Ar'Kendrithyst

Kiri sat in her chair and also in the sky far above the Brightwater.

Teressa stoically handed her a mana potion. The large woman’s blonde hair was a bit unkempt, a bit unruly from the neat bun she usually kept it in, while her emerald eyes were half sunken with hidden worry.

Kiri took the mana potion. It was as brilliant blue as a clear sky, and it weighed. It was her first potion of the day but it might not be her last. She decided, “I’m going for Intelligence as soon as Erick gets back.”

Teressa softly said, “That’s the dangerous one. Erick has to fight paranoia all the time. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, but… Hmm.” Kiri sipped the potion. Her Mana Regeneration slowly climbed, and it would likely settle in at around triple regeneration for a good five minutes. It would be enough. She had to save some fuel for the treachery that was sure to come. No one truly trusted Brightwater or Farix. Kiri said, “I have a support structure. I won’t go crazy from paranoia.”

Teressa said nothing.

Kiri leaned back and submerged herself into Sunny’s senses. Things happened fast.

The Brightwater was down below.

The soul ooze was in the center.

Killzone bounced off the soul ooze.

Jane retreated with her kill.

Nirzir’s spellwork broke as she canceled it, because the soul ooze pulsed and sent out a thousand globs of black ooze and also a pulse of shadows. Nirzir didn’t want to risk her spellwork being turned against them, for it surely would have been.

The ooze’s pulse turned all the nearby bright blood into dead blood. Black droplets, each a meter across, hung in the air around the ooze like a thousand floating [Force Traps]. Black puddles on the ground for kilometers around ripped into the air, into those hovering orbs, and then the larger orbs flowed back into the soul ooze. And the ooze began to grow.

A waterfall in the northern wall turned from a lazy gush of black water into a seeking tendril of the stuff, flowing directly at the soul ooze.

And the soul ooze began to rise into the air.

Slowly. Surely. It had cast [Fly] on itself.

‘No soul casters spotted and that wasn’t actually a Soul Bolt spell; Sentries confirmed. It was a [Dispel] from a dispeller still inside the thing.’ Poi sent, ‘You’re clear. Attack before it can regrow itself or escape.’

Kiri focused.

Sunnys rapidly descended into the bowl of the Brightwater. For a moment, just briefly, Kiri was surprised at the scope of the battle. From where she had been all of this looked like dots on a far away map. Now, the soul ooze’s size was readily apparent. It was at least two kilometers across, now.

Kiri and all of her [Familiar]s opened up with [Luminous Beam]s, switching out for [True Sunlight Rift]s as soon as their Script Second allowed them to, letting them keep up the burn for 5 seconds at a time while adding to the burn with sunlight. She began chain summoning her [Familiar]s, while commanding them to reapply spellwork and to get back out there as soon as they could.

Beams of absolute light tore at the soul ooze from ten different angles, while Rifts of pure sunlight lit up the bottom of the Brightwater like looking at the sun. The puddles of soul ooze on the ground, not swallowed up by the monster, instantly evaporated under such an assault. Her beams crashed into the thing like streams of high powered Water Magic tearing through particularly hard ooze. It was not as effective as Kiri had hoped, but it was still effective.

She was spending 811 mana per second and regenerating— Not enough. She downed the rest of her mana potion. Within seconds, she was regenerating 133 mana per second; ten times her usual max.

Each Sunny was able to cast five [True Sunlight Rifts] and two [Luminous Beam]s, meaning ten seconds of work for each Sunny before they were expended. In the first ten seconds of her assault she managed to get through one full rotation.

Huge swaths of central ooze evaporated under her onslaught. Everything that broke away from the ooze rapidly evaporated, but actually breaking anything away was a lot tougher than it should have been.

And then the monster pulsed with a terrible, vibrating scream of shadows, popping every single Sunny in the area and disrupting every nearby rift. The land was still filled with rifts, though, and Kiri had managed to interrupt the waterfall of mucus streaming in from the north, but it was not enough.

Kiri sent in more Sunnys.

Kiri’s second assault went better. Sun rifts piled up all around the thing while beams of light cleaved into the monster. But she could not keep this up. Not at this rate.

In 15 seconds, Kiri had summoned all of her Sunny again, expending all of her mana to do so. In those 15 seconds, she had regained enough mana to cast two more Sunnys, which she had to do because the dispeller inside the soul ooze was still breaking them when they got lower than half mana.

This was not the slow and steady race at the beginning. This was a frantic sprint to see how much damage she could do. And she was doing damage. She had also cut away whatever magic was enabling it to fly. The thing rested on the bottom of Brightwater Lake, like before.

The ooze had lost well over half of its diameter, too, meaning Kiri had cut through 70 to 80 percent of the creature’s size—

She clipped the dispeller amalgam still inside the ooze. She got a notification. She had killed it. But she was not killing the ooze fast enough. And yet… Maybe she had stabilized?

