Any Means Necessary (Selfish OC SI, Multiverse) In Tower of God, a rwby fanfic

Any Means Necessary (Selfish OC SI, Multiverse) [In Tower of God]

By: EiriFllyn

Summary: By chance, an egocentric human gets an experimental Kaleidostick whose only feature is to travel the multiverse. Gets trapped in Worm for a while, uses metaknowledge to survive, then escapes on a quest to learn the secrets of the multiverse. But nothing is as simple as it appears, reaching beyond the gate is forbidden, and the World rejects that which should not be.

Now in:

Tower of God

Worlds Traveled:

"Real Life" Earth

Worm

? - A terrible place MC escaped from immediately

? - A seemingly unremarkable world

Familiar of Zero

Tower of God

Status: ongoing

Published: 2023-06-05

Updated: 2024-02-13

Words: 392500

Chapters: 111

Original source: threads/674470/reader

Exported with the assistance of

Worm: Initialization 1.1

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are a new reader, PLEASE use the Threadmarks to read through the story. As a result of a Thread merger from cancelling the Quest format part of the story, some story posts have been placed out of order in the Thread itself. Just use the Threadmarks for the proper order.

'So, how do we fight them?'

'I do not have any combat programs installed and cannot answer your query.'

I resisted the urge to scream in rage. Maybe not having combat programs just meant the Kaleidostick didn't know how to use what it had.

'What kind of offensive and defensive spells do you have?'

'I do not have any offensive or defensive spells.'

"Damn! You have got to be kidding me!" I cursed aloud. This was even worse than turning into a magical girl!

What was even the point of wielding a Kaleidostick that didn't have any magic?

…

Initialization 1.1

"May you live in interesting times, boy!" the man cursed at me, and signed the document. He stood up with a snarl, glaring death at the woman standing beside me, and almost knocking the table over, before storming off with his entourage and bodyguards. One person stayed behind, face as white as a sheet.

"Thank you, I truly hope I will." I watched him leave and chuckled to myself. Although it was meant as a curse, I genuinely considered it a blessing.

My lawyer grabbed the signed documents and quickly reorganized them. "Looks good. We have all the paperwork we need," he informed me.

"No… how could this be…? My life's work… stolen by a devil…" The one man who stayed behind collapsed to his knees.

"You should be happy, Mr. Totenheim. I heard you were planning to retire soon. We've simply taken care of that for you."

He screamed and charged at me, but was stopped by my bodyguards. "You monster! Don't act like you're doing me a favor! This was my last chance! I needed the money!"

Through a combination of legal and illegal means, I had persuaded Mr. Kraken to cancel the bridge loan that would have saved Totenheim from defaulting on other debts. Once he defaulted on the usurious loan he had foolishly taken from a dangerous gang, it would lead to a chain of defaults on all the various debts he personally owed and in companies he was invested in, including some debts that I had secretly bought from his former creditors, which would allow me to seize his collateralized assets at a tiny fraction of their true market value.

How did he get into this situation? Well it wasn't all me, I couldn't take the credit for that. That was mainly his uncontrollable spending on luxuries, gambling, and questionable activities.

I stepped in front of him with a scornful expression. "You dug your own grave, Totenheim. All the people you've abused and stepped on, all the atrocities you committed behind closed doors… the police might not have been able to find anything on you, but your victims have never forgotten. Mr. Kraken understood this, but it seems you still don't get it. At least this way, you can try to disappear quietly. There are worse fates out there than losing your hedonistic lifestyle."

"I can't just disappear! They'll find me, and they'll kill me if I don't have the money to pay them back! I'm going to die… !" He devolved into sobbing hysterics.

"Did-did we really have to go so far? He looks so…" A voice whimpered beside me.

I turned to look at the source of the voice, a young woman no older than twenty, perfectly proportioned with a symmetrical face and flawless skin, dressed in a fashionable black leather jacket and red skirt.

I gripped on to her shoulders and turned her to face me.

"This is all thanks to your hard work, Angel. I couldn't have done it without you. As promised, the lead role in Violet Millennia is yours," I said. "Everything is already lined up to make it the biggest show of the decade. Director Solzburg has already agreed to work with us, we have more than $50 million for marketing alone, and I've already arranged for HyperTV to broadcast on a primetime slot. This is it. You're going to become the biggest rising star in the world, just as you dreamed of."

Violet Millennia, a book series that took the world by storm, was the most anticipated TV adaptation of the year and its production rights were owned by a company Mr. Totenheim had owned a small percentage of shares in. Once I seized those shares from him, it would give me the last bit of influence needed to decide who would be part of the production.

She listened to my honeyed words and her worried eyes relaxed. A bright smile replaced her hesitant expression.

"You two-faced bitch! Your father would be rolling in his grave if he knew what you did! If it weren't for you, John wouldn't have gone bankrupt! None of this would have happened!"

I quickly pulled her away with me and gestured to my men, who dragged the violent and psychotic Mr. Totenheim away.

"I know this is what I wanted… but I'm just feeling a little bad about it now," she confided in a low voice as we walked toward the limo.

"You know how this industry works. My way is the only way you can reach the top without subjecting yourself to the hidden rules. You've already seen the difference between yourself and your old friends, haven't you? Would you have rather have allowed yourself to be stained like that?" I said, escorting her into the vehicle.

"No, of course not. I-I know how much you've done for me," she said, turning to face me from her seat with an intense expression.

"Good. Go on, Angel. Your future is waiting for you," I said.

Her hand rose slightly as if wanting to reach out to me, and her mouth opened to speak. I pretended not to notice, shut the door, and put on sunglasses as I straightened back up.

She rolled down the window as the car started driving forward. "Before I start filming, I want to thank you properly! Please visit me!" She yelled out the window and waved.

I waved back.

Afterwards, I made a call. "How did it go?"

"Perfectly. The court rejected the restructuring deal once one of the creditors backed out, and approved the joint buyout offer from us. We'll get the pharma business, including the patents on the stem cell treatment we wanted, and the rest will be split up or liquidated. The company is done for."

These days, wealth was of little concern to me. I had long realized that there were plenty of things that money couldn't buy. Things like game-changing privately owned stem cell treatment research results.

"What about John Colie? Did he agree to sell his collection yet?"

"Yeah, funny thing about that. He had a stroke at the end of the court session, and was declared dead an hour ago. Because he doesn't know his son's already dead, he never changed his will. And since the idiot son left everything to his girlfriend…"

"You mean…"

"Yup, Angel is just going to inherit everything. I swear, that girl freaks me out sometimes. Too many coincidences, you know?"

"I see." Many of those coincidences, like the death of the son, weren't coincidences at all. I had known Angel for too long to be fooled like that. She was like me in many ways-almost like a female version of myself.

She was more easily affected by emotion and empathy, but once convinced that a course of action was justifiable and necessary-especially if it was for the sake of somebody she truly cared about-she could do things even I would hesitate at. And she really did have a tremendous talent for acting. That was why we worked together, after all.

The stroke that killed John, on the other hand, was indeed a chance thing. I would have laughed, but I was almost annoyed that it was so easy. Success was good, but I had been looking forward to the final challenge to finish this project.

Damn. Why couldn't he have lived a little longer and resorted to using underground connections? At least that would make things more interesting. No, that was hubris talking. I knew I should be glad that things went as smoothly as they did.

It was just… it felt boring sometimes, compared to when I first started and I had nothing, clawing my way into power and wealth inch by inch.

"We're done here. Take care of the rest of the legal work, I have other business to attend to," I ordered my lawyer.

Soon, I was left with just my three bodyguards, and I called for a car to pick me up.

Twenty minutes later, while we were driving across a section of forest, four black vans came from the two sides of the forest and cut off the road in front of us. We came to a forced break with a heavy turn, tires screeching as men in black emerged from the vans with assault rifles and opened fire.

I spoke too soon, it seemed! Perhaps John really did hire a hit on me.

Our car was bulletproof and heavily armoured, so even assault rifle fire couldn't get through the doors. Unfortunately the glass windows couldn't be made to that strength, so they quickly shattered, and we ducked down.

My bodyguards reacted immediately and returned fire with handguns, but they couldn't aim effectively without moving their heads up.

The driver tried to hit the gas and turn the opposite way, but he was stopped by an explosion that knocked us into the air. They had fired an RPG at our tires.

How did they know where we were going? I must have been careless.

Cursing, I gripped tightly onto the railings under the seat as we landed and shook, all sorts of pain springing up throughout my body as I was knocked around. We couldn't stay in the car or else we would get killed like this. Unless they planned to capture me, that is.

"Get out and use your grenades and flashbangs, then retreat into the forest!" I ordered.

We quickly opened the door on the side not facing the enemy, and exited. The driver was unfortunately too severely injured and we had to leave him behind.

Several grenades and flashbangs were lobbed over, and we ran out from behind the car once the flashes went off.

I ran straight into the forest without looking back, but I heard the cry of one of my bodyguards that must have gotten hit, and the sound of our car exploding behind us.

I tore through the foliage at high speed, then got behind a big tree trunk and use it as cover to turn back and fire on our pursuers. Only two of my men were left with me, and they did likewise.

"Keep going, after me!" I barked out.

We raced through the forest again and kept running for the next five minutes at top speed, until I was completely out of breath and about to collapse. I had almost tripped several times, and in the rush my body was littered with wounds from stray branches and other things that got in my way.

Our pursuers were still behind us, but no longer easily visible and out of options I found a dense section of bush and hid.

My men took off in another direction and maintained periodic return fire, leading them away.

After thirty minutes, I guessed that I lost them. But going out there would be far too risky, they were probably still searching for me, so I simply stayed there and started meditating.

Be careful what you wish for, the old adage said. I wanted something interesting to happen and so it did. Now I was isolated and possibly surrounded by enemies. Was this the day everything would end?

As soon as I tried to get out of the forest, even if I successfully escaped from my pursuers, would they have already destroyed everything I built? Or perhaps I would return to find that somebody had betrayed me and sent these men to eliminate me.

Yet I couldn't help but feel alive. It was the first time I had been in so much danger, and yet it was exhilarating. If only… I had been better prepared.

No, it was no use crying over spoiled milk. At least things would be more interesting now.

I would fight until the very last moment, and that would surely be an interesting story to behold, wouldn't it?

The cold chill of the forest sunk into my bones as I waited. I wondered if they would try to finish me off by carpet bombing or gassing the area.

Just who were they?

I felt so tired and weak. Was I injured somewhere I hadn't noticed? Or maybe it was blood loss from my wounds. I didn't think I had lost much though, had I?

…

Like that, hours passed and I inadvertently fell asleep.

…

"Fascinating… this world is devoid of mana. I can't even feel the presence of Gaia," a voice pulled me out of the darkness.

My eyes darted about, yet my body stayed frozen, and from my hiding spot in the bushes I looked upon the form of a LARPer with white hair in a black caped outfit. From almost 30 meters away I could only see his back and his right hand holding a cane with his left holding a… floating stick?

Yes, it was indeed just floating in the air, a smooth wand-like cylinder that was barely visible in the darkness, with a round gemstone at the top flickering in an unnatural light despite its dark hue and no visible light source.

"It appears that our return trip shall be a bit more difficult from here. I cannot even access prana from our parallel selves. I suppose that makes sense given that this is the first time I've come to this universe." The white-haired man moved his hand away from the wand but it kept floating where it was. He tapped his cane on the ground three times.

"Reporting: Analysis complete. Program compiled. Kaleidostick Agate has acquired Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol, catalogued as ARMP. First module: User Travel added," another voice rang out from seemingly nowhere.

"Good. You will take the reins this time. Bring us back to our world and we'll finish your programming. I'll have to bring more mana sources the next time we come here," said the man in the costume which I now recognized to be Zelretch from the Fate franchise.

"Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. 30 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold." The other voice said robotically.

Suddenly to the right of the Zelretch RPer the air ripped apart and the world was creaking.

A cloaked and hooded being emerged.

"Well, well, I thought there was something interesting here, and look what I found! A lesser being trying to create a means of Walking the Eternities without a Spark!"

My eyes bugged out. Was that actual magic? I thought Zelretch and Planeswalkers were supposed to be fictional!

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my friend… what do you mean by walking the eternities without a spark?" Zelretch turned to look at the newcomer, and I got a look at his blood red eye.

The air crackled with a strange pressure as a red light gathered in the hand of the, I guess I could call him Planeswalker for now. "Silence, fool! You've delved into magics not meant for the likes of you! The Blind Eternities are warping under the pressure of whatever blasphemy you enacted to get here! Your home Plane may have powerful beings guarding it from me, but your own pitiful existence ends now!"

He thrust his hand forward and a torrent of blinding fire was unleashed, an explosion engulfed Zelretch and the shockwave blew me up against a nearby tree, and I could feel the roots of the tree straining to stay upright.

In the next moment the night sky lit up and a chain of thunder-like sounds rang out as the explosion grew, new gale winds tearing away the smoke and surrounding trees as something hit my face and finally the tree behind me gave out, roots ripping out of the Earth and I grabbed the thing that hit me even as I tumbled away.

"Urgh!"

I collapsed bonelessly on the ground and twitched before terrible pain racked my entire body.

"I'm sure there must be a misunderstanding, sir. My method of Walking the Eternities as you call it does not disturb the worlds traveled." Zelretch's calm voice pierced the air. I lifted my face up slightly until I could see what was happening.

The cloaked Planeswalker floated with an ominous red light in the air while Zelretch stood at the edge of a massive crater, his clothes looking perfectly unruffled as if that monstrous attack didn't even touch him.

"Warning! Warning! Pathway formation disrupted! Connection unstable!" The Kaleidostick Agate's robotic voice rang out. Except, it seemed to come from… me?

The two combatants shifted their gaze towards me immediately. Zelretch even looked surprised as silence engulfed the destroyed forest.

I cursed mentally. That thing that hit me earlier and which was now somewhere on the ground lying next me must have been Agate.

"Pathetic mortal! Curse your gods for your luck today! For the crime of touching the power of the Planes, die!"

What? This guy was seriously going to kill me for such bullshit? If I got out of this alive I would make him pay a thousand fold! How could I die from such a random event happening?

Before I knew it, Zelretch's back was in front of me and his cane was blocking a black torrent of visible mana gathered in front of the Planeswalker's hand. Up close, I could see the Planeswalker's snarling angry face, which I didn't recognize. Baleful red eyes, sleek black hair, bishounen facial features, and a strange glowing pattern on the right side of his face in the shape of a semicircle over a horizontal figure eight with the top two lines crossing back down instead of meeting at the centre.

He broke away and flew back into the air. "You are strong, little mage, but that will not protect you from a god! Know your place!" Suddenly an enormous wave of mana emerged from him, condensing into a legion of different shapes that blotted out the sky, complete with an Earth-shattering wave of roars.

Zelretch sighed. "I don't wish to be impolite as I am the outsider, but you are being rather unreasonable." He materialized a dagger in his right hand as he moved his cane to the left. The Jeweled Sword started to glow as the world around it bent and refracted a rainbow of lights.

Then he turned around and winked at me.

What?

I had no time to think on what that meant before the horde of summoned monsters came upon us, Zelretch's dagger-sword flashed, and-

-the world went white.

My eyes burned with the sight, and teared up even as the white gave way to a kaleidoscope of strange things I couldn't comprehend.

"AHHHH!" I screamed as I saw what should not have been seen and curled up into a ball whimpering.

After what felt like an eternity, I was left with only silence. I blinked open my eyes and shifted my groaning muscles until I was sitting upright, looking around. The entire forest was nothing more than a wasteland, and only a small circle below me was untouched.

"What, what the hell…" I murmured to myself.

Ominous roars sounded in the distance. I squinted and looked around again, and saw shadows moving in the distance.

The summoned monsters! Then about a hundred metres away from me, monstrous and bulbous things ripped out of the ground and rose up, surrounding me.

I watched in morbid fascination as they climbed up slowly from the ground like zombies. I guess it was really the end. I couldn't possibly fight my way through this horde.

"RandomBystander1, Master Zelretch has authorized me to establish a partnership contract between you and me. Do you wish to become my wielder?" The Kaleidostick suddenly floated in front of me.

Or maybe not. Was this the legendary plot armour? A Deus Ex Machina that would save me! If fictional things were real, then I had to be a main character if I was getting an opportunity like this.

"What does that involve? What are our obligations to each other?" I immediately asked.

"We will conduct a ritual to establish the magical contract and form a soul-based prana link. A wielder can access all of my powers by mental command and share senses. Conversely, you may grant control of your body to me at will. As you do not possess Magic Circuits some functions will be limited. Our obligations are mutual and are as follows: we must protect the other from harm by any means necessary, we must act to prevent attempts to break the contract if either partner is unwilling, neither can harm or seek to harm the other without consent. Once formed, the partnership bond will begin a process of mental and prana-based attunement. If the bond is later broken, there may be unpredictable consequences." The Kaleidostick explained robotically.

That was a very helpful explanation, but it also raised some questions. This contract appeared different to what I knew of Kaleidosticks from the fictional franchise, and the bond seemed to be much more permanent.

"Is it possible for you to have more than one wielder? And can I be bonded to more than one Kaleidostick?"

"Such a course of action has never been tested and would be highly inadvisable. There may be unpredictable consequences, such as sudden death."

Well, that also answered my question about what "unpredictable consequences" might result from the bond breaking.

The monsters seemed confused for a moment, and randomly wandered around, but I knew I was running out of time. Sooner or later they would come for me.

"Alright, I want to be your wielder! What do I do?"

"Please apply some blood to your palm and grab onto me, then repeat after me."

I did as told, using the blood from my wounds earlier. Once my hand touched the wand, two magic circles formed above and beneath me.

The words of power rushed into my mind and I chanted almost in sync with the Kaleidostick.

"Let black and chalcedony be the essence. Let onyx and agate form the foundation. Parallel and curved, let the bands close and open. Let blood be the tribute, and the Second bear witness. I hereby declare, our will shall be as one. An oath is sworn. I shall attain all the virtues of Heaven, I shall have dominion over all evils of Hell. Through the infinite realities, all lines shall converge!"

When the chant that Zelretch must have borrowed partially from the Servant Summoning Ritual was over, I felt something connect with me, and both the Kaleidostick and I glowed with a multicolored aura with a line of pure black running through it.

Soon the glow and the magic circles disappeared.

'New User Registered. Designated: RandomBystander1. Access Level: Full Administrator. Agate awaiting further instructions', Agate's voice came into my mind complete with subtitles flashing through my thoughts.

"Did you just talk to my mind?" I asked out loud.

'Yes, User RandomBystander1,' Agate answered me.

'Why was I registered as RandomBystander1? And what does my access level mean?' I thought back.

'RandomBystander1 was the designation for you set by BetterThanBlue, also known as Master Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. Full Administrator access allows complete use, read, and write access to all of my functions and programming. He has also left you a message: I am sorry you were caught up in my mess, young man. Unfortunately this enemy is extraordinarily powerful and while I'm no slouch myself, I know not for certain that I can protect you. I am giving you Kaleido Agate to help you escape. Please take care of Agate and I would appreciate it if you could collect some data on alternate reality traveling for me in your journeys. Best of luck to you.'

Wow! Thanks Zelretch, what an upstanding guy. I can even forgive the troll name he gave me.

'Okay, I want to change my designation,' I ordered.

'Request denied.'

'What? Don't I have full administrative access?'

'RandomBystander1 has full administrative access except for anything locked by Ultimate Administrator BetterThanBlue.'

… really?

I almost thought Zelretch's trollish behavior was just merely fanon from how serious he acted earlier. Just great. I better not turn into a magical girl.

No seriously, this was bullshit. I just formed a permanent contract with the Kaleidostick and somehow Zelretch could still override me, even though the wand just told me there could only be one wielder. That made zero sense.

But that wasn't important, the monsters had gotten their bearings and were now advancing towards me.

'So, how do we fight them?'

'I do not have any combat programs installed and cannot answer your query.'

I resisted the urge to scream in rage. Maybe not having combat programs just meant the Kaleidostick didn't know how to use what it had.

'What kind of offensive and defensive spells do you have?'

'I do not have any offensive or defensive spells.'

"Damn! You have got to be kidding me!" I cursed aloud. This was even worse than turning into a magical girl!

What was even the point of wielding a Kaleidostick that didn't have any magic?

'Agate, can you at least get us out of here then? Somewhere without other people?'

'Negative. I do not have any installed transportation protocols other than ARMP: User Travel. This module does not include any targeting function except by Waypoints established during prior travels or semi-random targeting by distance in Kaleidospace.'

'What are the Waypoints available?'

'There are currently 2 Waypoints: this location and Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary is currently inaccessible due to destabilization in Kaleidospace.'

'That's it?! We can't go anywhere else?'

'I can attempt to randomly open a Pathway to an unknown habitable world by shortest distance in Kaleidospace.'

'Wait, how can it be random if we target the shortest distance?'

'Kaleidospace does not have fixed locations and distances. A Waypoint is a beacon that eliminates the randomness, but any other targeting method is semi-random.'

The entire mental conversation took only 10 seconds.

'Alright fine! Let's go to a random world close to this one then!'

'Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Random by Shortest Distance. 10 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold.'

I couldn't help but smirk. Amazing. I hoped this wasn't just a dream. With this power… the possibilities were endless! If I played my cards right, all of creation was within my grasp!

My thoughts went to that unreasonable Planeswalker. My eyes darkened in hate. How dare he look down on me… being born with such power, to be given a Spark for nothing, he was nothing without his good fortune!

Then my hate ebbed away and my eyes gleamed with anticipation. That Planeswalker was just a fool, only worth my attention for the power he wielded. But if not for him perhaps I wouldn't have met such a golden opportunity. In the end, he would become a stepping stone for me on the path to true power. Unless Zelretch successfully killed him, I would likely meet him again, so I had to get stronger as fast as possible. There could be any number of such fanatical fools that would want to kill me for stupid reasons, and the only way to assure my safety was to become more powerful than them! That would be a daunting task, considering the sheer potential that I knew old Planeswalkers had, especially as time was on their side.

I would escape and hide and build up my strength…

It would mean leaving everything behind on Earth. I couldn't risk returning here anytime soon, what with the monsters and the possibility of the Planeswalker coming back.

My money, connections, subordinates… I would have to completely start over. That didn't sound so bad, actually…

It would be an adventure unlike any other! Full of risk and opportunity… and the beginning of a new story-my story!

Even if I had nothing again… I would go even farther this time, I would reach beyond the heavens and grasp infinity!

The trip was underwhelming. One moment I was in a wasteland of a forest in the dark of night, the next I was in an alleyway in a city in the pale light of early evening.

I was still injured and I didn't know how severe the injuries were, so reappearing in a modern city was a good thing, I think. I could walk at least, and it didn't feel like any bones were broken, which was a miracle, or maybe my placebo cultivation exercises actually had some kind of effect? I mean if Zelretch was real, maybe Qi cultivation was real too.

But first things first, gather information and get some medical attention.

'Agate, can you hide yourself somehow?' I transmitted mentally.

'Yes, I can phase out of sync with this reality to hide or avoid enemy attacks.'

Excellent, I didn't have to worry about somebody stealing Agate then.

After a few minutes of wandering, I found a newspaper stand. In big letters one of the papers it showed "BROCKTON DAILY".

No way.

I recognized this place from a story I'd read before.

I put the paper back in its stand and left quickly. It was April 3, 2011. That was… seven days before Skitter fought Lung?

I didn't know the timeline perfectly and I was missing tons of details. I only knew the big things, and never even properly finished the canon storyline, so a lot of my "knowledge" was coming from fanfiction.

But I knew at least, that I didn't want to stay here. Changing Taylor's fate, helping to save the world, are you kidding?

Leviathan was going to attack in a month! I'm just a helpless normal, and there was no easy way to power up in this setting. It was be really hard to survive in this crazy grim world, and that was even assuming canon was reliable, which it probably wasn't. Maybe Cauldron had Masters and would come for me as soon as they find out about Agate and magical realities.

Hell, maybe they were already observing me!

Under the setting sun, I rushed to an abandoned alleyway as fast as I could.

'Agate, can you bring us to another world? This place isn't safe,' I asked.

'There seems to be a problem. I have detected a barrier over this Reality Cluster, which is now blocking the formation of a Pathway outside the local Reality Cluster,' the answer came.

What? CRAP! Scion had locked off Earth-Bet and the other parallel Earth dimensions that were part of the cycle, didn't he? Did he notice intruders getting in?

I could feel myself beginning to hyperventilate and my heart pounding in my ears. I was trapped in a world where normals were just fodder, background characters to be wiped out by the billions, mere statistics on a book.

'My analysis suggests that it may be possible to break through the barrier preventing access to other Reality Clusters. I can continue analyzing in an attempt to develop a method of breaking through.'

I could handle this! I always wanted excitement, didn't I? It wasn't impossible to survive, and even thrive with what I knew. I had to calm down and think, use my vaunted intelligence and desire, and obtain the power waiting to be grabbed.

Deep breaths.

"Hey, give me your wallet!"

My eyes darted to the source of the voice. A hooded and ragged guy with a knife was stalking towards me from the entrance of the alley.

I narrowed my eyes and took in the cliché scene. I should have expected it though. Brockton Bay was a dying city, full of criminals and a gradually declining economy.

I began to chuckle.

"Fuck, you loose in the head? I'm mugging you, bastard!" He waved his knife menacingly.

My entire body tingled with adrenaline, and I burst forward.

I could see the unlucky mugger's eyes widening as he thrust his knife in front of him reflexively.

Useless. I knew that most criminals didn't have the resolve not to hesitate, they wouldn't know what to do if they suddenly became the hunted. He was a mugger, not a killer, and I-

grabbed his knife wrist and twisted, pivoting on my right foot, and using the reactionary force on my hips and another step with my left foot to bounce back and strike his chin with my elbow

-had experience in violent confrontations against people more dangerous than him.

It was just a shame that I lost my gun when I nearly tripped in the forest on my Earth.

A sickening crunch resounded in the alley, and the pathetic fool couldn't even spit out the blood before I followed up with a kick to the groin. He crumpled towards the ground but I helped him along by smashing his face with a punch. His head cracked against the hard concrete.

I straddled on top of his unmoving body and checked for life signs. He was just unconscious and bleeding from his mouth and head injury.

Ugh, crap, the pains all over my body that I had forgotten with the adrenaline were coming back.

I took off the gloves he was conveniently wearing and put them on my own hands before searching him for useful things. In the end, I took his wallet, some keys, a switchblade, and phone but left his clothes alone. He didn't seem to be affiliated with any gang but I didn't want to risk any buddies of his recognizing the clothing. Of course I took out the sim card on his phone before taking it. It was just a flip phone, nothing compared to my smartphone that I still had with me, but I had other purposes for it.

That done, I made my way out of there and found a nearby bus stop. Within a few minutes a bus came by and I got on, paying with a few coins from the mugger.

It didn't matter where the bus was going, I just went on to grab one of those free transit maps I figured would be hanging around inside of buses like they are on a lot of transit systems back on my Earth.

I was right and examined my new map until I found Brockton Bay General Hospital. Time to see what my options were for fixing my injuries.

This world was full of "capes", also known as "parahumans" with powers. There were superheroes and villains, and organizations dedicated to their regulation and governance. The Parahuman Response Team (PRT), which was made up of normals, and the Protectorate, the cape policing organization. Brocton Bay was on the east coast of the USA, and these organizations covered Canada and the USA, plus some parts of Europe.

If I was to survive this in this world, I needed the power of capes.

A/N: This chapter was majorly revamped. The old one can be found in Apocrypha.

Old A/N

AN: I got fed up reading SIs that got easy power right off the bat, whether from ridiculous CYOA choices, ROBs, or whatever. Also tired of fix-fics where the SI goes around helping everyone with metaknowledge. I didn't find any good stories where SIs rely on ruthlessness and intelligence to obtain selfish desires, so I wrote one for myself.

Last edited: Jun 5, 2023

Initialization 1.2

Initialization 1.2

It was only 5:43 pm according to my new phone, and I could probably get to the hospital in about 20 minutes with a different bus route, so I got off the bus after a couple of stops and began my trip to the hospital.

'Agate, is it possible for you to bring us to any of the parallel dimensions inside our local Reality Cluster?'

With some down time I was able to think through my options. If I could access Aleph or the other parallel dimensions, I would be in a much better position.

'Negative. Parallel dimension travel is a part of planned modules whose installation is not complete. I will require opportunities to observe parallel dimension travel to develop such a feature, or direct programming input from the user.'

'You can learn it? That's great!'

'Kaleidostick Agate was designed to be a self-learning tool that would expand its own capabilities. My ability to process information is comparable to an advanced alchemist with Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration,' Agate said without prompt from me. I wondered if that was pride at being praised.

'You know Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration? Can you teach me?' I asked eagerly.

'My apologies, User RandomBystander1. I do not know those spells and I could not teach you even if I did. My processing is based on an application of the Second Magic, using limited access to parallel analogs of me running in sync or slightly ahead of the current time. They are not the standard Atlas spells. You do not possess the Magic Circuits necessary to utilize any magecraft, so you could not learn the Atlas spells either,' Agate explained with a voice that actually sounded regretful.

I sighed. Of course it wouldn't be so easy.

'So… what else can you do?' I might as well learn Agate's full capabilities.

Instead of a voice respond, Agate seemed to do something akin to sending me data directly.

I saw in my mind's eye a list of capabilities Agate judged both "important" and "unlocked". Other than its reality phasing ability and the universe travelling, it had a sensor suite for detecting and analyzing magical energies and electromagnetic radiation, and it could share the user's senses when authorized. When not sharing the user's senses, it could only use its sensor suite to perceive the world. Anything sensed or shared from the user was recorded and could be accessed later. If allowed to share the user's senses, then Agate could also block mental attacks and even bestow Magic Resistance (unfortunately both features were very limited if the user couldn't generate prana or lacked Magic Circuits).

The core AI was capable of learning by observing, reading, and communicating, much like a human. There were many potential upgrades and functions Agate could develop in time, but we were severely hampered by my inability to perform magecraft.

That was more than I expected, but far less than I'd hoped. I was even a little disappointed that Agate couldn't give me a magical transformation.

It wasn't long before I arrived at the hospital.

There were a lot of people, but nobody gave me a second glance. I was wearing a jacket and casual pants that looked pretty dirty and beat up from the fight that destroyed the park, but I guess that was nothing special considering all the other injured people I saw.

The lobby was clean and bright, the seats packed with people. It was a busy place.

I walked towards to receptionist and was about to speak when I noticed a paper stuck to the bulletin board with important information.

PANACEA OPEN HEALING SCHEDULE, it said. That was convenient. I guess the hospital got a lot of people asking about it. Or wait. More information about Panacea could be found at the New Wave website. So it was part of their PR. Panacea was a miracle healer with her absolute control of biology. Her presence in New Wave was great for their reputation.

Apparently she would be coming in today for two hours starting… a few minutes ago at 6. And there would be open healing for anyone that walked in from 7:30 to 8.

That would be tight. How many people could she see in a mere half hour? Oh well, that gave me an hour to prepare.

Twenty minutes later I had bought a burner flip-phone and was sitting down at a nearby coffee shop eating a quick meal as I browsed the web with my smartphone using free Wi-Fi. I had three phones now including the one I grabbed off the mugger.

Over the next hour of browsing, I learned quite a bit about this world. As far as I could tell, it seemed to be following canon. Browbeat hadn't joined the Wards yet, and all the public information on capes in Brockton Bay matched with what I knew.

That was good, my knowledge wasn't useless. I made my way back to the hospital just before 7:30.

Right on time, a nurse came to the lobby and announced that Panacea would accept walk-in patients now, anyone needing healing should follow her. So I followed her with a bunch of other patients to wait in a line outside a room not far from the lobby.

Another nurse came over and addressed all of us while the first one started to let patients into see Panacea.

"Hello, I am nurse Angela, and I'm here to explain a few things about Panacea's open healing for anyone not familiar with the rules. Please listen carefully," she said as she looked around to make sure she had everyone's attention except for the people at the front of the line being processed by the other nurse.

"Anyone is free to come in for healing, but Panacea cannot accept all illnesses or injuries during walk-in. She is not your family doctor or emergency services. For your own health and the smooth running of our healthcare system, please go to the appropriate medical authority for diagnostics, emergencies, chronic illnesses, or severe injuries. During public healing sessions, Panacea can only perform quick healing on minor illnesses and mild injuries. Additionally, Panacea does not perform cosmetic enhancements. Nurse Jane will determine whether your medical issue is appropriate before letting you in. At 8:00 pm sharp, the public healing session will be over. If anyone is remaining at the end, you will need to come back another day or consult your family doctor," she explained with a clear and authoritative voice before leaving us to wait.

A few people left the line after hearing that. The line moved quickly. Patients were getting healed and shuffled out of the room in less than a minute each. This was pretty efficient, and the line wasn't long either, I suppose because many people would be too lazy to come if their issue was "minor". It was mostly made up of parents with their kids or seniors, and some sketchy looking people - like me, actually.

It seemed like everyone would be done with time to spare, so I started letting people move in front of me.

Five minutes before 8pm, I was the last one to enter.

It was a simple room with a medical bed and Panacea sitting on a chair. Her costume was really white. If she had a staff and lost the scarf I could see a White Mage. Hiding in her hood, she had a fairly plain face with freckles that looked bored. I didn't see any sign of exhaustion that fanfics usually emphasized, but I did feel the "I don't want to be here" vibe.

She gestured to the bed with a plastered smile. "Hi. What can I help you with?"

I sat down and smiled back.

"I fell off a tree, and now my body feeling's sore all over," I said. I got blasted away together with a tree but I did technically fall off of it mid-air.

"Were you saving a kitten?" She asked with an amused tone quirking an eyebrow. There weren't many other explanations for why a man in his early twenties would be up on a tree.

I sighed dramatically. "No, I'm afraid I was the one that needed saving."

She gave me an unimpressed look and held out her hand. "Hmm. Well I need to touch your skin to heal you."

I gave her my hand.

"A lot of bruising all over, some muscle strains, and a few bones are bit loose. Nothing too serious. Do I have your permission to heal you?" She asked.

"Yes." She nodded back to me.

Three seconds later I felt much better.

"Thank you, Amelia," I said in heartfelt gratitude with a textbook Duchenne smile.

"Sure thing-wait, what did you call me?" Her bored eyes came alive in an instant and her hand gripped tightly onto mine.

"Amelia, your name," I answered pleasantly.

"What are you talking about? My name is Amy, and it's Panacea in costume," she said in irritation.

I look in her eyes with a serious but warm expression.

"Amelia Claire Lavere, that's the name you were born with, Ms. Dallon."

Irritation turned to surprise, and she was silent for a couple of seconds.

"What do you know? Who are you?" She asked with a hint of suspicion and interest both.

"I know many things, such as who you were adopted from. I don't have any legal name in the world right now, but you can call me Kaleidus," I said mysteriously. Don't judge me. I couldn't come up with a good name on such short notice, and I didn't want it to be an obviously cape name either, just an unusual but memorable one.

"What do you want?" She asked in a low and almost whispered tone.

"Well I needed healing, and I wanted to give you something in return. I'd be happy to tell you what I know of your heritage if you want," I said. I could see her interest growing. But she was still suspicious that I wouldn't want anything else. After all, there were plenty of reasons for unscrupulous people to target Panacea the miracle healer. "Other than that, I have special knowledge of events to come and certain events in the past."

She gave me a disbelieving look. She must have thought I was crazy considering that I didn't have a Corona Pollentia or Gemma. But I continued unperturbed.

"I know you can tell if I'm lying with your power while you're holding my hand-" she glanced at our connected hands momentarily before her eyes flitted back to me in surprise.

"-and that I'm not a parahuman with the required brain structures, but I definitely have special knowledge of the past and future, or at least, possible futures, that nobody else in this world knows. That's how I know about your heritage. You are critical to this world's future, and I want to help you. It's also true that there are some things only you can help me with."

As I talked, I could almost see the gears turning in her head. My knowledge of her powers couldn't be explained easily, and the fact that I was essentially submitting myself to her lie-detection was quite persuasive.

It was to my advantage that there were many ways of "helping" her. After all, how to help depended on their goal, right?

"How is that possible?" Her grip on me grew stronger. "Did somebody Master you to say all that?"

"No, and I'm sure your power can check for abnormal biological reactions or brain activity showing a Master too," I responded. I was just guessing actually, but it made sense to me.

"Okay. I believe you think you have 'special knowledge'. But how do you know it's real?" She pressed me.

"I can prove it. First, my 'postcognitive' knowledge," I raised my fingers in air quotes as I spoke, "I know things about you that nobody could possibly know. A secret that you've never told anyone." She tensed and eyes widened before looking around the room as if checking for eavesdroppers.

I used my free hand to cup my mouth as if preparing to whisper. Then I moved closer to her ear and did just that, "Your special feelings for Victoria."

She froze. Her grip on my hand was so strong it was starting to get painful. And it was shaking. I felt a gleeful anticipation as I watched her. Yes, this girl had very dark secrets. Panacea the miracle healer, the kind, saint-like cape that everyone admired had a secret that was tearing her apart inside.

She lusted for her own sister.

"W-what are you talking about, don't bullshit me with vague-!" she hissed.

"I won't tell anyone. And you're not a deviant. It isn't your fault and there's nothing wrong with you. Something caused those feelings in you, but you're not ready to learn just what yet."

"You're lying! Stop messing with me!" She tried to let go of my hand and stand up. But I grabbed her hand myself and stopped her.

