had when Arcane Spark was overloading. A ripple of fear echoed itself within him, but he managed to swallow it back, recognizing that it was neither anywhere near as violent as he had experienced with Arcane Spark, nor did it feel hazardous. Rather it was more that his Shadow and his Mana were resonating a little. Perhaps the intense interference from the overloading Spark had created a relationship between his Mana and his Shadow that hadn’t existed before.

Maybe this was just a normal occurrence as he progressed in power?

Either way, after a long minute of his core and his Shadow rippling and shaking in harmony, both compressed. His core, invisible but to his minds eye, shrunk to an infinitesimal speck as it had the first time, vacating the space and allowing the waiting Chaos to purify and rush in as whisps of thin Mana. His Shadow though grew darker, somehow more black than the black it had been. The edges were more crisp, more defined. It still did not look so much like cloth as smoke drawn into a semi-liquid, semi-solid form, but there were definitely suggestions that it would one day look entirely solid.

He felt… more real. Anchored, ever so slightly more, in reality. His bony, withered hands were ever so slightly more fleshed out. They still looked as if they belonged to a corpse rather than the living. Given that he was quite possibly a legless, faceless torso inside a cloak of shadows floating in the vacuum of space over a dead planet, being living would likely be a very short ‘lived’ situation. Any progress towards taking on a form that felt right, felt alive, felt human, though, gave him some hope that he would one day grow strong enough to truly be alive again.

All around, still very much distant, groups of Them were gathering along the edges of the damage he’d wrought with the Spark. A few, very few, had sustained enough small arcs of latent energy to be destroyed, their tiny amounts of Shadow and Chaos being drawn over the distance and into him. He barely even registered them. Those outer edges had already been drained of whatever bits of static remained. Most of Them were now entangled or actively entangling, forming thicker layers of Shadow over more concentrated cores of Chaos, actively blocking the smaller, weaker Sparks that jumped from the cracks, expending themselves. The closer they got, the more energy seemed to remain.

He had time. Quite a bit of time it seemed. Perhaps ten minutes. Perhaps an hour. If he waited an hour though they would likely have joined into clumps as large as the insectoid though. Best not to wait that long. For now, he had a fresh set of choices being offered to him, just as he’d hoped.

This time, perhaps, he’d consider them very carefully. Take into account that raw power was not the best solution. At least, not always. Mana Bolt was is most efficient tool for smaller enemies. If he could upgrade it, penetrate through thicker Shadow without it being blocked, it could remain so for larger targets. Arcane Spark, before he’d broken it, had been very effective for groups and bypassed Shadow defenses very effectively. It had been impossible to target specifically though and had taken a lot of Mana to defeat smaller targets compared to Mana Bolt, making it close to net zero Mana gain for masses of the small ones of Them.

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His Shadow felt more solid now. More merged with his core. Whether that translated to being harder to injure by contact with Them or actually made him more vulnerable, he wasn’t sure. He took a moment to try and manipulate his Shadow, or to infuse it with Mana like the one spell choice had suggested was possible. He was able to… make it ripple, maybe, a tiny bit. So small at to be almost imperceptible. He may even have just imagined it. Wishful thinking.

Maybe, if he had days or weeks or months to practice, he could actually make real progress. For now though, it didn’t seem to be a usable solution. Imbuing Mana into his Shadow did nothing. The Mana flowed out of his core, as it did when he built and powered a spell structure, but it did not seem to interact with his Shadow in any way, simply returning to his core after being released from his mental grip.

Another few minute whisps of Shadow and Chaos slipped into his core as some of the smaller of Them perished against stronger remnants of the Spark. The larger ones were moving more cautiously, holding thick layers of Shadow as shields forward. Even though the latent Sparks still seemed to bypass the Shadow more than a Bolt would, they were definitely reduced in effectiveness against the thicker layers. Maybe the nature of the spell was a different due to the modification? Maybe due to being released through a touch triggered outlet instead of the ranged one? In either case, it did not bypass the Shadow defenses the way it had before, even if not completely blocked.

Perhaps he had closer to that ten minute mark.