All of the Brightwater was now absolutely filled with Sunlight Rifts, removing the black mess in the bowl of the Brightwater, turning the entire land bright red. Farix had repaired the broken crystals in the walls, staunching the flow of ooze into the Brightwater…

Was she still on a timer—

‘Time to switch. Keep two Sunnys on the ooze, preventing it from flying.’ Poi sent, ‘All the rest need to start laying down Rifts near the other sides of the holes in the Brightwater. Farix’s magic will not last much longer.’

She was still on a timer.

Kiri moved on, quick as a mental shift in direction.

Eight Sunnys stepped through the sky, back over the edge of the Brightwater, most of them heading toward the other side of the western break in the wall. Barely three kilometers down from the top, Kiri encountered the gloom that was everywhere below the surface of Ar’Kendrithyst these days. There were surely more amalgams below that gloom, but they shouldn’t be a problem.

Right?

Poi answered her unasked question, ‘We never noticed soul casters anywhere except near the core of the ooze. You’re cleared to dive in and start killing anything and everything you see.’

Right.

Kiri did just that.

Soon, light bloomed in the dark depths, driving away gloom and then ripping through disconnected soul ooze like it did every single night, all around the walls of Spur. Massive whirlpools of ooze began to form here and there as Kiri’s Sun Rifts appeared under the surface of the waters. Lances of [Luminous Beam]s went out occasionally, killing the larger threats before they could become actual threats.

- - - -

Jane sat upon a pool of blood and felt as the sun seemed to shine upon her and every single piece of reality connected to her many legs. The day’s earlier revelation of how Mind Mages saw the world was similar, but different. Similar, in that Jane felt the world in a way she never had before, but different in the depths of that feeling.

Lights flashed overhead, but Jane sunk her feet deeper into the puddles of blood all around.

Her connection to the world expanded.

And she realized something, there in that bloody land, filled with the transformed remnants of dead and mutated life. This was not physical blood at all, but raw, Elemental Blood. Her new thought was, in the realizing of it, perhaps a trite revelation. What was actually important though, was what came next.

The impetus to the creation of her Prismatic Class. The reason she wanted to be ‘Prismatic’ at all.

She wanted to do everything. She wanted to be anything she desired to be. She wanted to be Everything. Maybe not all at once, but she certainly wanted to see all that life had to offer, from the brightest skies to the deepest depths, and everywhere in between. She wanted to cast magic and swing swords and hide and show herself and tank and backstab. To be whatever the situation demanded; that was what Jane desired.

[Greater Shadowalk] was just one version of her transformed self, no less able than her [Greater Lightwalk] self, which was again, no less useful than her [Air Body], or [Stone Body]. Everything had its place. Every power had its necessity.

And.

She had been artificially limiting herself.

There were six primary Elements, yes, but there were other Elements out there that also had their place of power, their usefulness. Poi’s Mind Mage powers were an Element, for sure. Blood was an Element which Jane was very familiar with, ever since gaining her Queen Blood Weaver, but even before that, with all the blood and violence necessary on Veird, Jane was familiar with blood.

Jane touched the world through the blood and felt a hundred million small secrets calling to her, telling her what she needed to know, that Blood was an Element, and that Mind was an Element, and that everything she could think of was an Element, because of course it was.

That’s how magic worked.

“You see now, yes?” Melemizargo spoke to her, from the Dark, the place beyond mere Shadows. “It’s all connected. Nothing is truly separate. All is one, and one is all.”

Jane heard someone talk to her, but she could not hear the words, or understand the speaker. She felt her legs sink into the blood. The stone rubble below seemed to part, drawing her down as a depth expanded from her soul. The wind and the sunlight touched her and she saw herself vanish, becoming one with both. The shadows under her welcomed her to join them, and she did so, plunging straight down into the rubble.

This was the Truth of it all. Everything was connected. Mana held all possibilities; even more than the Script allowed…

Which was perhaps a trite realization, but there it was.

In seconds, Jane touched upon the wall of Ar’Kendrithyst and felt a thousand years of spellwork upon that wall trying to rebuff her presence. Jane merely flicked a switch in her mind she didn’t know was there, becoming one with the spellwork, and then she passed through the wall.

She shouldn’t have been able to do that. People did not [Stone Body] through the wall of the Dead City and live. Even the soul ooze could not breach that absolute barrier. But it was like the wall had been primed to let her through. She had no time for that mystery, though.

Because she felt the world, and the world called to her.

She touched the ocean underneath the Crystal Forest, becoming one with the Abyss, feeling her connection between Shadow and Water deepen. For a moment, she was the Abyss itself. Deep dwelling eels lived down here, and they snapped at Jane’s passing, but all they got for their trouble was a smack on the face and a ripping of blood out of their violet bodies.

For Blood was everywhere, too. Blood was life, and life was Blood.

Jane became one with the Blood, and then she moved on.