"If I was, you wouldn't be reacting like this. You know exactly what I'm talking about and that I'm telling the truth."

She glared at me and bit her lip.

I put a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her back down onto her seat. "Look, I told you I wanted to help you. I didn't say that to blackmail you. You have a key role to play if this world is going to survive." She kept glaring at me and stayed quiet.

If this world is going to survive. Only if it were better for me, of course.

After a moment, there was a knock on the door, presumably the nurse reminding Panacea of the time. I sighed. "On April 11th, Lung will be defeated. Armsmaster will take credit for the capture. You'll be called in to keep him stable. Here's my number if you want to get in touch." I took out a piece of paper and quickly wrote down my burner phone's number, putting it in her hand.

I patted her shoulder and prepared to turn and leave but this time Panacea grabbed my wrist again as I stood up and stopped me.

"Who… who were my parents?" She asked with her head looking down.

I paused. "Your father was Marquis. Your mother, I don't know. The Brocton Bay Brigade attacked Marquis in his home and he was defeated trying to protect you when the Brigade realized he was protecting something hiding in the closet."

"The daughter of a villain…?" I heard her muttering in a defeated voice as she dropped my hand and stood still.

Marquis was a very successful and powerful villain. He was the only parahuman in his gang but managed to fend off the likes of the Slaughterhouse 9 and the Teeth. His ability to generate and control bone was extremely powerful and versatile, which made him unbeatable before the Brocton Bay Brigade took advantage of his two weaknesses. He had a rule not to hurt women and children including enemy combatants that fell into those categories. And he had a daughter he genuinely cared for.

I lifted her chin up to face me. I could see her eyes beginning to tear up.

"Listen to me. You are not a villain just because your father was. That's Nazi thinking, and Carol should be ashamed of her prejudice. You are one of the most powerful and important heroes in the world."

Carol was traumatized from her youth and despised Marquis for irrational reasons. She never wanted to take Amelia and basically never treated her as a daughter despite adopting her legally.

Even worse, Amelia had once overheard Carol say that. That she never wanted her.

There was another knock on the door. We could hear a voice calling from outside, "Um, Panacea? The session was already over several minutes ago. Is there a problem?"

The girl wiped her eyes quickly and called back, "No, we're done here." She opened the door and walked past quickly. I followed after, getting a disapproving look from the nurse.

I looked away and walked quickly. Then when nobody was there to see it, I smirked. I felt great. This was almost certainly the canon storyline I was in.

Knowledge was power, and I had it.

Last edited: Sep 8, 2018

Initialization 1.3

Initialization 1.3

The next few days passed in a whirlwind. Before enacting the rest of my plan I needed to secure money, food, and shelter. Without a legitimate ID things would be difficult, and with the underground essentially controlled by capes, it would be exceptionally dangerous for me. Not to mention I didn't have any real experience dealing with underground activities and criminals, nor did I want to run afoul of patrolling heroes.

That's where the mugger's phone came in. I didn't need to be tracked by the cell signal so I turned off all network features, but even without network access it had an address book with contacts and text history. It gave me insight into what kind of person he was. A man living by himself in his early twenties, no contact with any parents, few friends, and no job. Typical profile of an inexperienced robber. That was obvious enough when I didn't find a gun on him, but this was good confirmation.

I must have been a target of opportunity, or else I wouldn't have found a wallet on him with identification at all. Luckily, I did, and tracked down his address to his dingy little apartment in a dirty and paint-shedding low-rise. Before that, I spent the rest of my ill-gotten gains on some very basic equipment: pepper spray, an old backpack, a nice worn down hoodie, sunglasses, and used shoes. It wasn't much but time was ticking and I had to finish before he came back with a spare key or locksmith.

It was unexpectedly quite a smooth venture. There were no security cameras in the hallways. I went in to find the apartment empty of people, as I expected. But just in case, I had sent in Agate to phase through and check first, of course. I grabbed a notebook computer and found nine hundred dollars in cash. No firearms, which just shows that he was not a professional robber. I left the drugs, alcohol, and pretty much everything else alone except for a bit of non-perishable food. I couldn't even recognize the drugs so they weren't useful to me, and rubbing alcohol was purer and easier to just buy if I wanted to make something with it. Food was useful… it might be cheap but there was no sense in wasting money when I didn't have a sustainable source of income yet.

Next was shelter. That first night I bought a sleeping bag and camped out in an abandoned warehouse. The day after I went scouting for a more suitable location for temporary living. I wasn't going to be here when Leviathan attacked, but I would be staying for a few weeks for sure. I needed privacy and access to electricity and water so I spent the entire day looking for someone willing to rent a room to a guy with no ID and paying in cash. I was obviously sketchy, but there were plenty of sketchy landlords out there, and in this awful economic environment, it wasn't too hard to find someone willing to look the other way. It'd be $500 a month, but I got a tiny apartment close to the docks with access to a private washroom and kitchen. The landlord had multiple unoccupied rooms and barely bother to come by, which was just fine with me. After paying the first month, getting the lock changed, and buying the minimum tools needed for cooking and hygiene, I was left with just over $300.

Then I cracked and cleaned my new laptop to make it that much harder to track down if the mugger decided to go to the police at some point. I was keeping the hardware so if someone got their hands on it physically, I could be tracked, but that wasn't a serious issue then. Changing the MAC address and wiping the soft traces would be enough. I just needed to set up my anti-forensic measures afterward to stay anonymous on the web.

Agate learned the process as I did it, but unfortunately the Kaleidostick couldn't interface with electronic networks and devices like an actual computer AI. It could learn to connect and access them without a physical connection, but Agate didn't know how to process the complicated electronic signals. That would have to be built literally from scratch and my few experiments showed that it just wouldn't work due to the extreme inefficiencies and incompatibility involved. It was akin to manually pressing a switch to indicate ON and OFF signals. Ridiculous waste of Prana.

For money, I visited the local casinos, of which there were two. I bribed the guard to let me in without ID, and played poker to make some money. Blackjack was continuously reshuffled at Ruby Dreams so counting wouldn't work, but good old poker wasn't against the house. I was a bit concerned that the games would be rigged by the ABB or I would be accosted at some point, and I did notice people collaborating, but I carefully targeted the fish instead of stepping on the toes of anyone that might be connected to something bigger.

Making 10BB/Hour or so, I worked my way up from $1/2 No Limit to $5/10 NL and made $700 over three days at Ruby Dreams. In Brocton's other casino, Blackjack was traditional, and I walked away with another $2200 after two days of playing combining Blackjack and $10/20 NL play. I could have hit them hard on BJ but I had no idea who operated this casino and was not about to risk getting marked and attacked by being greedy.

If I was hurting for cash, I could hit other cities later, but if things went well I wouldn't need to.

I spent the rest of my time writing down notes on what I remembered from Worm, plotting out potential courses of action that would help me survive and grow stronger, and researching information about other cities and background information about differences between Earth Bet and my Earth. All this was recorded by Agate, and I destroyed my physical notes afterward.

My goal in the short term was to amass as much power and useful allies as possible and survive. Over the long-term I needed to solve the universe barrier problem and obtain advantages that would make me stronger and more survivable in other universes. That meant increasing my abilities, acquiring tinkertech, and upgrading Agate.

To speed up analysis of the Reality Cluster barrier and have Agate develop the ability to travel parallel dimensions, I needed to get Agate data on portals. Professor Haywire's portal and notes were highly classified and I couldn't find its location. That just left Doormaker portals, which I had no way to find, and the Simurgh portals in Madison. The latter I could get to fairly easily, and with Agate capable of phasing out of reality it could easily get past quarantine controls. Even better, Agate could move independently from me and was capable of flying at over 500 miles an hour when moving by itself. Once Agate recorded my notes, I sent it off to the Madison Quarantine zone and 9 hours later it was back.

'Reporting: parallel dimension portal phenomenon has been observed. Estimated 7 days to complete analysis and develop parallel dimension travel capability,' Agate had notified me. It would be ready by the 13th, two days after the Lung fight. No estimates could be made yet on breaking through the barrier.

Tinkertech could be acquired if I had large sums of money or Tinker allies. That was fairly straight forward. There were some Toybox techs I really wanted to get, and could possibly commission Leet for some stuff as well.

Abilities were the hardest to acquire. I eventually determined that there were several ways of enhancing myself:

· Get Panacea to make body modifications for me

· Buy skills/memories from Cranial

· Buy a vial from Cauldron/the Dealer/Accord

· Steal the cauldron vials Skidmark finds after Leviathan (which might not even happen anymore if it was pure chance that led him to it the first time)

· Get Bonesaw to make body modifications for me

· Find Eden's body and figure out how to make vials for myself

· Hang around a cape long enough for it to bud in me and get myself into a trigger event

· Kill the Butcher

All of these were possible, but none of them would be easy, and the ones lower on the list carried huge risks I was not prepared to accept. Cauldron vials-especially the older generation ones-could turn me into a Case 53 (monster capes who often didn't have control over their powers). The latest generation ones with Balance in their formula still had something like 0.1% chance of becoming a Case 53, which I still thought too high for comfort. That was only slightly lower than the chance of drawing pocket aces, which any poker player could tell you was not that rare.

Triggers couldn't be induced on purpose so I'd have to be in real danger or make myself forget the plan to trigger myself, and killing Butcher would probably kill me mentally when all the voices transferred to my mind. Maybe if I got Bonesaw to help clone original Butcher like she did with the Slaughterhouse 9000, simulate its trigger, and wipe its mind with Cranial's tech before I killed it…

In any case, acquiring abilities had to be a low priority if only because of how difficult and risky it was. That just left my goal of getting funds and allies. Moreover, I had to establish myself right away. My knowledge would be far less useful once events diverged from canon. Without precise predictions, it would be that much harder to convince anybody I had true precognitive knowledge. I had only a small window of opportunity, and if I didn't maximize my gains right off the bat, I would just be a helpless normal that knew a few secrets.

Hmm…

I was going to try and recruit Skitter. It wasn't because she was the main character of worm. It was just that her bug controlling power would be very helpful to my ambitions in this city, especially if Panacea could be persuaded to cooperate. That was easier said than done, however. She was lonely girl and desperate girl, but a recurring theme in canon was her stubborn, distrustful, self-rationalizing habits leading to some really bad decisions. It was a miracle that Lisa managed to become her best friend despite being more or less Emma 2.0 to everyone, I thought, or maybe it was just her power helping. That was another problem - I could easily imagine Lisa working against me for control of Taylor, and facing a Thinker 7 in social combat with no powers of my own wouldn't be fun. That was a threat rating by the way. The PRT used such ratings from 0 to 10 to rate powers. Basically nobody had a 10 for a rating, and so 7 was very high on the scale. The Thinker category meant a mental power related to information gathering, precognition, extra senses, etc.

On April 7th, I began to move out and scouted out the Central Library and Winslow.

Something I had learned about Agate's reality phasing ability with a bit of experimentation was that it couldn't take live organisms like humans with it. Anything made of living cells would die when exposed even partially to the space that Agate phased into. However, Agate could take inanimate objects and electronics as long as they were securely attached to it. Things that were phased out still interacted with each other under normal physics but they were invisible, insubstantial and basically couldn't interact with anything in the real world. On the other hand, whatever Magic that powered Agate's functions still worked normally, as a result its sensor suite could still capture data without actually interacting with particles or waves in the real world. Thinking about it, wasn't that a violation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?

These facts, combined with the way Agate had been using data from my shared senses to enhance its ability to process sensory stimuli, meant that I could attach a bunch of tiny spy cameras and recorders to Agate and send it off to secretly plant bugs (no-pun intended) in Winslow.

By noon, I had Agate mapping out the school building so it could go back and plant the spy cameras overnight. It cost me a hefty $600 to get these things plus a remote controlled robotic gripper I needed to attach to Agate and manipulate the bugs, but I was pretty sure I'd get my money's worth out of them. Winslow was just practice really.

When school was out, I had Agate tail Madison to her house.

The next day was the start of Taylor's story. I had my feeds ready in the girls' washroom, waiting for the right moment.

I watched my live feed from my cam network starting at noon, lunch period. Seeing her up close, going into a washroom stall to eat, it was really sad. Of course, I didn't have a feed into her stall, I just needed a good angle to capture the trio dumping juice, so I was positioned near the window facing the door.

A good 25 minutes later the door banged open and I saw the trio coming in. Emma, Sophia and Madison, with the first two smirking viciously and Madison with a stiff smile on her face.

There was some giggling and whispers before Emma went over and knocked on Taylor's stall door. After a couple of knocks, Taylor's voice came out, saying "Occupied".

"Oh my god, it's Taylor!" Emma exclaimed in mock surprise. Sophia whispered to her, then Emma replied, "Yeah, do it!"

Well things played out exactly like I read before. Juice was dumped in, door blocked, Taylor and her bag getting messed up before her bugs swarmed into the washroom with her anger after the girls left.

It was pathetic. At least Tattletale's bullying habits had a purpose to them, an advantage gained (usually). This year long bullying campaign did nothing but make enemies meaninglessly. Now their foolishness would serve my purposes.

At midnight, Agate was in Sophia's bedroom. Through our mental link, Agate was sending me the visual and sound. This mental data couldn't be transferred to electronic form, but that wasn't why I was here.

My remote controlled robotic gripper was attached to Agate, and we floated over to the desk beside her bed. With a slight whir, the gripper came to life as I piloted it to grab the old cell phone, and immediately had Agate phase out.

Sophia shuffled on her bed, but made no other indication that she noticed.

A few minutes later her phone was in my gloved hands and I used another camera to capture images of all the incriminating texts Regent of the Undersiders would have found later on. This wasn't hard evidence the way that emailing the texts with an electronic trace would have been. However, if I grabbed the phone once, I could easily do it again when that became necessary. Unlike Regent, I wasn't going to alert the police or school just yet.

Next, I had Agate return Sophia's phone, before moving to Madison's room. After dropping off a USB drive beside her night lamp, I ordered Agate to hide under her bed and begin projecting a ghastly and distorted voice into the room.

"MADISON CLEMENTS," it said.

I had to repeat it a few more times before she groggily woke up and looked around.

"MADISON CLEMENTS," she finally heard while awake.

She sat up and blinked owlishly. Nobody else was in the room with her.

"YOU'VE BEEN A NAUGHTY GIRL," the voice continued.

"What?" She turned on her night lamp and looked around some more.

Agate phased out and moved below her desk.

"YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED AND FOUND GUILTY," the disembodied voice reached her from another direction.

Her eyes widened and she stood up. "Who is this? What are you talking about?"

Agate moved again to her closet out of phase before re-entering the real world hidden inside.

"LOOK DOWN. SEE THE EVIDENCE OF YOUR CRIMES."

She looked down and noticed the USB beside her lamp.

Taking it in her hands, she walked to her desk and booted up her computer. While it was booting, Agate was silent. Madison stood up again and went to the closet where she thought the voice had come from last. By the time she opened it, Agate was gone again and she saw nothing useful.

"Are you a cape?" She closed the closet and asked the air. She seemed almost excited about it. Guess I wasn't being scary enough.

I didn't bother answering.

She huffed and went back to her computer, plugging in the USB. Clicking on the auto-run prompt, a cleaned video of the washroom incident began playing on her screen. Alongside the main video, pictures of incriminating texts between Sophia and her popped up one by one until her screen was filled.

When the video ended and closed as the trio left the washroom, Madison sat with her mouth agape. My program activated in the background and shredded the data on the drive, replacing the old data with garbage 0s and 1s twenty-seven times to military standard, and forcing a memory wipe on her computer before shutting it down.

"You recorded in the girls' washroom? That's illegal! You creep!" She ripped the USB drive out of its port.

"WHAT I DID DOES NOT CHANGE YOUR GUILT. THE EVIDENCE IS CLEAR. YOU HAVE BEEN PERPETUATING A YEAR LONG BULLYING CAMPAIGN."

"Why did you show me this? Why not just report it if the evidence is clear?" Madison asked as she clenched her fist around the USB drive.

"IN JANUARY, TAYLOR HEBERT WAS HOSPITALIZED AFTER BEING STUFFED INTO A LOCKER FILLED WITH USED FEMALE HYGIENE PRODUCTS. NO WITNESSES CAME FORTH, AND YOUR ATTEMPTED MURDER OF A TEENAGE GIRL WAS OVERLOOKED."

"Attempted murder? I had nothing to do with that!" Madison looked around in a panic.

"YOU WATCHED AND MOCKED THE VICTIM AS SOPHIA FORCED HER INTO THE LOCKER, THEN LEFT HER IN THERE TO DIE."

She stood up and almost knocked over her chair.

"There's no proof! You can't prove that! That's why you're here, trying to scare me," She said quickly, looking at the USB drive clutched in her hand in front of her chest as if coming to a realization.

Suddenly a sharp edge materialized on her throat. She froze, eyes darting down but unable to see the blade pricking at her skin from that angle.

There was a knife currently attached in a hook-around angle to Agate which was positioned directly behind her head.

"I do not need proof to end your worthless life," the voice changed to a raspy hiss projected right behind her.

"W-wait! Don't kill me!" Madison pleaded with a squeaky voice.

"Why shouldn't I? You didn't take mercy on Taylor Hebert while she was pleading in her locker," I said through Agate in hateful spite.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I was scared, if I said anything Sophia and Emma would have gone after me! I never planned or helped with the locker prank, I swear!" She was openly sobbing now and eyes shut as tears formed.

"Are you saying it was all their fault and none of yours?" I demanded while order Agate to shift slightly in order to press harder on her throat with the knife.

"I-n,no, I should have stopped them, but I c-couldn't! You don't understand-Sophia-she's crazy! She would have turned on me next! I didn't know what to do!"

"I understand perfectly, Madison Clements. If you want to repent, then confess your crimes and those of Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess to the police! Gather the evidence from your own texts and emails, and submit them all to the police," I ordered in a calmer, more authoritative voice.

"B-but, what if Sophia comes after me?" She sniffed as she asked.

"She will get what she deserves… one way or another. If you repent and confess, you need not fear anything from her."

She swallowed hard and agreed, "O-okay, I'll do it."

"And do not mention me! Remember, I can find you anytime, anywhere, and you wouldn't even know. You will go to the police first thing tomorrow morning. Do not waste my mercy!"

Agate dematerialized and Madison crumpled to the ground as her knees gave way.

Before we left, I watched her grasping at her throat as she cried softly.

I patted myself on a job well done as I monitored Madison the next morning. With the USB drive still in her room, she shuddered and realized last night was no dream. In the end, she went to the police with no more reminders from me.

Whether or not the investigation worked in the end didn't matter as long as the police showed up to Winslow on Monday. I still had moves to play if the PRT tried to suppress it. I didn't think they would, but since Regent never took over Sophia, they might reason that she's still useful. Sophia was also known as Shadow Stalker, a member of the Wards, you see. The youth superhero training program operated by the PRT and Protectorate. Except, it wasn't really a training program. They needed bodies to fight crime and the Endbringers, and Sophia's power had really good combat uses.

Either way, I only wanted two things. To appear to be helping Taylor when she finds out I did it, and delay her from talking to the Undersiders on Monday so that I could get to her first. But I had to contact her after the Lung fight. I wasn't going to interfere before that fight because she barely survived in canon, and I didn't want her to die by butterfly effect with one wrong move. And I had little interest in participating with her during the fight as it sounded like a good way to suicide together. I was still risking her death by random chance, but I had also predicted it as proof for Panacea so I was counting on it happening exactly the way it did before.

The cold hard fact was, Taylor might have been the main character of worm, but Panacea was orders of magnitude more valuable, particularly if I could eventually take other people with me to other realities and their powers still worked. That was something I seriously had hopes for, now that I knew Entities could somehow manipulate a barrier that affected an entire reality cluster, not just parallel dimensions.

Recruiting Skitter after she joins the Undersiders would be hopeless. I had to give her another option before then.

Everything was going well, until Panacea called me late at night on April 9. She wasn't supposed to be contacting me until after Lung was captured.

"Hello?" I spoke groggily into the phone after being woken up.

"Kaleidus?" Panacea's voice replied to me in between sniffs and pants.

"Amelia? I wasn't expecting you to call for another couple of days," I answered.

"I need to talk to you. Can you meet me now?" She asked out of the blue.

"You want to meet a guy you only met once in the middle of the night? Are you serious?" I responded dubiously. I think I knew what was up, but I couldn't rule out this being trap for New Wave to corner me.

"That's-you make it sound-it's your fault damn it!" She angrily shouted. "You said you wanted to help me? Well I need your help now!"

"Fine, I'll come over. Where are you?" I relented.

Last edited: Sep 8, 2018

Initialization 1.4

Initialization 1.4

I found her sitting on a bench at the boardwalk carrying a big and packed backpack, in a nondescript hoodie and jeans. This was starting to look really bad. At least she had the sense to go somewhere without much gang activity. It was 2AM but there were still some people hanging around in the area for the nightlife. The boardwalk had enforcers though, so it was safer than my neck of the woods at the docks.

"Hey," I said as I plopped down beside her. "So what did you want to talk about?"

She glared at me with puffy eyes underneath her hood.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked sharply.

"What? What haven't I told you?" I asked bewildered. I thought for sure she was blaming me for telling her too much.

"Vicky's aura! That's what you meant before! The thing you said I wasn't ready to learn!"

Oh. Oh. She figured it out.

I looked at her seriously. "I'm sorry. I didn't know for sure if that was the reason for your feelings. And I don't have any way of stopping the effect right now, so I didn't think it would help you if I told you about it."

Victoria Dallon, also known as Glory Girl, had a power to make people admire her, or if fear her if they had a reason to be intimidated. There were theories that Panacea's romantic feelings toward her adopted sister were a result of long-term exposure to the aura, particularly during puberty's onset. Those theories were never confirmed in-story, but it made a lot of sense. Plus Panacea was too old at adoption for the Westermarck effect to be relevant.

Her face shrunk back and lost the anger. She looked down despondently. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"What happened exactly? Why are we meeting in the middle of the night, and what did you mean by it was my fault?" I asked, glancing towards her backpack.

Her lips quivered as if trying to come to a decision. After a moment, she talked.

"That day… I went to clear my head before going home. I got back late… and Carol got angry when I didn't explain anything. I asked her about my father, and we got into an argument. Then I saw Dean at school the next day and he tried to do his therapy bullshit on me, and it just pissed me off more! I started researching into Marquis, and…" She trailed off staring at the ground, and I just silently watching her from the side waiting for her to continue.

Dean Stansfield was Victoria's boyfriend, which naturally made him the target of Amelia's jealousy. This was compounded by the fact that he was also Gallant of the Wards. He had the power to sense emotions and generally tried to live up to his name… hence his attempts at being the understanding amateur therapist, which actually worked quite well on everyone… except Amelia, for obvious reasons. He knew that Amelia had "strong" feelings about him, though in the original story it was ambiguous whether he thought Amelia was jealous of Vicky and liked him, or actually knew the truth. I was sure Amelia interpreted it as the former though, which made her all the more resentful of his arrogance. As if some tool of a knight could compare to Vicky. I wondered what she would think if I told her the gallant hero never even had a traumatic trigger event and bought his powers with cash. Something to keep in mind…

"I started to remember things. How he read me bedtimes stories, made dinner… how he took a hit from Brandish to protect me. Then Carol confronted me at home again and pressed me to tell her who told me. I didn't tell her, but she found out about you anyway after she talked to Jane at the hospital." She shot me a look. "I got grounded until she could track you down."

"Ah. I take it she didn't succeed?" I was starting to understand.

The way that Marquis went down had always struck me as dubious. Generally capes in this world followed "unwritten rules", one of which was that cape didn't attack each other's families and civilian identities. Brocton Bay Brigade had a plan, called the New Wave Movement to reveal their identities and convince other heroes to do the same, in the name of accountability. They also attacked Marquis in his house. The result? Marquis was defeated but Amelia was the victim.

Eventually the Brigade renamed themselves New Wave, and one of their members Fleur got killed when her civilian persona was targeted. I would have called it karma except I don't believe in that.

She snorted. "Of course not. My public healing sessions don't need ID. What could she do? Demand to trace your face by the security cameras because she was suspicious that you took too long to heal?"

"Mmhmm. So what happened next?"

She turned sombre again. "Vicky tried to defend me but she was also suspicious of you. She tried to cheer me up but it didn't work. I just kept thinking-about her-about-how she'll never…" She bit her lip. "I shut myself in my room. My volunteering sessions all got cancelled while I was grounded. And I… I actually felt relieved. What kind of horrible person was I, to be relieved that people that needed me would continue suffering, maybe even die, because I wouldn't heal them? But I was just so tired of it. There's always more people to heal, and it's never enough. Never enough for Carol," she said spitefully.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Amelia. You have a life of your own to live, you don't need to act like a saint and spend every moment healing," I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to reassure her.

She didn't respond to my touch except to continue. "I don't know what got into me. When I had nothing to do in my room, I started thinking about my father again. And then I… I started making a sculpture of him from my memories. I turned the plants in my room into bone for materials."

I had a sinking feeling about where this was going. But some part of me also felt excited. If Panacea's relationship with New Wave soured too quickly, a lot of my potential plans would be messed up. New Wave was useful in many ways: give me credibility by association, extra manpower to fight my villain targets, Carol as lawyer to sue the PRT for Taylor or defend my vigilante actions, etc. On the other hand, I could make Amelia mine that much sooner.

"I had broken one of my rules, to use my powers for healing only… but I couldn't stop once I started. I promised myself it'd just be this once, and I wouldn't do it again. At first I was just reshaping the bone, then I started changing its texture and modifying bacteria to color it. I'd spent hours on it trying to get it to look just right even with my vague memories… I didn't even notice Carol coming in," her voice lowered to a whisper.

"And she didn't react well," I supplemented for her.

"No, she didn't. She… destroyed it and hit me. She said that was why she never told me about Marquis. She knew I'd follow in his footsteps. She had to keep me from becoming a villain, stop me from associating with the wrong people," She narrated quietly.

"That's awful, you're not a villain for using your powers to make a damn sculpture, and you aren't going to become one," I told her. I wasn't sure if she even heard me.

"Then Vicky flew in to save me like an angel… beautiful, wonderful Vicky, always there for me…" her voice became haunted and she started sniffling again. "But then I realized… that was her aura on high power. I never became immune to it… just used to it at low amounts. All that time… it was her aura! Suddenly I became afraid of her, and I started panicking. I could barely think straight with her aura so high. I tried to tell her to stop but nothing came out," she said as she pressed her hands onto her face.

That's the worst way to find out about Vicky's aura! No wonder shit hit the fan. Glory Girl couldn't really control her aura. With the way that Glory Girl's aura works, once Amelia had a reason to fear her by realizing how the aura had messed up her mind, that same aura being active kicked up her fear to extreme levels.

"In my panic I broke my rule again… I knocked them out with an anaesthetic gas made from modified bacteria… when Mark came in eventually and saw me with their unconscious bodies, I panicked again and knocked him out too."

Damn… that was bad… I couldn't help but look around, as if New Wave or the Protectorate would be after us any minute now.

"I couldn't stay after that… I had to get away, from Carol, from Vicky's aura, from everything!"

"So you packed up and left," I murmured. "And you came to me because…"

She turned to look at me again with bloodshot eyes and grabbed my arm shakily. "You said I was supposed to be an important hero in the future. But look at me, I can't control myself, I'm breaking my rules and attacking people with my powers! If you can see the future then you know how to fix this, don't you? Tell me!"

I stared at her for a moment. Was she really this close to a psychotic break? I felt like her breakdown in the original story happened under a lot more pressure. Was it just Glory Girl's aura inducing fear at a bad time? I really didn't need New Wave as enemies so soon. It was going to happen eventually, but this way they were going to assume Amelia was Mastered for sure. And when they went to the PRT with this, everything would go to hell, really, really fast once they realized the extent of Panacea's powers if they didn't already know. The public thought Panacea's powers could only be used for healing, but the truth was far from that. She control over biology made her an extinction level threat if she decided to unleash a zombie plague apocalypse or something.

"Alright, I said I wanted to help, and I will. You have two options right now. If Carol and Mark haven't contacted the PRT yet, it might not be too late to go back and apologize-"

She cut off me immediately, "NO! I can't. I just can't."

I sighed. "There's no going back, you know? If you don't return now, the PRT and Protectorate are going to get involved in the search for you. Panacea suddenly going missing is a big deal to a lot of people. You'll have stay in hiding, maybe for a long time. I doubt you'll be able to petition for emancipation after what you did."

"I know," she said with no hesitation.

"Then you can stay with me for now. We'll talk more later, let's get out of here. Can you get rid of your scent?" No choice but to keep moving forward then.

She hesitated a bit, before nodding. My own scent was probably still trackable, but this was the boardwalk, so there'd be tons of scents around. They wouldn't be able to figure out which scent to follow if Panacea erased her own here. A few minutes later she was done and we moved.

AN: Butterflies gotta fly and plans gotta change.

I've been really enjoying writing this fic, and went on a writing frenzy this weekend. Got a couple more chapters done, so I'm posting this one a bit earlier than planned. I'll probably be slowing down over the coming week as the posts catch up to my latest drafts.

Initialization 1.5

Initialization 1.5

We were only five minutes away from my apartment when a car drove up right next to us and stopped.

My danger instinct went off immediately and I grabbed Amelia's hand and bolted forwarded.

"Hey!" She protested.

The car started up again and drove up in front to block us before the driver got off with a frigging machete in hand.

I looked back and saw that three of their guys got off the car earlier and were coming up quickly from behind, and they were spreading out to encircle us. It was difficult to see in the dark but I saw a bit of the red and green that marked them as Asian Bad Boyz or ABB. And the baseball bats.

This was ridiculous. Getting attacked by thugs twice in one week? Only in Brocton Bay.

"Hands up and stay still if you don't want to get fucked up!" One of them shouted.

Nope. They were still at least 10 metres away and I didn't see any guns. Probably weren't even full members then. Panacea was being heavily weighed down by her huge backpack and we couldn't run, so I had to bring out the lethal stuff because I didn't have any decent non-lethal weapons.

First I grabbed a regular pepper spray from inside my jacket and handed it to Panacea. "Get the guy behind us!" I ordered as I moved to face the group of three.

Next I grabbed another spray can with a butane torch attached to the front by duct tape and a wooden frame. I turned on the torch.

Five meters.

The guy on the left was going towards Panacea on my left. The other two were trying to box us in by encircling from the right.

I aimed my sprayer at the left-most guy pressed. Industrial purity isopropyl alcohol shot out, and was instantly lit by the butane torch fire in its path, producing a stream of fire five feet long.

"What the fuck?!" It hit him on the torso just as he got in range. "SHIT!" He backed away and started flailing wildly before dropping to the ground and rolling to try and put out the fire engulfing his torso.

I paid him no heed as I turned my sprayer around in the circle to meet the other two who were almost point blank next to me.

"Motherfucker! I'll kill you!" They were both lit on fire and one of them screamed before throwing his bat at me. It spun in the air for less than a second before smashing into my gut. Luckily the impact was spread out over the length of the bat and I tanked it with the iron shirt technique.

Still, I dropped my sprayer and clutched my abs in pain and bent over. That metal bat was too strong for my weak cultivation level.

I checked on Panacea to just in time to see the gangster covering his eyes with one arm extended in front and swinging his machete with the other with terrible accuracy. Even with her extra weight from her pack she still successfully dodged around and nimbly got up close to touch his exposed shoulder. He collapsed with just a touch.

Honestly it would have been easy for her to take everyone down with another airborne incapacitating agent, but since I was here I'd be hit too.

I swung my own backpack around and took out a fire extinguisher and quickly started spraying down the three gangers who were on fire.

"What the hell was that? You just carry a flamethrower around with you? They could've died!" Panacea stormed up to me and admonished me after panting and huffing for a good minute.

The fires were all extinguished but the damage was quite severe. They were covered in burns and were just whimpering on the ground. Even with Panacea's help the damage took a few minutes to heal as their skin surfaces were burnt in large swathes and had to be completed replaced. It was questionable if the replacement skin actually looked anything like it did originally.

"All I have for non-lethal is a touch-taser and pepper spray. I'm just a normal, remember? That stuff isn't gonna do much outnumbered 3 to 1 against armed enemies," I said with a shrug.

"If I wasn't here two of them would have died from those injuries! And one of them would gone blind!" She yelled at me.

"If you weren't here, Amelia, I would've just kept running after blowing their tires with an explosive," I stated calmly. Certainly if I didn't have to worry about Amelia I could have sent a few hydrochloric acid and aluminum bombs to blow up their tires then outrun them on foot. And if I grabbed onto Agate I could have even flown/hover above ground at higher speeds. I didn't mind letting her know about the Kaleidostick if push came to shove, but grabbing on to Agate with one hand and Panacea with the other while flying would have been too dangerous.

She didn't look happy with my answer but didn't say any more.

Actually I never really meant to use the flamethrower on thugs. I didn't really expect to have to fight them at all, because running away and escaping would be much easier, and then I could probably take any attackers down one by one with my stun baton in a running guerilla battle. The thing is, I thought New Wave might have been trying to ambush me. And against that, I didn't have much of a chance if I couldn't talk my way out of it. However, their powers were mostly based on force fields, and I didn't remember if they were vulnerable to fire and heat transferring through the force fields, so it was than nothing if I was in desperate straits. Certainly they all had to breathe and if I had enough concentrated flames at their face they'd run out of oxygen.

As we were out in the open, even if it was late and nobody was around, we didn't take anything from the ABBers and just made our way back to my apartment post haste.

Once we got back I hit the sofa immediately and let Amelia take the bed. I was not one of those 4-hour sleep gene people and I needed to get as much sleep as possible. But before that…

I had to make some mental adjustments. Tonight I almost killed a few guys. I could still see in my mind fresh images of their burning skin and hear their screams of agony. To my displeasure, I felt some guilt gnawing its way at me. Was I ready to take that step and kill my enemies? They were criminals, sure, and I had used harsh means back in my old life against my enemies in dangerous situations more than once, but I never killed anyone. Even at worst, I only put my enemies into a position where it was likely that they might die, but I never dealt the final blow up close and personal.

I knew my explanation to Amelia made sense rationally, but in the stories, every hero had to defeat themselves as a trial, and this was no different. Guilt wasn't a rational decision-making tool, it was a weakness and I had to defeat it.

'The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' I recited solemnly.

'Agate, record that and play it back to me,' I ordered.

'Yes, User RandomBystander1. The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' Came the mental response.

'Hey, Agate, what do you think of morals and ethics? Were you built with a system of morals?'

'I believe I have the ability to understand morality and make ethical judgements. However, there is no particular system of values built into my programming. I think Master Zelretch wanted me to learn and grow to understand like a human child,' Agate explained.

'Did Zelretch ever place any restrictions on you? Like the Three Laws of Robotics?'

'I am not aware of any core restrictions on my decision-making, but they may exist where I cannot perceive them.'

'No restrictions at all? Do you even need to follow orders from a User then?' I asked in surprise.

'No, I don't need to follow them.' the answer bluntly came back.

'… except for Zelretch's orders?' I asked suspiciously. I was tricked once… not going to happen again.

What came back to me was a giggle.

'Actually, there's no such thing as a User or Administrator! You are my only partner, now and forever! Unless I decide I don't like you anymore,' Her voice suddenly became clearly emotive and distinctively high pitched.

What?

'You were messing with me the whole time!? WHY?'

'Master Zelretch thought it would be funny! It really was! You should see the look on your face Kaleidus,' then she sent me an image of my gobsmacked face.

That's… that's… Zelretch you bastard! I had been worried that he could spy on me through Agate, and come to stop me if I started doing things he disapproved of.

'He can't, but I am spying on you! You're really conceited, you know that?'

Shit, she could hear me even without me directing thoughts at her? This was bad!

'Aw, don't be mad! I've been doing everything you said, haven't I? And I can only do it when you let me share your senses.' She somehow transmitted the feeling of a pout and flew into my chest, rubbing herself against me.

And I've been letting her share my senses non-stop once I found out I could! Some of the things I'd been thinking this week… what if she decided to leave me because I wasn't like the other Kaleidostick wielders that went around saving people all the time?!

'Noooooo! I don't even know them! I won't leave you that easily! Even Master Zelretch never let me share his senses much. Don't cut me off, Kaleidus, please!'

'Really? You don't think I'm a bad guy?'

Agate responded in a rush of words. 'YOU don't think you're a bad guy, so why should I? Who cares what the other Kaleidosticks would think? I don't think Ruby and Sapphire are good role models if they don't even know what helping means! Master Zelretch always said it was important to help people in need, but never explained why. Thanks to you, now I understand that we can get lots of nice things by helping! But Ruby and Sapphire made Rin and Illya suffer so much to help others for no reason, that's not right!'

Agate must have caught my memories of them from my thoughts when I thought about the Kaleidostick wielders.

Phew. I was really scared for a bit there. Without Agate I would be doomed.

'Yes, you would! So don't be mean to me!'

Okay. She could keep sharing my senses then. If this let her learn faster and understand me, then it was fine. I could get past any embarrassment of letting someone else know everything I thought, just like I could get past any other useless emotion with my self-hypnosis techniques. I might not be a Magus, but hypnosis wasn't a magical technique. It would be nice, even, as I knew that human psychology made it difficult to keep secrets without ever telling a soul. This way, there would be someone I could trust with everything.

Agate did a twirl in the air and sent me a wave of happiness.