Sighing, mentally since he could make no sound and take no breath, he fell inward into his mental image of a library. There the faceless librarian was presented with three choices, just as before. Three volumes of knowledge. Not just pure knowledge, he realized, not even muscle memory, mental muscle though it was. The broken structure of Arcane Spark was a poignant reminder and a clear indication that these spells were not merely memories, but something real. He couldn’t cast two Mana Bolts at once, but he could cast an Arcane Spark and a Mana Bolt at the same time without interference. He had a limited amount of mental capacity, so loading up on different spells didn’t mean he could cast them all simultaneously, but there was some intrinsic element to the spell which existed, quite literally, within the knowledge of it.

It begged the question then if he could ever repair or recreate Arcane Spark or if it was permanently destroyed. Something to consider for another time. For now, he had his choices and he would think about them carefully. He’d learned his lesson.

One of the offered volumes was familiar. Imbuing Mana into his Shadow, acting as the sacrificial lamb against Them and their insatiable consumption. A defensive measure.

Or was it? Perhaps, if he could learn to manipulate his Shadow more, it would allow him to use his Shadow as a weapon? Increase the versatility? Something to consider. He was, after all, limited to Mana Bolt once more. The gathering enemies were greater, rather than fewer. He suspected he’d have to deal with at least one if not multiple empowered ones too, such as the insectoid. The idea that he might find more Artifact shards was both exciting and terrifying. Keeping the shards rather than using them seemed like a much more desirable choice.

First things first, have to survive to even have the choice.

The other two volumes were very different. They weren’t really spells at all. More like, techniques. The difference was that there was no inherent structure to them, it was purely information, experience. Like something well practiced and understood, but lacking whatever it was that made it possible for Arcane Spark to be broken, literally, inside of his mind, even though it was only a copy of it which had been broken.

The first of these two new options gave him a sense of movement. It would teach him how to better move, quicker, over rougher surfaces, over larger gaps. There was the glimmer of a suggestion that at very high levels of understanding, he could even depart from the surface of the planet altogether and fly! If he could move faster and more nimbly, he could line up shots better, move away from the truly dangerous of Them until he gathered more energy, perhaps more spells, rather than fighting. Though, they formed from all directions. It would mean a constant, unending, moving battle. He’d maybe have been fast enough to simply run beyond the reach of the insectoid though, rather than fight it. Lacking Arcane Spark, he didn’t think he could even take one down anymore.

The third was a sense of resilience for the spell structures themselves. The ability to safely pass more through them, without a failure. Maybe… maybe this could have preserved Arcane Spark, even in its mutated state. Maybe the circuits could have survived? Could he use it to make Mana Bolt more powerful, without actually improving the spell structure itself? Just increase the amount of Mana contained within it? It might give him the amount of power he needed to punch through the tougher enemies that he otherwise had to bleed off their Shadow with hit after hit until they could not longer maintain themselves. Hitting harder against tougher targets was something he desperately needed.

He briefly glanced back into the outside world and saw he still had a little time. His thoughts returned over and over to the empowerment skill. It was broadly applicable, though he only had one spell to apply it to at the moment. It could be incredibly useful in the future. Then again, it felt like something he would likely develop on his own, whereas he greatly lacked the knowledge to even try to build a spell, if such a thing were even possible for him. The shadow spell might give him critical insight as well as allowing him to protect himself. Trading Mana for time though wasn’t necessarily a winning prospect, because he needed to gain Mana in order to reach the next milestone.

The mobility upgrade was similarly something he’d likely figure out over time, yet the ability to better manage his position and cross gaps and cracks that slowed or outright stopped him was an attractive one. It consumed no energy he was aware of and it could definitely give him more time. He could more readily focus on the lighter targets, maximize his Mana returns. Try to get to the next level as efficiently as possible. It would mean a lot more active dodging and limit him to the lighter targets, but it made tremendous sense.

Though he had some time to consider, it would be best to engage the incoming front as much on his own terms as possible. Punch through the heavier conglomerates of Them that were now leading the push, taking advantage of the remaining, latent Sparks, to take them down and move through and past into the spread out, gathering fields of little ones of Them. Thus, the perception of their being time to decide was a false one. It was time to start this fight, which meant;

It is time to choose.