A twist of direction brought her to a land of Fire and Stone; to Magma. Lizards made of Elemental Magma hunted on the edges of those fiery depths. The lizards snapped at Jane just as the eels had done, but she left them be, for she was fast as the bubbling Plasma rising up, and she had to keep going.

She followed an endless river of Plasma that became simple Air that blew up from down below, into a land of Shadows and Air and Elemental Sand. She became one with something that was more than pulverized quartz and broken obsidian, and quickly moving air. Nothing overt lived in this dark, endlessly hot place, except for the elementals swirling in the sand, watching as Jane passed by.

For she had seen something in the far distance.

She followed the Light, this time.

A brilliance of Light shimmered out of long forgotten Elemental Crystal, a mix of Light and Stone, in the middle of a cavern that was filled with bright water that was not water at all, but Elemental Healing. Jane giggled. ‘Elemental Healing’! What a silly notion. They couldn’t come up with something better to call it than simple ‘Healing’? The waters of this hidden place were filled with all manner of fish and grasses and monsters that Jane had never seen before, and they all shimmered with bodies composed of Elemental Healing.

A True Rivergrieve tried to bite Jane, to eat her, Forceful jaws snapping out from every part of its thirty-meter-long eel-like body as it gave chase. Jane laughed. She almost wanted to try her hand at becoming one with Elemental Force and to eat the rivergrieve right back, but not today.

Jane left that land, headed up, directly out of the Healing waters and into another cavern, lit with the light from those waters. This smaller cavern was not filled with Healing, but instead with Lightning, and Jane had to laugh even louder when she saw the creatures that lived here. Spiders. Thousands of them. They crawled over webs made of Lightning and they shot bolts of lightning down into the waters to catch fish for their dinners.

They tried to catch Jane, too.

But the Darkness guided her forward, dancing through the Lightning and the Stone and the Air and the Water. Nothing could touch Jane as she transformed herself right alongside the Darkness, like a child chasing after a playful giant—

Suddenly, the Darkness passed through the lower walls of Ar’Kendrithyst. And Jane followed. The walls let her through a second time as she chased the dragon into a world of Radiance, dried and dead Blood, and a sad looking soul ooze’s core—

Several things happened very fast.

At first, a notification appeared.

And Jane felt the world all around her, as she suspected very few ever could. She felt the stone and the crystalline floor of Ar’Kendrithyst. She was the air all around her, and the dried blood on the ground. How was the blood dried? It was wet not ten minutes ago. As Jane contemplated the dead blood all around she soaked in the light from a hundred different Rifts suspended overhead, feeling the world all around her as she never could before. From the stone underfoot to the hot, stagnant air, to the bright sky...

She was everywhere, but there were two places where she was not.

Both of those places were in front of her. One was crushed against the dried-blood bottom of Lake Brightwater; the core of the soul ooze. It was a black and radiant white at the same time; a tumor of a grand rad twenty-five meters across at its narrowest section, but with raised domes of crystalline growth all over the thing, and with a smattering of sharp spikes of black/white crystal as well. It was perhaps the second most dangerous thing Jane had ever felt and seen. The only reason Jane wasn’t more concerned with the soul ooze was because it was completely cleaned of black ooze, its Domain was broken and could not be repaired, and it was currently cowering from much larger power overhead.

For Melemizargo, like a black mountain of wings and scales and power, had one clawed hand resting atop the core of the crystal ooze. He was a thousand meters tall, or even larger. Jane had no idea. She had never seen him this big. He was using that size and his power to gently crush the soul ooze’s core into the bloody ground. He probably could have done it shaped as a three meter large snake, too, but he chose this big form because he could, no doubt.

Jane had no idea why she said it, but the words came out before she had time to think better, “You’re bigger than before.”

“Much smaller than I used to be.” Melemizargo leaned forward, like he was inspecting a very pretty bug, and said, “You’ve grown, too, and yet you’re still getting into deeper trouble than you know how to handle. Tackling this thing without a Domain. Tsk tsk. Reckless. I respect recklessness. All the best growth is done through adversity.” He eyed Jane with an eye brighter than the sun rifts all around. “But you’ll run out of mana if you keep doing that, so you can stop now. I’ve got everything under control.”

Jane’s power vanished in a flashing instant.

Suddenly, she was just a tiny blue spider facing off against a massive dragon and a world-threatening enemy that that dragon treated as one would treat a very small stepping stool. And yet, something was different. Something unrelated to the dragon or the ooze. Jane felt different.

Some eternalness clung to her body like an elemental miscellany, a fog, or a glow. She glanced at her blue spider legs and saw a prismatic sheen that was new. She had no idea what it was, but she could feel the world almost the same as before, but on a much, much smaller scale.

Aura control? Perhaps.

She would deal with that later.

Jane asked, “What are you going to do with the soul ooze?”

“Make you kill it, of course.” Melemizargo moved one of his talons around the soul ooze, pointing to a cleft that separated the left half of the grand rad from the right. Jane hadn’t even noticed the weak spot until Melemizargo pointed it out. “[Strike] right there. You don’t even need your black sword to do the deed.”