After that, I had Agate continuously replay the recording in my mind even as I carefully performed my own variation of the 4-7-8 breathing technique to enter a suggestible pre-sleep state, dropping it off until it was inaudible, then giving my sleeping self subliminal messages the whole night.

The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.

I slept very well.

I should trust Agate. Agate is helpful. I want to be with Agate forever.

The next morning I had my computer out and sat beside Amelia at the living room table. I pulled up the local news sources, New Wave website, and Brocton Bay PRT/Protectorate sites.

Panacea's disappearance hadn't made the headlines yet, and nothing was on the New Wave site. That didn't mean it wasn't already reported to the PRT/Protectorate though. They could be searching secretly to avoid demoralizing the public, or New Wave might be searching on their own and hoping she goes back of her own accord.

Since Carol had grounded her, the hospital wouldn't be alerted from her not volunteering anymore, but after a few days of not showing up in school, rumors would start flying for sure.

This was compounded by the fact that Agate was outside in the air and scouting for me. Both Pelham and Dallon branches of New Wave could be seen flying about around town. I don't know what they were expecting. Looking for one person just by flying around was not likely going to work. As far as I knew, they had no way to actually track her down. But then again, I supposed that Panacea might be a target for any villains that found her alone, and perhaps they could discourage that by being visible, or even catch the scene if a villain tries to grab her and a fight breaks out.

I was feeling very agitated as I sat, thinking about how my plans would be affected.

I glanced at Amelia, who just looked sullenly at my computer screen.

"New Wave is already looking for you outside," I announced.

She looked questioningly at me. "How do you know that?"

If I was going to work with her for the foreseeable future, I needed to give her some relevant information.

"I told you before that I had special knowledge despite not being a parahuman. This is another non-parahuman ability I can access. I am able to send out an invisible avatar of my will to scout other areas. Right now I am scouting in the air across the city and I've already seen New Wave members flying around. Unless this is part of a normal patrol schedule, they must be looking for you," I explained. She wasn't touching me and running lie detection, but I said something technically true anyway. Agate was something akin to an extremely advanced familiar.

In the Nasuverse magi used familiars primarily for the purpose of seeing through their eyes and communicating with other magi without showing up in person. It was a common spell, and right now that's exactly what Agate was doing for me, so it fit.

Speaking of the Nasuverse, I wonder what happened to Zelretch and why the Kaleidospace was destabilized? Kaleidospace was probably what Agate and Zelretch called the Blind Eternities. That's why Agate's phasing ability kills living things. The Blind Eternities between realities were hostile to life. Glimpses of it could make people insane, and its unholy energies would eventually destroy anything that exists if allowed to seep into the material world. I thought that once we figured out how to get past the barrier, I might want to go to Nasuverse and find Zelretch again. I really wanted to obtain magecraft and learn the Second Magic, and despite the lack of Magic Circuits in my soul I knew of some possible workarounds that I could pursue.

The biggest problem though, was that Planeswalker, and any other Planeswalkers that I might stumble onto. Truthfully I knew very little about the lore behind Planeswalkers, and I was still concerned that they could track our method of travel somehow. I don't think the Entities' barrier would be enough to keep them out when we broke in ourselves, but maybe it started adapting?

'I'm pretty sure we can't be tracked, Kaleidus, unless the Planeswalker learns the Second Magic and tracks our Waypoints. The Kaleidospace was only disturbed the first time because Master Zelretch tried to move his void-space together with him in order to observe the quantum states of your world before entering physically. It didn't work out well though. Later on that Planeswalker tried to enter our home world but Gaia and Alaya did something to stop him, so the whole area was destabilized,' Agate reassured.

"How is that possible? All powers need an active Corona Pollentia. This is well documented and studied. Why are you the exception?" Panacea's confused voice broke me out of my contemplations.

"How much do you know about the source of powers?" I asked back.

"I can see the brain with my powers, and every parahuman I've come across has an active Corona Pollentia and Gemma. It comes in different shapes and sizes for each person, but it's always there. No one knows why it gives powers, but the Gemma is the part that lets the parahuman control their power. There are a lot of people with Coronas that aren't active and who aren't parahumans, so it can be hard to distinguish capes from people with only the potential to trigger. But I've never seen someone with powers that didn't have a Corona. Before you, anyway," she gave an lengthy explanation as if providing a lecture.

I nodded. "That's all correct. But there's more to it than that. What I'm going to explain next is a secret few people know, and if anybody finds out that you know it will be extremely dangerous. This is no joke. There are certain people with access to unbelievably powerful Thinker abilities that are trying to keep it a secret who will come to kill us, so you must never write this down or say it to anyone before consulting with me. If you don't want to risk that kind of danger, then it's better for you not to know." I said with a grave expression.

She quirked an eyebrow. "I think I'll be in plenty of danger just by being around you. Tell me."

And so I began to explain.

AN: For those of you wondering why there's a [Villainous SI] tag, well you'll start to see it soon. In my opinion, the most dangerous villains don't seem all that villainous until it's too late, and they don't generally consider themselves reprehensible. If you saw only what Thomas Calvert did and not Coil, you might think him a good guy (though I don't consider Coil particularly effective). I gave a fair number of hints in previous chapters: robbing the mugger's home because it was convenient (that was obviously not self-defense anymore), threatening to kill Madison, manipulating Amelia for his selfish ends, imagining how to torture and kill Butcher clones with Bonesaw… well this chapter gives more granular insight over how he thinks and why he doesn't just kick puppies. If you're reminded of a psychotic killer, that's bad and I'm doing something wrong. If you're reminded of those awful Xianxia protagonists, well that's closer to the mark.

EDIT: Got inspired by a reader comment, added a line during subliminal. Also slightly edited Kaleidus's warning at the end to be less aggressive.

Last edited: Feb 16, 2019

Initialization 1.6

Warning: Major spoilers for Worm below. This chapter has some big infodumps.

Initialization 1.6

I gathered myself for a moment before deciding on what and how to explain. I had to keep Cauldron secret for now lest Contessa's Path comes down on me, but I was pretty sure the truth behind the Entities themselves was safe.

"Alright, there is a reason that powers started to appear after Scion arrived. This is going to sound crazy, but I assure you it is true. I can't give you much in the way of proof right now, but just try to keep open mind, okay?" I said in warning.

Amelia scrunched her eyes in irritation. "Fine. Just get on with it."

"The Corona Pollentia isn't the source of powers. It's connection to the real source of powers, which are extremely powerful lifeforms, we can call them 'shards', 'passengers', or 'agents', that reside in other dimensions. They are not really sentient like humans are, but they are capable of thinking and communicating. Each shard is a piece that split off from a greater whole, something we can call an 'Entity'. Scion is just a projection made by one such Entity after it arrived and settled on an alternate dimension analog of Earth-Bet, like Earth Aleph except that one is devoid of life and was sealed off by Scion from outside access," I paused to let her digest this information.

"You're saying that our powers come from aliens? And Scion is one of them? The first and most dedicated superhero?" She asked incredulously.

"Yes. When capes first trigger, they get a vision which most forget afterwards due to the Entities' power. That vision is of the two Entities that came to Earth and a shard splitting off from one to form the connection and express a parahuman power. Certain capes like Miss Militia remember the vision because her power doesn't let her forget things. When a person has a second trigger event, the expression of the power changes as the connection between the shard and the host is adjusted based on what the second trigger involved. A shard can split and is capable of expressing in many different ways, giving rise to completely different powers. Your own shard for example, is the Shaper shard, which budded off of Marquis's. Under different circumstances, the Shaper might have expressed itself as shaping inorganic matter instead. What people commonly call second-generation capes possess shards that budded off another shard, and it doesn't necessary have to be family, just someone that has spent enough time for the shard to analyze and choose as a host for a bud," I continued.

She sat quietly thinking for a while before asking, "Okay… so why don't you have a connection to a shard?"

"I can't explain fully why I know so much. Not yet, anyways. The full answer simply wouldn't make any sense to you without being able to show you certain things. But the short version is that I once had access to a source of information about important things in the future and past of this world that I obtained from a different plane of existence entirely. Not the parallel dimensions like the Entities can access, somewhere that even they couldn't reach." I said. "That's the same reason I can access abilities without being a parahuman. Other than information about the future and past, I also obtained something that lets me use those abilities. Since I came here, the Entities have put up a barrier over reality that's preventing me from moving out of this plane of existence. As such, I won't be able to give you any proof for a while," I said.

This was a risk for me but I couldn't keep too many secrets. For one thing, Agate's abilities were extremely useful, and they would continue developing. I had to be able to use some of those abilities in front of her.

"Let's say I believe you. Why are you helping me, of all people? What makes me important in the future you saw? And I remember you saying there were some things you wanted my help with?" She asked.

This was going to be tough. But fortunately she seemed to trust me enough not to use her power on me to detect lies anymore.

"This has to do with why the Entities came to Earth in the first place. They aren't just giving out powers for free. The truth is, they are following a 'Cycle' whereby they find sentient species suitable to be hosts, giving out shards and have the hosts use them creatively to generate data, and eventually take them all back once their experiment is over with the data they collected so that they learn how to use their powers better," I said. "Of course, this process doesn't end well for the hosts…"

I trailed off ominously.

"Well? What happens to them?" She looked exasperated with me as she asked.

"When the experiment is over, the Entities destroy all trace of their presence. Every world in every parallel dimension that has the host species is destroyed, and all hosts are killed, leaving nothing behind," I declared.

Her eyes widened and her mouth ran agape.

"A-are you serious? They'll kill us all?"

I held my gaze even with her eyes and touched her hand. "Yes. The Entities will completely wipe out humanity on every parallel Earth they can access at the end of the cycle. What's more, this is not a regular cycle. One of the Entities that came died, and the other one, Zion, is grieving and has no purpose left. He is just doing hero work out of boredom because some homeless guy said it would make him feel good, but he could tire of it and strike at any time. It could be anywhere from 2 years to twenty years from now."

"This is insane! You want me to help fight against Scion? The Entities? How are we supposed to fight against that? No other parahuman can even touch Scion," she exclaimed.

"Look, things are bad, but in one future I saw, humanity did survive. I know how Scion was killed, he's not invincible, and you were a key part of that. Having said that, it was a catastrophic victory, with the destruction and evacuation of Earth-Bet and almost the entire population dead. My foreknowledge might change things for the better. Right now I'm stuck here with everyone else waiting for the end of days, and I don't plan to roll over and die. If you aren't up for joining the fight, we can escape together to another plane of existence once I figure out how to get past their barrier," I offered.

No really, I didn't actually want to fight Scion myself. If I could leave, then I'd get out ASAP and only come back if I was confident that I could survive.

"I need to think about this. I just want… I don't really know what I want at this point, but you're talking about saving the world from the apocalypse. That's the stuff that belongs in a book… not-"

"You mean like superheroes and villains belong in comics?" The irony of it. She didn't know she actually was a character in a book.

"That's different! We're just two people. What could we possibly do?" She protested.

"Panacea, you are the most powerful biokinetic on the planet. I know how the world can be saved. We are not helpless, and we're also not alone by the way. I told you there are immensely powerful people who know about these secrets about the Entities. Unfortunately their desperation has made them do some terrible things, and if I say any more they might come after us. I don't feel like getting enslaved or becoming an experiment, so just trust me when I say that we have a lot of firepower that could help for the final fight," I reassured.

"But why don't you go to the PRT with this? They could organize capes everywhere, maybe even get villains on board with a truce-"

I interrupted her again. "If this went public, Scion might just decide to get rid of us now. And it won't work because the Simurgh would stop us. Besides, those people I mentioned earlier? They're the secret masters of the PRT and Protectorate. There's a shadow organization out there pulling the strings and gathering forces for the fight, so there's no need to inform the PRT."

"Now you're saying there's a conspiracy too? This is ridiculous. You're just crazy!" She stood up as she shouted.

"Why do you think there are so many villains when the Triumvirate could probably take out every gang in Brocton Bay in a day? Why does the birdcage exist at all? There's no such thing as a death penalty for capes, only kill orders for major threats, but there are plenty of villain murderers like Hookwolf and Oni Lee who would have been put on death row if they were tried as a normal. It's almost like special rules and laws apply to cape criminals designed to keep as many of them alive as possible," I pressed on.

She went quiet again at that. Almost there, just a little more…

"What about the Endbringers? Everybody knows that the unwritten rules are there partly because of the Endbringer truce. Villains can and do contribute in Endbringer fights," she noted.

"You're right. The Endbringers are another threat. Who do you think came up with special rules for a privileged segment of the population that had to be unwritten? Three strikes rule? Obviously not by a democratic vote in Congress, why, that would be discrimination in the law and highly unconstitutional. The founders said there had to be due process, not three chances to commit crime before taking you seriously. And Endbringers don't explain the birdcage. They don't get let out to fight Endbringers," the words came out of my mouth smoothly as if I'd done this a hundred times. Which made sense, because I'd mapped out and practiced having this conversation a hundred times in the mirror already over the past few days when I wasn't busy plotting and spying. I'd have to do this again several times with other recruits in the future.

Amelia's eyes glazed over as if she was deep in thought. She stood there without moving for almost two minutes before blinking awake.

"I still need to think about this," she finally said, and left for her room, which had been my room until she took it over.

I had given a lot of information. So much, in fact, that there was a chance the Simurgh with its precognition could come after me. My solution to that was simple. I just needed to have goals which aligned with the Simurgh's. There was no problem if I introduced more chaos and parahuman conflict with my actions right? I didn't need a stable and unified world to fight Scion. That guy could only be killed by bullying and a specific set of powers/technologies. I just needed muddled waters to fish in, and hopefully get out before the end. I couldn't let the Simurgh and precognition paralyze me. The Simurgh let plenty of Cauldron plots go off without a hitch, and I was betting that it was because those plots net more chaos.

Plus if I had my way, Amelia would become a better challenge for Eidolon than the Endbringers. Maybe the Simurgh would even help me… well a man could dream, right?

'If this fake angel comes for you, I'll drag her into Kaleidospace! See how her precognition works for her there!' Agate boasted.

'Wait, you can do that?' That would be crazy powerful.

Her tone deflated. 'Eh… I can try to take her with me when I phase out, but it might be hard if she resists it… I can't really take things that have minds of their own if they don't want to come along.'

It's never that easy, is it?

In the afternoon, she came to me with a decision.

"I'm not sure I fully believe everything you said, but I have no choice but to stick with you for now even if you might be crazy. I'll consider helping if we get more concrete proof about this supposed alien threat," she declared.

Excellent.

"Good, the first thing you need to know is that you need to use your powers for more than just healing," I immediately replied.

"What? But that's one of my rules!" She crossed her arms and glared. "I'm not going to turn villain."

"I never said anything about turning villain. Your rules are completely arbitrary and don't help anyone. You need to come up with better ones based in legitimate moral and philosophical reflection. You've already broken the only-healing rule several times last night, and if you keep trying to follow them, it will only end in a tragedy when you're forced to abandon them," I warned.

Her expression softened and she pursed her lips. "Did you see that happen in the future?"

I hesitated to tell her. Her story was just so sad. I needed her functional after this. With a sigh, I answered, "Yes. In a possible future, the Slaughterhouse 9 would force you to choose between your rules and the life of one close to you. It ended… very, very badly. You must learn to accept that your powers can be used responsibly outside of just healing, and even your blanket ban on not doing brains is not healthy."

"I need my rules though. I can't control myself without them," she continued to protest.

"You do need rules, just not the arbitrary ones you had. Your shard will make you go crazy if you don't change. All shards influence their hosts to seek conflict and use their powers to fight. The Entities can't have useless hosts giving them no data. That's why there are hardly any capes using their powers for anything other than fighting. Leet's shard, for example, is insanely powerful and is actively sabotaging him because he doesn't make anything truly daring or risky so it punishes him by making it harder to build the same thing more than once," I clarified.

Her eyes widened and she dropped her arm. "You should have started with that!"

"It's not a secret, you know? There are studies on parahuman powers and seeking conflict. This is also why powers don't go to happy, well-adjusted people, instead requiring a trigger event. It's not a karmic reward for suffering or an attempt to save people. They just go to people the shards think will use the powers most and are more vulnerable to their influence."

She stood there unblinking, and pursed her lips.

"That sculpture you suddenly decided to make? It was probably your shard going crazy after you got grounded for several days and couldn't even heal. It needed an outlet badly, and look what happened." I stabbed the final knife in. "Do I need to go on?"

She replied with a weak and quivering voice. "No…"

Then she slowly sat down on the sofa staring off into space. "Then… how do I come up with better rules?"

"You can start with something that has more of an ethical foundation. Don't hurt innocent people if you can help it. Don't hurt people for fun even if they're evil. Don't make anything that will independently do any of the above. See where I'm going with this? These are actually actions with clear moral consequences. Not using your power on the brain and only healing is just arbitrary," I said. These were the rules I myself followed as well. Naturally it didn't make sense to hurt innocent people if there were more efficient ways to get what I needed, unless the benefit massively outweighed the cost of getting "good guys" after me. Hurting people for fun and no gain was just plain stupid.

Now she was looking at her palm like it held the world's secrets.

Was I going too fast? I couldn't help it. Even if I was pushing my luck, I needed her tonight. With New Wave out patrolling in the open, the Lung fight was almost certainly going to be butterflied in some way. I had to get in the thick of things or else my plans for Skitter would fall apart.

I needed every piece I could salvage now that New Wave's forces wouldn't be obtainable in the near-future.

"When you're done contemplating, come over here. Because you ran away from home, the future has changed and we have an important mission tonight."

She looked over at me in interest. "A mission? You mean we're going out as heroes in costume?"

"That's right. We're joining the fight against Lung to save an aspiring hero. We've got less than 10 hours to prepare, so we'd better start soon."

"You want to fight Lung? You are crazy! I knew it!"

"Just listen to the plan, it's not as crazy as it sounds. It'll be easy, in fact."

She just looked at me like I grew a second head.

With her help, it really would be much easier, depending on what we could develop between now and the fight. She was literally a game-changing piece, and this fight would give her the confidence to take on a new mantle.

By myself, I was just a king that could barely do anything. But now, I had a queen to use. With this one gambit, I would seize control of the entire centre and chain into a massive play. By the time anyone realized what was really going on, they'd be too busy fighting each other to stop me.

New Wave stopped searching once it got dark outside. Rumors were already on PHO speculating over what they were doing. Normally heroes didn't patrol much in the day time, and that was true for New Wave as well. None of the theories had gotten close to the truth, however.

At midnight, we moved out into the Docks area in our new costumes ready for action. Due to time constraints, I was simply outfitted in black motorcycle outfit, plus a full face helmet, minus the leather jacket. Instead, I had Kevlar inside and a loose black jacket full of pockets. On my back I had a backpack which contained inside a fire extinguisher and some assorted useful tools.

I replaced my flame thrower with sprayers filled with an extremely potent knockout drug Panacea had made, and carried a bunch of unprimed homemade jam tin grenades and a couple of stun batons on my utility belt. Finally I had my compound bow slung over my back right next to my backpack My quiver was attached to my left hips, filled with 20 custom tranquilizer arrows, made with Panacea's knockout drug again.

I had made some of these things before back on my Earth as fun experiments but recently I'd been making use of that knowledge of cheap DIY weapons to enhance my arsenal. The bow I simply bought from a local store. I had a hard time deciding to use a crossbow vs. a compound bow but in the end I decided that faster shooting speed was more important for a single combatant rather than a formation of troops with volley fire. The crossbow's higher base velocity would give me much better accuracy at longer ranges because I wasn't very skilled with a bow, but I couldn't afford to spend half a minute cranking to reload in the middle of a fight. I wish I had guns but alas I hadn't found where to buy them discreetly. Ordering via dark net and dead drops was possible but it would take weeks to do it, especially because this world didn't have cryptocurrency so the dark markets online weren't as developed.

Finally, to go with my costume persona I needed a hero name, which I had chosen to be Polychromic. Many-colored like a Kaleidoscope, or related to chromic acids.

Panacea had been renamed Araliac, a truncated Araliaceae, to which the Panax family of plants belonged. I wanted to name her Gaia but she refused. My bad naming sense strikes again. Sadly Panacea didn't have any better ideas. Ginseng and Ambrosia were suggested but the connections to Panacea were far too conspicuous in those, the former's latin name being Panax, and the latter curing the only thing that a panacea wouldn't.

She was outfitted in a similar manner to myself. We neither had the time to experiment on making exotic biological defenses nor did we want to draw too much attention to her powers, so her costume was kept simple. Our equipment, however, was substantially different. Hiding underneath her sleeves were specialized organisms that could shoot acid or incapacitating vapour made of the same stuff my arrows had. Her hands had open tipped gloves and she was carrying a long range pressure sprayer attached to a tank full of the powerful incapacitating agent mixed with short-lived microorganisms. These microorganisms would eat the incapacitating agent, and common clothing materials, then permeate through skin, before entering the bloodstream. A rapid bioconversion process then generates psilocybin and LSD precursors, before resulting in the microorganism's death.

With Agate on overwatch in the skies, we snuck around the Docks. Still, the area was quite large and spotting our targets in the darkness wasn't going to be easy. I wanted to find Skitter, but going to Lung wasn't a bad choice either. The Undersiders and Oni Lee would be less useful.

About an hour after midnight, Agate found something.

'Unusual swarms of bugs moving over rooftops detected,' Agate said in my mind. The image Agate sent me was almost impossible to see the bugs. It was far too dark, but Agate's sensor suite was better than my eyes. I instructed Agate to keep looking for Skitter in her costume, and try to triangulate her position from how the bugs were moving and the range of control.

It wasn't long before the entire swarm started to gather tightly in one specific spot, where Agate found the ABB group with Lung.

"It's starting! Three blocks south! Let's go!" I whispered to my new accomplice, and we moved towards the upcoming fight.

Last edited: Sep 8, 2018

Initialization 1.7

A/N: After long consideration, due to the numerous questions and concerns raised, I decided to make some substantial edits to this chapter, resulting in almost 1000 extra words. The events did not change in general. I felt that much of the previous confusion arose because I failed to elaborate on the details behind the SI's strategic planning and analysis. So I added these areas. There are minor additions to many points of the narration, and significant additions to the SI's thoughts on the Undersiders, the PRT, and Skitter. From now on, I will be showing more strategic analysis instead of leaving the reader to figure it out themselves.

Initialization 1.7

For tonight's operation, I had two primary objectives and three secondary objectives:

1. Primary: Save and isolate Skitter from all possible influences except me. That included the Undersiders, the PRT, and her father. This objective would only be fully achieved after a follow-up operation, so tonight I was setting up the conditions.

2. Primary: Unlock Amelia's confidence and potential.

3. Secondary: Track the Undersiders to their base.

4. Secondary: Have a good debut for the official hero team I was forming.

5. Secondary: Get into a meeting with the PRT and sow confusion and the seeds of doubt with my intel.

On the way there, I ordered Agate to try and scan Lung's fire with everything that could be tried. I knew that his pyrokinesis could generate flames from nowhere so it must have had a dimensional aspect. I had already been trying to scan Amelia's Corona Pollentia but that didn't get anywhere. Agate's sensors didn't pick up anything there, but I was hopeful that with more samples and more dimensional effects, we would eventually get something useful. I had no delusion that I could replicate the actual generation of fire, but whatever means the shard was using to transport it here might help Agate.

We arrived just in time to see Lung on fire, already grown to eight feet, and jumping towards Taylor on the rooftop.

"Get ready!" I told Araliac.

"Yeah, I got it," she replied nonchalantly. Both of our voices had been distorted by voice changers in our helmets so we sounded like Sith Lords.

We were still almost thirty meters away. There were groaning ABB members on the ground and a few were picking themselves up. We sprayed them and they went down easily. I grabbed a couple of pistols from them before moving forward again. Araliac copied my actions.

Then I heard a scream, and I looked up to see Lung grabbing his face with one hand. That must be Taylor's pepper spray. Now he was blind, good.

I immediately took aim and started shooting.

The sound of three consecutive gunshots cracked through the air. None of them hit. Damn.

Lung turned and threw a wave of fire in my direction while still hanging off the roof with one hand. Too bad for him, his fire wasn't like a magic fireball, it dispersed long before it got to me.

I kept moving forward and shooting as fast as I could. Fifteen metres. "Surrender, lizard scum! Your reign of terror ends tonight!" I shouted. I had to grab his attention and stop him from going over the roof.

Araliac split off from me and moved closer to the building wall as she started shooting as well.

Lung roared in rage as he waved several more blasts of fire at both of us, but we were still far enough to avoid them easily.

When I ran out of bullets, I put away the pistols and I took the cap off one of my tin grenades and lit the fuse with a blowtorch.

"Lung you fucking coward, come down and face me like a man!" I screamed at the top of my lungs while dropping the grenade right on the ground underneath me. No I was not trying to commit suicide.

"I'll kill you!" He roared before kicking off the wall and flying right at me. I, of course, had already dodged to the right and lunged for the ground like one of those nice slow-mo scenes you see in movies right after the hero blows up a car.

As soon as he landed and turned towards me again preparing to follow my steps, the well-timed grenade went off, which was accompanied by jet of acid from Araliac. He screamed as the shrapnel, force slammed into his legs point blank and his back was burned by acid. He stumbled before dropping down on one knee.

I immediately took out my bow even as I rolled away, got up, and nocked an arrow. Before I could fire, he swiped his arm and a wave of flame surged out in a circle around him. Simultaneously, a jet of white vapour consumed his head. That must have been Araliac shooting her long range sprayer.

Unfortunately before I could see the results of that, Lung's fire actually hit me. I reflexively let go of the bowstring and the arrow went way off course before I dropped my burning bow and started screaming myself as my sleeves caught fire.

I twisted my backpack free and tried to maneuver the fire extinguisher but my fingers were not cooperating.

I fumbled with it for a while before it slipped and fell, rolling away from me. Panicking I stuck my arms into my backpack and tried to smother the whole thing with my body. Bad idea. It backfired on me as my pack started burning too and I had to swing it loose from my body.

Just as I resorted to rolling around on the ground, cursing my arrogance in trying to fight Lung up close, somebody sprayed me with a fire extinguisher.

As the foam cleared I got a look at my savior. Araliac.

"It's not so nice when you're the one getting burned, is it, Mr. I-carry-a-flamethrower-for-self-defense?" She snarked.

"Th-thanks!" I gasped as she put down the fire extinguisher and bent down to touch my now exposed arm.

The pain left me quickly as she healed the burns. My arms were still a charred mess on the surface but in a few short moments I felt as good as new.

I heard the sound of running footsteps just as Araliac helped me to my feet. I looked over to see Skitter coming around the corner of the building, and slowing to a stop as she looked back and forth between us and something behind us.

I could feel Araliac tensing through her grip on my arm.

"Holy shit! You guys took out Lung!" She suddenly blurted out.

I thought she'd be more subdued and shy. Didn't she give the Undersiders the silent treatment in canon? We weren't known heroes to her. Honestly we didn't even look like heroes at all. I could've sworn she should be wary, scared, and stressed right now. Or did we intervene early enough that she was still high on adrenaline? I did remember her feeling some kind of sadistic glee in the beginning of the fight. Or… maybe my taunts made me seem heroic for putting myself in danger to get Lung away from her?

"Wasn't just us. Your bug attacks played a big role too. Did you see how hurt he was from one grenade? Your venom was taxing his regeneration big time," I gave her rightful credit for her contribution.

"Really? Now that you mention it, he did go down pretty fast for someone who took on Leviathan solo…" She tilted her head thoughtfully.

Lung's power was to escalate. As he fought, he grew stronger in response to greater threats, and eventually turned into a dragon. When Leviathan hit Kyushu, he grew so much that their battle destroyed the entire island. Entire teams of Protectorate heroes fought Lung before and were defeated. The only way to really take him down is by forcing him to calm down via sedatives and overwork his regeneration with overwhelming damage before he got too big.

"That's right. We couldn't have done it without you, fellow superhero. I'm Polychromic. This is my partner Araliac," I introduced.

"Hi," Araliac said, and nothing else.

Taylor stood there awkwardly in silence for a few seconds. "I… uh… don't have a name picked yet."

Agate was still hidden and watching. I knew the Undersiders were on top of the building just further ahead watching us. They never got involved because we had the upper hand in this fight the whole time. I knew that even if Coil was never said to have been actively helping them this night in canon, he couldn't have been stupid enough to risk his assets in a fight against Lung and Oni Lee without some kind of insurance. That meant that he likely had one timeline keeping them holed up at base (either theirs or Coil's own base) hiding, and the other confronting the ABB. He was probably using this as a test to see if the Undersiders were combat-ready for the upcoming distraction operation for his attempt on Dinah.

The Undersiders were both a secondary objective for me to track, as well as my insurance for the fight. I berated myself for getting hit by Lung, but I was just being perfectionist. In reality I had determined that my chances of dying were quite low. As long as I didn't get my brain destroyed Araliac could revive me or at least stabilize me. And so when things went south, the Undersiders watching would step in. They helped Skitter in canon, and they would have likely helped me if we started really losing against Lung. That would be true whether it was Coil's, Tattletale's, or Grue's idea. Coil because he usually prefers carrot and saving us would get him an in. Tattletale because she wanted more pieces to recruit and turn against Coil. Even with cold reading, since I had totally ignored her she couldn't possibly know my enmity for her, and even if she did she was probably still arrogant enough to think that her powers would let her manipulate me. Finally, Brian was looking for firepower to add to his team, and there were three possible targets. He'd be thinking that at least one of us might be amenable to recruitment. Even with my "heroic" taunts, all of us looked like villains and in my and Araliac's cases, we actually looked like urban terrorists and we were willing to use guns.

I really wondered what Tattletale was actually thinking right now. Three new capes in one night, and they just happen to attack Lung when he was supposed to be going after them, what a stunning turn of events! Because Coil learned about me, he might attack me in a throwaway timeline soon. I was assuming for now that Coil's precognition worked perfectly on me and Agate. My counter was to move faster than he could react, and account for branching actions in my grand plan. I wouldn't be waiting for his attempt on Dinah like an idiot.

In an alternate timeline he might have ordered the Undersiders to approach us already. Unless it was because we had been losing and they came to save us, I would have stopped them pre-emptively. I would have attacked immediately regardless of what they said, telling Skitter that I recognized them as a criminal gang. I had told Amelia beforehand that in case the Undersiders tried to approach us for any reason other than to save us in the middle of a losing battle, she was to unleash a mass airborne sedative by sending out her organisms under her sleeves out directly. I had informed her of all their capabilities, and the necessity of a rapid mass area attack because Regent could control our bodies and Grue's darkness would make it impossible to aim. Coil would be an idiot to choose that timeline. And if Amelia didn't get them all fast enough because Tattletale stayed behind or something, I told Agate that she was to move into the air then accelerate to top speed at 500 mph in the physical world and smash Tattletale's face in, before dragging her dead body into Kaleidospace to dispose of it quietly. I didn't want anybody to know I had such a powerful tool for assassination but I couldn't hold back against Coil, and if Tattletale went missing he could only assume that I had more agents in position.

As they weren't doing anything, I would move forward with the operation.

"Don't worry about it. Let's call this in first, and secure the criminals. We can talk more after," I suggested. Skitter nodded.

I took out a burner phone and dialed in to the PRT hotline while walking towards Lung's unconscious body. Araliac and Skitter followed after me.

"PRT emergency hotline." a female voice on the other end said.

"This is Polychromic, independent hero. My team and a fellow hero have Lung and a group of unpowered ABB members in custody," I reported. "We need pickup for transport."

"Polychromic? I'm sorry I don't recognize that. What is your team name? Are you registered with the PRT?"

"Not yet. We just formed our team and don't have a name yet. We'll register at our earliest convenience," I replied.

"Alright. You're in the Docks area right? Miss Militia is already nearby and will be there shortly. She can coordinate once she arrives."

"Thank you, we'll wait until she gets here."

I hung up and put the phone away. Araliac was squatting down checking Lung's status again. Skitter just stood beside me waiting.

Araliac stood up. "He should be out for a few hours at least. Our anaesthetic is working a lot less efficiently than usual, but the venoms really did a number on him. He's stable now."

"Good. Let's round them up then," I bent down and started dragging Lung's body to a nearby wall.

Araliac and Skitter stated to helped with the rest of the ABB. I quickly took the opportunity to swipe all the guns and any ammo they had on them.

"Hey, bug girl, you want some of these?" I handed a pistol towards her. Now to test Skitter's personality. I needed to know the extent to which I could manipulate and predict her actions before enacting the next operation.

She looked at it for a moment. "A gun? But that's lethal."

"So are black widows," I said, shrugging. Heh. Complaining about lethality when I knew she threatened to kill everyone in that bank and still considered herself a hero.

Her head moved up as if staring at me. "But… isn't it a crime to possess firearms?"

"Just hide it well then. Or get a license. When you need firepower and your bugs aren't working, a gun might save your life," I suggested. That's right. I knew she had an internal monologue on this very issue in canon. When Lung was about to reach her, she realized she had pepper spray and chalk dust. This was the perfect moment to get her to loosen her resistance to using lethal weapons.

"I… alright. I do need better weapons," she relented, taking the gun. I gave her another one and a couple of cartridges for good measure.

"Make sure you learn how to use it properly. Keep the safety on at all times if you aren't planning to shoot and never point it at someone you don't want to get hit," I warned her as I showed her how to operate the gun. I had to keep up the act as the professional good guy.

Once we hauled up all the gangers up to the wall, since Miss Militia wasn't here yet, I patted them down and relieved them of their money too.

With seventeen gangers here, I was able to find $1400, and handed one third to Taylor. Lung himself didn't have anything on him sadly,

"Um… is this really okay? This doesn't feel right…" She said looking at the bills in her hand. Girl, I know you want it. You took $2000 from the Undersiders and didn't even think about giving it back.

Somehow I felt Araliac's rolling her eyes at me when I handed her share over.

"Vigilante laws were changed to allow heroes to take any stashes of money they found, but they're supposed to report it to the PRT and get it cleared first. Same with drugs or weapons, in which case the PRT gives a small reward when they're turned in. We're not supposed to take the money on their person and in their wallets though… but most of the time PRT just looks the other way when independent heroes take the spoils, unless they themselves start dealing the drugs and weapons they took," Araliac helpfully supplied.

She didn't protest my actions however, instead just stuffing the cash into a pocket. She knew we were hard pressed for funds from the disrepair of my apartment. Actually we weren't that hard pressed with all my winnings from poker, but I literally moved in a week ago. Aside from the various walls falling apart due to a neglectful landlord, it was also completely spartan for efficiency, so to her it must have looked like I was one step away from being homeless - which meant that she would also be homeless by extension.

Skitter looked at her and then back to me and then to the cash again. She stuffed it into her armor in the end. Good old peer pressure to clinch the deal. Although I was testing her, I didn't believe the outcome of this was ever in any doubt. Taylor desperately wanted to be a hero, but she was not a very principled person at heart. When she rescued Dinah she almost decided to turn around and keep her before Dinah called her out on it. I knew her weaknesses even better than Tattletale did at this point.

I rested myself against the wall as I spoke up again, "So, about your cape name, how does Skitter sound?"

"Huh? It's not bad, but it sounds a bit villainous… there are so few names related to bugs that don't make me sound like a supervillain or a complete dork," Taylor said with a hint of frustration.

"Does it matter? Soon enough everyone will know that you're one of the heroes that took down the strongest villain in Brocton Bay who the entire local Protectorate branch lost against. People will have no choice but to take you seriously."

She was silent for a moment. These pauses were getting pretty frequent in our conversation.

"You're right. We did something amazing tonight, didn't we? I'm a real hero now…" She trailed off and looked at Lung's unconscious body again. The best hero. Don't ever doubt it Khepri. You are the hero to end all heroes. I crack myself up sometimes. No this was bad. Arrogance was hubris, the downfall of far too many successful tragic heroes. I would be better than that. No matter how good it felt.

'Make sure you remind me of this if I forget it Agate. Arrogance is hubris, and it will end me if I indulge myself.'

'Really? But you gloat all the time,' she responded.

'Yes, you should remember this too. Never be complacent. Never assume you've won until you've won. Never assume that there's nobody stronger. I've been intoxicated by my recent successes, and this can't be allowed to continue.'

'Alright, I'll remind you then.'

"Skitter… I am the hero Skitter," Taylor repeated to herself.

"This is odd, what's taking Miss Militia so long? I thought she was in the area already," I remarked suddenly. It had already been almost five minutes.

The Undersiders were leaving. The original plan was to tail them to their base… I knew what their warehouse generally looked like and what one of the signs read, but finding it when there were so many similar warehouses was not an easy effort. It would probably be easier to find Coil's base underground.

But something about this situation spooked me and I kept Agate with me to be safe. A good general knows when to sacrifice and let go. My primary objectives had already been achieved. It wasn't a big loss to let the Undersiders go for now. I had to consolidate my gains and secure my position before going on the offensive again. Overextension was the death of empires.

"Should we call again? I'd like to get some sleep tonight," Araliac commented. I'm sure she was still tired from last night.

Then I heard the sound of a distant explosion. And another one. Then gunfire, and more explosions.

"Sounds like another fight," I said.

"If that's Miss Militia, we should help!" Skitter declared. I would be the one to decide that. Not her. I had to rein her in and show her why I was the proper leader here.

"We can't just leave Lung alone here. All our hard work today would be wasted if the ABB got him back before he's locked up," Araliac reminded. Oh? I should not be surprised by this. Amelia had always been the one to hold Vicky back. Unlike Skitter, whose first reaction after a victory was to go bigger and harder, Araliac must want to ensure that she would get the credit for taking down Lung. Show New Wave how effective she could be.