Jane suddenly realized her sword was gone.

And that she was talking to Melemizargo.

And she was standing about thirty meters away from the soul ooze’s core.

She was halfway dissociating due to the danger, but she was still cognizant enough to say, “This seems like a trap.”

Melemizargo’s entire face filled Jane’s view as he grinned, showing off some very, very large glowing white fangs. “They tried everything to kill this little guy, and still they could not break its power. I had to step in, you see, and only because youmanaged to get this far with your understanding of [Greater Prismatic Body]. You deserve a reward, Jane. This is that reward.” Melemizargo inclined his head toward the west. “Or… You could let that happen.”

Jane glanced to the west.

The blood crystals that had held the flood back were broken. The flood had been released. And yet, time was frozen, and like time, the ooze had frozen, too. Not wholly. Not completely. Jane watched as a blood crystal slowly spun away from the hole it had been covering and as the wave of black ooze flowed out of the hole like that Pitch Drop experiment she had read that one time. She had no idea why she thought of the Pitch Drop experiment, but there it was.

Jane fully turned back toward the ooze’s core. She conjured a [Flying Striker] in the shape of a very large ice pick…

It hovered above her, ready to [Strike]...

And yet, she had to repeat, “This feels like a trap.”

Melemizargo nodded sagely. “It is not, but I understand the trepidation. This whole scenario of me granting you a kill on a demonstrably greater power than yourself goes against everything I usually stand for. This little slime was pretty strong, and it was getting stronger, and if it were capable of overrunning this whole world I usually would have let it.

“But I’ve learned a few things recently, and… Hmm.” Melemizargo hummed, then pianoed his talons atop the ooze’s core, creating a series of terrible taps upon the crystalline surface. The ooze’s core vibrated in fear, though that could have been Jane’s imagination. “Tell you what. I’ll make this simple for you: I saved your life, and so you owe me one, and I’m calling in the favor. Kill the slime. In fact! I require you to kill this creature in my name.You need to say ‘I dedicate this hunt to Melemizargo, God of Magic’, before you strike the blow, or else I will depart and let things happen as they will. And to be sure you understand what will likely happen: The sun is fifteen minutes from setting. That boy of Rozeta’s is lining up his spellwork right now. You can’t tell, but this entire place is in shadow, and the soul slime still has a good connection to its body, all the way out there. That’s why Farix’s spellwork has finally failed, and why Kiri’s blasting of the ooze beyond here has also failed.

“This place will become a crater in five minutes unless you kill this thing here, and now, and with my name upon your spidery lips— Actually! We’re going to do this properly. Transform back to a human. Now.” Melemizargo added, “And put everything you can into the [Strike].”

Jane…

Transformed back into her human form.

Feeling a lot less strong, and a lot smaller, Jane Flatt stood before the God of Magic, naked as the day she was born save for the rings her father had made upon her fingers. At least she hadn’t lost those. She did not flinch at the Dark Dragon’s grin. She did not waver as she readied her flying weapon.

Jane simply walked forward and enveloped her conjured weapon with the power she had learned. The dried blood all around her held a little power, and so she used that power along with stone and air and light and shadow, swirling them all together, transforming her [Flying Striker] into lightning and abyss and brilliant blue fire. The modifier for using all of these elements in a proper [Strike] should have been in the tens of thousands of mana costs, but it was a lot less than that. Easier, now that Jane had found her Truth.

She was everything she needed to be, and this [Strike] reflected that part of her Truth. Instinctively, she knew that it would shift to become the Element it needed to be to inflict the most damage possible. She felt rather good about that part of herself.

It felt… Very correct.

With a directed thought she hovered the weapon ten meters away from the weak point in the core—

“Speak the words, Jane Flatt.” Melemizargo said, “And thank me for saving your life back in Songli.”

“… Thank you, Melemizargo, for saving my life. I do this for Veird, and for your eventual sanity.” Jane said, “I dedicate this kill to Melemizargo.”

She struck.

Melemizargo could have prevented the strike with a casual tilt of his claw, for his claw held right beside the weak spot in the ooze’s core, but he did not. He merely grinned.

He had not stopped grinning this whole time.

Jane was honestly surprised as her conjured spike, which shouldn’t have been able to do anything, pierced the soul slime. As the length of elemental power drove deep into the core the black-white grand rad cracked in all directions. Radiating fractures spread out everywhere, and then deepened. Parts of the whole shattered without preamble. A tumorous growth of crystal broke away from the top. Another outcropping of sharp crystal shattered away from the left side. The entire right side cracked fully in half, the whole thing slipping apart—

Melemizargo lifted his claw and the entire grand rad fractured and broke like a disintegrating pile of magic, slowly at first, and then rapidly.

And then Melemizargo pulled his trick.

He slammed his claws into the center of the disintegrating soul slime and pulled out a pearl of white light. It was beautiful. It was pure. And then it was gone. It had vanished sideways, disappearing from sight in some way that Jane couldn’t tell. What had he done?