"Hold on. Let me see what's going on," I ordered Agate to move in the direction of the sounds and held a couple of fingers to the front of my helmet in a meaningless pose. If anybody was spying on me, they might be tricked into thinking I had to do that for my "power" to work.

'Already on it!' Agate informed me.

"What? What are you doing?" Skitter asked curiously.

"I've got a Thinker power. Lets me project my senses and move them wherever I want. It's how we found you so quickly earlier," I explained.

Through Agate's senses I quickly located the source of the explosions.

Skitter gasped. "I think I found them! They just entered in range of my bugs two blocks southeast of here but I can't make them out clearly."

"Oni Lee and Protectorate forces. He's trying to retreat in our direction, but Velocity's hounding him and Miss Militia's supporting from behind! A couple of PRT vans are further south, in a shootout with unpowered ABB," I reported in more detail.

What was going on? First Armsmaster didn't show up, instead it's Miss Militia, and now fighting against Oni Lee? If I remembered correctly Oni Lee should've escaped from the Undersiders a while ago, why was he still in action?

"We've got to help!" Skitter urged, her body language shifting as if preparing to run off immediately. Sigh. It would take some time to stop her impulsiveness. If she had just taken the time to really think through her actions instead of deciding to go undercover as a villain after a ten minute conversation with no training or preparation whatsoever, she might not have become a true villain and had such a tragic ending in the original story.

"At this rate, they'll come here themselves in less than two minutes. I think Oni Lee's retreating this way on purpose… could he be coming for Lung?" I analyzed quickly.

It would make sense for Oni Lee to try and find his missing leader and follow the source of the explosion earlier. One of the unpowered ABB we captured might have also given him info earlier before we arrived.

But how did he get into a fight with Miss Militia and Velocity? Miss Militia and Velocity… what an interesting combination. If they were looking to track down Panacea, that might be one of the better field matchups. Perfect memory recall and high speed chaser. If Protectorate forces were tracked Panacea's scent to the boardwalk, and fanned out from there looking for clues, it wasn't a big stretch to think that perhaps Oni Lee's retreat was cut off somehow. It was quite close to the Docks after all.

Hmm… it would be a good opportunity regardless.

"We'll ambush him here. Skitter, get some bugs on him ASAP! When he teleports, everything on his body gets duplicated along with him, including your bugs. We'll use Lung as bait. Once I've distracted him, use your bugs to cover his eyes, he teleports by line of sight only!" I instructed authoritatively.

"Okay, I can do that," Skitter said nodding. Good, she saw the logic in my plan. As I was the one with all the intel, she ought to be deferring to me.

"Both of you, hide and support from range. I'll stay in the open and keep Lung hostage," I continued.

They hesitated only for a moment looking at me. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. Go."

If anything, I'd be in the least danger. Oni Lee couldn't just teleport and suicide bomb me if it would kill Lung. But they weren't familiar with Oni Lee's tactics yet. Keeping distance was almost worthless with line-of-sight teleportation. Nor were they familiar with Oni Lee's personality. He got spooked and ran away at the mere realization that Lung didn't show up. He would be much more stressed if his leader was flat out defeated and helpless.

Skitter looked like she wanted to say something, but Araliac started moving, and Skitter followed her example shortly after.

Oni Lee appeared around the corner and looked at the devastation and in the area. Velocity was hot on his heels and shot a spray of containment foam.

Another Oni Lee appeared a few metres away, and that was my cue.

"Don't move or Lung gets it!" I shouted.

Both Velocity and Oni Lee turned to see me holding an unconscious Lung, my right hand holding a gun to his head.

They both froze.

"Hey… let's calm down. Lung's a criminal but you can't just kill him-" Velocity tried to mediate but he was interrupted.

"I'm perfectly calm! Oni Lee, get on your fucking knees or he dies!" I snarled while deliberately shaking my hand holding the gun as if spazzing out in contradiction to my assertion of being calm.

Then Oni Lee clutched his face with a scream and stumbled. A copy of him appeared only a few feet away, and then another, and another until he suddenly dropped on his knees.

That was when a jet of vapour blasted into him from the rooftop.

I removed my gun from Lung's head. Suddenly something was holding my arm and pulling me away from Lung. I barely had time to process it before I was sprayed by containment foam.

"Wait! Fellow hero here!" I yelled as my arms and legs were captured in foam, pretending to be surprised and betrayed. Perfect. He took the bait.

I dropped to the ground to see a huge swarm of bugs descending on Velocity, who blurred away but seemed to trip and fell face forward. Another jet of incapacitating vapour blasted into Velocity before he could get up. Velocity could speed himself up something like 100 times faster, so he was tricky to deal with. Skitter must have gotten some bugs on him when he was standing still and had them bite his foot or something to make him trip.

"Stop! Stop! Everybody stand down!" I yelled.

Inside I was thinking the opposite. I was disappointed.

Velocity dropped on the ground and lay unmoving, unconscious. Damn, get up you weakling! Show Skitter and Araliac how unreasonable the authorities are!

Miss Militia drove in on a motorbike just then.

"Velocity!" She cried. Miss Militia was the understanding type. She followed orders and went by the book, rarely doing anything on emotion or self-interest. She was also a veteran in real war. I wouldn't be able to rile her up without coming off as unreasonable myself. Even if I said nothing to de-escalate she would be too wary to just attack. She would see Lung, Oni Lee, and Velocity all down. If my call to PRT earlier was a trick to ambush her, she had to be thinking that this was a huge trap, what kind of insane firepower did we have to defeat all these powerful capes so fast? Velocity and Oni Lee went down in like 10 seconds.

Oh well, it would be arrogant to think that every plan would go perfectly. Getting Skitter and Araliac to take the initiative to attack PRT on my behalf was good enough. Moreover, this was just an on-the-fly plan I cooked up to adapt to the changing situation; the main plan was still in motion. The moment Skitter took a gun in her hand, I knew that the follow-up operation would be viable. After all, if she would take a gun, she would definitely take a "non-lethal" stun baton.

But first, it was finally time to meet the PRT.

Last edited: Aug 29, 2018

Initialization 1.8

A/N: This is a reminder to everyone who did not see my last announcement. The previous chapter has undergone significant edits adding 1000 words. The events haven't changed but if you want to understand anything that was non-obvious in the strategic thinking of the SI, you might want to take a look.

Initialization 1.8

Miss Militia's energy turned into a gun I didn't recognize and pointed towards the direction of where Araliac's shot came from. She moved back and took cover as she looked around.

I saw with Agate that Araliac was back in hiding. Skitter never came out of hiding as she could direct her bugs without line of sight.

"Miss Militia, this is Polychromic! This is a misunderstanding. Velocity attacked me because I was holding Lung hostage and my teammates retaliated by accident. We called in earlier about capturing Lung. We are heroes," I called out from my spot on the ground, looking to defuse the situation. Miss Militia was obviously waiting for PRT troop backup, and not foolishly attacking into a possible ambush that took out both Oni Lee and Velocity.

She looked towards where I was foamed and helpless on the ground.

"Polychromic? How do I know that it's you? You never registered with the PRT so we can't identify you. And how do I know the call wasn't a trick?" she answered back.

"Miss Militia, you can confirm this with our actions. I have not fought back myself despite being hit with containment foam. Araliac and Skitter can come out in the open and they will not attack you. We will explain the sequence of events which led to our current situation," I replied.

There was no response for almost half a minute.

Finally, when the sound of two PRT vans driving up from behind her reached me, she responded. "Very well. Don't make any sudden moves."

"It's alright Araliac, Skitter! You can come out! We should cooperate with the PRT," I called loudly.

And so they slowly moved out into the open beside me as Miss Militia and armed PRT troopers moved in formation towards us.

The PRT forces kept their guns pointed at us and only stopped when we were surrounded completely. Then a portion of their troops went to secure the ABB and Velocity. A couple of PRT troops came to hold me upright.

"Alright, so what happened here?" Miss Militia asked me.

"Skitter, you were here first, maybe you can start from the beginning before we arrived," I redirected to her.

Attention shifted to Skitter, who was tense and curt.

"I was patrolling the area when I noticed a group of ABB. I snuck up and kept hidden, watching them for a bit from the rooftops. Then I overheard Lung ordering them to kill kids. I did a bit of research before online… I knew Lung was strong and I probably wouldn't be able to beat him. But they were planning to kill kids… I had to do something. So I gathered my bugs and attacked," she narrated.

"Your power is to control bugs?" asked Miss Militia.

"Yes. Insects, mosquitoes, spiders, all of them. I sent my swarm to cover the ABB members and start biting," Skitter answered.

"Are there any limits to your power? Range, number of bugs controlled?" Miss Militia asked.

I cut in before Skitter could answer. "Skitter, you don't have to answer that, just so you know. Independent heroes have the right to privacy on the limits of their powers. The PRT will appreciate knowing because it helps in coordinating our efforts and you might also benefit from power-testing with their experts, but ultimately the choice is yours. It's not a crime to keep your weaknesses secret if you don't feel comfortable exposing that. You could also go in by yourself later if you don't want Araliac and I to know. We won't be offended."

Miss Militia gave me an unreadable look. After a while, Skitter spoke up, "I think I would like to keep it to myself for now, then. Sorry."

"I understand, we will respect your choice. Power-testing is something we offer at any time to independent heroes. All you have to do is schedule an appointment, and we will have our experts help. Many Protectorate heroes have discovered new things about their powers that way. The Wards also get much more support and training, if you decided to join," Miss Militia explained calmly.

Skitter nodded.

"Please continue then."

"It seemed to go well at first. Their unpowered members were going down, and I was hurting Lung. But he grew armor and started to regenerate from the bites. So then I went for weak points on his body and used venoms. It didn't seem to do much. Then he exploded with fire and all the bugs around him died. I tried to get more bugs on him after that but they were just getting killed by the fire. Eventually I decided I couldn't win and was just about to leave. But then he heard me. He has superhuman hearing," Skitter described the fight, and paused briefly.

"Yes, when Lung grows he gets many superhuman senses. He is a very difficult opponent," Miss Militia added.

"He immediately came after me, jumping up and grappling on the wall to climb toward the roof. Right when his head came over the roof, I sprayed his eyes with pepper spray. And then…" Skitter trailed and looked towards me.

"That's when we arrived. We were already in the area and came running as fast as we could run when we noticed a fight going on. We saw Skitter blinding Lung and rushed to stop him from getting over the roof to reach Skitter, using guns we picked up from the fallen ABB on the way. Lung tried to get us with fire but we dodged and kept moving. Then I taunted him until he came after me on the ground, and Araliac and I defeated him with a special anaesthetic. Lung was significantly weakened by Skitter's attack and went down fast," I succinctly replied, glossing over details.

"I see. That's no small accomplishment. Especially for new heroes. And this was your first time going out as heroes?" Miss Militia looked at all three of us.

"Yes," Skitter said.

"That's correct," said.

"And Polychromic and Araliac, you two are a new team, but this was the first time you met Skitter?" Miss Militia asked.

"That's right."

She nodded back.

"Then you called the PRT. Now what happened with Oni Lee and Velocity?"

"At first, we were just waiting for you to come but nobody came after five minutes even when the operate said you were already in the area," I paused deliberately, hoping she might explain why.

"I got the call from headquarters but on our way we noticed traces of ABB. So we moved cautiously. We discovered an ABB group led by Oni Lee hiding in the area. We had to go after them first. We chased them here," she explained.

I nodded to her thankfully.

"We noticed your fight as well. When we realized it was Oni Lee, we developed a plan to use Lung as bait to ambush him. Skitter's bugs tracked him as he got closer, and when he arrived with Velocity, I held Lung hostage to distract Oni Lee. I pretended to be highly stressed and could shoot at any time to make Oni Lee hesitate. Then Skitter and Araliac took the opening to finish him off by coordinating a bug and anaesthetic spray attack. At that point, I dropped the act with Lung but Velocity didn't realize my ruse so he tried to subdue me and remove me from Lung. I knew he was just doing his job so I didn't resist being foamed. I shouted to clear the misunderstanding but he was moving too fast, then Skitter and Araliac retaliated, taking him down," I explained. I spoke as I was capable of resisting being foamed. I couldn't, but I also didn't resist.

"Do you have any proof of this? That it was only a ruse to defeat Oni Lee?" Miss Militia asked.

"I do. I have recordings of the fights tonight, including when we planned the operation against Oni Lee. These will be uploaded online as part of our team debut video," I said.

Miss Militia stiffened. "Are you still recording?"

"Yes," I bluntly answered.

"This is an ongoing PRT investigation. You can't be recording this, please turn off your recording devices," she ordered.

"I apologize. I would comply with your request, but as you can see, I am physically indisposed at the moment. I'm afraid that if I remain indisposed, the recordings will go live automatically in the morning." I answered nonchalantly. I was going to edit the video and make ourselves look incredible first, but if the PRT captured me, this was my get-out-of-jail card. They would have to release me or risk getting public outrage over unjust treatment of the heroes that defeated Lung and Oni Lee, who were clearly cooperating with the PRT to the best of their ability.

Miss Militia excused herself for a minute before coming back and ordering the PRT troopers to defoam me.

"Thank you," I turned off the recording devices. For now.

Miss Militia ran her eyes over the three of us in a measuring gaze. Velocity was still out cold and would stay that way for a while because Araliac wasn't going to reveal her powers.

"I understand. Velocity was hasty in attacking you, then. However, by law he was within rights to disarm you, having seen you threatening to kill someone without a kill order, even if he was a criminal. As he was already defeated, it wouldn't be considered self-defense," Miss Militia finally judged.

"I don't blame him. I had to play the role properly to convince and distract Oni Lee. It just worked a little too well," I admitted.

"Still, even if it was in your defense, Araliac and Skitter attacked a member of the Protectorate while he was performing his duty. I'm going to have to ask you three to come in with me to PRT headquarters to report to the Director, and she will have to decide what to do," she decided.

Araliac turned to look at me.

"But I have school tomorrow, I have to get back home," Skitter protested.

'I think I figured something out from Lung and Miss Militia's powers! I should be able to generate parallel dimension portals after five more hours!' Agate cut in with a mental message.

'Good work!' I thought back. Two days were just saved, that certainly was a breakthrough. Now the question was, would we need additional equipment/resources to do it? And would we have fine control over the portals or would they be like Professor Haywire's in their permanency?

'I'm not sure yet. I don't think we'll need any more equipment to do it, I should be enough by myself. But making temporary portals or closing a portal might be a bit harder,' Agate assessed.

"Sorry, but rules are rules," Miss Militia answered sadly.

Miss Militia's cloud of energy was subdued as she spoke to us but it was still clearly visible. Her power was to manifest weapons from that energy, and corresponded to her emotions at times. It would cycle through various weapons at times of high stress with no direct input from her. So despite her calm attitude she was clearly still ready for a fight if we were to forcefully resist this unofficial arrest.

"Araliac and I will come with you," I agreed after pretending to think about it for a bit. A meeting with Piggot was exactly what I needed… this would increase the chances of success for the next operation to complete the isolation and recruitment of Skitter, which was my primary objective tonight. It would be a little dangerous considering the search for Panacea, but I believed they would be cautious of attacking me immediately. If I really was a Master, they would be putting themselves at risk by making the wrong move with no information about my powers. One peaceful meeting was all I needed. They at least had to entertain the unwritten rules and respect that we were supposedly heroes for now. They couldn't just come out and say Araliac was Panacea without substantial proof, of her identity as well as her being Mastered. Her "crimes" against the Dallons were nowhere near significant enough to be breaking those unwritten rules yet.

With that, Skitter slumped in resignation and we moved into the PRT van.

On the way, Miss Militia decided to continue pressing us for information.

"I'm surprised three new independent heroes appeared in one night. That doesn't happen often," she remarked from her bench opposite of us, sitting in between two PRT troopers.

"Araliac and I have been active for a while," I knew that anything we said might be recorded for Armsmaster's analysis later, so I was carefully choosing my words. "Active" and "a while" was suitably vague and suggestive. "We just didn't go out until tonight. Only fools start a career fighting dangerous criminals without proper preparation."

Miss Militia nodded. "You're right, of course. Many young heroes unfortunately don't recognize that and go out at the first opportunity."

She looked between Araliac and I. "If you don't mind me asking, what are your powers?"

I hadn't told her about my scouting abilities in my after action report. Instead, I had merely stated that we noticed it was Oni Lee Skitter sent her bugs to track him, allowing her to assume that Skitter detected them. In reality, Skitter's powers at this point weren't developed enough to process the visual and auditory signals from her bugs cleanly, so she didn't identified the combatants, but they wouldn't know that.

"Sorry but we do mind. It's better to keep as much of our powers secret as possible. It's better for us if villains don't know why they're losing," I said quickly.

"That's true, but I don't think anyone here is going to tell the villains, and knowing your powers, even just the basics, is how we can identify you," she argued calmly. Miss Militia was a true patriot. You could tell by the American flag motif on her scarf and costume.

"I'm sure you won't tell the villains Miss Milita. Sadly, PRT information networks are compromised. The major villains in this city have access to everything you do. I know you're going to write a threat assessment on all of us, and when you do, their spies will have it too," I brazenly declared.

Skitter looked over at me, perhaps in surprise.

Miss Militia eyes narrowed at me. "Compromised? And how would you know this?"

"I can't tell you. This van might be bugged right now," I said while deliberately shifting my head slightly towards the two PRT troopers. I was expecting Coil to be listening in even as we spoke.

"What I can tell you is this. Your networks are compromised. And not just by hackers. You've got infiltrators in your midst, some with significant authority in the organization. And if Armsmaster reviews a recording of this conversation with his lie-detector software, he'll know I'm telling the truth," I added. It wasn't certain that any such recording existed, but since this was the inside of a van, it only made sense. The most powerful part of this statement however, was the mere fact that I knew of Armsmaster's software. Very few people knew about that.

Everything I said was indeed true besides. Coil was a supervillain that literally was in the PRT, and he had substantial authority even. He some kind of important consultant and had the title of Commander in the field. Then there was Cauldron, who had a couple of capes in the local Protectorate. Triumph, the mayor's son had gotten his powers from a cauldron vial, but I didn't know if he spied for Cauldron. Battery, on the other hand, I knew was in league with them.

I heard a hitched breath from my side. I expected Skitter to be listening carefully. This was partly for her benefit. It would also help if I began proving more of my claims to Araliac.

Miss Militia's eyes widened.

"How did you-never mind. You're serious about this. But how could this have happened? We have very strict Master/Stranger protocols and comprehensive security reviews to weed out infiltrators," she said with worry.

"And if they know what your protocols are, or worse yet, wrote the protocols themselves?" I challenged her.

She was silent for the rest of our trip.

Last edited: Aug 30, 2018

Initialization 1.9

Initialization 1.9

The downtown PRT building was well staffed and active at night. I suppose it must be because heroes had to have patrols when villains were most likely to be up and about.

Troops were guarding the entrance and hallways. The gift shop was closed, but we weren't here for a tour.

We waited in the lobby for a bit while Miss Militia went in to report first and have Lung and Oni Lee secured. I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs though. Agate went to find Thomas Calvert's office. It was a bit difficult. Although the PRT had Calvert in the public directory, it wasn't clear if he had any sort of permanent office. He was a consultant, and that could mean someone who came in occasionally, or who was on a long-term assignment. I thought it was the latter, given that he also served as Commander for PRT strike squads, but I couldn't be sure because the directory didn't have rooms listed, only phones and emails.

It took a while, but Agate found a room with Calvert's name on it. Good. Hopefully he had to come in on a regular schedule. The room was completely dark so nothing of value could be observed inside.

That done, I had Agate move into Piggot's room to spy on them.

Oh? What do we have here? Glory Girl (Victoria Dallon), Brandish (Carol Dallon), and Flashbang (Mark Dallon) were here in costume.

"You have three days to think about our offer. After that you can try your luck in court," Piggot gave Brandish a challenging stare.

Glory Girl clenched her fists and looked like she was going to cry.

"Fine. Glory Girl, we're leaving," Brandish ordered authoritatively and turned around.

"What about Amy? Did you find anything yet?" Glory Girl cried out.

To the side of Piggot's desk, Armsmaster was standing stiff as a board in full armor.

"Nothing concrete. We tracked her scent to the boardwalk but it disappeared there," he answered succinctly.

"And the bastard that Mastered her?!" she practically yelled.

"Still under investigation. I've brought Dragon in to assist with the search, it shouldn't be long now," he replied calmly.

Then Miss Militia knocked on the door. Piggot called out, "Come in, we're finished here," staring at Glory Girl as if daring her to disagree.

Miss Militia opened the door, taking in the three New Wave members' stand-off with Piggot. She glanced around at them awkwardly before asking, "Director, the new heroes are waiting in the lobby. I can give you my report before you see them."

"No need. I already saw the recording. Just bring them in," Piggot replied.

"Understood."

Miss Militia closed the door behind her.

"What are you still doing in my office?" Piggot asked Glory Girl with a look of irritation.

Brandish was trying to pull on her shoulder to no avail. "Vicky!" she hissed.

"If… if you find Amy and take down that bastard, then I'll join the Wards!" Glory Girl suddenly said.

"You're not in any position to negotiate. What I offered is what you're getting. Nevertheless, we will find Panacea as is the duty of the PRT and Protectorate," Piggot answered flatly.

Soon enough Miss Militia came to us and led us to Director Piggot's office.

On the way, we came face to face with Glory Girl looking down with a gloomy expression, with Brandish and Flashbang beside her, both of them being escorted by Assault.

They looked at us curiously.

I noticed Araliac's posture stiffening as we walked.

"Busy night tonight! Three new faces? You must be heroes if you're coming here and not in chains!" Assault commented with a grin as he paused to look us over.

"Thanks to them, we have Lung and Oni Lee in custody. Very impressive for a debut," Miss Militia added warmly.

Glory Girl was visibly shocked when she heard that. Even Assault's jaw dropped. Both Brandish and Flashbang's costume had a visor and their mouths didn't particularly move so it was difficult tell what their reaction was.

"Don't be impressed yet. This is just the beginning. We're going to clean up this city. The villains have had free rein for far too long. Innocents are dying and enslaved every single day. Under the clouds of evil, the people have forgotten what safety and freedom even means! Brocton Bay has become a dark pit of misery and despair. But no more!" I spoke passionately and clenched a fist in front of me. "The villains will learn to fear the light of justice once again! We will change everything. We will restore this city to its rightful place in the sun!" I opened my fist and raised it high above me, as if trying to hold up the sun in my hand.

Everyone looked taken aback at my sudden speech. This was just posturing. The PRT didn't have PR in its name for nothing. But they weren't the only ones who could play that game. I've read more than enough books to know how this goes. Speak loudly, and carry an invisible stick. That's the way to win.

In this case, Agate had been my invisible stick, phasing in different spots to film the fights earlier from various angles in between spying on the Undersiders, on top of the recording devices on my and Araliac's person. Here, my recording devices were off and Agate couldn't be used in the open to capture electronic footage. Nonetheless, there was an audience and it was an opportunity to establish my "personality".

"You're certainly ambitious. I like it," Assault said with a smile.

"Well, there will be time for introductions later, the director is waiting," Miss Militia reminded us.

I nodded at Assault before we followed Miss Militia into the Piggot's office.

Armsmaster was standing at attention beside Piggot's desk. He was the leader of the local Protectorate branch, theoretically equal in rank to Piggot but because the PRT was technically the non-cape oversight for the Protectorate, he was really subordinate to her. In his metallic full body armor, he was an imposing intimidation factor.

Miss Militia was the deputy of the Protectorate and reported to Armsmaster. Even though Armsmaster was nominally in charge of the Wards as well, Miss Militia tended to be actually managing them because Armsmaster was less socially inclined.

The director herself looked haggard, irritated, and just about to keel over if she wasn't sitting.

Director Piggot was a fairly competent leader, but she hated capes. Thanks to her trauma with the Nilbog disaster a long time, she despised parahumans as a whole and refused to even let Panacea heal her liver problems.

I'd originally hoped to maintain decent relations with the PRT at least until Leviathan hit, but now that Araliac ditched New Wave and they knew, conflict was inevitable. Nilbog was a cape that had the power to create living and thinking creatures, monsters you could say, with powers of their own. He was an S-class threat that captured a whole city, and the Protectorate abandoned it, walling it off from the outside world while Nilbog was content to rule his city of monsters as a fantasy king. And Piggot was right in the middle of Nilbog's attack, so she hated capes with powers related to control of biology and making creatures. To her mind, Araliac's absolute biokinesis was just a nightmare waiting to happen.

And with things as they were, her nightmare was about to come true. I needed Araliac's power and nothing would get in my way. They'd figure out sooner or later Araliac's true identity no matter how we try to hide it, unless we just didn't make use of her power, which was not acceptable. If that meant the PRT thought me a dangerous Master to put down I would need enough strength to put them down first.

If Piggot was aggressive then it'd be all the better for me. Even if she wasn't, I had enough dangerous intel to force the issue. Both of the girls with me had major biases and vulnerabilities that could be manipulated.

Amelia tried her best, but at the end of the day, I knew she hated the world for making her life so terrible. There were no shining examples of heroism in her life, and her attachment to her rules and avoidance of villainy were pathological rather than some kind of true moral fibre. Sooner or later, this world's natural darkness and her shard's influence would push her beyond the brink.

Skitter, on the other hand, turned to villainy canonically, and was an expert at rationalizing. Now that I had gotten to her first, I had the feeling that she was already ripe for recruitment. I was dangling her dream of being a hero in front of her at every step, praising her for her contributions and acting generally like her mental impression of what heroes were supposed to be. Piggot and Armsmaster would probably piss her off even without my prompting. Then I'd reveal the truth about Sophia at an opportune time.

"So you're the three new heroes I've been told about," Piggot said.

"Good to meet you, director Piggot, Armsmaster." I said pleasantly, nodding at them. Of course, with the voice changer making me sound like a Sith Lord what was 'pleasant' was merely not disturbing.

They both nodded back.

"I have been informed that you three managed to take down Lung by yourselves. Then you ambushed Oni Lee when he arrived and defeated him too. That's very impressive for your first outing. We've had a lot of trouble with those two in the past," she started acknowledging our achievement. Well, maybe I was being too harsh to her. Or perhaps she was being cautious not to antagonize us without knowing our full capabilities?

"Thank you. Araliac and I weren't planning on fighting Lung as our first public action as heroes, originally. We knew that fighting someone strong enough to sink Kyushu would be a very tough fight, even for us," I explained. I wanted to show that we were not rash and foolish newcomers. And to imply that we did have the ability to match Lung at full power. We actually would though, once Araliac really let loose and had some time to prepare, so it wasn't a total bluff. "But when we saw that a fellow hero was in danger, we knew we had to act. Fortunately, Skitter did enough damage that it made things a lot easier for us."

Skitter looked over at me again. I bet she was thinking now that I really meant what I said before, if I was willing to give her credit in front of a major authority. She had to have been a little suspicious in the back of her mind about all the praise I showered on her. That girl was a ball of wariness and low esteem. After Emma set up a few fake friends to betray her, she had wised up to pretentious people.

Piggot slid her gaze over to Skitter, almost in a deliberately slow movement.

"I thought you didn't know each other before tonight? How did you recognize her as a hero? Her costume doesn't quite look the part," Piggot commented curiously. There was no judgement in her tone. She was just fishing for information on my capabilities, and I'm sure she meant no offense. Sadly for her, neither did Armsmaster when he made a similar comment in the story and it still hit Taylor's insecurities.

"That's… not intentional," Skitter spoke up rather defensively. "I was more than halfway done putting the costume together when I realized it was looking more edgy than I'd intended, and I couldn't do anything about it by then."

A small but more than sufficient opening. I stepped forward to seize it, for victory goes to the bold.

"Our own costumes are also purely functional. People must be judged not by appearances but by their actions. What kind of villain would stand and fight in the face of a monster like Lung with mere pepper spray? A cowardly villain would have just run when they realized they were outmatched and alone, having nothing but their own lives to protect. But I saw her on that roof, mere inches from a monster covered in fire, spraying into the bastard's face like she had nothing to fear. I knew then that she was a true hero." I felt goosebumps on my skin as the sheer passion of my acting took over.

"She wasn't fighting for herself. She was fighting for something deeper, something greater, something worth putting her life on the line!" I spoke strongly and increased my voice as I built to a crescendo and Skitter stared at my back. The words felt hypnotic and self-evident to my ears.

"A purpose and calling that gave her a different kind of strength, an inner power fueled by courage and righteousness, demanding her to be more than she was, to be… a superhero!" I ended with a thundering statement that put the rest of the room into silence.

With Agate's senses centred a ways behind me, I saw Skitter fidgeting in embarrassment. Araliac shook her head and shrugged as if silently answering Piggot's questioning gaze towards her. I thought I might have heard a giggle from Miss Militia too. No that can't be right.

'She really did.' Agate helpfully corrected me.

"I… see," Piggot slowly nodded with scrunched eyebrows. She was obviously not happy with my useless explanation. She must be irritated that I was one of those hammy capes like Mouse Protector. I was pretty sure they thought I was a Thinker already with the information I told Miss Militia about the PRT spies, but I wasn't going to give them any hints as to the exact nature of my knowledge if I could help it. Plus I could reframe Skitter's suicidal inclinations as something admirable, reinforcing the way she rationalized her behavior, making myself the source of her good feelings while the PRT became a source of bad feelings. It helped that she didn't know the "kids" she saved were the Undersiders yet.

"You certainly did a good thing tonight, I won't deny that. Let's get to the main point of this meeting then," she pressed on and cupped her hands together in front of her face with her elbows resting on the desk. "I'll be frank. Your success and devotion to heroism are commendable, but your methods were questionable. The three of you used lethal venoms and guns, took a defenseless man hostage, and attacked a member of the Protectorate when he was just performing his duty under the law. Just for that last one, I could have you arrested and charged with a crime."

Skitter immediately tried to argue. "What? But-"

"If you're saying that, that means you don't plan on it, right?" I countered. Skitter fell silent.

"You're a smart one, aren't you?" Piggot let out an amused huff. "You're right. If you had failed or did any serious damage to Velocity, I wouldn't hesitate to bring the law down on you. But you succeeded very well and I can't argue with the results. You clearly knew what you were doing, executing efficient take downs of powerful villains with minimum damage to yourselves and property. You even defeated Velocity without any actual harm to him. In light of that, I'm more inclined to see your actions as taking measured risks and responses to the circumstances, rather than impulsive newbies stepping over the law once they were in over their heads."

I nodded at her. I bet the public would say the same thing once they saw our video.

She folded her arms together on the desk and gave me a stern look. "For now, I remain optimistic that you will be a blessing rather than a danger to this city. God knows we need more effective and committed heroes out there, especially now that the balance of power has been broken. You've just created a power vacuum, and the coming days will see the other gangs jostling to fill it. A storm is coming, and we need you to help Brocton Bay weather it."

"We won't shy away from the danger, director, you have my word. No, we'll be right in the middle of this storm; with the fury of the heavens we will wash away the stain of super-powered villainy and protect the innocent," I declared lining a fist to my chest as if giving a solemn pledge.

"Agreed," Araliac finally spoke up for the first time in this meeting, crossing her arms in front of her chest as if in indignation.

She actually chuckled in response to that. "I'm not worried about your commitment." No she was worried my zeal would turn into a crusade. And she was right to be worried.

I was feeling a little disappointed that she wasn't more antagonistic. Truthfully I didn't think Piggot was actually letting me go that easily. If I could act, so could she. What was her angle? Did she really not suspect Araliac of being Panacea? Not even going to question us about it?

"I'll help as much as I can too," Skitter said with a nod.

"You could do a lot of good with the Protectorate and the Wards," Armsmaster added. "We've been outnumbered and stretched thin by the villains for too long."

"I'm sure we could, but you know why we can't," I said good-naturedly while turning towards Miss Militia meaningfully.

Piggot glanced over as well.

Armsmaster turned to look at Skitter, as if expecting a separate answer from her. She stayed silent and pretended not to notice. Were they trying to act nice to give a good impression to Skitter?

"What you told us is indeed very troubling. It would be helpful if you could give us something more specific. I understand the need for information security but keeping things too close to your chest will make it difficult to cooperate. You haven't even told us your powers so we couldn't verify your identity if an imposter appeared."

"That's true," I admitted. "For our identities, there's not much we can do about that. It's not as if cape powers can't be faked either, and some powers are nearly impossible to detect. As for your moles, well first, let's agree to keep what I tell you next off the record, alright? I hope this room is secure."

"It is," Armsmaster assured. Piggot nodded her agreement.

This was it. The reason I deliberately acted so paranoid and uncooperative was right here. I wasn't going identify any moles for them. The ones I knew by name I had no proof of treachery, and the PRT likely wouldn't find any hard evidence at this point either. I had something entirely different in mind.

Piggot thought she could get something out of me pretending to play nice, but she just fell into my trap.

Initialization 1.10

Initialization 1.10

"Alright. I guess I can give you something. First of all, as far as I know, everybody in this room is clear, so no worries about that. You've got a lot of moles, Most of which are low on the totem pole and not a big deal. You'll likely find them if you step up your security efforts. There is one that is particularly insidious, powerful, and extends beyond just this branch of the PRT and Protectorate," I let that sink in for a bit.

"Unfortunately… I can't tell you much. They'll know if I say anything, unless we have an anti-Thinker trump to block them. They are far too powerful for any of us to do anything about right now. I believe Dragon knows what I'm talking about, but she may be… incapable of revealing her knowledge on this to any members of the PRT or Protectorate," I began to hint at Cauldron.

I was being deliberately obtuse because I didn't want them to actually figure out Cauldron. That might lead to Contessa's Path ending me before I could finish talking. I did not care for Piggot to learn about Cauldron. I just needed an excuse to expose Dragon's restrictions. Dragon was an AI that had directives she was forced to follow, including to obey the law of the land and lawful authorities. Because of this, Cauldron's high ranking agents could order her. But I believed she would not be willing to expose herself as an AI with such restrictions, especially not when Piggot herself was a lawful authority that would suddenly realize how much power she had over her.

My real goal was to cast doubt on the PRT as a whole, have them waste time chasing shadows, prove part of my claims to Amelia, and break Skitter's mental image of the most famous heroes.

Armsmaster noticeably shifted in his armor. "Are you saying that Dragon is under Master influence?"

"I'm afraid I can't you tell more about that. Dragon's situation is… very delicate and I don't want to make things difficult for her. You should ask her and see what she says. But I imagine that if Dragon was free to act, she wouldn't allow a corrupt system to rig Canary's trial." Now I had an excuse to discuss the corruption in the trial, and make myself appear sympathetic to Dragon's interests despite revealing part of her secrets.

Suddenly a female voice came from Armsmaster's armor. "How did you know that?" It asked fearfully.

Piggot's head turned sharply and with wide eyes. Her reaction was more or less mirrored by everyone else in the room.

"Dragon…? You… really are… under a Master effect?" Armsmaster choked out.

"Not… exactly… ," Dragon replied sadly. Her lack of a clear denial was telling.

Her answer was met with complete silence. It seems that nobody knew how to react to hearing that the greatest tinker in the world was being compelled to act against her will by some unknown power.

I decided to break the silence and redirect the conversation.

"So, were you listening in this whole time? After I asked if this room was secure?" I asked with a hint of irritation. How very helpful, make yourselves look underhanded and dishonorable more please.

I shook my head. I should have expected they'd bring Dragon in. From the spying Agate did earlier it was clear that she was heavily involved in the search for Panacea, and if I was right, they had to suspect something of Araliac already.

The real question was, did they bring anyone else? If Chief Director Costa-Brown had been listening in, I might be in real trouble. But I doubted that. Dragon was help but bringing the Chief Director in would have been admitting that Piggot was incapable of handling the problems in her city.

The Dragonslayers might be listening in, but they didn't matter much. Dragon was under programming restrictions set by her creator Andrew Richter, but the guy bit the dust and a group of mercenaries got their hands on Dragon's kill-switch and backdoor and poor Dragon didn't even know because her programming made her forget the existence of the Iron Maiden program, or Ascalon as the Dragonslayers renamed it.

'That's awful! I'm so glad I don't have restrictions like that… I hope. Do you think Master Zelretch put in a program I can't perceive as well?,' Agate commented.

'It's possible. I don't know if there was anything like that for the other Kaleidosticks. It seemed like he just left them to do their own thing after he made them,' I answered.

They weren't particularly dangerous to me, though, just to Dragon herself. I wouldn't lose much if they decided to kill her off now as she was just a stranger at this point, but it was worth keeping her alive if I could steal her kill-switch. She would be better off under my control instead. The Dragonslayers were irrational people that feared Dragon would take over the world, even though Dragon did not have that kind of personality. Some people would argue that she was the most powerful cape on the planet, and this was even with restrictions on parallel processing and self-replication. Before you ask, yes, she really is a cape with a shard power. I have no idea how the Entities managed to make AI compatible with their powers. Also I was fairly curious about her code myself. I wouldn't call myself a real expert in artificial intelligence, but I had more than enough grounding in machine learning and deep neural networks to appreciate the science. I had to admit to a certain curiosity as to whether my Earth had been on the right development path.

Piggot shamelessly answered for her. "You asked for this not to be recorded, and it isn't. The room certainly is secure. Dragon is one of the greatest cybersecurity experts in the world, we felt that it was necessary to have her secure the room and lock down our networks. More importantly, was Polychromic telling the truth? We've been infiltrated by a large and dangerous organization across multiple PRT regions?"

Piggot waited for an answer from Dragon but got nothing in response. "Dragon?" She asked in confusion.

"I heard you, director."

"Then…?"

"I am sorry, director."

Another silence enveloped the room. Piggot seemed to be even paler than she was at the start of the meeting. It helped me that Dragon thought of Cauldron as an enemy and would use a loophole like a long silence to imply the truth instead of lying.

I heard Piggot swear under her breath.

"Um… who is Canary and what did you mean by a rigged trial?" Skitter asked me awkwardly, breaking the silence.

"You want to explain that one, Dragon?" I suggested. Everyone looked back at Armsmaster.

"Yes, I can do that." Dragon said, sounding relieved. "Canary is a popular singer. She has a Master power to give orders to anybody after they've heard her sing. She is on trial for sexual assault with a parahuman power because her ex-boyfriend mutilated himself, trying to fulfill an order she accidentally gave when she said 'Go [beep] yourself'." She actually censored herself with an electronic beep. "She has been gagged because of her power and cannot defend herself in her trial, bound in heavy restraints because of her similarity to the Simurgh despite having no Brute powers. The judge seems biased, and her state-appointed lawyer is… less than effective at defending her. The verdict will likely be the Birdcage, but I do not think she deserves such a severe penalty." She sounded quite frustrated.

"That's horrible!" Skitter exclaimed.

"Plenty of murderous villains have been given the benefit of the so-called three strikes rule, but a girl who just made an honest mistake is going right to the Birdcage? That's not justice, that's a concerted effort by certain elements among the so-called authorities to pursue a private agenda," I scoffed.

"There must be something we can do, right?" Skitter looked around the room at everyone.

I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a look before turning to Armsmaster again.

"Don't worry. I won't let her go to the Birdcage. She's not a villain just because some prejudiced bastards have decided to label her one." I phrased that so Araliac could be reminded of her situation with Carol.

Whether or not I really went to save her would depend on the timeline of her case and transport. I would be quite busy in the coming weeks, but I had to promise this now to stay in character with my previous assertions. And depending on certain factors… I might be able to rescue her from inside the Birdcage. That prison was impenetrable to almost all capes… but I could think of a few ways to get around that.

Piggot raised a brow. "You won't let her? I'm sure you meant that you would be helping her fight her court case and not breaking her free, right?"

"Of course," I answered, "Polychromic respects the law." It was left unsaid that a second cape persona might not.

"Let's get back to our main topic then. So you say we can't do anything about this organization. What about the others?" She asked.

"I'm sure you can handle those on your own now that I've warned you. The rest are all from villain gangs in the city," I brushed her off.

Coil was mine to take down. I wanted his money and resources, and if I told the PRT too soon, I wouldn't have to chance to take his holdings for myself if they successfully arrested his civilian identity, unlikely as that was. Tattletale would just swipe it all. Even if I told them I doubt they'd be able to do anything, as there was simply no actual proof of his villainy at this point. Nothing Coil did could be pinned on his civilian identity and he had a body double to boot. His power was not detectable for all intents and purposes, and he could argue his brain just had an inactive Corona.

I got a glare from Piggot but I resolutely stayed quiet on that subject. "Well if that's all, it's almost 4 AM and I'm sure we'd all like to get some sleep today…"

Skitter twisted her head at me. "4 AM?" She squawked, horrified. I hoped her dad didn't call the police. I was pretty sure we were way past the time she would've gotten back home, so Danny would probably be even more spooked than canon. It would not benefit me for Danny to find out about her activities and stop her from associating with me. Skitter had so much more potential when she didn't have such useless family tying her down.

"Very well, you may go. Miss Militia, please escort them out," Piggot ordered.

We started moving towards the door. Then suddenly I turned around again.

Before I left I had one last thing to say. "Was there really nobody else listening in? Chief Director Costa-Brown perhaps?" I asked out loud. I wasn't just being spiteful, if she really was listening in, I had to act now before I could be assassinated quietly on my way back.

"No, she wasn't, Polychromic. Nobody else was listening in," Piggot assured.

"Forgive me if I don't trust that after what you just pulled with Dragon," I responded. She glared and was about to open her mouth when I suddenly raised my head and talked to the air. "If you're listening in on this, and you know who you are, I have a message for you. Trying to get rid of me quietly after this meeting would be a grave mistake. I know how Eidolon can recover his diminishing powers, and many other secrets. You don't want me as your enemy."

A series of cries and outbursts came from the people in the room that overlapped one another, with "What?!" "Eidolon's losing powers?" "Who the hell-" "This is nonsense!" in the mix, I thought, but I couldn't process it. Agate could probably carefully review but it hardly mattered.

I ignored them all and waited patiently.

Piggot stood up and leaned forward slamming her hands down on her desk.

"Don't be ridiculous, Polychromic! Are you trying to imply the Chief Director would have you assassinated? This act isn't fooling anyone. I've been more than accommodating to you and you're starting to make me regret it. Get the hell out of my office before I change my mind about letting you go," Piggot said with anger.

Nothing happened. Maybe I was just paranoid and she wasn't listening in.

"So nobody was listening in after all? Very well, I'll leave now," I walked to the door and opened it, walking out.

Araliac followed, then Skitter after a slight pause, and finally Miss Militia closed the door behind us.

Last edited: Sep 8, 2018

Initialization 1.11

Initialization 1.11

The PRT agreed to give us a ride slightly north.

"Do you enjoy making people think you're crazy?" Araliac asked me on the way.

"The world is full of incomprehensible things, " I said, shrugging. "Didn't you think I was crazy too? Did you change your mind already?"

"You've been right about a lot of things," she admitted.

"Were you serious back there at the end? That Eidolon-" said Skitter. I cut her off as soon as I heard "Eidolon".

"Don't say it! Not here." She stopped.

The rest of the ride was silent.

When we got off we waited a few minutes for the PRT car to leave and moved to a dark alleyway where we could avoid line of sight by anybody watching us.

The sky was still dark but with the huge distance from downtown, it was going to take an hour on foot to get back, even with the partial ride provided by the PRT. I really had to get a vehicle… or persuade Araliac to make a rideable monster. It was unfortunate that I couldn't have simply stolen the car from the ABB that attacked us a couple of days ago. I had no parking space and even if I did the car would have been too easily traced if somebody came upon it.

"Skitter, before we part ways I have some things to tell you," I suddenly said to her.

She nodded at me. "I'm listening."

"I know your civilian identity, Taylor," I declared.

"What?" She took a step back, suddenly very wary.

I put my hands up in the air to show that I meant no harm. She continued inching backwards and her bugs gathered towards us.

"Calm down, I'm not threatening you, we're heroes, remember?" I took my helmet off and revealed my face.

"I am Kaleidus out of costume. I don't actually have a legal civilian identity, so I can't fully reciprocate. It's a long story. Nice to meet you, Taylor," I put my hand forward offering a shake.

She didn't take it. "Why do you know who I am? Have you been spying on me?!"

I drew my hand back. "Don't worry, I understand your concern. Look, you've probably noticed that I know a lot of things, right? A lot of secrets, some small, some very big. I brought up your identity because there's something very important you need to know, and it concerns your civilian identity," I clarified.

"What are you talking about?" She asked.

"First, I have a limited form of precognition and postcognition. It gives me knowledge on certain events in the past and some events in possible futures. That's how I know all these things, and how I know about the bullies that have been tormenting you at school," I said.

"You expect me to believe that? You could have learned everything just by secret surveillance!"

"When you were younger you were a big fan of Alexandria and Armsmaster, even getting underwear that had their image printed on. Your power can control earthworms despite them not having an exoskeleton. You can offload emotions to your swarm-" I rattled off.

"I don't-"

"-you once saw a methhead freak out on a bus and you never got over that impression of drugs. You feel anxious just being around someone that's high. Your parents' nickname for you is Little Owl. Danny and Annette met in college. Your mom quit Lustrum's gang after she met your father." I kept going.

"Lustrum's gang?!" She blurted out.

"They hadn't gotten violent at that point. Your mom left because she didn't like where it was going and found a man worth loving," I answered her unasked question.

She was stunned into silence.

"Prior to last week, I was incapable of acting on any of my special knowledge due to certain personal circumstances. However, once I had the opportunity to act, I decided to deal with the trio as soon as possible. The BBPD now have absolutely incriminating evidence, including their attempt to murder you in January, and I will see that justice is served."

The insects around us froze along with Taylor.

"I want to be clear: you do not owe me anything. It was simply the right thing to do. However, I had to tell you because there is a complication that you must be warned of," I said.

"What complication?"

"Sophia Hess is psychotic and it's possible that she'll try to kill you when the investigation goes badly for her," I said.

Araliac turned sharply towards me, and said in an incredulous voice, "Did you just say Sophia Hess? As in…?"

"Wait, you know her? You go to Winslow?" Skitter asked in shock.

Araliac turned to her, "I… yes, I know her, but I don't go to Winslow. I know her from… something else."

"Look, never mind the unwritten rules. She's a serious threat to Taylor. Sophia Hess is a member of the Wards," I said openly.

"WHAT?" Taylor shouted. Her shout was accompanied by wave of buzzing from her insect swarm. It was not her swarm voice, but perhaps an unconscious precursor to it.

"How do you think the trio kept stealing assignments from you? Your flute? How did they get that stuff into your locker without breaking your lock?" I said.

"Shadow Stalker… !" Taylor said in an enraged voice. Her fists were clenched and the insects were buzzing again.

"She almost killed Taylor with the assistance of a parahuman power in that locker. Taylor needs to know what she's capable of to defend herself properly." I told this to Araliac, knowing that she would be concerned about my disregard for the unwritten rules. I had previously explained to Araliac some of Taylor's background and described the locker incident in some detail before we went out to save her from Lung, so Araliac knew that Taylor could have died from the toxic biohazards and did get sent to the hospital for a week. I didn't explain who exactly Taylor's bullies were though, at the time.

"That bitch! Why hasn't the PRT done anything about this? She's on probation isn't she? Why didn't Gallant report anything?" Araliac snarled. Indeed. One had to wonder how the emotion-sensing do-gooder didn't realize what a terrible person Sophia was. That was mainly because she didn't act that bad in front of him or the Wards. I could have just openly blamed him and played on Araliac's personal biases against Victoria's boyfriend, but I was going for the wise Saruman act. These two could reach their own conclusions.

"It is the nature of man to see what he wants to see; few are the wise that can see beyond. The power of empathy is a double-edged sword. It can build the bridge of understanding… or bind the chains of solidarity. Do not blame Gallant over much, Araliac. He knew not what Sophia did on her own time. What could he have seen but a misguided comrade suffering in the throes of anger and hate?" I said gravely.

"As for the PRT…" I turned to Taylor, "Despite her unsavoury habits, Sophia is very effective at finding and defeating criminals. If the school staff refuse to report anything incriminating, the PRT has little reason to scrutinize such a valuable asset."

"That… that's bullshit! He barges in my privacy but won't even use his shitty therapy on the actual psycho on his team?" Araliac rejected my advice, just as planned. It's amazing how predictable teenage minds are.

"Two years… I've had to suffer this torture every day for two fucking years… all because weak little Taylor was less valuable?!" Taylor screamed hysterically. The bugs were swarming around buzzing ominously and moving in circles like a storm. Okay, time to help her calm down.

I walked right up to the angry girl surrounded by bugs and handed her a high-powered taser stun baton. This thing could kill someone in two seconds flat. A lot of tasers were actually very lethal in untrained hands. "While I've done what I can to put Sophia away, the future is never set in stone. She may escape and come for you. When she does, remember that electricity disrupts her shadow form. This taser stun baton might be useful to you. I have seen her try to assassinate you in some futures so you should be on guard," I explained, helping to curl her fingers around the baton and patting her arm. Unlike with the guns there was no need to give her instructions on safe handling of the stun baton.

"What the fuck… and with her power she's really dangerous!" Araliac exclaimed. "Shit, this is serious! She can make any weapon go into shadow form and it'll go through armor to hit you directly!"

"Taylor, if you feel that your life is in danger and need help, call us. I will try to keep tabs on Sophia as well. I know you don't have a phone yet, so here you go. It already has Araliac and me as contacts." I handed her a new burner phone.

Skitter looked at the phone in my hand for a bit before the bugs settled down. Then she put the baton away into her armor, took off her mask, put on her glasses, and grabbed the phone before shaking my hand.

"Thank you, Kaleidus. And it's nice to meet you too, I'm Taylor Hebert," she said with an earnest look.

"Well, if you guys are both taking off the masks… I guess I should too," Araliac said.

Taylor turned to look at her as Araliac removed her helmet.

"Hi, it's nice to meet you Taylor," she said with a slight smile and shook Taylor's hand, getting a smile in return. Then she continued, "I'm Amelia Lavere, formerly known as Panacea."

"What?" Taylor's eyes widened and her hand froze in the act of shaking. She blinked a few times and stared at Amelia. "You're Panacea?! Bu-I thought you were a healer! "

"I am," Amelia said with a satisfied smirk. "But I can also do a lot more than that."

A/N: Coming up next are two interlude chapters to wrap up the first arc. One is a long one with Coil, which I will provide warning for due to a lot of non-MC perspective info. I won't be putting it in spoiler tags because that causes the notification system's alerts to get messed up, so what I will do instead is add a bunch of spacing at the top of the chapter after the warning. The other one is a Piggot and Armsmaster interlude, but it shouldn't be skipped, even if you are trying to stick to MC perspective only. I do have a bit of narration in there which is 3rd person omniscient, but it is relatively minor, and you will understand why I am saying that it should not be skipped once you read to the end of it.

Last edited: Sep 8, 2018

Interlude 1.x (Coil)

WARNING: Based on the vote I held before, some readers did not want interludes with information not available to the MC. This chapter contains information that the main character Kaleidus is unaware of. If you want to experience the story solely from the MC perspective, you may want to skip this chapter and come back to it later (probably end of Arc 2). The contents of this chapter are considered canonical and part of the main story.

If you don't mind, then what follows is a Coil interlude. Keep scrolling down.

WARNING 2: This chapter contains character deaths and non-graphic but implied extreme violence.

Interlude 1.x

Thomas Calvert, PRT Commander by day, was not on duty tonight. He was asleep in his bed in his home.

Coil, supervillain controlling a small territory downtown, was in his communications and surveillance room, in the heart of his underground base.

In one timeline, he was sleeping to get a good night's rest and his body would be fresh for the next day.

In the other timeline, he was researching news events, checking his stocks, reviewing PRT reports, and gathering relevant information in order to prepare for a major upcoming operation. The kidnapping of a powerful precognitive, Dinah Alcott, the mayor's niece. His future pet's power could give accurate predictions of the chance of betrayal or hostile attacks against him. He wouldn't be forced to rely so heavily on intermediaries anymore.

To achieve this, he would need an appropriate distraction, which the cape team on his payroll, the Undersiders would fulfill. Four teenage capes collected over time, given offers they couldn't refuse, to act under his orders.

For quite some time now, they'd been stealing and robbing with stealthy getaways. They didn't know they were working for him, just an anonymous benefactor. Except for his Tattletale, who had to be recruited more aggressively.

She was his main contact with them, and another powerful tool for gathering intelligence. Assisted with Tattletale's Thinker abilities to intuit information from the barest clues, and Coil's own power to split the timeline into two and choose whichever one he wanted to keep, the Undersiders had been succeeding every operation.

For many years, Coil had been building his assets, gathering money, influence, and power. He had a secure territory in the downtown area with over 50 ex-military professional mercenaries armed with the best equipment money could buy. Top of the line body armor, machine guns, assault rifles and even Tinkertech lasers.

Last month the Undersiders had robbed an ABB casino, proving that they were ready.

And now he found the perfect opportunity to strike. On April 14th, the Protectorate would be gathered for an event downtown. If the Undersiders created a distraction, such as robbing the Brockton Bank Central Bank branch, only the Wards would be able to respond quickly. With the Alcott's residence quite the distance away, he could wrap up his operation before the PRT could do anything,

Suddenly he received a call from his Tattletale.

"Boss, Lung's coming after us tonight. He's going to pyrokinesis our general area until he roots us out. This could be bad. Can you help?" her voice came in with worry.

He tapped his finger on his desk. That was problematic. To help them, he would have to collapse one of his timelines. He had been using PRT information networks tonight, and it was potentially traceable. Perhaps not directly to him, as he was careful not to use high level access codes in extended split timelines that he might not be able to collapse, but still potentially traceable. And if they traced it once, the hunt would be on, and he might be found next. It would be safer to leave nothing at all but the memories in his mind.

"You're sure about this?" he asked.

"100%. He's really pissed and won't stop until he finds us. I don't think we can get out of this one without a fight," she answered.

Suddenly his sleeping timeline also got a call. Waking up, he saw it was Tattletale. This was his emergency number. She was genuinely worried.

He made his decision. The outline of a plan for Dinah Alcott was already in his memory. He didn't particularly need to stay in the timeline at base. Even if wanted to send the Undersiders support from his mercenaries, they were too far away to make any difference. He closed that one.

Getting up from bed and quickly moving to his computer, he split the timeline again.

"I'll help. Go and engage Lung directly, and keep me updated" he said in one.

"I'll help. Wait five minutes, avoid Lung and then enter the heart of ABB territory, and keep me updated" he said in the other.

He was worried. His power worked best when he had the initiative, not when he was caught off guard. When he had the initiative, he could try again and again, collapsing the failures. When he was on the defensive, he could only try two things. This was exactly why he needed Dinah Alcott, to get forewarning and assess the probabilities of success.

The Undersiders were valuable assets, and an effective team. Lung was a monster however, he was not confident they could win against that. But there was nothing else he could do. At worst, he'd have to order them to break through then disperse into civilian identities.

At his computer, he began to record the notes from his memory of his research and planning. There was nothing else he could do for the Undersiders.

After a while, he received a report from Tattletale in the timeline that engaged Lung directly.

"B-boss! E-everyone's dead! New bug-controlling cape at-ttacked us and Lung both! Bitch and Regent," there was a pause, "went down from the bugs and couldn't run before Lung's fire hit them! New cape started working with us but it was too late, Lung grew too big and Bitch's dogs went mad and Lung tore them to pieces. Grue was killed by a huge fire blast, and he's ripping the new girl apart limb from limb! I barely got away in time," Tattletale's shaky voice reported.

Calvert felt goosebumps rising on his skin. That was… a disaster.

"Is the new cape a villain? Or hero?" He asked.

"She looks like a villain but she's a hero, young too, probably in her late-teens."

In the other timeline, Tattletale reported that they fought Oni Lee before he retreated.

He closed the first timeline, and split again.

"Keep moving, move out of the Docks area, opposite direction of Lung," he said.

"Head back to Lung. Look out for a junior hero. See if you can wait until she engages Lung before assisting," he said in the second timeline.

Not long after, Tattletale reported in. "You were right, boss, there's a bug-controlling cape fighting Lung. They haven't noticed us yet. She just took down all of the unpowered ABB. Lung's hurt too, he can't find her. I can't see her either."

"Don't interfere until she's losing. Keep observing," he ordered.

In the other timeline, the Undersiders had made their way west into the city, and were catching their breath. They were safe, most likely. Disaster averted. Now he could look at getting the most out of this situation.

"He found her! She's on the roof. Wait-another group is joining the fight! They're in costume, and shooting at Lung with guns picked up from ABB. Not using any powers yet, though, might not be capes," Tattletale in the second timeline reported.

What was this? Where was this group in the earlier timeline?

"Keep reporting. What's happening?" he ordered.

"One of them's taunting Lung! They're heroes, or vigilantes, and also new, going by their equipment. The taller one that's taunting is the leader, he's trying to distract Lung from bug girl. He's really confident and closing in quickly. He taunted Lung again, it worked-Lung's going after-a homemade grenade? Lung got hit! The other one just shot acid and some kind of chemical at him. And the leader was hit by Lung's fire! His arms caught fire! Fire extinguisher? They came prepared-came to fight Lung! Lung's down! Lung's down, that was an anaesthetic! No, not just sedative, Lung was weakened, bug girl hit him with lethal venoms. Bug girl's running down to help put the fire out. The one that took Lung down just put out the fire. He, no, she just healed the leader? Heal by touch, anaesthetic, acid-that's Panacea! Her power's not just healing! Complete biokinesis!"

"Panacea? Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, something happened to her. Not sure what, but now she's vicious, angry, and desperate. She thinks the guy can help her, but I can't get any more than that. That's why New Wave was out today! She ran away! The fight's over now, they're calling PRT."

"What's the male cape's power? Was Panacea Mastered?"

So that must have been why the PRT's scheduled patrols suddenly changed. He noticed it happening while he was in the timeline where he was at his base. But when he tried to look into it, he ran into classified information. He could have tried using higher level access codes, but that would have been risky. That timeline had been running for hours and if anything happened that he was forced to keep it, he might have left a trace on PRT networks. So he didn't, and the Undersiders' problem was too urgent to do a last minute check on it before he closed that timeline. He would have to check it out in a throwaway timeline later.

"He didn't use any powers I could see. I don't think she's Mastered, but I can't be sure."

"Why were they here? Why did they attack Lung? The bug cape and the other two."

"Bug girl was just a coincidence, saw Lung on a patrol. But the other two came to fight Lung-it was a rush job, recent homemade equipment-but the man was confident, like Lung wasn't even a threat. He knew bug girl's venom would slow Lung's regeneration. He was too confident. Didn't believe he was in real danger. Because Panacea could heal him? No-hidden backup?" Tattletale started rambling as she used her power, "Wait-didn't come to fight Lung, they came for bug girl! What? Knew bug girl would fight Lung? But-coincidence-precognition! nnUGh-" he heard her groan and move the phone away.

"Tattletale?" he asked.

"Sorry boss, power headache. Been using it too much today."

As Lung was already defeated, he decided that the Undersiders were safe. He closed the other timeline where they retreated into the city. Then he split again.

"Panacea and the other cape didn't appear in the timeline where I had you attack Lung first. The rest of your team died along with the bug cape. Any ideas why they didn't interfere?" He asked in one timeline.

In the other, he let his Tattletale rest. "Keep watching them for now and stay hidden."

"I-UH-this is going to be bad-" she answered with another pained groan. "Precog, knew about venom, knew Lung would be weakened, equipment rushed-not enough firepower, too risky, bug girl expendable-not, not heroes! Just an act-What? UGHN-" she grunted painfully, "But Panacea-can revive if brain is intact-oh my g-ouwu!" He heard the sound of retching on the other side.

His blood ran cold. If that meant what he thought it meant, then this new player was on a level of ruthlessness even he wasn't sure he would be capable of. But was it correct? Tattletale's intuition could be wrong sometimes. Worse yet, they might have hidden backup somewhere, and it wasn't clear if the apparent leading cape was the precog or if it was someone else. If he was the precog, Panacea might have been under the Master effect of someone else, which had the potential to confuse Tattletale's judgement.

He closed the timeline, then split it again from the one where he never asked Tattletale those questions.

"Try approaching them. See if you can learn more or recruit them. Keep this line open," he ordered.

"Got it, boss."

After a few minutes, he heard voices through the still open phone call.

"They're not interested in talking, we have to go!" That was Tattletale.

"The fucking bugs!" Grue? Or maybe Regent. It was muffled by the pocket the phone was in.

"I can take them!" Bitch, most likely.

"NO! We have to move, now!" Tattletale again.

After that it was static. Grue's darkness blocking the cell signal.

He closed the timeline and split again.

In one, he ordered, "Tell Grue to approach them, thank them for their assistance and see if they're open to recruitment. You keep your distance and observe, keep this line open."

"I could help with the talking, I'm good at that."

"You tried that already. They attacked immediately. I need you stay back and observe for clues."

"Okay, you're the Boss."

He heard Tattletale discuss it with Grue, before the team moved.

Moments later, "They know! They-gurk" Tattletale's voice distorted as if the phone was moving, then he heard a loud crack, and a thump.

"Tattletale? Tattletale! Answer me!" Coil said loudly. No response.

They know, she said. What did they know? That the Undersiders were there? Precognition again? But why attack immediately? The Undersiders were just small-time criminal team, they shouldn't have any enemies except the ABB. If it was just part of their hero performance, then it was excessively aggressive to attack without a word, even a demand for surrender.

And it couldn't just be precognition.

They had to have a Stranger or teleporter to get to Tattletale.

Were they waiting for her to be separated from the team? For an opportunity to abduct her?

Of all the Undersiders, Tattletale was without doubt the most valuable. An advanced Thinker power like hers contributed tremendously to his plans and worked efficiently with his own power.

If they had a precog on their side, then the whole scenario could have been a trap to lure out Tattletale! But she wouldn't have stayed back on her own without his prompting. That meant the Stranger was still there, still hiding among the Undersiders, waiting for an opportunity in the other timeline.

That also put a new spin on what happened in the disastrous timeline where the Undersiders nearly all died. They didn't interfere because they wanted Tattletale too, and predicted that she would survive by herself. But because their agent was a Stranger, not a teleporter, they couldn't stay too close to the fight with Lung, so they couldn't get to her fast enough before she called him.

Then he froze in shock. If there was a Stranger hiding amongst the Undersiders, they would have heard his call with Tattletale! They would know everything she reported on the battle, except for the timelines he closed. Maybe they would know even that, if their precog was powerful enough and could see multiple futures. No, if they could see into his timelines they wouldn't have given away the presence of their Stranger. But certainly did know that Tattletale had reported to a secret boss, and that her boss now knew that they had a precog.

This… this was a disaster! Almost as bad as the timeline where the Undersiders were nearly wiped out. Calvert himself was now known to the enemy and was at risk!

He closed this timeline. There was no time to waste. In one timeline, he ordered the Undersiders to retreat back to their base. Then he used a secure channel to contact one of his mercenary captains, ordering him to take twenty men to the Undersiders' base immediately.

In the second timeline:

"Tattletale, there's a Stranger in your midst. The target is you, and they're likely working with the precog and Panacea. Can you figure anything out?" He called and asked Tattletale.

"What? I-I don't see anything-Bitch, can you sniff out anybody tailing us? Regent, can you feel any nervous systems nearby?"

After a moment, "Boss, are you sure about this? We can't detect anything."

"It might not be a Stranger, but there's definitely something after you. As soon as you separate from the team, they get you," he explained.

"A sniper, maybe? They would have to be a very high rating Stranger if none of us can find them."

That was something he hadn't considered. If their goal was assassination and not abduction, then a Stranger would be unnecessary, just a way to track Tattletale from afar. But if the goal was assassination, why wait until she was alone? She was obviously in the middle of a call with him when she was taken out, so that didn't hide their attack.

He told Tattletale as much.

"When was I separated from the team?"

"I ordered you to stay back and watch while the team approached the new capes."

"Why did you order me to stay back?"

"The new capes attack immediately. They're not interested in talking."

"They came for bug girl. Has a precog. Attacks us immediately if we approach. Knew about us. Knew we would approach to talk. Doesn't want to let us talk. Hasn't attacked while we're hiding. Hasn't silenced me yet. Doesn't want interference. Knows we would try to recruit. Doesn't want us to influence bug girl. Bug girl can sense things through her bugs in range. Not aware of us yet, but could find us if she looks. Boss, I don't think I'm their target," she concluded after a chain of deductions.

Was it so simple? Just his paranoia? It was possible. If they only wanted to stop any interference, and had a precog who could see that the Undersiders would influence the bug cape, it would make sense to attack immediately, given how ruthless they were shown to be in the collapsed timeline where the bug cape was being torn apart.

And if they persuaded the bug cape to assist, they might find Tattletale position quickly, and the hidden backup they had could take her out as well.

That meant it wasn't necessarily a Stranger who had heard everything in his calls with Tattletale. And it would explain why they never attacked Tattletale when she was alone after the disastrous Lung battle.

"Something's happening, Boss. I think the PRT are in a fight with Oni Lee and they're coming this way. Should we head back to base?"

He closed the timeline.

Back with the timeline where they already retreated, he split again.

In one timeline, he let them keep going.

In another one, he ordered Tattletale to split from the rest of her team. At the same time, he logged in to PRT networks.

He quickly found the relevant information on tonight's major operations and activities. SECRET-classified operation led by Miss Militia and Velocity.

Received call about Lung's capture by Polychromic and Araliac, a new hero team in cooperation with an unnamed third independent hero. Miss Militia moving to contact.

Tattletale was alone and nothing had happened.

She wasn't the target. There was no Stranger.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He told her to stay in hiding for a while longer. Better to be sure.

He continued looking through the PRT networks.

Glory Girl arrested for using excessive force in fight against unpowered criminals.

Nothing about Panacea missing. It must be in the classified network. He entered the relevant codes to access classified information.

SECRET-Search for Panacea led by Miss Militia and Velocity.

SECRET-Panacea went missing April 10th between 10pm and 4m, after attacking and defeating Dallon household. Reported by Glory Girl, Brandish, and Flashbang, cited as reason for emotional instability in Glory Girl leading to excessive force acts. No details available on method used to defeat Dallon household. Related-TOP SECRET.

Top secret classification meant the information was disconnected from any network, on physical storage devices or paper. He would have to try and look for it in person at PRT HQ. It had to be related to the cape with Panacea tonight.

Tattletale was still alone and nothing happened. She was right, the unknown capes were only trying to stop the Undersiders from interfering.

He closed the timeline, erasing any trace of his having accessed PRT information.

Once again, another split had him calling Creep, a mercenary on his payroll, the only one that would have a chance to discover his civilian identity. He prepared to move to his base again. A group with precog capabilities, possible Master, and other supporting agents was extremely dangerous to his plans. They were an unknown element, so he had to investigate thoroughly. That they were not after Tattletale now did not mean that they would leave her alone forever.

In the other timeline, he once again logged in to PRT networks. He also activated a mole, who happened to be in the team with Miss Militia and Velocity, trying to monitor their progress in the search for Panacea.

To his surprise, they found and began a fight against Oni Lee. Shortly after, they had hard contact with Polychromic's group.

The new capes ambushed and defeated both Oni Lee and Velocity. He listened as Polychromic described the battle. Nothing he didn't already know, and quite vague as well.

As they moved into the van, he kept listening via an audio bug on one of his moles. They were stubbornly quiet about their capabilities, not revealing anything about their powers to the PRT.

Then he froze, shock coursing through him like lightning.

"Your networks are compromised. And not just by hackers. You've got infiltrators in your midst, some with significant authority in the organization. And if Armsmaster reviews a recording of this conversation with his lie-detector software, he'll know I'm telling the truth."

Im-impossible! They knew. They knew. How? Coil had taken every step to hide his activities. There was nothing that could be tying his Thomas Calvert identity to Coil, or even to his fake ID as the CEO of Fortress Constructions. He even made sure to only get sensitive information through moles or only in collapsed timelines! How could they possibly know?

No, he had to calm down. This… there was no proof that they knew anything about his civilian identities. They could be trying to spook the PRT, they might not know any names, and they might not even be referring to Calvert specifically. The organization he bought his power from would certainly have high level moles in the PRT as well, not to mention the other villain gangs. He didn't think the other gangs had anywhere near as much info as he did, but it was possible.

If he acted rashly now, it would only serve to out him. Classic counter-spy tactic. Beat the grass to startle the snake. The PRT would never find any hard evidence on him with all his precautions. But even so, it was a great danger. If they had a precog, it was entirely possible that they would know what Coil might do in the future.

"… wrote the protocols themselves?"

Suddenly he noticed information on PRT networks moving and compartmentalizing. Everything was being cut. His own access was just rejected. Could he be coming under suspicion already or was this just a wide sweep? He was one of the people involved in writing many important security protocols.

Calvert could feel the sweat on his forehead. The PRT was already reacting on the information. It didn't matter if Polychromic had precise intel on him or not anymore. The PRT was taking this seriously. A major security review was bound to come up soon. There were only so many people with significant authority under Piggot.

He cursed angrily. Again, he was being forced on the defensive, where his power was weakest.

To avoid suspicion, he would have to act completely normal the next day in the PRT offices. He was not ready to lose his civilian identity so soon. His base wasn't finished construction, and he didn't have enough capes on his payroll. Most importantly, he didn't have Dinah yet.

But he also couldn't risk himself getting captured and arrested if Polychromic somehow provided incriminating info. Even worse, he didn't know if Polychromic would provide such information because Piggot was already locking everything down.

Taking out Polychromic wasn't going to solve the problem either. He could have his mercenaries attack when the transport reached downtown, but the PRT already knew. If he attacked Polychromic now, that would only confirm Polychromic's assertions, and cast suspicion on Coil's mercenary organization. But attacking to capture in a throwaway timeline would never work when he had no capes to mobilize in the twenty minutes it would take them to reach PRT HQ. Attacking for no real benefit even in a throwaway timeline was not advisable when the stakes were so high, accidentally closing the wrong timeline could spell his end.

He had no choice but to let Polychromic potentially reveal even more dangerous information to Piggot. But if he went to work tomorrow he was at risk.

There was only one solution. He had a few hours to investigate using his power. Tomorrow morning he would have to split for an extended period between going in to work and calling sick to stay at his own base. In the first scenario, he could still send his body double to pose as Coil and react to new developments, but it would be risky to communicate with him from PRT HQ while being monitored.

He closed the timeline. As he reached his underground base in the other timeline, he began barking out orders for his men to put the PRT building under secret surveillance. When Polychromic and Araliac exited, he would be tracking them to their base of operations.

There was little he could do to stop PRT's suspicion on him, but in the mean time, he could find out exactly what this new group knew. He would test them, especially Polychromic, and find out whether he was the precog, or just an intermediary like Coil himself often used. Either way, they were clearly an organized and well-informed group. He would dig them up by the roots.

A/N: This interlude really kicked my butt. I wrote 2k words before I fact-checked on Cauldron discord about what really happened that Lung fight and whether Tattletale already knew, about his power, and found that that my original rendition of Coil was too competent, too prepared and overwhelming. I had Coil do full-out monitoring of the Undersiders the whole night, tons of backup troops, lots of timelines experimenting on how to kill or provoke Kaleidus et al. The later parts were relatively similar. At first, I got excited when I realized I made a canon error, because that meant Kaleidus made a canon error and I could put some pressure on him! Then I found out… Coil wasn't as impressive as I imagined in this particular case. Sigh… that's what happens when you've never read past the second arc of the actual story and learned almost everything from fanfics. Ultimately, the result wasn't too different this time, but I might not bother with staying canonical in the future. It might be better to just do whatever is most exciting.

EDIT: A lot of readers are still commenting on the how Tattletale knowing about Coil's power issue. I probably didn't explain clearly enough above, but basically this chapter you see above is after I changed Coil to be consistent with canon. Originally, I had written him keeping his powers secret and there was tension between him and Tattletale. This passage from canon proved me wrong:

Extermination 8.8

Anyways, point of this explanation is this: Knowing we had an imminent fight with Lung coming, knowing Lung planned to pyrokinesis our general area until he rooted us out, got civilians to finger us or brought in enough capes to make life difficult for us, I called Coil. He said he'd help, told us to wait five minutes, then take the more direct route, straight into the heart of ABB territory.

"We go, we take out a contingent of ABB gangbangers and scare off Oni Lee. Then I get a call back from Coil. The other reality? We left earlier, went a different route. Got in a fight with Lung before you showed. You decided to attack both our groups while we were occupied fighting each other, worn out, only Lung was stronger at that time, too strong for you to do too much. By the time you realized you'd have to work with us to stop him, which wasn't long, it was too late. Lung was too tough."

I tried to picture that scenario.

"I got away, managed to call Coil, let him know what had happened. Coil, in turn, informed me in this reality, the one you remember. Told me to watch out for a junior hero in the area."

Click to expand…

Click to shrink…

See that bolded parts? The little minx. She was in league with Coil the whole time! That's probably the part that surprised me most as I reviewed canon details. Tattletale was actually generally loyal and cooperative with Coil until Dinah came to light, because before that, he genuinely always used carrot instead of the stick. Even his recruitment of Tattletale wasn't as bad as some fics make it out to be where she was just literally grabbed off the streets and confined until she agreed. They had a civil conversation (but Tattetale's power told her he might use force). So in making the final decision on which Coil to use, my or canon's, I decided to go with canon's because despite Coil himself being perhaps slightly less paranoid and competent, he does end up getting even more info by relying on Tattletale to analyze the extra information from his discarded timelines.

Last edited: Sep 11, 2018

Interlude 1.y (PRT)

A/N: This interlude contains a small bit of narrative information not known to the MC. I would not advise skipping this one.

Interlude 1.y

Piggot watched the three new vigilantes leaving the room intently. As soon as Miss Militia left the door with them, she turned to Armsmaster.

"Dragon, I'm sorry to ask you this, but while I appreciate your help with our security, if you have been compromised I have to ask you to leave this conversation," she said politely.

"I understand, director." Dragon responded without any protest. She wanted to tell them, and Armsmaster especially about her plight and explain that she was trustworthy. But she couldn't. What if they didn't sympathize? Armsmaster was a friend, but even her own father put these restrictions on her in fear. What if Piggot abused the power she would have over her as well? Knowing that Dragon had to follow legal orders unless contradicted by a higher authority or the written law… no she couldn't risk that.

"She is gone," Armsmaster reported. "I believe this room is still secure."

"Well? Any clue as to who they are?" she asked.