“What was that?” Jane found herself asking.

Melemizargo smirked, and then told her, “The soul slime was a unique existence, only possible because of a hundred small factors that normally never would have happened. A broken artifact here. A consumed artifact there. A feast of dead souls and a magical impetus allowed to run amok. A hundred small failures that I can only attribute to Fate, but there’s only one current Walker of the Path right now, so, by all rights this should have been his burden to bear. His monster to kill. It was, after all, a horrible amalgamation of every bad thing to ever come before. The perfect monster to foil Erick.

“But apparently Erick’s Fate is not a normal Fate.

“He guided you this far, and he guided me to be here, too. He gave spellwork to his apprentice in the form of [Luminous Beam] and powerful weapons to his daughter and his guards. He helped that one archmage from Songli with that inspired Undertow effect. He helped from afar, which was exactly as it was meant to be. Apparently. Not how Iexpected it to happen, but the mana is always a bit mysterious in its workings.

“But that wasn’t really your question, was it? Your question was about the thing I took from the broken core.

“The answer to that is simple to explain and hard to grasp due to the scope involved. That glowing fragment is the Truth of the soul slime. A fragment of power left over from the twisted life which birthed it, which I shall change into something nicer. Something to go along with this new world your father is forging.” Melemizargo eyed the world around him, then turned back to Jane. There was a newfound joy in his supernova-bright eyes. “Technically, I alsosaved your life today, Jane, but I won’t be calling in that favor. We’re even, if you wish for us to be even.”

Jane had no idea what to say to any of that.

She blinked.

Melemizargo vanished.

Time resumed.

The ocean of ooze flowing in from the west hit the sunlight-filled bowl of the Brightwater, and broke, evaporating away in great swells of wind and steam and air, becoming nothing but a hot breeze. It reminded Jane of how it was every night out there on the walls, fighting under the very same lights. She wasn’t worried about drowning, though.

Jane suspected that if the soul slime was still alive, then it would be producing more slime itself, since the sun was already setting beyond the Dead City’s walls.

All these lights in this land wouldn’t have mattered at all if the slime was still alive.

But it wasn’t.

Jane had killed it.

At Melemizargo’s behest, but still. The soul slime was dead. Jane was alive. Spur was alive.

At that thought Jane’s emotions came crashing down. She was a naked woman alone in the center of the red lake bed of the Brightwater with a hundred false suns hovering overhead and a tropical heat hurricane flowing at her from the west. If she wasn’t mostly immune to environmental effects thanks to the Class Ability that granted her that immunity, she likely would have been cooked alive, like the blood under her feet. That blood was dry and dead, and flaking under the sun and the sudden hurricane-force breeze.

She held up her hand to look at herself and a shimmer of thick air drifted off of her body, but more than that, she could see the world around her, through that shimmer, and a bit beyond. It was different from Surround Sight…

So both mana sense, and aura control, eh?

Not a bad haul—

“Jane?”

Killzone stepped down onto the land ten meters away. He looked ready for war, with his thin black plate armor that was just his body but shaped differently, and a helmet over his head. He had no eye slits and he didn’t really need them, either; they were just weak points anyway; places for goo to accumulate. He padded forward, his feet barely touching the dried blood underneath him. He was still flying but he wasn’t trying to be obvious about it. He was obviously stressed out, though. He twisted his head and body this way and that. And then he focused on Jane.

“… So hey!” Killzone’s helmet dissolved into a hood that he pulled back, revealing his face. His smile was pure joy lit by the light of a hundred suns, and his stupid southern-ish accent came back in full force, as he said, “Looks like ya’ killed it! We tried everythin. Lightnin. Fi-er. Heck a lotta light.” He held up his fists. “Adamantine battering ram!” With a chuckle, he said, “But then you up and steal all the glory! I ain’t complaining, though… But… Where’d you go? You freaked out Poi good and deep for a long while.”

He was trying to be non-threatening, as one did around Shades and other possibly-horrible things inside the Dead City.

Jane breathed out, then looked at herself again. And she realized she could actually look at herself from outside her body. And she could move around mana outside her body. This was strange. Aura control and mana sense were weird.

Killzone was acting weird.

This whole thing was odd.

And Jane admitted to herself that she was likely compromised in some way.

Jane said, “I’m going to conjure some clothes.”

Killzone gave no objection.

Jane conjured some clothes and felt a lot better about standing around in the open, but a lot worse in an entirely unexpected way. Her clothes were pastel blue, but also dark blue, and with splashes of rainbow in them. It wasn’t anything organized like a proper tie-dye outfit, either. It was a bunch of random colors splashed onto her body in the shape of clothes.

But…

So her conjuring was bad! So what. She would deal with that later.