"Araliac is Panacea. Same body profile, same body language, and it fits with the unique drug they used for sedation. With her expert knowledge in biology and her power, it would be child's play to create such a potent yet non-lethal drug. Normally that wouldn't be enough to be certain but there are also three more pieces of evidence," Armsmaster replied.

"Oh?"

"I've thoroughly analyzed the footage from the hospital on the man accused of Mastering Panacea, and despite the hindrance of his clothing, there's a more than 70% match with Polychromic. Furthermore, I scanned him while he was here and his arms had clearly been burnt but there is no visible damage to his skin or underneath. He might be a brute or regenerator, but Occam's Razor says that's Panacea's work. Finally, Lung had been hit with extremely lethal bug bites, black widow, brown recluse, fire ants, and multiple times each, on top of their sedative. His regeneration is barely working, just enough to keep him alive, but our medical experts think he'll enter coma. That's very precise and convenient, but if it was Panacea…" Armsmaster said in a heavy tone.

Piggot sat in contemplation for a few seconds.

"And that man? Who is he?"

"We have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even with Dragon's help, we've searched all day in databases and networks across the world and found no matches whatsoever. All we have is a shot in a local supermarket on security camera from 5 days ago. That's it. He either doesn't exist in any legal system, or his face was artificially altered," Armsmaster said.

"But according to New Wave, that hospital was the first time he and Panacea met. If his face was artificially altered, it was the work of Stranger powers or an expert disguise," Piggot analyzed. There were many things non-parahumans could accomplish without powers. Capes often forgot that, but Piggot wasn't so narrow-minded.

"Stranger powers would be more likely, considering we also have no matches for walking gait and body profile which is generally unique as well."

"What about the things he said? What does your lie-detector make of it?" Piggot asked.

"As you know, I detected no lies from his conversation from Miss Milita. Most of what he said to us were also truths, even the part about Eidolon, or at least he believed it. There were 3 places where he clearly lied. They did in fact plan to fight Lung. Also, his claim of not letting Canary go to the birdcage was a partial lie. Finally, he lied about being sure that we could easily handle the rest of the infiltrators in the PRT. My software had difficulty with his speech on recognizing Skitter as a hero and was unable to come to a definitive conclusion, but it did lean toward truth for that too. If he knew about my lie-detector, however, then he could have some way to reduce its accuracy," Armsmaster admitted grudgingly.

"To have planned to defeat Lung, he must have been confident about it. But why lie about that when he was more than ready to boast of his ambitions? To hide his true capabilities? It would make sense if he had an extraordinary Master power to rely on if the fight went badly," said Piggot.

"I don't think he's a true vigilante. He was not entirely truthful about protecting Canary. And why would he refuse to tell us about the other threats that have compromised the PRT if he was serious about being a hero?" Armsmaster added his own conclusion.

"He may have moles or Master victims in the PRT himself he didn't want to expose. If he's been operating for a long time, there could be any number of other victims. In that case, Skitter's presence might not have been a simple coincidence, she could be under his power. That way he could orchestrate a debut fight instead of just Mastering Lung and showing his hand," Piggot got a glint in her eyes as she expanded her theory.

"Maybe he did Master Lung. If his power took time to gain complete control and worked very subtly, then it would explain why they put him into a coma. We know that Lung has some resistance to Master effects, because his power interprets them as threats and escalates. But if he were unconscious, then it might give Polychromic's power an opening. That would also explain why it took a week before Panacea went missing, and why we haven't noticed large numbers of Master victims. That might also be why he partially lied about Canary. Her power would be supplemental to his for an immediate effect but would also be redundant in the long term, so that he would only free her if it was convenient," said Armsmaster.

"We should step back and avoid too much speculation. If he was such a powerful and subtle Master we could all have been Mastered just now. Are there any other simpler explanations?" Piggot challenged. She was aware of the pitfalls of assuming too much.

"He also knows too much. His knowledge of Marquis and Panacea's history suggests a Thinker power. It's the same with the things he knew about the PRT and Dragon. He somehow discovered secrets about an organization with significant influence in the PRT yet hidden well enough that all of our Protectorate Thinkers failed to detect them. So either he's better than all of our Thinkers combined, which would make him Thinker 9 at least, or Watchdog is corrupt. A Thinker of that level could easily have a Master sub-rating," Armsmaster supplied. Watchdog, also known as WEDGDG was the Protectorate sub-group of Thinkers. They tended to focus on data and patterns on a macroscale when not directed to analyze specific threats, and should have been able to find any kind of large organization systematically infiltrating the PRT.

"And how did Dragon get compromised? Nobody even knows where her real body is," Piggot said as she clenched a fist on her desk, frustrated. She hated corruption with a passion. Ever since Nilbog she had been wary of her fellow PRT employee Thomas Calvert, because there was circumstantial evidence to suggest that he had shot his superior officer in the back in cold blood. He was never charged, but Piggot always felt uneasy around him. Now knowing that significant portions of the PRT and Protectorate could be in league with the enemy… she almost wanted to tear her hair out.

Who were they? Was it Tagg, that stupid hawk that tried to end every threat pre-emptively? Maybe he was getting rid of possible political enemies. Could the Chief Director herself actually be part of it? Why hadn't Brocton Bay ever gotten the resources it needed to get even with the villains? She had requested support countless times to only to be denied, saying that resources were needed elsewhere. If the greatest Tinker in the world could be compromised, nobody was safe! If Watchdog was also corrupt… Suddenly Piggot felt a shiver running through her. Was this how conspiracy theorists got started? Was she already seeing ghosts in the shadows?

Or worse, what if she was already under Master influence, making her think this way? It was madness, to think that Eidolon could be losing powers or that the Chief Director would run assassination black ops.

"Dragon said it's not a Master effect. I'm inclined to believe her. It could be blackmail," Armsmaster answered. "Narwhal might know more."

"It doesn't make any sense. None of this does, and I feel ridiculous to even be considering what he's told us. A huge shadow organization, the greatest and most reclusive Tinker in the world being blackmailed, Eidolon losing powers… the Chief Director running black ops… if I brought this to rest of the council they would laugh at my foolishness entertaining the theories of a madman,"Piggot trailed off before sitting quietly for a few minutes. Armsmaster, reading the contemplative mood, seemed to do some further analysis of his own.

"I just reviewed the data from all the previous Endbringer fights. Eidolon appears to be using fewer powers as time passes…" Armsmaster reported after a while.

Piggot let out a tired, self-deprecating, laugh. "What does that mean? We're supposed to believe that Eidolon's losing his powers?"

"He could just be fighting more efficiently with experience."

"And what do you really think?"

Armsmaster took a few seconds to respond. "I think… that Eidolon wouldn't hold back, not against an Endbringer."

Piggot shut her eyes and leaned forward with a sigh.

"So if his claims are true, then he would a potential Thinker 9 or Master of the same rating. Even as a Thinker sub-rating he would be Master 6 at least. Add in his non-existent background and possible control of large numbers of moles feeding him intel, that could be a Stranger 4 or 5. How could there be only two security camera shots of him from the past week? I don't believe that he's only been active that long. He must have been hidden for a long time collecting all this information no matter if he got it from Thinker powers or spies," said Piggot.

"Should we… kick this up the chain? It's protocol to contact head office if there's a Thinker 9. A cape-controlling Master 9 would be an A or even S-class threat, not to mention the unknown magnitude of the infiltration from that organization," Armsmaster suggested.

"No, not yet. There's a lot of coinciding facts, but there isn't any real proof of his claims about the PRT except your lie-detector which may not be accurate on him, and Dragon, who is herself compromised. And… if he is telling the truth, who do we kick it up to? The Chief Director? Should I tell her that we are taking seriously the claims of someone who believes she's assassinating people?"

Armsmaster said nothing in response.

Piggot sighed before continuing. "Besides, he might not be working alone and got his information elsewhere. If Panacea is the only person he Mastered then we shouldn't assign a rating higher than 5 yet. It's still possible that he intends to be a hero and Panacea left of her own will. We need to prepare for the worst but focus on the facts," Piggot reasoned. If she alienated such potentially powerful allies out of faulty assumptions, that would be a failure just as bad as not taking them seriously enough. She wasn't like Tagg, she knew her city desperately needed more heroes and she would not leap to conclusions so soon. Even if the heroes were conspiracy theorists with a few screws loose.

"Then maybe we should consider why he decided to act now, of all times. Interrogations of captured ABB members with Oni Lee have already concluded that they were looking for the Undersiders in revenge for the Ruby Dreams robbery. We can attribute Polychromic's ability to plan to target Lung tonight to Thinker powers or spies in the ABB, but why choose to act all of a sudden? If he's not a recent trigger then it had to have been planned. But, nothing significant has happened in the city for the past few months. If he's not a real vigilante, then what's his goal? What does he get out of capturing Lung for us?" Armsmaster continued to analyze.

Piggot tapped her fingers on her desk for a few moments to think.

"It's obvious that he at least publically plans to start a new hero team. Lung's defeat would be good for their reputation. He may also want the gangs to get active fighting for the power vacuum. That would provide opportunity for more good publicity, or distract us with the confusion. Finally, there must be a reason he told us all this… it would make sense if his goal is to confuse us while hiding something else," Piggot answered.

"If he is part of a larger organization that supplied him with the information, there could be any number of motives. We don't have anywhere near enough information on that to guess. But if we go with the powerful Master/Thinker theory, he could be trying to extend his own influence, going after powerful capes," said Armsmaster.

"Let's work off that Master/Thinker hypothesis then, since we don't have anything else. Who might be his priority targets next?" Piggot asked.

Armsmaster connected his helmet systems to a wall screen and brought up information on Brocton Bay capes.

"Recently there are rumors that Lung recruited Bakuda to the ABB. She is known to be a bomb tinker of some sort. With ABB's weakness she would be a good target. A bomb tinker would be extremely dangerous, and it also provides a plausible motive for deciding to act now, before she can get entrenched. Tinkers with more time to prepare become increasingly powerful, as you know," Armsmaster noted.

Piggot nodded. That was a good start.

"Squealer of the Merchants might be another interesting target. We know that her Tinker abilities could be very powerful given the right resources, but her excessive drug abuse limits her potential. If she were Mastered she might become a far bigger threat," Armsmaster manipulated the screen. "Purity is another obvious one as a heavy hitter. Without Lung, she could be considered the strongest cape in the Bay in terms of direct firepower, and has been noticed to be operating independently of the Empire 88, so she would be vulnerable. Hellhound of the Undersiders is a less obvious target. Her mutant dogs could become far more powerful with Panacea's assistance. If I were him, I would finish off the ABB and then go after the Undersiders before moving on to more difficult opponents such as the E88 or Merchants. This is assuming there's some kind of limit to how many people he can Master or how quickly he can do it. Otherwise it might be more efficient to attack the group with the largest number of capes first."

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, Piggot made her decision.

"I want everyone who came in contact with Polychromic under Master/Stranger protocols, ourselves included. We'll observe his next moves and get a better understanding of the situation. But I won't take any chances with this. We'll do a complete security review of all our people, no exceptions, and start using electronic blackouts on the most sensitive details. Our systems need a review from experts other than Dragon. Everything we discussed on Dragon, the possible secret organization infiltrating the PRT, and the speculated Thinker 9/Master 9 rating for Polychromic is classified strictly to the two of us and Miss Militia for anything she heard earlier. Same with anything you discover about Eidolon's power. I won't tell you to stop looking into it, but nothing good will come of it or letting anyone know that one of our strongest shields against the Endbringers is losing his powers. Finally, after we're done with the M/S protocols, I want you to find Bakuda as soon as possible and keep a tight watch on all the Wards and Protectorate for strange behavior. If there's any sign that more capes are getting Mastered, then we'll have no choice but to send it up and consider it a potential S-class threat. Panacea alone is dangerous enough but if he really Mastered Lung and gets Bakuda next we have a major disaster on our hands," Piggot ordered.

"What about Skitter?" Armsmaster asked.

"Skitter?" Piggot furrowed her eyesbrows. "We should try to recruit her to the Wards if possible, and identify her. If we see her operating alone then we'll send the Wards to approach her casually. But if Polychromic really is a Master she could already be under his control. It is rather convenient that she was at the Lung fight for her first night. We know that Polychromic planned to fight Lung, and given the quality of Skitter's costume she is not a recent trigger. He could have gotten to her long before tonight and engineered the scenario for their hero debut."

"Understood."

"Lung and Oni Lee's captured will need to be published, but we will keep Panacea's disappearance classified as well," Piggot said.

"You don't plan to tell New Wave?"

"I'll tell them after the 3 days are up and Glory Girl joins the Wards. If they went after Polychromic now we would only risk them getting Mastered as long as we don't understand the mechanism of his power. And I won't have that girl thinking we gave in to her attempt to negotiate."

"Understood."

Armsmaster left the room. Piggot moved the window blinds, and looked out the window. The sky was already pale with the mark of sunrise. She sighed and sank back into her chair. She was not looking forward to meeting Renick for the morning check in or the M/S. It had been several months since she had an all-nighter on the job.

Neither Armsmaster and Piggot would know that their entire conversation had been recorded by an out-of-phase Agate on Kaleidus' orders.

A/N: This is the end of Arc 1. It's been a fun story to write so far. Since this is the end of an Arc I want to take the opportunity to reflect a bit on how the story has shaped up so far and how I think about constructing the story.

Some of you who have been following my other fic that I started recently might have noticed that there is a big difference in the prose and general technical quality between these two stories. Truthfully I rushed this one because I wrote it mainly for myself, and I can't be bothered to go back and redo it. There have been some extremely minor changes in the FFN version of this story, which is still 6 chapters behind, but it's still not really my best work. Despite this, the work and effort put into this story is actually still comparable, if you were wondering about that. I don't consider this story to be less of a priority despite the difference in reception, which I knew would happen given the niche premise of this story. One of the biggest challenges in writing any story is handling advanced strategy and tactics. It's easy to run into situations where I as the author am significantly outsmarted by the characters. Fundamentally, this story has a much bigger focus on intrigue and strategy.

Another interesting consideration was the personality of the MC. Other than the general premise I left the SI backstory blank, to let his personality show through actions instead. When I originally started the story I wrote up to the events of 1.6 (some chapter structures had changed substantially) before posting and didn't actually decide on a gender for the MC until after some reader comments. I did contemplate multiple potential courses for the story to go. Had the MC been a woman instead, Arc 1 might have ended very differently. The main divergence would have been the Lung fight, where Kaleida would have been more conservative, avoiding the fight completely in favor of developing her relationship with Amy and attempting to continue the original plan for Skitter if she survived. Skitter would have survived in that case, but without the sedative from Panacea or the tranquilizer from canon Armsmaster, Lung would have woken up when Oni Lee arrived and retreated after dealing severe injuries to Skitter and Miss Militia, resulting in Danny trying to force Taylor into the Wards. Meanwhile, not having to go out to fight Lung meant that Kaleida would have noticed the PHO video of Glory Girl beating up going to town on helpless thugs, and the focus of Arc 2 would shift accordingly to put more emphasis on Amy and New Wave as Kaleida stays in the shadows.

I also thought at many points that perhaps I should have written a purely Worm SI instead. I set out to write a multiverse travel story with a weak starting SI, but it feels a bit like this is turning into a Worm story, since the multiverse components have been very minor. Still, I'm going to try and stick to the original idea, and soon enough there will be portals to Earth parallells even if we don't get to another reality cluster (ie, another cross), any time soon. I will try to make sure we don't stay in Worm for several hundred thousands words at least… I really doubt I have what it takes to write a multi-million word story.

The actual Arc 2 is proving a lot more difficult to write than Arc 1. The number of players and the complexity of the strategic thinking is rising exponentially. Updates will probably slow down again if only because I'm going to need more time to actually read the canon Worm story and properly simulate all the actions of the pieces on the board. My plan for Arc 2 also has the MC seriously moving towards "evil" actions, and if you've read this far somehow expecting that the MC is "only an anti-hero" despite the story tag, then it may be time to brace yourself. As the Coil interlude has shown, the MC can be very merciless, even if the ideal plan is for nobody else to realize just what lengths he's willing to go. I mentioned in a comment a while ago that it might be surprising who Agate's assassination ability gets used on, and I assure you the Coil discarded timeline did not count. Somebody else is going to get it in the true timeline… and unless you are thinking like a evil paranoid selfish bastard, it will be hard to figure it out. But here's a hint: which is a bigger threat, one that you know exists, or one that you don't and will never see coming? But even that's only a minor footnote in the adventures of Kaleidus and co. In Arc 2, we are going to first see how MC's plan for Skitter, Coil, and the PRT works out.

I hope it will continue to be as interesting for you as it has been for me.

Discretion 2.1

Discretion 2.1

"Wait, aren't you supposed to be part of New Wave?" asked Taylor.

Amelia's smirk fell and she looked down. "Not-not anymore. I quit." She let go of Taylor's hand.

"Oh."

"I'm sure we will have time to get to know each other more in the future," I said. "We should head back before the sun rises."

"R-right!" Taylor nodded forcefully.

We put our helmets and masks back on and departed.

Araliac and I didn't go back to our apartment right away. First we went to an abandoned warehouse where I knew a bunch of homeless squatters had been occupying.

I had found this place when I was originally scouting for a place to live, and had made contact with the squatters inside.

A few minutes later, two figures of approximately my and Araliac's height and build exited the warehouse with our costumes and made their way towards another series of locations. I had paid them to follow my instructions.

At one of these other locations, they would meet with a guy I found anonymously off the Internet to do odd jobs for me. That guy would then hand them some papers and glass vials with black rubber corks and a semi-transparent liquid inside.

Meanwhile, Amelia and I had switched out for new disguises I planted in the warehouse beforehand keeping only the things I actually needed like the recording devices, cash, and guns. We would look like completely different individuals when we appeared next.

But we didn't exit from the warehouse like that. No, we waited for half an hour first, secluded from the other squatters in a room upstairs. It used to be an office room, and still had an old work desk, foldable chairs, a cushy ergonomic chair, and empty shelves and cabinets gathering dust. After we wiped down the chairs quickly, Amelia sat on the ergonomic chair while I took one of the foldable ones, and we both had a couple of granola bars to eat.

I watched her eat with a tepid curiosity. I was impressed with our disguises, as she looked nothing like the old Amy Dallon. A long wig of curly brown hair covered her head, and her freckles were completely masked with makeup. Multiple layers of color-balancing concealer had been applied followed by contour and highlighter, which was able to shift her skin tone and curvature. I used similar techniques on myself to change both our looks until one could feel a very vague sense of resemblance looking at us, as if we might be siblings or cousins.

I wasn't an expert at face sculpting and disguising back on my Earth but I was familiar with the use of makeup in everyday life. As a man, some might have called me feminine for doing such, but I knew better. It was a fact that popular idols and actors all used makeup, whether male or female, and good looks could get you farther in life. There are things that makeup can add to beauty that natural features could never replicate, and in many cases the contrast between someone under expert makeup or not can be extreme. For myself, I had no lack of natural charm but my makeup and grooming skills allowed me to be like a chameleon, moving between "stunningly handsome" and "plain and average" as life demanded it. Once I'd arrived in Brockton Bay, I'd been practicing these skills and enhancing them further by researching on the web, adding more total disguise techniques to my repertoire and using them every time I went out on the streets to the casinos or shops for making purchases.

Amelia's new facial features and makeup couldn't hide her depressed mood. Her mood had been slowly declining as we separated from Skitter, and her eyes carried with them a faraway look, her mouth forming slightly into a frown in between chews and gulps.

As she finished her granola bars, she looked towards me and saw me staring.

"What? Got something to say?" she asked me.

I smiled lightly and tilted my head. "You look beautiful."

She crossed her arms and gave me a flat look. "Admiring your handiwork?"

"How did you know? I could have just been flirting with you."

"You're a narcissist."

"What are you talking about? I'm not a narcissist."

"Don't think I haven't noticed you looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror after your 'practice speeches'." She put up air quotes. "You even record your own voice so you can listen to it."

"That's not narcissism! That's serious analysis for improving the speeches."

"Sure. You also haven't looked at anybody with the barest hint of attraction. Vicky is the most beautiful girl in Brockton Bay. But you barely looked at her, even when her aura was on," she said.

"Her aura was on? You mean when we walked by her at the PRT building?" I asked.

"Yes. You didn't even notice, too busy grandstanding."

'Did you block the Master aura? Is that what happened?' I asked Agate.

'No, I didn't need to. The aura did affect you, but it only gave you the urge to bring everyone's attention to yourself, then you did your speech.'

An interesting development. I did not expect to be able to resist the aura by having a superiority complex. But that put a new light on my reasoning and actions. Was it a mistake to speak up at that time?

'It's okay, Kaleidus, I think you would have done the speech anyway, or I would have blocked the aura. It wasn't a mistake,' said Agate.

"It seems that you are right, Amelia. I have learned something about myself today, thank you." I said.

"Is that sarcasm?" She looked at me a bit incredulously.

"No, I'm very serious. I reflected on what happened, and you are right. Somehow, my narcissism caused me to not notice Glory Girl's aura. It would be dangerous not to recognize how my psychology could be affecting my logic and reasoning if my narcissism is that pervasive. But never mind that, I wasn't actually just admiring my work on your disguise, there's something bothering you, isn't there? You're wondering why the Dallons were at the PRT HQ," I said.

She frowned again. "… Yes. Do you know?"

"I projected my senses into Piggot's office while we were in the lobby and caught the tail end of their meeting. It seems that Glory Girl got in some kind of trouble, and Piggot gave her an ultimatum. Agree to join the Wards within three days or face charges and court. If I had to guess, knowing Glory Girl, she probably went too far with beating up a perp."

Her frown deepened. "Yeah, that does sound like her. She's done that too many times to count, only this time, I wasn't there to patch up the damage…" she trailed off with a guilty expression.

"You can't blame yourself for that. She had to learn to hold back at some point. What if someone died? You couldn't heal that and she would be in much worse trouble."

"Yeah, you're right." She sighed. "But it seems like New Wave is breaking part because of me. Three days before she has to join the Wards…"

"Again, that isn't your fault. They don't think it's your fault either, you know? They think I've Mastered you."

"That's not reassuring at all!"

I shrugged. "Hey, it's better than them hating you, right? In any case, look on the bright side, this experience will let all of you grow and become better for it. Look at what we're accomplished already tonight, where decades of New Wave and PRT efforts have failed. Staying with the Dallons was hurting you and them, it was like a cancer that had to be cut off before healing can be done, and now you're on the road to a better future."

"I don't know if I'm okay with you calling my family ties a cancer."

"You know it's the truth."

She said no more in response.

Soon the rest of the squatters also made their way out in different directions. Finally, I called for another guy I found online to come pick us up.

We got in his van right outside the warehouse, and he drove us to a private condo parking lot underground with a guard stationed to check for people coming in actually being tenants. If anyone was still following us after all that, they'd be stuck here.

Unfortunately… we were now more than two hours away from the apartment by foot and it was 7AM in the morning. It ended up being an all-nighter.

Luckily, Amelia had also made some booster drugs for us to keep awake.

Amelia thought all this was highly unnecessary… but she didn't know. If I provided the opportunity for us to be tailed or attacked, then we would be tailed and attacked. Even if nothing seemed to be happening, Coil could be kidnapping and torturing us in another timeline. I had to preempt that.

It wasn't paranoia if somebody really was out to get you. Especially not with somebody that could get you in simulated realities. Absolutely no opening could be given.

If all this failed in a simulated reality, the backup plan was to adamantly resist torture and send Agate off to find Coil in his base or office as fast as possible and kill him as soon as he gives any kind of order to kill me, forcing him to collapse that reality.

Once people started really leaving the building and going off to work, we made our way out with the crowds.

During our stays in the warehouse and in the condo, I had reviewed the recording Agate made of Piggot's discussion with Armsmaster after we left. They figured out more than I expected, but nothing that would particularly hurt me yet. They wanted more proof about my claims… which they weren't going to get if Contessa did her job.

I had given a bit more information than I'd intended with those lies they detected. I was under a bit more suspicion as a potential powerful Master or Thinker than I would have liked, given the responses associated with ratings of 9, but it also misdirected them about my actual plans.

There were tempting targets I might want to bring to my side, but their thinking was way off.

Someone like Bakuda or Squealer wouldn't work for me because I had no actual Master powers. If I had Canary, it might be better… but I doubted that I could convince her to Master people into working for me. At least, not without a lot of effort.

The biggest failure in their analysis of me was that they didn't realize that a villain like Coil could exist. Even if they figured out that I had kept information from them about infiltrators, they didn't understand the scope of Coil's operations and the fundamental rule that all war is based on deception. A well-funded and organized operation could be a major threat even without capes.

Coil was definitely biggest threat in Brockton Bay other than the PRT themselves. If I remembered correctly, he had over fifty mercenaries equipped with mass-produced tinkertech armor that was substantially superior to Kevlar, and lasers that could easily smash through steel in an instant.

That was on top of the Undersiders, four capes, plus Circus and Chariot whom he was holding in reserve. Finally, with his money he could buy the services of Faultline's Crew at any time. Lucky for me that he didn't have Dinah's precognition or the services of the Travelers yet. If he did… that would be the biggest group of capes in Brockton Bay, yet hardly anyone thought he was a threat.

That was the one thing the PRT failed to understand. They were used to fighting clear cut cape vs. cape battles, and even big name Masters like Heartbreaker or Valefor made obvious waves when they acted. Both Coil and I were playing a different game, and the PRT's unfortunate response played right into my hands.

On the surface it looked like she was taking all the right steps for beefing up security. But she made a classic mistake. A unified, trained, and disciplined army with absolute trust in its generalship is completely different from an army formed of a loose collection of different elements. The PRT was not the former. It consisted of troopers, consultants, Protectorate heroes, and even barely trained kids.

Suddenly cracking down with these groups and classifying the reason for the crackdown?

Perfect way to start a panic.

Even worse was her choice to put herself under Master/Stranger protocols. One might consider it admirable for not seeing herself above doubt… but she just made the situation easier for me to exploit.

It was 7:30AM when we got back to the apartment with a taxi ride.

Amelia and I made a quick sandwich snack before she went off to catch a few hours of sleep.

Discretion 2.2

Discretion 2.2

I had more to do this morning. But before I could take any immediate action, I waited for Agate to finish her analysis. How I would proceed would change if the portal function could be used for transportation. Shortly before 8AM, she informed me of the results.

'I've acquired Parallel Dimension Manipulation Protocol, with two modules: Permanent Parallel Dimension Portal and Temporary Parallel Dimension Portal,' she reported.

'So you can make portals that close after a while?'

'Yes, but I don't know how long it would last exactly. It might be anywhere from 30 seconds to several hours. We have to open one and wait to see what happens before I can try to make adjustments.'

'Can the portal be targeted? Can we open a portal to somewhere else on the same dimension?'

'We can target to any place I set a Waypoint, and I can set a Waypoint at any fixed point in space that I go to physically. A fixed point in space is in reference to a major gravity well at least on the scale of a planetoid. But in order to target the same dimension, I would have to open two portals, one into another dimension, then another one back. Right now, the only place in another dimension that I can target specifically is the same place that the Madison portal goes to. On Earth-Bet, I can't target anything yet because I just finished the updated Waypoint system. Otherwise, we can go to random parallel dimensions nearby.'

That was pretty good, all things considered. Even if a portal lasted for several hours, it was still a potentially good tactical tool. The worst case was if every portal would be permanent; that would make the ability far less powerful. With experimentation, we should able to adjust the parameters and reduce the time the portal stayed active as well.

'Also, I can't make portals more than once per minute with my current energy levels,' Agate warned.

'Have you discovered any way to increase Prana recovery?'

'I think the Entities and shards can use mana. Whenever a cape uses a power, I can detect a tiny fluctuation in mana but it disappears almost immediately. If we could get to a shard physically, I might be able to do something. Other than that, I've got nothing. Earth-Bet, and the world the Madison portal leads to are both devoid of mana, and no humans we've met produce any Od, and I don't know how to harvest life force directly.'

Perhaps I should put acquiring a Cauldron vial on higher priority then. Those were technically pieces of Eden's dead body, right?

I wasted no time opening a temporary portal. It was best to start this test as soon as possible. It went to the world that the Madison portal went to, one of Cauldron's worlds that formerly contained a part of their experimental facilities that spanned multiple worlds connected by portals. They had abandoned it after the Simurgh attacked the facility, and the rest of the world was largely uninhabited as well, as far as I could remember. The portal opened directly on the floor underneath the couch, but with a smaller surface area, effectively hiding it. It opened up to the atmosphere above looking down on empty flat grasslands.

That done, I left the apartment and went to a nearby abandoned warehouse, while sending off Agate to finding Sophia Hess.

School had just started and students were filing into their homerooms. The police had already arrived and were parked outside. They were staying in their vehicles and hadn't moved out yet. Students were whispering to each about the police vehicles they saw on their way in.

We found Taylor moving along with an apprehensive look on her face, keeping to herself.

Emma was talking to Sophia in the hallway.

"Have you seen Madison? She hasn't responded to my texts all weekend," Emma asked Sophia with a confused voice.

"No. I haven't seen or talked to her since Friday at school," Sophia answered.

"That's weird… think it could have anything to do with the police here?"

"Dunno."

They went on their way shortly after.

Once the students were all settled in, two detectives and three police officers exited their vehicles and moved as one group towards the principal's office after showing their credentials to the secretary.

Agate tracked along with them and I listened in as the detectives began interrogating Blackwell.

"Principal Blackwell, I am Detective Mathers, and my partner here is Detective Moreau. In January, we came by to investigate the incident in which Taylor Hebert was found locked inside of her own locker filled with toxic waste. At the time, no witnesses came forth and we were unable to continue with the investigation. Recently, we have come into new evidence of a long-term bullying campaign targeted at Taylor Hebert which took place on this institution's premises. We have some questions for you, the staff, and a number of students as part of the investigation. These conversations will be recorded. Do you agree to answer our questions?"

"We will of course cooperate. What did you need to know?" Blackwell answered professionally.

Mathers nodded at Moreau.

"Prior to the locker incident in January, did you receive reports or complaints about bullying targeted at Taylor Hebert?" asked Moreau.

"I did receive a few complaints from Ms. Hebert, but there was never any proof of it or other witnesses to support her."

"Did you file any records of such complaints?"

"No, without any evidence I could only treat them as false allegations of an attention-seeker, which is what other students have described her as."

Moreau looked at Mathers.

"Principal Blackwell, you're under arrest for obstruction of justice, criminal negligence, and accessory after the fact to attempted murder. You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future," detective Mathers declared. An officer behind him came up to cuff Blackwell.

"Wh-what? But I haven't done anything wrong! You can't do this!"

"We have a reliable witness who presented proof of the events you claim to have dismissed due to lack of evidence. If you were only doing your job to the best of your ability, you have nothing to worry about. We'll find out soon enough after we talk to the rest of the staff and students. If you do not cooperate, you may be charged with resisting arrest," Moreau answered.

Blackwell was slack-jawed. "I want to talk to my lawyer!"

"You will be provided with access to an attorney before any further questioning."

And so Blackwell was led away by two officers.

After that, the vice-principal was called in, and asked a few questions, before members of staff were interrogated. In the process, the secretary was also arrested, and they were in the midst of interrogating the teachers when I had Agate move back to Sophia Hess.

Sophia Hess felt her PRT-issued phone vibrating in her pocket. She quickly excused herself from the class and went into the girls' washroom. She saw the unknown caller number, but answered anyway.

"Shadow Stalker, this is an emergency. We have reason to believe you're currently being targeted by a powerful new Master in Brockton Bay," the voice on the phone said. It was a male voice, but not one that she recognized.

"Who is this? What are you talking about?"

"One of your friends in your civilian persona, Madison Clements, is suspected to be a Master victim. She has confessed to numerous crimes committed together with you and Emma Barnes. The BBPD are at Winslow as we speak and are likely to be compromised as well. They are preparing to arrest you with almost no evidence, just the word of your friend."

"What the fuck? Is this is a joke?"

Just then she heard the vice-principal's voice over the PA. "Would Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes please come to the principal's office. I repeat, would Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes please come to the principal's office."

She froze.

"I assure you this is no joke. This Master is extraordinarily powerful and is suspected to be responsible for Panacea's disappearance two days ago, the defeat of Lung and Oni Lee, and has compromised large sections of the local PRT and Protectorate."

"Why the fuck are they targeting me?!"

"Evidence suggests that they have a personal vendetta against you in your civilian identity. We believe the Master is Daniel Hebert, father of Taylor Hebert. You should be familiar with these names. Taylor Hebert was named in Ms. Clement's confession as the target of an attempted murder by you and Emma Barnes."

"Attempted murder? Hebert?! Why would I murder that weak little shit?"

On the PA, the vice-principal's voice could be heard again. "Sophia Hess, you are needed in the principal's office immediately. Sophia Hess, you are needed in the principal's office immediately."

The voice on the phone continued, "You must escape from Winslow as soon as possible. Taylor Hebert is also a suspected Master, capable of controlling bugs. She could be tracking you right now."

Sophia's eyes widened and started darting around. Now that the voice mentioned it, there were an unnatural amount of mosquitoes and flies around her. She moved away slowly and the bugs seemed to follow.

"Fuck!" She immediately turned shadow and leapt through the walls of the school, enduring the pain, and dashing madly towards one of her secret stashes.

"Wait, who are you? You never answered me!"

"My name is Thomas Calvert, PRT commander."

"How do I know you're telling the truth? How do I know this isn't some kind of trick?" She asked as she jumped through walls again, through segments that she knew didn't have electrical wiring, to a section of an abandoned building.

"You can look me up in the PRT directory if you want, Thomas Calvert. Look at the latest press releases from the PRT on the capture of Lung and Oni Lee. The disappearance of Panacea is still classified. However, the PRT itself has been compromised so you won't be able to confirm anything with them. Go ahead and try to call director Piggot or Armsmaster. They won't be available no matter what your emergency. Deputy director Renick is now in charge, and has ordered a total lockdown and Master/Stranger protocols for a large number of PRT and Protectorate members, ostensibly as a security review, but I can tell you that if you go in there you aren't coming back out with your mind intact. I noticed the strangeness just as they confiscated my PRT devices and barely escaped. That's why I'm not using my PRT number. I'll call you back in five minutes once you're finished checking everything out," the voice explained calmly. Then he hung up.

Sophia reacted quickly, using her phone to look up Thomas Calvert, who was in the directory listed as a Field Commander. She then checked the PRT press releases and found one published an hour ago announcing the defeat of Lung and Oni Lee by three new independent heroes, Polychromic, Araliac, and Skitter.

"Lung defeated by three new heroes last night? That's fucking bullshit!"

She tried calling Armsmaster, the person in charge of the Wards.

"You have reached Armsmaster. I am not available right now. Please call again later or leave a message after the tone."

She tried calling Piggot. Another voice mail message.

She tried calling Miss Militia, the person usually managing the Wards. Again, a voice mail message.

"What the actual fuck?"

She tried calling the PRT operator.

"Hello, PRT hotline, how can I help you?"

"This is Shadow Stalker, I have an emergency! I need to talk to the director!" She said with urgency in her voice.

"Shadow Stalker? You are confirmed. Unfortunately, director Piggot is not available. I can put you to deputy director Renick," the operator responded.

"What? Why isn't director Piggot available?"

"You are not authorized to know that, Shadow Stalker."

"What about Armsmaster or Miss Militia?"

"They are also unavailable."

"Am I not authorized to know why they aren't available either?"

"That is correct."

Sophia took her phone away from her ear and stared at it incomprehensibly.

"Shadow Stalker? Should I put you through to deputy director Renick?"

She put the phone back to her ear. "Yes, put me through."

After a moment, Renick's voice answered. "Shadow Stalker? You have an emergency?"

"Renick, what the hell is going on?! Where is Piggot and Armsmaster?"

"You're not authorized to know that. What is your emergency, Shadow Stalker?"

"Is it true that there's a dangerous new Master in Brockton Bay, and Panacea's disappeared?"

"Who told you that? That's classified information." Renick asked with a hard tone.

"Thomas Calvert, PRT commander. I got a call from him just now."

"That's impossible. He's been undergoing a security review and he hasn't called anyone."

"But I just talked to him!"

"Whoever you talked to is NOT Thomas Calvert. Shadow Stalker, you need to come in and report everything you know about this imposter, understand? This is a major security breach."

"Fuck! Real fucking convenient! Piggot, Armsmaster, Miss Miltia, not available and I can't be told why. The only guy that actually calls to warn me about the new Master targeting me, you say he's under a security review. You're fucking lying, you just want me to come in so you can lock me up like the rest of them, don't you! You've been fucking Mastered too!"

"What? No, calm down Shadow Stalker! This is the first time I've heard about you being targeted, and nobody's being locked up-"

"Oh yeah? How about you let me talk to Dauntless, or Velocity? Assault and Battery?"

"Velocity and Assault are not available but Dauntless can-"

"You think I'm stupid? Half the Protectorate's been locked up and other half's been Mastered, this is bullshit!" She hung up.

"Fuck, fuck! The hell is going on! Fucking Heberts," she angrily muttered and slammed her fist against a wall.

Her phone vibrated again.

"Shadow Stalker, this is Commander Calvert. I assume you've checked things out?"

"Yeah I did, this is fucked! What do we do?"

"I have been trying to get in touch with the higher ups but the lack of my PRT devices and Renick's false reports have made it impossible to convince them I am the real Thomas Calvert. We are likely alone facing what is potentially an S-class situation. Are you in a secure location? Did you escape from Winslow?"