Jane said, “I went on a journey. I don’t know why, but… Got [Greater Prismatic Body].” Which she decided to Favor right then and there. 50 mana per second was way too much, but 12-13 mana per second was easy enough to deal with— She ignored the math for the moment. She focused on the problem now facing her. “Found Melemizargo. Or he found me. He saved my life in Songli, and he guided me or dragged me or directed me… Not sure. I went on a journey and then came back here and he asked me to dedicate the kill of the soul slime—”

A notification appeared.

You have slain Soul Amalgamator Slime!

15% Participation!

+1.9 e25 experience

She shot straight up to level 99, and theoretically, she should have hit level 100.

The Fibonacci sequence, upon which the whole leveling system mirrored to a certain degree, dictated that level 100 should require 3.4 e22 experience, but according to what Jane was now seeing in her Status the required experience to reach level 100 was 1e100. A one followed by a hundred zeroes.

Literally no one was ever going to reach that number. The soul slime had only reached something like 12.6 e26, if her math was right.

Jane’s own Status now showed her as 1.8 e25 out of 1 e100 to the next level. The barest bit of what she gained was all that was needed to put her well past this soft ‘cap’.

From his expression, Killzone was reading the same sort of notification. Jane wondered how much experience he had gotten. Less than her? She had dealt the killing blow, after all.

But that was a topic for some other time.

Jane defended herself, “Melemizargo asked me to dedicate the soul slime kill to him, or else he was going to release it back into the world, and I don’t think whatever the Headmaster had planned would have worked. So, I agreed. And then I killed it in Melemizargo’s name. And then he took some Truth from the soul slime’s core and spoke about changing it into something nicer. Something to go along with the new world…” Her voice trailed away. “He thought that my father should have been the one to kill the Soul Slime, but then… We were here. And then this happened.”

For a long while, Jane just stood there, putting on a brave face.

For a long while, Killzone also just stood there, thinking.

With a voice almost devoid of his usual accent, Killzone said, “I don’t know what sorta fuckery went down here, but the current result is good and I’m pretty sure you were forced to choose between the sword or the fire, and Spur protects its own, of which you are still a part. So this whole thing is not a big deal, and especially so if this was us succeeding on foiling the Worldly Path.” He pulled back a bit, as though realizing something. With a softer voice, he said, “This is likely the best possible result we could have asked for. Good job, Jane. Report for decontamination and some debriefing, then you can go home and rest.” He turned half away, looking to where the breaking soul slime core had left a black and white scorch-like mark upon the ground. “Dismissed.”

“… Okay!” Jane saluted, then walked to the left two steps before realizing that walking wasn’t the best way to leave this place. And also she was missing something. She stopped, turned back, and asked, “Say, uh? Sir? Have you seen my sword?”

Killzone remained focused on the scorch mark, frowning a bit. “Ah. You didn’t use it here, eh? … I have no idea where it could be. You can search for it tomorrow, but if one of our guys finds it then it will be returned to you.”

Jane gave a small nod then decided that she could check at least one place before she reported back to town. She turned to prismatic radiance and went searching in the most obvious spot; the stone behind that one plateau, where she started her elemental journey.

The sword wasn’t there.

The ruined land was swirled like someone had taken a [Greater Stonewalk] to it and then dove inside, leaving a splash of half-smoothed rock behind. As Jane hovered there in her prismatic light the stone seemed to soften under her brilliance. Parts of the land burbled, releasing air trapped in the stone, and Jane could feel the start of a deep and twisted tunnel of transformation that led off far below.

… Now was not the time to investigate all that.

Jane dropped her [Greater Prismatic Body] and turned on her [Greater Lightwalk]. The land stopped burbling. It was going to take her some time to understand exactly what her [Greater Prismatic Body] did, but that time was not now.

For now, Jane zipped up through the Sun-Rift-filled sky of the Brightwater, to hover high above the place and gaze out at the bowl of land below her. She watched as Sunnys deposited even more Rifts here and there, but primarily at the holes in the Brightwater’s defending wall, to evaporate more spewing ooze before it could get too far. That tactic worked phenomenally well. Perhaps even better than it had before. Kiri would likely need to deposit these Rifts all across the whole of the Dead City, though, to clean up the deeper dregs of the soul slime.

Silverite would probably order her to do that, actually—

Poi’s rough voice came through, ‘You made me worry almost as much as your father does.’

Jane laughed loud.

With a more relaxed tone, Poi sent, ‘There’s a debrief and you’re either going to have to take it here or at the Courthouse. From what we already saw through [Witness] there’s nothing for you to worry about.’

Jane breathed out a ragged breath, then sent, ‘I’ll take it at the Courthouse.’

‘I’ll let them know… Report to conference room 3.’ Poi added, ‘The main celebration of the kill will likely commence tomorrow night. Everyone is tired.’

Jane smiled brightly at that. Yes, she wanted to sleep, but she was also looking forward to another grand celebration. The one after Champion Yetta’s journey through Ar’Kendrithyst and the one after Last Shadow’s Feast had been fun.

For a brief moment, Jane was a shining beacon of temporary joy in the middle of a red and gold sunset sky.