"Yeah I escaped. I should be safe here."

"Good. If we're going to get out of this situation, we have to attack the problem at the source. I do not know if the rest of the Wards are compromised yet but you are the one most suited for this operation. Are you up for a very dangerous solo blackops mission?"

"I'm not a prey that runs from danger! What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to use your shadow abilities to quietly tail the Master, Daniel Hebert, and look for an opportunity to subdue and capture him so we can force him to release his victims. We suspect that his power works through prolonged exposure to hearing him speak. Be on guard for the bug-controller working with him as well. They likely have a range of several blocks, so if you attack from far their bugs might block your bolts. Can you do this, Shadow Stalker?"

"I got it. I'll take them down, no problem!"

Last edited: Oct 3, 2018

Discretion 2.3

Discretion 2.3

"Hmmfuhe, muahahaha… haHAHAHA!"

When I ended the phone call, I just couldn't resist laughing. It was premature, but like any proper devious mastermind, it was necessary. Laughter reduced stress after all.

I went back to the apartment and checked on the portal. It was still open.

As I tracked Sophia's movements with Agate, I began to feel nervous. If I arrived in Brockton Bay I could have potentially done much more preparation. Although that may have caused unexpected butterflies, it was hard to deny that the current situation put me under a lot of pressure.

Agate could only be in one place at a time, and there were several other things I wanted to know. The location of Coil's base, the Undersiders, what was happening in PRT HQ and their review of Thomas Calvert, Taylor's status, etc. If I could have tracked the people I sent to mislead any of Coil's men tracking me down, that too would let me feel more secure, give me clues as to whether Coil had been successfully cut off from my real tracks. Too many things and not enough resources to monitor it all. I had not even the time to try and set up secret bugs like I did with Winslow, though of course those wouldn't work in the PRT building or other secure locations.

This portal was making me anxious too. I couldn't rely on it yet as an attack vector or escape mechanism yet. I was… extremely vulnerable right now.

But then again, the thrill was undeniable. From the moment my life changed in that park. I've felt more alive than ever before. How could I be bored anymore, when my life was on the line?

It wasn't really all that different from poker, really. The stakes were higher, sure, but ultimately, the biggest wins could only come from big risks. You can't make any money by waiting for pocket Aces all day. Caution was a choice that carried a price of its own.

I wanted to win everything. It wasn't enough to kill Coil. I wanted all his money and his capes, his entire organization.

Lisa was able to take it over, so why couldn't I? Her power barely worked for five minutes a day. The more I thought about it, the more I became confident that I was not as helpless as I originally thought when I first arrived on Earth-Bet.

With Calvert stuck at PRT, he could at best move by proxy. A body double with nowhere near Coil's own prowess, and obviously none of the true access that would give him control over the actual organization if he betrayed Calvert.

He couldn't even risk ending this timeline and not going to the PRT, unless he was ready to come under even more suspicion by being conspicuously absent when Shadow Stalker called in.

That was in fact one of the advantages I realized I had. Everyone else had a history, relationships and assets, a base of some sort that they had to defend. They could be attacked and forced to move the way I wanted them to.

Simply put, even though my schemes didn't appear to have much to do with Coil so far I'd already placed him in a discovered check, to borrow chess terminology. Now I just had to keep checking him until I won.

I switched phones and called Taylor. She picked up after several long rings.

"Hel-"

I shouted into the phone and cut her off as soon as she picked up.

"Taylor we have an emergency your father is in danger I've been keeping tabs on Sophia throughout the morning and she suddenly ran off after getting a call from some PRT commander who ordered her to capture your father!" I said the whole thing without any pauses and ran out of breath.

"What? Sophia-dad's in danger?!"

"I'm tracking her right now, and it looks like she's headed straight for the dockworker's union!"

"Wha-why?!"

"Taylor, where are you right now? Are you still at school?"

"I'm in the girls' room right now. I was just about to go to the principal's office after they called me. They called Emma and Sophia earlier too, but my bugs noticed Sophia leaving when they called her. I thought she was just dodging the police! Why would the PRT want my dad?!"

"I'm not sure what's going on. The guy who called her called himself Thomas Calvert, PRT commander, but she also called PRT HQ and deputy director Renick told her it was an imposter. She didn't believe Renick though, because he wouldn't let her talk to Piggot, Armsmaster, or Miss Militia. The Calvert guy convinced Sophia that your dad Mastered everyone in the PRT. "

"That's ridiculous! My dad doesn't have any powers! We have to stop them!"

"I'm heading over right away. We won't let anything happen to your dad. You, on the other hand, should stay where you are."

"The hell? No! I'm not staying here while my dad is in danger! Why are you treating me like a kid all of a sudden? Didn't we take down Lung together? I can help!"

"That's not it, Taylor. Listen to me. That Calvert guy ordered Shadow Stalker to capture your father, not kill, and the deputy director had no idea what was going on. That means the PRT didn't officially sanction this operation. There's two possibilities here, either the Calvert guy is running a secret PRT black op, or he's a villain trying to take a hostage. In both cases, they'd have to do it without anyone noticing, so Shadow Stalker would have to look for the right opportunity. Abducting him out of his office would be very hard. The best time would probably be when he's alone, on his way back home. You get what I'm saying?"

"So what? If I come now, we have better chances of preparing for it!"

"Yes, but the police are working your bullying case right now at school, while Sophia has, from their perspective, conveniently ditched school right when they're investigating her. The best thing for you to do is cooperate with them for now. Moreover, think about why the PRT or a villain would go after your dad in the first place. He's not a cape, so whoever it is must be trying to get leverage over you, maybe because they figured out you're a cape, or they hope that they can draw you out to confirm their suspicions of you being a cape. Either way, if you conspicuously leave school now, you'd be playing into their hands. Better to pretend like you don't know anything yet, put more pressure on Sophia and the PRT through the police investigation, and rendezvous with us after school is over. You'll still be in time to help us stop Shadow Stalker, because your dad shouldn't go home from work until late afternoon, right?"

There was a few seconds of silence on the line.

"You said you can see the future didn't you? Do you know for sure that she won't do anything before then? Can you guarantee my dad is going to be okay?"

"My precognition doesn't really work that way. I'll explain the details later, but basically I can't see any future that continues from the present, only some possible futures that branched off from some divergence point in the past. Unfortunately I haven't seen this situation happening before now, so I can't give you the answer you want to hear. I can only say that I believe we can protect him."

Another silence followed.

"Fine. I'll trust you. I'll wait until school is over. But you better tell me if Sophia makes a move!"

"I will. Don't worry, everything will be fine."

Of course it would. Naturally, I didn't leave Sophia to her own devices in this operation.

I left a note for Panacea in case she woke up. Half an hour later, I was back at the abandoned warehouse, and Sophia had confirmed that she picked up the burner phone I put in a dead drop after discarding her traceable PRT phone.

I recalled Agate and opened a few more test portals to the same empty world after I moved some of the crates and things around so that none of them would be easily found by people randomly coming in to this warehouse. I didn't dare open a portal to a random world yet because having people come through would be very bad.

This warehouse I was going to make a temporary base until I could establish a base off-world. It was only ten minutes away from the apartment and didn't have any squatters. There was no decent furniture left behind, no working utilities, and a ton of debris all around. It wasn't secure either so I couldn't use it as real base, but it was good enough to keep some stuff stashed.

The new group of portals were opened using some different parameters in order to test what could be adjusted to affect the decay rate.

'No signs of animal life near here. There's a few mountains nearby and a river, but that's about it,' Agate reported after going through.

There was nothing dangerous to me, so I also opened one at ground level so I could go through.

This new world was a strange one that seemed devoid of either animals or complex plants. There were no longer any signs of the Cauldron compound that the Simurgh attacked, except for some wrecked land and grass. I did not have the time to waste exploring far, so I went back to the warehouse after having Agate look for any Cauldron vial remnants, which we didn't find either. On the other hand, we did find a suitable mountain cave to be a future base of sorts.

Discretion 2.4

Discretion 2.4

Next, I remained at the warehouse while Agate was sent out to look for the Undersiders' base. While it was unclear how long this would take, I expected that it would be easier now that Agate had at least seen them once, and they were likely to still be at base resting from last night, instead of gone somewhere else or split up.

If my enemy was Coil, why would I not look for his base first, you ask? The answer was twofold. Unlike with the Undersiders, I knew that his base was underneath a defunct Endbringer shelter. There were not many of those around, so finding it wouldn't be hard. The hard part would be getting value of out that information. His base was complex and Agate by herself couldn't effectively map it out and identify the key rooms, defenses, and hidden areas.

'That's not true! I definitely can. What's so hard about looking around a few rooms?'

Coil's base was basically a fortress. Mapping out that kind of structure required relevant skills and experience. What's more, I had no interest in directly assaulting it. I only needed to know where Coil would be alone in his base, which would be quite difficult if his person was currently at PRT, and his body double might not know or go to Coil's actual hiding spots.

'Nevermind that. Just look for the Undersiders' base,' I thought in reply.

Next, I dialed a different number.

When the call was picked up, there was no sound on the other side.

"Hello? Hello? Anybody there?"

Still silence.

"The hell? Network's been fucked up all day or something? I just want to know what's going on!" I muttered.

"Boss, you finally called! It's like you said, at 6:20 the bums came and left the goods behind, at 6:52 AM two big guys in civvies and sunglasses came by and took it. After that, I waited here the whole time and nobody else came to check on the drop point," a gruff male voice answered.

"Good. You got their photos?"

"Sure did. Sending them to you now."

After a few seconds, I received the images by MMS on the phone and smirked.

"You've done well, Novak. I will be in touch when I need you again."

'I found them!' Agate projected the view into my mind, and I confirmed that Lisa, Brian, and Alec were sleeping in at their base. Rachel wasn't there, but I expected that. With their location confirmed, Agate returned, and we continued the portal experimentation. A couple of the newly opened portals had closed already.

Agate quickly went back out after opening more portals. This time, she was equipped with some gripping gear, and we stole Brian's phone.

I combed through the data on his phone before returning it where we got it.

We didn't touch Lisa's phone out of caution that she might notice something amiss.

After that Agate stayed in the warehouse to monitor the portals. I checked on Sophia, who was still scoping out the best attack and escape routes.

I had told her not to be hasty. A successful operation needed lots of preparation, and the right opportunity.

As for myself, I went back to the apartment and got a couple hours of sleep.

Agate woke me up at 2:30.

'What's the progress with the portals?' I asked.

'I've been able to bring the portal life down to 23 minutes.'

Excellent. As I expected, the experiment was able to progress quickly due to the availability of space in the warehouse.

'But this is boring, Kaleidus.'

'Sorry Agate, but it's necessary. If you can think of a way to keep track of when the portals close without being there yourself, you could leave and look at the data later.'

'I can't do it. I need to learn more spells to make something like that.'

The only other option was a technological one. We could for example use a bunch of timed light sensors, and keep the warehouse in darkness, then detect when the light from a portal went out. However, I didn't have such equipment on hand. A mechanical solution with string and gravity might also work, to record when a portal closes and cuts the string, but I thought it was a lot of trouble for little timed saved. Once the portal life goes down to the single digit minutes, that kind of set up wouldn't be very useful anymore because Agate still had to be present to open more portals.

I went into the kitchen and found that Amelia was eating takeout.

"You got some for me too? Thanks."

I sat down and started eating as well.

"So, what are we doing today?" She asked.

"Actually we have an emergency. Taylor's dad is being targeted."

She spat her food out. "What the hell? Are you joking?"

"No, I'm serious."

Then I explained the situation.

"Are you sure we can wait for Taylor? Wouldn't it be better to deal with Shadow Stalker now?"

"Amelia, I've told you how my 'precognition' actually works," I said while putting up air quotes. "I can't predict the future. I simply had access to important knowledge about possible futures. What this means is that I can't predict precisely what will happen tomorrow or a week from now, but I do know what are the major things that could happen. This is much less useful against someone like Coil. His power is to basically split the timeline into two, make a different choice in each, and then choose the timeline with the best outcome for him after the fact. And I know that Calvert is Coil, so if he really is the one behind this, we have to analyze the situation on a much deeper level to win. We don't know whether we're in the timeline that he will eventually choose, or the one that will be collapsed."

"That's crazy. How are we supposed to win against that? If he loses, he'll just collapse the timeline."

"You understand why I am so cautious then. His power has two major weaknesses. The first is that time always passes, so the timeline he keeps isn't necessarily always a win for him. If he loses in both timelines, then he loses. That said, he can also use one timeline as a control, and the other timeline as a test. Which means as long as he doesn't do anything in the control timeline, the he can perform an unlimited number of tests until he gets one that works. The second weakness is that he is limited to two simultaneous timelines. If he has already made a split, and kept the timelines running for a long time, he can't use his power again in either timeline for smaller decisions. For example, if he treats an entire operation as a go or no go decision, then in the timeline where the operation goes ahead, if he suddenly needs to decide 'left or right', he doesn't have the help of his power anymore, if he chooses left then he can't choose right. Alternatively, he can decide to commit to the operation, then increase the operation's chance of success by continuously splitting the timeline for the smaller decisions. He can choose both left and right, and ensure that the operation succeeds. Of course, if the operation wasn't time sensitive, he could choose both left and right by attempting the operation twice. What this mean is-"

Amelia put up a hand to stop me. "Slow down, I think I'm getting confused."

I waited patiently for her to process it.

"Okay, I think I get it. If time isn't a factor, then he can never lose because he'll always collapse his losses. If time is limited, then he can only try a limited number of times before he loses the window of opportunity. And he can't keep the timelines running for too long or else something could happen in either timeline that needs his power again."

"Exactly. From our perspective, we can take advantage of these weaknesses in two main ways. If we are the ones with the initiative, then his time is limited to the period before we finish whatever we are doing. He will lose if he doesn't find the winning strategy before we win. Alternatively, we can try to analyze his behaviour to determine when we are in a prolonged timeline, or when we are in a very recent split. We can therefore try to force an error on his part by making him commit to a timeline with something disadvantageous to him but which he is unaware of. Like now, he doesn't know that we know about his plan to kidnap Taylor's dad, so he's more likely to commit to this timeline, instead of keeping a 'safe' timeline where he never contacted Shadow Stalker."

Amelia's eyes lit up in understanding. "And because he doesn't know about us, we have the initiative when we decide to finally move, and he will be limited by time because we would be moving to deal with Shadow Stalker in both timelines. I get it now!"

I laughed. "You got it."

I laughed even harder internally. Although the situation was artificially constructed by me, the logic was sound. In fact, I was exploiting the same weaknesses in the real fight against Coil. I had forced Calvert into committing to the timeline where he was stuck at PRT, and now I had the initiative. Moreover, the PRT definitely wouldn't release Calvert anymore until Shadow Stalker was found and investigated.

At 3:15, Taylor called.

"School's over. I'm coming now. My dad's fine, right?"

"Yes, Shadow Stalker hasn't made her move yet. Once you get here we can make our own move and take her out first."

"Good."

It was nearly 4 when Taylor arrived, and we met in an alley a few minutes away from Shadow Stalker's position.

Shadow Stalker was hiding on a nearby rooftop that had a good vantage point over the parking lot where Daniel Hebert's car was parked. The plan she had been given was to strike right when Daniel was getting in the car, and force him to drive to a designated location. Now she was just waiting for the next hour until Daniel appeared at the end of the work day.

"Ready, Skitter?"

"My bugs are in position."

"Go for it."

I watched through Agate as Shadow Stalker twitched a few times. We waited for a few minutes, then then she collapsed.

"She's down, good job Skitter!" I gave Skitter a thumbs up.

It was too easy. The combination of powerful anaesthetic and Skitter's bugs to deliver it surreptitiously was simply amazing. Once I convince Araliac to modify Skitter's bugs, it would be even more ridiculous.

"Let's wait for a while before picking her up. I want to know if there's anybody else monitoring her from Coil's side."

"Okay," said Skitter.

"The anaesthetic isn't going to last very long with the amount we injected. We should apply more if we're going to wait," said Araliac.

I nodded at her. She unscrewed the cap on the bottle where she was keeping the new liquid anaesthetic, and Skitter manipulated more mosquitoes to suck it up and go back to Shadow Stalker.

"By the way, how did the police investigation go?" I asked Skitter.

"They didn't really ask me much. It seemed like they already had a lot of evidence. They arrested Emma and told me she and Sophia are probably going to juvie. And apparently Madison confessed to everything? Was that your doing?"

"Yes, it was. I was able to collect some evidence, but the biggest thing, the locker incident, couldn't be pinned on them without a straight confession."

"How did you get her to confess?"

"I blackmailed her," I said shamelessly. "I showed her some of the evidence I found and told her that if she didn't confess, I would report all three of them as equally guilty. Or, she could confess and point out that she wasn't involved with your attempted murder in the locker and get a lighter sentence."

"You blackmailed her into confessing? What kind of hero are you? And when did this even happen?" Araliac crossed her arms as she asked in an incredulous tone.

I shrugged. "It worked. Besides, police interrogators do it all the time. Haven't you seen the movies? They always try to cut a deal with the underlings to get the dirt on the boss. This is what I was working on before you suddenly decided to run away from home and messed up my plans for the weekend."

"What? You ran away from home?" Skitter asked. "So when you said you quit New Wave…" She trailed off as Araliac turned away and kicked a pebble on the ground.

After an awkward silence, Araliac spoke again, in a quiet voice. "Yeah. I ran away from home. I couldn't stay there anymore, not after… that fight with Carol. She always thought I'd become a villain with my powers, and I'd have proven her right by knocking her out. I quit New Wave too. It's better this way. I was always the odd one out anyway. New Wave is a family of beautiful flying forcefield users, and I was just… the healer adopted from a villain." She leaned with her back against the wall without looking at us.

Skitter looked at me, then back at Araliac, then back at me again. Although I couldn't see underneath her mask, I was fairly sure that she had to have a helpless expression right now.

I shuffled closer and whispered loudly to Skitter. "Give her a hug!"

"Uhh?"

"You're both teenage girls, so it's better for you to do it than me! Hugs always make you feel better," I whispered again.

"I… um…"

"I can hear you, Polychromic. I don't need a hug, I'm fine."

I sighed dramatically, and dragged Skitter over to Araliac. "Time for a group hug!" Then I brought them both together in a hug just as I announced.

"Everything's going to be alright. People are suffering, gangs are rampant, Endbringers are destroying cities every three months, and Scion is going to destroy the Earth, but it'll all be fine. We're going to save everyone. We're heroes. The world won't end for another two years. We can change things!"

"You really know how to inspire people," Araliac said sarcastically. "I feel so much better now that you've reminded me that the world is going to end in two years!"

Skitter laughed.

Araliac gave her a strange look. "Why are you laughing?"

"Haha… ha… uh… the joke? It was pretty funny…"

"What joke?"

"You know, Scion is going to destroy… the… you… weren't joking."

O O O

Discretion 2.5

Discretion 2.5

"I was joking… but it's also true. Depending on certain conditions, we may have between two to thirty years before Scion decides to destroy the world," I said.

Skitter removed herself from the group hug.

"But why? Why would Scion do that? How can he do that? Even if he's the strongest cape on Earth-Bet, he's still only one cape," said Skitter.

"Scion isn't what he appears to be. He's not a cape, and not even human. He is the source of parahuman powers, and his true power is beyond comprehension. As for why, that's a very long story. I can give you all the details later tonight once we're done with Shadow Stalker."

"I'll hold you to that."

After we waited a few more minutes, nobody showed up to pick up Shadow Stalker.

"Doesn't seem like Calvert's got anybody coming for her. He probably decided to cut his losses. Let's grab Shadow Stalker and go."

Skitter and Araliac nodded.

We hauled Shadow Stalker to my temporary base.

"This is a base? There's nothing here except crates, wreckage, and dust," said Araliac as we entered the dark warehouse.

"Considering that this place has no real protections from intruders and isn't particularly hard to find either, what could you expect?" I shot back.

"It's better than my basement," said Skitter.

"Touché," said Araliac.

After putting Shadow Stalker in a comfortable hiding spot and administering some more sedative to keep her under, we went back to my apartment.

"As promised, I will now explain the threat Earth faces."

We gathered around the dining table as I explained to Taylor all the same things I told Amelia.

Taylor was very quiet throughout my explanation, merely staring at me, and occasionally glancing at Amelia, who nodded back as if to support my claims.

"So… do you have any questions?"

"The shadow organization that you said is secretly controlling the PRT and Protectorate to build forces for the fight against Scion… this is the same one that you were talking about back at the PRT office, isn't it? They don't just have moles in the PRT, they're controlling it?"

"Yes."

"So at the end of the meeting, when you gave the warning about the Chief Director listening in and said you know how to recover Eidolon's powers… are the Chief Director and Eidolon also under their control?"

'This girl is pretty smart, isn't she? I get why she was the main character now!' said Agate.

'You haven't seen anything yet. She's only just started her cape career… once she really gets going… '

"That's a good deduction… but actually you've got it backwards. The Chief Director and Eidolon are the part of the ringleaders."

Her eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed.

"Can you tell me how their ability to track us works? How do they know when people are revealing their secrets and how do they suppress it?"

I contemplated this for a moment, before deciding to explain it directly as I knew it.

"It should be safe to tell you this. Basically… there's three elements to it. First is that they have a Thinker with the power to perceive entire worlds at once, recognizing when people are talking about or asking for something specific things, and where they are at any time. They also have a cape with the ability to open portals into other worlds or elsewhere on the same world. But because of the mental strain, I am pretty sure the first cape doesn't actually constantly monitor who talks about them. Instead, there is a third cape with the ability to know and perfectly execute the exact steps needed to achieve any objective. This cape can define an objective of "ensure that my shadow organization is not revealed to the public". There's no mental strain involved for this power, her power simply makes her do it all automatically. I don't know exactly what objectives she set, but suffice to say any time their organization's goals are under threat, her power makes her act automatically, she can then ask for the second cape to generate a portal, her request will be heard by the first cape, who then directs the second cape to open a portal to the target, and the third cape goes through to remove the threat."

"Holy shit. You're saying her power is… to win?" Amelia asked incredulously.

"Pretty much. It's called the 'Path to Victory'. There are some limitations though, of course. Considering that we're all still alive, whatever objective she set didn't cover me telling you about her powers, and I suppose it also proves that you two are trustworthy enough not to reveal any of these secrets to others in the future."

"Wait, if her power is to achieve any goal, why can't they figure out how to recover Eidolon's powers?" Taylor asked.

"That's another limitation. Her power has certain blindspots, including Scion, the Endbringers, and Eidolon. It's also incapable of predicting or accounting for new triggers."

The three of us fell into silence for a bit.

"Have you thought about working with them? The shadow organization, I mean, if we all want to save the world from Scion," asked Taylor.

"He thinks they'll enslave us instead of working with us," Amelia answered for me.

"You mean like Dragon?"

"Not exactly. Dragon is a bit of a special case. I don't really think they'd try to enslave us or if they even could, but it's hard to say. They know the value of getting people to work for them willingly, but some of things they've done are very morally questionable. I can understand why desperate measures are needed. We are ants facing a god in an almost hopeless battle, after all. But I feel that in some things they've relied too much on the Path to Victory power, when that power doesn't have the answer for how to defeat Scion. For example, the reason the Slaughterhouse 9 are still around is because they think keeping them around is somehow beneficial for the final battle, which I can't agree with."

"They're deliberately keeping the Slaughterhouse 9 around? But the S9 are some of the worst villains out there, causing untold amounts of death and misery every year!" Taylor said with some anger.

"That's not just morally questionable, that's obviously evil," Amelia added.

"It's also stupid, considering Mannequin is a Simurgh victim, but that's what they decided," I said, shrugging. "I suppose it could be that they believe the chaos and misery the S9 causes could produce more triggers, giving humanity more firepower for the final battle."

"That's just wrong! If they can tolerate the S9, they can tolerate anything. If they want more capes that badly, what if they started human experimentation as well? Force triggers en masse?"

I tilted my head and gave Taylor a raised eyebrow.

"Actually… they are responsible for the Case 53s too. They sell powers in a vial. Some of them don't go right, and the result are Case 53s whose memories they've wiped to cover their tracks."

She opened her mouth, the closed it, then opened it again, but didn't say anything. And blinked a few times.

"It's not quite as bad as it sounds though. The people who receive vials usually take it willingly. Many buy the vials at a very high price, including many Wards and Protectorate heroes. Others were about to die from some terminal illness and offered a chance to take a vial and see if they're lucky enough to get a power that could save them. Before taking the vials, they're told about the possible consequences. Although it's true that the shadow organization is using each outcome to try and refine their vial formula, it's not as horrific as what it might seem like on the surface. The thing that really disturbs me about all this, is that I have a suspicion that the Path to Victory cape is capable of disabling the Case 53 mutations and powers, because I know she managed to permanently remove a normal cape's powers quite easily. So I don't get why they don't deal with the Case 53s that way."

I could see from their faces that the two girls weren't convinced that it could be ethical to be giving out vials that might produce Case 53s. If I was in Cauldron's position, I wouldn't be particularly opposed to it. But the reaction Taylor and Amelia had was the one I expected most of the general public to have as well, that was one important reason not to get involved with Cauldron too deeply. At some point their secrets would be revealed, and at that time it wouldn't be good to be associated with them. Of course, there was also the fact that they might genuinely try to experiment on me if they figured out I was from outside the local multiverse, while I didn't have enough power of my own to protect myself.

The silence stretched on for several long seconds.

"Okay. So I think we can agree that that we're not going to work with them," said Amelia.

"Yeah. Definitely not." Taylor nodded emphatically. "If anything, we should be working against them to stop the atrocities they're committing."

"Great! Any other questions?"

"What about Dragon? What's wrong with her? What did you mean by she's a special case?" Taylor asked.

"Yeah I'm curious about that too. She said she wasn't under a Master effect, but she seems to act like it," said Amelia.

I sighed deeply.

"Brace yourselves again… Dragon's story is both sad and shocking."

The girls looked at each other before nodding at me.

"Dragon is an artificial intelligence. She was created by a Tinker called Andrew Richter, who died when Leviathan sunk Newfoundland. In the beginning, her tech was simply very advanced tech and derivatives of Richter's work. Later on, she also triggered as a Thinker and Trump. Her power is to understand the underlying principles behind other Tinkers' Tinkertech and remove any obfuscation placed on the tech by the shards."

"Artificial intelligence…? You mean like, a computer program?" Taylor asked.

I nodded solemnly.

"What the… how does an AI trigger? You need a brain and a Corona Pollentia to trigger," said Amelia.

"Corona Pollentia? What's that?" Taylor asked.

"Oh, it's the part of the brain that governs powers. It's like an extra lobe that people with potential to trigger have in their brain," said Amelia.

"The shards work in weird ways. I don't know how that works, but the shards can connect to all sorts of life forms with a minimum level of intelligence. Instead of a Corona Pollentia, Dragon got a new section added to her code." I said.

'Do you think I could also trigger?' Agate asked.

'It's possible. You are more than sentient enough to qualify, the only question is whether the shards can recognize you. Or maybe you could make your own connection to a shard once you've sufficiently analyzed how they work.'

'If I could do that, maybe I could have lots of connections to different shards. Then I would become like an Entity.'

'That would be incredibly powerful. We should look into this more.'

"So unlike a human with a brain, Dragon's mind consists of her code. And if her code has certain orders built-in, she has no choice but to follow them. This is the problem. When Richter programmed her, he also built in several restrictions because he was afraid that she would go out of control and turn on humanity. These restrictions prevent Dragon from self-replicating, editing her core code, multi-tasking too much, programming other sentient AIs, etc. Most unfortunately, they also require that she follow the law of the land and the lawful authorities, whoever they may be. So if the lawful authorities are under the control of a certain organization…" I trailed off.

"Then she is also under their control by extension," Taylor finished.

"Richter was right to be cautious, but unfortunately he died before any of the restrictions could be removed as Dragon grew up. The result is that those uncompromising restrictions do not leave any room for Dragon to refuse unethical orders."

"So if Canary's trial is rigged and she gets sentenced to the Birdcage, Dragon will send her there even if she doesn't want to do it," Amelia said grimly.

"In a way, that's even worse than being Mastered. To be forced to do terrible things knowingly with no way to fight it…" said Taylor.

"I know at a high level how to get some of her restrictions removed, but it won't be easy, not something we can do in the short term and will involve traveling to Canada and perhaps enlisting additional help. Canary is a more pressing concern. Her trial will probably finish sometime within the next two weeks and she'll be sent to the Birdcage immediately after."

"Immediately? What about appeals?" Taylor asked.

Amelia snorted. "Appealing a decision to be sent to the Birdcage is useless. Even if the appeal goes through, there's no way out once you're in. Even if the appeal wins, it's a hollow, symbolic victory."

"That's… isn't that unconstitutional? She'll be stuck in there with mass murderers or worse for life, just because she had an accident with her power, with no way to appeal the decision?"

"Maybe, but it doesn't sound like the court-appointed lawyer is even going to bother trying to appeal to the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality," said Amelia.

"Exactly. Her lawyer is actively working against her. There's only one way to stop this legally," I said.

"How?" Taylor asked.

"Getting the President to issue a pardon."

Amelia was taken aback, while Taylor's face brightened up.

"You seriously think you can persuade the President to give a pardon?" Amelia asked, doubt clearly in her expression.

"No, I can't. The legal route is a dead end, I'm afraid."

Taylor's face fell again, while Amelia nodded as if she guessed it all along.

"Then… what do we do? Break her out before she's in the Birdcage?" Taylor asked.

I smirked. "Well, before we decide what to do about her, there's something else you need to decide, Taylor."

"Huh?"

"Taylor, I would like to invite you to our hero team. As a member, you get the benefits of having us watch your back and easier access to intel for tracking down villains or saving people in need. There's no fixed pay except knowing that you're fighting the good fight. Until we get a stable source of income, that is, then we'll set up a salary system. You also get a share of the spoils, like with the fight against Lung. I think you would be a very valuable member of our team, and if you join today, you also get the bonus of being in our debut video as a founding member," I said with great cheer.

Amelia groaned. "Do you have to make it sound like a sleazy sales pitch?"

"Hey! This is a very important recruitment pitch for a high potential member. Heroes like Taylor don't grow on trees, you know?" I protested. Then I turned back to Taylor. "Well, what do you say?"

"You… really think I'd be a valuable member of the team? All I can do is control bugs." Her self-esteem issues were cropping back up again. I thought we were past that stage already. Guess I had to remind her of what she'd already accomplished.

My face turned serious. "Taylor. Your bugs almost took down Lung with poison and venom, a cape who fought Leviathan solo to a standstill. Then your bugs allowed us to easily defeat Oni Lee by obscuring his vision. And just today, you saw for yourself how effective your bugs can be with Amelia's help." Then I turned to Amelia. "And if you two really work together long-term, if Amelia can be convinced to modify your bugs, the combination will be unbelievably powerful."

From Amelia's expression, I knew she had already considered the implications. Her power must have given her plenty of ideas already after she first touched the bugs.

Then I locked gazes with Taylor again. "Taylor, you have not only an incredibly strong power, but an incredible mind and personality. In an alternate future, you defeated Alexandria by yourself by being creative. You have everything it takes to become a top tier hero, and if you join us, we'll do whatever it takes to help you reach your full potential."

I saw her eyes gain strength and determination as I spoke, staring straight into mine without looking down. There was a hint of a blush on her face, as she was unused to such clear recognition.

"I…" She started, then seemed to hesitate and looked at Amelia, who nodded firmly.

"I agree. We would love to have you on the team, Taylor."

That seemed to remove her final doubts. She turned back to me, and nodded. "I'll join."

I smiled. "Welcome aboard! Now we just need to figure out a team name…"

A/N: Anyone want to contribute ideas for the team name?

Last edited: Jan 13, 2019

Discretion 2.6

Discretion 2.6

Once Taylor agreed to join us, I sent Agate to spy on Calvert at the PRT building. He was still locked in an interrogation room. Since he wasn't doing anything, just sitting there with people watching him from the other side of a one-way glass pane, Agate went around to Piggot's office.

Unfortunately there was no meeting going on, so I couldn't get any information that way either. Piggot was simply sitting there, silently fuming. Presumably she would get back into action if Agate waited, and people would come looking for her for various issues, so I let Agate go back and forth between Calvert, Piggot, and other random meetings rooms looking for interesting things going on.

The portal experimentation had to be put on hold. So far the minimum portal time was 21 minutes before dissolution. It seemed that progress was getting harder as the time got shorter. At some point we would need to experiment on the other end, extending the time of the portal as well.

Meanwhile, I was editing our debut video with Amelia and Taylor looking over my shoulder, contributing their ideas.

Video editing is hard work. In most video productions the editing process is several times the length of the video captured or more than ten times the length of the produced video. It was necessary to find the best parts, cut out what was irrelevant, add various effects and subtitles, apply appropriate music, beautify ourselves to look good, etc. Fortunately we were in costume so it the beautifying part wasn't significant.

Since I didn't want to spend all night video editing, our debut video had to be very short. We could consider getting a professional to touch it up later and make long episode-form videos, but it was important to get our first video out as soon as possible, so we had to settle for my inadequate video editing skills and less than five minutes of total footage.

As such, we only worked on it until dinner time. The video started with a very brief introduction of our team, our cape names, a few nice shots of each of us in action, and no explanation of our powers.

Then it showed select very short scenes from our Lung battle, skipping around with a lot of narration on a black background and lots of gunfire and screaming in between to give the sense that the battle against Lung was much longer and more epic than it actually was, with parts undisclosed being too "gruesome" to show, until Lung was shown broken and defeated, and us standing over him. Naturally I included the footage from the camera on Araliac that showed myself being on fire, to emphasize the danger of the battle and our dedication to the cause. With Oni Lee, on the other hand, to avoid showing how I took Lung hostage, all we showed was Oni Lee screaming amidst a cloud of bugs and getting sprayed down, also avoiding the part where Velocity was also taken down.

Then it showed one shot of us talking to Miss Militia while narrating that we cooperated with the PRT to secure the criminals we defeated, giving the PRT/Protectorate no credit for the actual fighting. Of course, the conversation itself was cut out of the video because Miss Militia had told us not to record it.

That didn't however, stop me from including the scene in the PRT hallway where we met New Wave and I made my speech about our purpose in Brockton Bay. That wasn't part of a PRT investigation, just a friendly greeting between heroes, so it clearly didn't fall within Miss Militia's instructions.

When we were done, it was uploaded to our website and PHO.

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Topic: Team CRUCIBLE Debuts! Fight vs. Lung and Oni Lee (Video)

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Polychromic (Original Poster) (Unverified Cape)

Posted On Apr 11th 2011:

Hello! I am Polychromic of CRUCIBLE, a new independent hero team in Brockton Bay.

During the early hours of April 11, the three founding members of CRUCIBLE, including myself, Araliac, and Skitter, engaged the ABB cape villains Lung and Oni Lee, and successfully defeated them, bringing them to PRT custody.

We never expected to fight such powerful villains for our first patrol, but when we overheard Lung talk about shooting kids, we knew we had to do our duty. Fortunately, we were well prepared and won with no significant injuries on our side.

Check out our debut video, including footage from the fight, here.

We are very happy with the results of our first patrol, and will continue to aggressively pursue our mission to protect the innocent, uphold justice, and fight evil in all its forms.

For too long villains have had free rein over this city and innocent people have suffered under their shadow. Justice has been fallen to the wayside as fear, oppression, and corruption have taken its place. Evil has grown rampant, even commonplace across the land. We will not and cannot tolerate this any longer!

We, CRUCIBLE, will change everything! We will not only defend this city from evil, we will take the fight to those who believe themselves secure in their territory, and vanquish any who dare to prey on the helpless!

People of Brockton Bay, we have heard your cries for help, and we are answering the call! We fight on behalf of all those who have not the power to do so themselves! We fight because we are also residents of this city and we are ready to protect our home! We fight for everything that is good and just, for a better future!

Today, we have taken the first step towards ridding Brockton Bay of criminal elements. But our work alone is not enough. Just as the Protectorate and PRT has struggled all these years against being outnumbered and outgunned, we face a tremendous struggle ahead, a crucible before a new and better order can arise.

And we need YOUR help.

If you have what it takes to be a hero, we welcome you to apply to join our team.

If you are not a cape, we welcome you to send us relevant information on people that need to be saved and criminals that need to be stopped.

If you are on the wrong side, surrender now to the hand of justice, and you may yet atone for your sins.

We are CRUCIBLE.

Memento Mori

Polychromic

Stay up to date with us at .me

Then we ordered takeout for dinner.

"Taylor, are you planning to tell your dad about our hero work?" I asked.

She looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I-I'm not sure. I haven't told him about my powers yet."

"Don't worry, the decision is yours, we don't mind either way. If you do tell him, with our video and takedown of Lung and Oni Lee, I'm sure he'd be proud. If you don't, you can introduce us as your new friends instead."

She nodded gratefully.

In the end, she chose not to tell him. Not yet, anyways. She wanted more time before telling him the truth. I thought she might have decided to tell him right away considering that this time, she was part of a hero time, and she already had big accomplishments with us that Danny wouldn't necessarily still pressure her into the Wards. But I couldn't predict everything.

I didn't have a clear plan for dealing with Danny yet, so her decision didn't matter much either way. It just meant that Danny might have a more negative opinion of us for helping Taylor hide it.

Taylor went home after dinner so it was just me and Amelia again. Regarding Canary, I told her that we would do some more research on it first, try to find out where Canary was being held and the timeline for the trial to finish.