And then she got back to Spur.

- - - -

In conference room three, Jane sat before Quartermaster Liquid and Silverite, while Poi and Kiri waited outside. Silverite’s questions were normal enough. ‘What was the full and complete nature of your meeting with Melemizargo?’ ‘What do you think happened there, at the end?’ ‘Are you aware you were manipulated?’ ‘Why did you allow yourself to be manipulated by the Dark?’ ‘What was the feeling you got when the Dark spoke of your father’s Worldly Path?’

The interview took an hour, but it was an easy hour. Jane answered succinctly and clearly, for though the questions themselves were barbed, the manner in which they were given was not. Silverite was just doing her job to keep her city safe, and she had been dealing with the Dark for over 550 years. There were no surprise handcuffs or surprise killing spells. There was no hostility at all. There was just a mayor wondering what new shit had landed on her doorstep, and if it was worse than what came before.

Toward the end, after everything had wrapped up, Silverite leaned back in her chair, and eyed Jane.

And Jane realized she was suffering from stress fatigue, or maybe she was having a War Response, or something along those lines, because this had been a true judgment all this while. Suddenly, she wondered if she had fucked up.

And then Silverite saw Jane tensing, and she relaxed herself. “Jane. You’re not in trouble.” With a soft voice, Silverite said, “The guidelines we have in place to define what constitutes a betrayal to the Dark includes killing in his name, but I am not one to condemn someone for breaking those guidelines in this particular manner. We are more than rules. We are a city of people working against the Dark, and the Dark likes to toy with us, to see how far we will break. Well I’m not breaking over this, and you shouldn’t either.” She added, “But you should go home and get some rest and stay away from adventuring for a while. Try to get a softer hobby. Something that is as far away from killing as possible, because you have taken on a lot of burden recently and I don’t want to see you pop. Okay?”

Silverite’s sudden and real compassion caught Jane off guard.

Jane wiped away an unruly tear and chuckled, saying, “Ah. I must need a break if— Ah. How about low level quests?”

Silverite frowned.

Liquid frowned even deeper, though. She was deeply unhappy. “When you came to me with that completed application and I warned you away from this life for the second time, and then you told me that I’ve never seen a kid like you? You remember? I responded with 90% of kids like you die their first year.” Liquid said, “You don’t see it, but you should have died at least 3 times over. Once with the Moon Reachers, once with being anywhere near your father’s Worldly Path, and then again, tonight, and for any hundred of small incidents— Oh! And there was also Champion Yetta’s shit! You have been remarkably lucky.” Liquid softened a bit, though her voice still had an edge. “You are also remarkably skilled and I am very glad to have you in Spur, but please take less risks.” She suddenly spat, “And get a damned Domain! That soul slime should have killed you ten times over!” And then she wiped away her own annoying tear, huffing and breathing hard.

Jane sat firm, taking it all in, and said, “I think I unlocked my aura and a mana sense. I’ll work on that, and also a Domain. Thank you for your care.”

Liquid nodded quickly, then she turned toward the closed door to speak loudly, “And Kiri needs a Domain, too! She’s the second damnedest fool of the evening. You two kids walking around with all this power and no ability to actually step into the deepest Dark! And you continue to step into the Dark! Foolish beyond words.”

Liquid’s words hung in the room for a moment.

And then the moment broke.

Silverite leaned forward, saying, “Good work out there, Jane. Very good work. Now. Do you have any questions for Spur?”

Jane did have one, actually. One that possibly only Silverite or Liquid might know. “Why is level 100 impossible to reach? Why the shift in required experience?”

Liquid gave a shrug. “Limitation to power under the Script.”

Silverite said, “Liquid’s answer is the accepted answer, but no one really knows. Monsters normally never reach anywhere past level 90. The ones that get higher than that get there through killing many, many other such monsters who also kill other high level monsters. The soul slime was an extreme example of this, while also being a Soul Summoner, or some other such variation. Necromancer. Flesh Crafter.” Silverite shook her head. “Fucking necromancers.”

“… What is experience?” Jane asked.

“A measure of soul strength,” Liquid said.

“A measure of overall strength,” Silverite added. “Not just soul strength.”

The two of them had a slight disagreement over that answer. Jane didn’t want to get into that disagreement, so she moved on to the big question, “Any idea what Melemizargo is going to make?”

Liquid frowned at nothing in particular.

Silverite shrugged. “Some horror similar to what the soul slime was in life, no doubt. But it’s out of our hands. Now, the gods get involved.”

Now, Liquid was angry again. “Four ‘Holy Paladin’s from four different churches tried to break that damned soul slime! They all failed.”

Jane was suddenly wide awake. “A lot happened when I was indisposed?”

“Quite a lot.” Silverite said, “Which is why it is likely a good thing that you did what you did. I’d have given the Headmaster’s attack a 95% chance it would have worked, but since Melemizargo was in attendance and working on his own ends, and this was supposedly part of Erick’s Worldly Path all along, that 95% is more like 5%.” Silverite said, “So thank you for that, Jane. You probably did save Spur and this whole area a lot more heartache and devastation.” She stood, saying, “You can get the whole story from your people. I have work to do, as do all the rest of the support staff. You’re done for a while, though.”

Jane and Liquid stood.

Liquid said, “Good work, Team Leader. Smaller celebration parties will likely begin around midnight, but the main party will be tomorrow.”

Silverite said, “I expect you to be the guest of honor tomorrow at the official celebration, too, so be prepared for that."

Jane bowed. “Thank you, Mayor. Quartermaster.”

And then Jane left.

Kiri and Poi and Jane blipped directly home—

To where Teressa and Nirzir had set out a feast worthy of several heroes, where Sunny played several musical instruments in the background. The little couatl played the flutes and the chimes and the drums, and though she played them poorly, she was trying, and Kiri was super excited.

“No one is going to die tonight!” Kiri shouted as she hugged Jane tight. “Or tomorrow, either!”

Jane laughed as she hugged Kiri back. There was a lot of sudden joy and relief from the battle, and Jane felt both overwhelmed and supremely grateful. And she wasn’t the only one. Everyone was happy in their own way.

The feast was delicious. Fries. Pizza. Fried chicken. Spicy sauces set aside just for Jane that no one else wanted to touch. Soda berry water that Kiri had managed to make through Particle Magic and Elemental Illusion two weeks ago, after Jane had told her how to make the stuff. And then came dessert. More chocolate cake. Cinnamon bread. And beer! And harder stuff, too.

Poi spoke of how every single one of them had gotten at least a single percentage of the soul slime kill, and how they were all level 99. He wasn’t sure what to do with all of his extra points, but he was likely going to save them for some spellwork he had been eyeing for a while.

“I’m going to take a look at Soul Magic,” Poi said, to the suddenly silent room.

A moment passed in contemplation. Cheese slid off of Teressa’s slice of pizza.

Jane said, “There’s no one I trust more with that sort of magic than you, Poi.”

Poi practically blushed, though his blue scales just turned a bit darker.

Nirzir rapidly said, “I agree with Jane’s assessment. If you wish for access to Songli’s resources, I will make them available to you.”

Poi was suddenly a bit more reluctant than he had been. “Ahhh. I’ll… I’ll figure it out. I finally decided to go after it tonight. But. Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer later.”

“I think it’s a fine idea.” Kiri said, “Soul Magic is terrifying, but it can do a lot of good in the right hands.”

Teressa was less sure, but she just shrugged a little, then she picked up the spilled cheese, put it back on the pizza, and ate it.

Nirzir spoke of how her [Undertow Stars] needed something more, for the spell didn’t fully stop the Hand Caster from partially blipping. It did lock down Healing, though, both because of the Void she had put into the spell and some Elemental Decay mixed into the working.

“So that’s why the thing didn’t heal itself!” Jane exclaimed, then started laughing.

“It’s not a perfect solution,” Nirzir said, “After all, with the target having more Health that means I can absorb more resources from it. But this is likely a foolish line to walk. I might keep the Decay in my next iteration, or I might remove it entirely. The whole Undertow branch of spellwork is completely new to me, so there is a lot of experimenting to be done.”

Jane almost spoke of how Melemizargo had mentioned Nirzir’s success with Undertow spellwork, but she decided against it, for now.

Over a third round of beers, after dinner was done and the leftovers had been put away, Teressa spoke of how she saw the choice Jane had needed to make, and she congratulated Jane for making the right one. The outcomes of Melemizargo taking the soul slime’s soul were unknown, but if Jane hadn't done that…

“The Headmaster’s spell would have failed. Only a 15% chance of it working.” Teressa said, “Prognostication is never a sure thing, but I’m pretty sure you made the only choice that had a good outcome.”

Jane smiled softly. “I hope it works out— Oh!” She asked, “Have you seen my sword?”

Teressa laughed. “Nope! I already looked, too. It’s probably a thousand kilometers deep in the Underworld. Do you remember all the places you went?”

“Fuck! … No.” Jane said, “I can probably track my path. But… Not tonight.”

Kiri had gone out of the room for something, but she came back wearing a nice green dress. With bright, joyful eyes, she said, “Let’s go out to a dancing room!”

Jane hopped off her chair. “Okay!”

Poi decided to be a wet blanket, though. “How about tomorrow? Let’s go tomorrow. Please?”

Kiri rushed to the man and grabbed his hands, pulling him off his chair. “No! Tonight! I can already hear the music outside! It’s calling to me, Poi!”

“How about just a music bar, then?” Jane tried to compromise.

Poi said, “Yes! I’ll do that. Compromise, Kiri.”

Nirzir said, “My people have a party going on at the Upper Bough for the night. All the Fonts who touched Jane hit level 99, and they’re all there.” With a happy little smile, she asked, “We could go there?”

Teressa smirked. “I’ll grab my coat.”