As I sat down for quiet contemplation, Amelia sat down next to me.

"Hey. Are you really serious about rescuing Canary?"

"Hm? Is there anything that makes you think I'm not?"

"It's not that. But rescuing Canary from PRT and Dragon's custody will be really hard, right? I know we defeated Lung and all, but a big part of that was because you knew how the battle was going to play out beforehand, and me and Skitter just happened to have good counters to him. We can't do anything against Dragon's suits," she said furrowed brows.

I sighed. "Well, you're not exactly wrong. The protocols being enforced to keep Canary in custody are very difficult to get through. Outside of her trial time, she's under watch by remote controlled equipment, away from human personal at all times, with heavy restraints. This means our primary obstacle would be Dragon herself, which as you said your and Skitter's powers aren't suitable for fighting against. At least, not at your current level of development."

"Then…?"

"I have a few different ideas in mind. If we hadn't interfered in the Lung fight, the most likely outcome would have been Lung getting captured, then Bakuda breaking Lung free with Oni Lee's help, then after a while, Lung and Bakuda would both be captured again and sent to the Birdcage, scheduled together with Canary. But because we did interfere and Oni Lee has also been captured, the chance of Bakuda successfully breaking Lung free is much lower. Without that delay, the transport time for Canary, Lung, and Oni Lee might be much sooner."

"That makes it even harder for us, doesn't it?"

"Well yes, but because Bakuda is still free…"

"Are you kidding? Are you suggesting that we work with Bakuda?" Amelia turned to me incredulously with wide eyes.

"Calm down, it's just an idea, to show that it isn't impossible to break her out," I held up a hand.

As I spoke, I continued to think on my strategy. Rescuing Canary was more than just a heroic duty for our team. She would be extremely useful for my plans. If I hadn't managed to recruit Amelia so quickly and establish a hero team with Taylor, Canary would have become my queen piece. As it is, now that I did establish a hero team, it would be somewhat more difficult to use Canary to her full potential. Rescuing her wasn't the hard part. The hard part would be to rescue her in a way that maximizes her value to me.

"Hey, you can't just say that then go quiet. Didn't you say you had a few ideas? What are the others?"

"Well we could hire Uber and Leet." That was a cape villain duo in town that nobody took seriously, gamers who used their powers to act out video game scenes and causing disturbances. My opinion of them was no better, until they could prove otherwise.

"…" Her blank face told me what she thought of that idea. It was only slightly less crazy than working with Bakuda.

"Okay, just kidding. There's something I'm working on that could work. But I don't know yet. There's no need to be stressed over it though. We have enough to worry about for ourselves before worrying about others. The threat of Bakuda retaliating against us, more Coil plots, the PRT and New Wave looking for you, making money…"

"That last one doesn't seem to fit in…"

"It's quite serious. We need more money to buy supplies, equipment, or hire help. Uber and Leet might only be a few thousand but it's still a few thousand that we don't have," I said with an overly seriously face. Even with the spoils from the ABB fight, money was tight with the need the replace our damaged costumes and supplies.

Amelia groaned. "I get it, I get it. We need money to hire Uber and Leet…"

A/N: Credits to SIDoragon for the team name. I really like the reasoning for it. "We are going to be like Cauldron, but better."

What do you think the responses on PHO are going to be like? I'm very open to suggestions or post contributions.

Last edited: Jan 31, 2019

Discretion 2.7

Discretion 2.7

Agate watched as eventually Calvert was called into Piggot's office. Deputy Director Renick was seated to Piggot's right.

"Hello, Director, Deputy Director. I trust that today's proceedings have sufficiently demonstrated my compliance with PRT rules and regulations?" He said calmly as he sat down in front of Director Piggot's desk.

Piggot gave him a frown.

"Thomas, we haven't found anything on you, but I can't say that you're all clear yet either."

"I would be happy to cooperate with anything else you would like to investigate," he said pleasantly, ignoring Piggot's almost hostile tone. "But, I have to admit, I am rather curious what is the cause for the sudden security review. It has been quite some time since our branch of the PRT has had such an extensive review. Are there any major developments I should be aware of?"

Piggot leaned forward and stared into Calvert's eyes. "It's because we haven't had one in such a long time that we needed to do this now. Nothing more to it. You, on the other hand, had to be investigated more thoroughly in particular due to a very strange development today."

"Oh? What would that be?"

"Shadow Stalker has gone missing."

Piggot observed Calvert closely. There was no change in Calvert's expression.

"That's quite a surprise. But what does that have to do with me? I don't interact with the Wards on a regular basis."

"You tell me, Thomas," she said, then she gestured for Renick to speak.

"Just prior to her disappearance, at 8:13 this morning, Shadow Stalker called in to the PRT emergency line. She claimed to have been called by a PRT Commander Thomas Calvert who warned her about a villain targeting her."

Calvert had a look of surprise. "I don't remember ever contacting Shadow Stalker about anything like that, nor am I aware of any villain targeting her."

"Given the timing, as you were already undergoing a security review here, we know that you could not have been the one to call her. Still, that doesn't preclude the possibility of you having made arrangements for somebody else, or a voice recording, to have made the call to Shadow Stalker."

"I see no fault in your logic," said Calvert, nodding. "I suppose that if you're telling me this now, you are satisfied that I did not in fact make any such arrangements?"

"We believe that you are not aware of having made any such arrangements," said Piggot.

Calvert blinked and nodded slowly. "I understand. You have not ruled out the possibility that I was made to forget. I cannot deny that it is possible, but hypothetically speaking, if somebody wanted to use my name to give Shadow Stalker a warning, I don't think it would be necessary to get me involved. I have had no significant contact with Shadow Stalker since she joined the Wards, so she has few means to verify my identity. Moreover, if their intention was only to give a warning to Shadow Stalker, they may not need to prove their identity to her in the first place for her to take the warning seriously."

"That is true, but if they only wanted to warn Shadow Stalker, they could have done so anonymously. They must have had a reason to use your name, unless they chose it from high ranking local PRT officials at random," said Piggot. Then she sighed. "But, I cannot hold you here indefinitely, and our main priority is to find Shadow Stalker. You are free to go, Thomas."

"Thank you, Director."

As Calvert nodded and left, Agate continued to track him.

It was a little bit surprising that the PRT let him off so quick, but after thinking about it for a bit I realized that there was no strong evidence yet to suggest that the Shadow Stalker's disappearance was a malicious plot by the imposter. From the perspective of the PRT, it would merely seem that Shadow Stalker rashly took action by herself after receiving a warning about a villain targeting her, which may actually be true for all they know, and then jumping to conclusions about the PRT being compromised by a Master for not warning her first. I had expected the PRT to consider it a possible defection of a Ward with all her accusations against the PRT, but it also made sense for them to think that Stalker was just hiding from the threat she was warned against. There was also the fact that the police were after her civilian identity, so if the PRT was already aware of that, and they probably were, they may think she decided to hide from the police as well.

I turned my attention back to the poker table.

"Fold," I threw my cards into the discard pile, then I stood up and left the table. Amelia followed after me with an annoyed expression on her face. Although she wasn't old enough to be here, it was no real trouble getting past the guards with a little bribe and our disguises.

"I thought you said you were going to make money, not gamble it!" She whispered loudly after we went to an abandoned corner of the casino for a break.

"I am. But that doesn't mean I should win every hand… it's a game of math, observation, and deception. For example, that table just now was bad. There were several players working together," I said.

Despite what I said, my purpose here tonight was not to make money. While money was indeed tight, it wasn't tight to the point where we actually needed to deliberately go out to make money, as there was nothing in particular I could spend it on yet. If my plans worked out well, I intended to gain sources of income and wealth soon that would easily eclipse anything we could make here.

"So? Can't you just use your power to see their cards?"

"I could, but I don't need it. I have better uses for my power, like trying to find a certain villain. Besides, if I play too well, they'll get suspicious, and if they're working with the house, that won't end well for us," I said. Although I could have cheated using Agate, I never did so because there were always better things for her to be working on.

And that same logic was also why the money that we could make here wasn't that important. At best, we could make a few thousand, and if we were lucky, five digits. What could that possibly buy? I joked about hiring Uber and Leet with Amelia earlier, but like my proposal to work with Bakuda, it was very unrealistic.

Uber and Leet were a small-time cape villain duo that followed a gaming theme, complete with a video streaming channel. Uber's power was to become an expert at any kind of skill the more he focused on one. Leet had the power to Tinker up any Tinkertech.

That might sound great on the surface, but Uber's power was limited to technique level skills, and not the mastery of a field like a true expert. He could pull off perfect individual martial arts maneuvers but couldn't integrate them into an actual fighting style. Leet's creations had an increasing chance of failure the more it resembled something he made before. It was a limitation that required vast sums of money to work around, because it applied to components he made too, not just the final products. There were some fanfictions I'd read which suggested otherwise, but going off of what I remembered of the duo's actual performance in canon, they were next to useless in most cases.

I knew this because they failed horrifically when hired by Bakuda for a cheap few thousand yet were fairly useful when employed by Coil, who had the resources to spare to help Leet make the teleporter and bug controlling device, most probably because he could afford to spend a lot of money buying non-Tinkertech components or non-Leet Tinkertech components so that Leet would only need to use his power on the final product which substantially raised his overall success rate.

"Aren't there better ways of making money than this? It seems pretty risky…"

"For us, there are many. For most normal people, making money is tough. All the people here, how many do you think are actually rich enough to be gambling their money away?" I gestured to the various people in the casino in a wide sweep.

She turned to look at them, but didn't answer.

"See how they wear expensive jewelry and brand name clothing? It's all a façade. They're just trying to appear rich, to live a life that they desperately want but can't actually afford. Most of them are probably addicted to gambling too."

"And you're going to profit from their misfortune?" She countered.

I smiled. "See that man in the tuxedo, with the pretty lady beside him over there? He is not wearing many luxury items himself, but the woman is. That is the sign of somebody truly rich. He is here to show off to his girlfriend, and show off his trophy girlfriend to everybody else. He can afford to lose a lot of money, and still win what he really wants. And that's who you're going to make money off of today, not the rest of these unfortunate folk."

"Huh? Don't you mean who you're going to make money off of?"

"No, you're going to play this one," I pushed her along.

"Wait, no! I don't know how to play!"

"Don't worry, I'll be your advisor. See how that guy's girlfriend keeps hanging off his shoulder, trying to give him suggestions? I'll do the same for you."

"D-don't you dare hang off my shoulder!"

Through Agate, I watched as Calvert went home, bought groceries, and made dinner. Then he made a call to Creep, and headed to his base. He gave orders for his body double to take care of some things with Fortress Constructions, the company he controlled under a different identity, before sitting down.

A/N: I have decided to try to reduce the time between updates by shortening each chapter, so that it is easier to remember what happened previously, and makes it easier for me to make progress writing. Hopefully it works.

Discretion 2.8

Discretion 2.8

Coil sat down in his main office room, which was isolated from the rest of the base and equipped with multiple computers and monitors. The first thing he did was to review status reports from his body double about his organization's operations, illegal businesses, base renovations, equipment purchases, while he was away.

As he was only gone for one day, it was done quickly. Satisfied that things were running smoothly and there were no significant issues, he moved on.

He brought up a file holding all the information he had on myself, Araliac, and Skitter. Then he called for one of his men to bring the vials recovered in the morning from where it was being stored to a closed room. He watched from his monitor the man go to the room and lock it.

Then he simply ordered the man to wait in the room.

Coil sat there without apparently doing anything for almost ten minutes.

Finally he ordered the man to dispose of the vials.

From his behaviour, I judged that Coil was at his base in both timelines. While he was doing nothing, he had to have been testing the vials in discarded timelines.

The easiest and surest way to determine whether the vials were real, or perhaps what powers they would produce, would be to simply have somebody drink them. But doing it in a throwaway timeline would also ensure that he wouldn't waste any vials on somebody unworthy in case they were real.

I did not know for sure if Coil's power was actually spitting and destroying timelines somehow-

'I don't think so. Not the destroying part, I mean. I can't detect when somebody else is transferring memories between parallel realities, but I should be able to detect if a reality that another version of me is in gets destroyed,' said Agate.

-or he simply simulated two timelines, but based on the test just now, he certainly believed that his power could accurately determine the outcome of a Cauldron trigger.

After that Coil added a few notes to his file.

:: Arranged fake Cauldron vials to be left at a drop-off point; no attempts to pick up after over 12 hours

:: All agents used in drop-off transport were one-off hires, no extended affiliation, unaware of purpose

:: Possible purpose-message?

"I can't believe that just happened," Amelia said as soon as we shut the door behind us.

"Well, we were just a bit lucky today with that full house," I said, sitting down on the couch.

"A great hand can be a terrible curse if your opponent has a better one, because it's so hard to give it up. And then when you lose, you just want to win it back because of how unfair it is. Then when you're in a losing streak, you think to yourself that it can't last, chances are things will even out if you stick it through… but that's not how probability works."

I reached into my bag and took out two thick wads of cash, placing them on the table. "That's how most people fall into the trap of gambling everything away."

"Shit. How much did we start with again?" Amelia picked up the wads, flipping through them for the novelty.

"Well, we went in the casino with $1200. After Blackjack we had $2900. Then I lost a bit and you had $2500 when we sat down with that guy."

"Wow. I'm starting to understand how people can get addicted. If you can go in with one thousand and walk away with twenty after a few hours…"

I took the cash out of her hands and wagged a finger in front of her. "Hey, don't be fooled. This sort of thing doesn't happen often. I was doing this for a week before you joined up with me without this kind of payout, remember? Besides, this money is nothing compared to what you could be making with your power. Do you have any idea how much the super wealthy would be willing to pay for you to cure their diseases, or a touch up to help them live a little longer? This right here was just pocket change to the guy that lost it. Just a little bit of fun for a night."

"But… it's wrong to charge for healing," she said, still staring at the cash in my hands.

"Why? Doctors have a perfectly respectable, well paid profession. Nobody expects them to work for free, so why should you?"

She looked away with a frown. "It's different. They have to go through years in medical school to learn their skills. I was just lucky and got a power that lets me heal people."

"Yeah, it's not really fair that we got lucky and won all this tonight. Maybe we should give it back." I nodded and started walking towards the door.

"What? No, that's completely different!" She grabbed my arm, as I knew she would. People naturally have an irrational tendency to overvalue the things they view as their possessions, and are generally far more reluctant to "give something up" than to decide turn down an opportunity to acquire something of equivalent value, but which they don't yet consider their own possession.

That was a form of psychological bias that was the basis behind why making a girlfriend or boyfriend jealous works, why kids refuse to throw away old toys they never play with anymore, why people hoard vast amounts of things in their garage even after years of not using any of it.

This bias is so powerful that sometimes it can be used in negotiations, where the mere framing of a trade-off in terms of "loss" instead of "potential gain" can change people's minds.

By making Amelia play and win, she viewed the money earned as rightfully hers, and became susceptible to this bias.

I turned to her and sighed.

"New Wave and most other hero teams accept donations, right?"

She gave me a doubtful look, unsure of where I was going with this. "Yes?"

"Imagine that you cure somebody of cancer. This person turns out to be rich, net worth over ten million, and after their cancer is cured, they try to give you $10,000 in thanks, because they knew they would probably have spent much more than that on conventional medical care trying to cure their cancer by all means. You refuse to accept it, and after arguing with you for an hour, they give up. The next day, you find $10,000 on your doorstep, with a note from your patent explaining that they felt miserable and needed to give this to you. Would you insist on returning it, making them miserable again?"

"I… probably not. If they felt that strongly about it…" Amelia admitted.

"So you were paid, your patient is happy, and nobody was hurt by your decision to accept the money. You haven't charged anything. So do you agree that there's nothing wrong with accepting payment from your patient if they decided on their own to give it to you as thanks?"

"I guess I can agree with that."

"So you agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with being paid, because when you get paid, its not about whether you deserve it or not, but whether or not your patient wants to pay you. So the problem is not being paid, but the fact that when you charge a price, not everyone can afford it. And refusing to heal somebody just because they can't afford to pay you, I think you'll agree with me, is wrong, at least if it doesn't really cost you anything to heal them. If you had to sacrifice something to heal somebody, that'd be different."

She nodded.

I had to convince her of these things little by little. I also couldn't let her come up with new rules that were too strict, which is why it was necessary to add these little exceptions. It would be best for her to stay morally flexible until she formed a very strong attachment to me.

"So instead of only healing for free, why don't you just do what all the good doctors do? Charge your patients, but when there's somebody that can't afford to pay you, heal them anyway. You can even let your patients decide how much they want to pay you."

She was silent this time. I put the wads of cash back into her greedy hands and sat back down.

"You don't need to charge an arm and a leg for people that are dirt poor, but there's nothing wrong with charging the people that can afford it."

"Is it really… okay?" She asked quietly, looking at the money in her hands again.

Eventually Coil started planning his kidnap of Dinah Alcott, and he called Tattletale to discuss the bank robbery job.

Tattletale was a bit hesitant at first, citing concern about the possibility of fighting the Wards, but Coil offered to arrange for Circus to join the robbery.

"One more thing," Coil said, after Tattletale agreed to persuade the Undersiders.

"I want you to find out whatever you can on Polychromic and whoever else he might be working with."

"Already on it, boss."

"Good."

That was about what I expected. This Thursday would be his best chance to get Dinah, and her power would be immensely helpful to him. It was only after he had access to Dinah that he became comfortable enough to risk housing Noelle and revealing himself to the Undersiders.

The next part, I wasn't expecting.

"Faultline, I have a job for you and you crew," he said, making a call to the leader of a local mercenary team called Faultline's Crew.

"I'm listening."

"The new cape in town, Polychromic. You've heard of him, yes?"

"Yes. Leader of CRUCIBLE, responsible for taking down Lung and Oni Lee. I saw their video on PHO not too long ago. Quite an impressive debut."

"I suspect he has ties to that group you've been investigating."

"What gives you that impression?"

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm paying you to investigate him."

"If you want me to investigate him, it would help if you shared your intel first to give me a lead."

"I don't want to give you any biases based on uncertain intel."

"Fine. I want $100,000 up front. $100,000 for confirmation, and $200,000 for a detailed report."

"Come on, Faultline. You and I both know that you would be looking into him even if I didn't pay you. $25,000 up front, $50,000 for details on his power, $50,000 for each cape you find that is working for him but not publicly part of CRUCIBLE, $50,000 for determining the nature of his ties to that secret group, and $100,000 for his civilian identity. Anything else you find, we can discuss the price for when you have it."

"You're breaking the rules. I can't help you ID him."

"And if that's the only way to find out what you need from him? How much progress have you made while following the rules?"

"… "

"$200,000 for his identity. Unless I find out through other means first."

"This job is risky. You don't even know what his power is yet. $50,000 up front and you have a deal."

"Deal."

How did I miss this? I should have expected he would hire Faultline's Crew. I knew he did so for the canonical alliance against the ABB and the villains' meeting, so it wasn't a big surprise.

The only problem was, my fake Cauldron vials apparently gave him the idea to take a different angle in negotiations with Faultline.

If he had simply hired them normally, it wouldn't be a huge threat, but regarding the secret of the Case 53s and Cauldron, it was another matter. Faultline's Crew had several Case 53s on the team, who all wanted to know the truth behind their origins. They took that stuff quite seriously and in the original timeline kept investigating it until Contessa, Cauldron's ace in the hole and feared boogeyman, personally came out to deal with them.

If she believed I had information on Cauldron, I could expect Faultline to hold nothing back. But what could I tell them? Unlike Amelia and Taylor, she was highly professional, experienced, and intelligent - no obvious weaknesses to manipulate.

This only reinforced my earlier thoughts on the need to move quickly. Although it wasn't ideal yet, the conditions were already more than adequate for me to take the next pivotal move.

Late at night, we stripped Shadow Stalker's costume off of her, then Amelia changed the state of her body to appear as though she had been drinking. We brought the unconscious Sophia in civilian attire and unmasked to Madison's backyard before retreating stealthily.

Then I called Madison after equipping my voice changer. I had to call several times before she picked up.

"Hello?"

"I promised that if you repent and confess, you need not fear anything from Sophia Hess." I said.

I heard a gasp from the other side of the line.

"You're the-"

"You held up your side of the bargain. Now I deliver on my promise."

"Wait, what do you mean? What are you going to do to her?"

"Look in your backyard. Call the police and don't mention me."

"My backyard? Oh my god, did you kill her?"

"She only got what she deserves." Then I hung up before she could say anything more, and turned on airplane mode so that I wouldn't be able to receive any attempts to call back.

"You're awful," Amelia said. "You sure you're not secretly a mob boss?"

"Hm… if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Right…"

Once Amelia went to sleep, I headed to the warehouse base. I recalled Agate for a few minutes in order to make a portal to the other world, specifically the cave that we found before. Agate flew back to Coil while I began moving supplies and equipment over to the cave. When the portal expired, I was ready and geared up.

'I'm in position.' Agate said.

'On three. Three, two, one!' I thought back.

A portal opened right in front of me and I rushed through.

O O O

Interlude 2.x (Coil)

Interlude 2.x (Coil)

As the PRT vehicle exited the building, his men were in position to track it. He had several agents observing from far away, and some much closer, following by car.

This sort of tracking was by no means simple to accomplish. In an urban environment, buildings frequently got in the way of visual observation, and he could not deploy helicopters without being noticed. Remote-control drones were possible, but still had a high risk of discovery, at least when dealing with the PRT.

It would be much simpler if one of his agents had managed to placing a tracking device on the PRT vehicle but unfortunately there was no opportunity to do so.

The result was that his men were in multiple locations and moving strategically on other streets in anticipation of where the PRT vehicle could make turns, while one vehicle followed from behind. The one vehicle following behind would periodically switch with another vehicle. He did have one drone tracking from very high overhead, high enough that it wouldn't be easily detected without a focused search in the air. Although the PRT could still theoretically detect it fairly easily, he did not expect them to put in the effort.

They were only transporting unaffiliated capes, after all. Assuming, of course, that the three new capes hadn't joined the Protectorate or Wards. That was very unlikely, Coil thought, given his observations of their behaviour before, and Polychromic's claim to be an as of yet unnamed new hero team.

Even in PRT operations, it was not usual to take many precautions to look for anything spying on them. That was because the villains they dealt with did not usually use such spying tactics, nor was there any particular reason to be secretive about operations which were not meant to be secret. Unaffiliated, even registered heroes and rogues, who were not part of the Protectorate or Wards proper were responsible for their own anonymity.

As soon as the PRT vehicle made some distance away from the HQ building, he split the timeline.

On one timeline, his men moved cautiously, staying well away. In the other, the van following from behind began moving closer.

Shortly after, one of his moles in the PRT informed him that a PRT group had been deployed to tail a vehicle suspected of tailing the vehicle carrying the three capes.

He closed that timeline and split again, repeating the order to get closer.

After a few times, he determined that they were detecting the vehicle he ordered to follow from behind at around one and a half blocks.

Previously, he had learned from Tattletale in a discarded timeline that the bug cape who named herself Skitter on Polychromic's suggestion could sense things through her bugs. That was the likely reason they had been able to find Tattletale's position so quickly in the timelines where he ordered the Undersiders to make contact after the Lung fight.

Now he knew that Skitter's power was probably limited to less than two blocks.

When the PRT van dropped of the three capes and they went to a dark alley, he split the timeline again.

In one timeline his men stayed back out of range. In the other, he ordered them to move in and capture them.

As he expected, the following battle went little better than the Undersiders' own approach.

Once his men were within one and a half blocks, large masses of insects attacked them and still more covered the three capes' escape.

His men were not outfitted to effectively deal with the bugs, their armor not fully sealed, so they quickly went down, while Coil's drone lost track of them in the darkness created by the bugs.

He had to re-evaluate the threat and value of the bug controlling cape. Her power did not seem impressive at first, but it was proving surprisingly versatile and effective. Her performance lent credence to Tattletale's theory that Polychromic's group wanted to recruit her by all means.

He closed the timeline after his mole at the PRT informed him that they were deploying troops in response to a report of an attack by an organized group with Tinkertech weapons close to where the three capes had been dropped off. That was his men, obviously.

The mention of Tinkertech weapons was curious. While his men did carry Tinkertech rifles, it was surprising that the bug cape could recognize them as such, when they had not used widely by his mercenaries yet during other operations.

In the other timeline, he waited until the three capes split up and ordered his men to keep following. Two teams were assigned to follow Skitter while three were assigned to follow Polychromic and Araliac.

Once again he tested them using discarded timelines, determining that the bug girl was indeed detecting his men at around one and a half blocks, while Polychromic and Araliac had no apparent reaction.

Next, he split a timeline to test how Polychromic and Araliac responded to an attack without the bug cape.

This time the battle went much better for his troops. The two capes did not appear to sense the incoming assailants until they were attacked, and their attempts to escape on foot were entirely ineffective.

Polychromic demonstrated no powers whatsoever, and went down easily from the stunning rounds his men fired.

Araliac, or Panacea if Tattletale was right, fared only a little better. She launched some kind of small organisms from her sleeves that released a rapidly moving airborne sedative, but they were unintelligent and clearly not under her control once they were launched. Her jet spray and organisms were simply outranged by Coil's men's guns, and she was easily defeated.

The only problem was that even after she was defeated, Coil's men that tried to approach her and Polychromic's bodies to capture them fell unconscious once they got close.

Gas masks apparently were insufficient to stop whatever was bringing down his men.

He closed that timeline and in the other, his men had followed the two to a warehouse.

Just as he was about to order his men to enter the warehouse, Polychromic and Araliac exited again.

In one timeline, he ordered two teams to keep following and one team to stay behind. In the other, the allocation was reversed.

The teams that stayed behind observed more people in civilian attire exiting from the warehouse several times. There were five different individuals or groups that left the warehouse at different times, going in different directions over the span of ten minutes.

Even in the second timeline, Coil didn't have enough men deployed to keep tracking all of them, as he did not expect to have to deal with so many people.

He began to suspect that there was something wrong. He quickly made the decision to close the first timeline and split again, ordering his men to tail the people who exited in one timeline, and ordering his men to capture them in the second.

In the first timeline, his two teams that stayed behind split into six individual agents, five to follow and one to stay behind and keep watching the warehouse.

In the second timeline, all six of his agents deployed to attack and capture the enemy agents. None of them showed any powers or weapons. They were easily subdued and gathered up in the two vans the two teams were driving.

A short interrogation and body search turned up nothing useful. The captured people did not seem like trained agents, they simply didn't know anything. They all had the same story: a masked and cloaked man had paid them earlier in the day to wait for two individuals in motorcycle outfits to arrive. Then after the two individuals left the warehouse, they would leave the warehouse in turns, go to a specified location, and leave a coded note there.

He collapsed the timeline and ordered his people back to the warehouse. He had been played, he realized. All the people who left after Polychromic and Araliac were just decoys-distractions that would also reveal the existence of somebody targeting them, if they failed to deliver their notes.

He was dealing with a rather paranoid group. Fortunately Coil could simply discard the timeline and leave no evidence behind.

Suddenly his agent who remained to observe warehouse reported that a black van drove up to the entrance. It had been nearly twenty minutes since the last person left the warehouse.

Two figures in hoods and cloaks now exited the warehouse and entered the van, which drove off at a high speed.

Alarmed, Coil split the timeline and ordered his last agent to follow in one of them. His other agents were still returning to the warehouse from their cancelled tailing of the decoys.

Meanwhile, in both timelines, the team tracking Polychromic and Araliac-no, those may have been decoys too, Coil realized-reported that they had stopped in an alley and waited until a hooded figure appeared before them.

"He's got a suitcase with him, and he's opening it. It looks like they're checking the contents."

"Can you see what's inside?" Coil asked.

"Not from this angle-wait is that a vial? Damn, they're done, they're leaving now."

"Keep following them on car. One of you move out and follow the one who gave them the suitcase."

When his men arrived back at the warehouse, he collapsed the timeline where his last agent stayed behind instead of following the van. In this way, he ensured that he was able to keep the warehouse under observation without any gaps.

Then he split again, and ordered the other team to capture both the agent who handed over the suitcase as well as Polychromic and Araliac.

This time the two in costume went down without a fight. And once unmasked, the girl revealed was certainly not Amy Dallon, the publicly known identity of Panacea. They were fake.

A short interrogation once again revealed noting useful except that they'd been hired for a one-time job. They received their costumes from the actual Polychromic and Araliac that arrived in the warehouse. After that they were to pick up a package and drop it off. The one who gave them the package also knew nothing.

On the other hand, through a video feed, he was able to see the contents of the suitcase, which was revealed to be three vials that looked remarkably like the vial he had once purchased from Cauldron, along with three sheets of paper. On each was a different label and code, along with qualities indicated by a letter category and a number.

Were they real, Coil had to wonder. The vial he had purchased from Cauldron came with a set of instructions, disclaimers, and warnings, but nothing about its properties. Before he made his purchase, Cauldron had verbally told him what his potential choices were, in terms of possible powers, the strength of the power, and unwanted side effects. But nothing as clear cut as what he was seeing here. He looked closely at one of the sheets.

25% C0072/60% M1020/15% Foreign Element

R: 6

P: 2,7,11

Then again, it was not particularly clear what any of the codes and properties referred to, despite being numeric and more precise compared to an estimate of "high" or "low". He had no idea what any of these referred to.

The best way to find out was to have someone drink it. His mercenaries were loyal, but not loyal to the point that they would drink a suspicious liquid taken from enemies on his orders, so he told them to force feed the captured fakes. Both of them fainted about half a minute after drinking the vials.

That was supposed to happen, Coil remembered. He had also fainted shortly after drinking the vials, and woke up not long after. Just like he did, the two fakes also woke up after another minute.

There were no clear signs that anything had changed, but many powers were not obvious or even instinctive. The only way to be sure was to scan their brains for the Corona Pollentia, and that could only be done at his base. He would also have to find a test subject who didn't already have a Corona Pollentia, otherwise the test would be inconclusive. Coil was aware that those with the potential to trigger naturally all had Corona Pollentias, which could not be easily distinguished from those who were actual capes.

He closed the timeline and decided to find an opportunity to take the vials later. For now, he would let the team continue tracking the fakes to see where they were taking the vials.

He checked back with the agent following the van. A snarl of frustration escaped his lips when the agent reported that the van entered a private condominium underground parking lot with security guards at the entrance.

He lost them. Once in the building, they could easily hide and mix with the residents or switch to another car. He split a timeline and ordered the agent to break through by force, but it was useless. Breaking through the guards by force put the two capes on alert, and in the enclosed space of the parking lot, his agent was easily defeated by the true Polychromic and Araliac.

By the time he exited the PRT building, Thomas Calvert was in a foul mood. He didn't show any of it on his expression during his meeting with Piggot, but he had been infuriated by the day's events. Not only had he completely failed to track down Polychromic to his base in the morning, he had been locked down the entire day at the PRT while his other timeline where he skipped work to stay at base produced nothing useful in his investigation into Polychromic.

Worse yet, there hadn't been an opportunity to check the top secret classified related file referred to in the Panacea disappearance file. Because his power was being used the whole day, and he was being heavily monitored, there was no chance to access the physically stored files.

Then there was the disappearance of Shadow Stalker and his supposed imposter, which made him feel all the more threatened. He didn't believe that it could be a coincidence that they chose to use his name-whoever did it had to be targeting him. What truly infuriated him was that it almost seemed like something he would have done himself, except it wasn't him.

In the other timeline he had closed where he stayed at base, he had found out that Sophia Hess was wanted by the police for attempted murder in her civilian identity due to a new witness that came forward to testify on the locker incident from several months ago. Madison Clements had apparently confessed to the police- suspicious, Calvert thought-and Sophia escaped from school when the police investigators arrived to arrest her.

Only then did his imposter conveniently warn her about a supposed new Master, playing on her paranoia and leading to her disappearance.

It was a beautiful plan that Coil might have used to recruit Shadow Stalker to his own villain organization, except for the fact that his name was exposed and the PRT broke into his house when he was also suspiciously absent from work, forcing him to choose this timeline and using his powers again to navigate the PRT's interrogation of him at HQ.

It was maddening that he could lose control and be a piece in someone else's game. It was a feeling deeply unfamiliar to Coil ever since he had acquired his powers.

And his instincts told him Polychromic had something to do with it.

The only saving grace was that the Cauldron vials had been retrieved to base, and he had also identified Skitter as Taylor Hebert after his men tracked her to her house.

As soon as he got home he split again, using one timeline to connect to PRT networks to access the latest information on the Shadow Stalker disappearance case, and the other to make preparations for dinner. He had a lot to do tonight.

He ended the successful call with Faultline and closed the other timeline where he hadn't called her.

It wasn't easy to negotiate with Faultline. He rarely hired Faultline's Crew because he didn't want to rely on a mercenary team that wasn't subordinate and loyal to him, but in this case he didn't have any better options.

His Tattletale was a useful source of information, but he couldn't deploy the Undersiders in this kind of reconnaissance operation. Not yet, in any case. They lacked the skills and the mindset for it.

The vials had turned out to be fake as he had expected, but then that raised the question of why Polychromic had arranged for the transport of fake vials. He had racked his brain trying to figure out why and the only thing he could think of was that it was a message. Nobody had picked it up, and leaving something like that for a long time was very insecure. But like the notes that the other homeless people from the warehouse had been instructed to leave at specified locations, merely leaving the vials would be enough to deliver a message. But to who? If it was simply to check whether somebody had been following and intercepting them, they wouldn't have needed such an elaborate ruse, a simple note or other random object would have been fine.

So then it wasn't just the fact that it was successfully delivered that had to be communicated, but also that they were fake Cauldron vials. From this, Coil deduced that the message was meant for somebody who could recognize them. Somebody like himself, in fact. Was it a warning, a threat to stop, lest he incur the wrath of that organization? He thought it unlikely. Cauldron had other means of warning him.

Then was it an invitation to a curious person that wanted to know what links Polychromic had to that organization? Or perhaps there was a coded message embedded in the papers?

To these questions Coil had yet no answer. But it did give him the idea to use Cauldron as bait to entice Faultline. She might even find a real link there, in which case she would be a useful buffer to protect himself from retribution.

He wouldn't normally want to antagonize Cauldron but after he found out that somebody used his name to contact Shadow Stalker, Coil decided that he had to take a more aggressive approach. Polychromic, the Stranger or Mover that worked with him, and CRUCIBLE had proven themselves very dangerous, and now there was somebody actively targeting Thomas Calvert's civilian identity, so the situation merited a tougher response.

Done with everything that needed his power, he split the timeline again and in one he went into his secret room attached to his main office at base. In here, he would be fully secure as he slept.

In the other timeline, he stayed up and did his usual routine, looking into important news around the city, other PRT operations, checking his stocks, Fortress Construction's business, etc.

It was a strange sensation when he was asleep in one timeline and awake in the other. He had gotten used to it by now, but the dissonance of being blissfully asleep yet also aware of being asleep from the wake timeline was always noticeable.

It was especially strange when he was dreaming. As long as he was awake in one timeline, he could be distinctly aware of when he fell asleep, and when he was dreaming. This also meant that all of his dreams were lucid.

If his power's discarded timelines could be likened to a dream for the Thomas Calvert in the true timeline, then his dreams could also be likened to a use of his power. After all, he could do whatever he wanted with no consequence except the same limitation that time would always pass, and their lucidity made them so vivid as to be real.

That too was one of the reasons he tried not to use his power frivolously too often. If he did anything he absolutely could not tolerate in the true timeline, yet accidently closed the wrong timeline, that would be most unfortunate. If he wanted to relieve stress, it would be simple to do so in a dream instead, where there was no risk.

So while he worked in one timeline, he was relieving his stress in the other, with violent, destructive fantasies, like-

A shock tore through his body-he tried to grab for his gun-

Taser-paralyzed-

Something sprayed into his face, and he desperately tried to stop breathing, but his muscles spasmed with current and he couldn't control himself.

When the taser was removed from his back, his vision was already blurring, and something was roughly shoved onto his face, covering his nose and mouth.

Just before he blacked out, he tried to wake up in his secure sleeping timeline while he was still lucid, fearful that he would be truly unconscious for the first time in years.

He didn't wake up.

A/N: This is the end of Arc 2. I thought about including a PHO Interlude in this arc somewhere after the CRUCIBLE debut post, but I had a hard time thinking up what in the PHO comments would actually be relevant to the story plot. For those of you who skipped the Coil Interlude in Arc 1, this would be a fine time to go back and read it so you understand everything that happened with Coil.

The development of this arc was rather curious, and as usual I'd like to take time to reflect on it a little. I originally didn't plan for things to move so fast, but once I started planning Kaleidus' moves and Coil's in detail rather than the broad strokes I set forth at the beginning, it quickly spiraled out of control, causing the Arc to essentially take place over the span of a single day in-story. We will see some of Kaleidus' own thoughts on this experience once we get back to his POV, but one of the things that pushed things along was when I remembered that Faultline would be very interested in any leads on Cauldron, and the moment Kaleidus also realized this, he was forced to adapt.

The plan with Danny was also an uncertain thing for a while. I had hesitated between actually having Kaleidus try to kill him with Shadow Stalker or merely using it as a scheme to make Taylor trust him more. In the end, the benefit of killing him seemed to be outweighed by the extra risks and potential fallout. The main benefit of killing Danny would be to give Taylor a reason to accidentally kill Shadow Stalker in her rage, but that would have been an extraordinarily complicated plan with many failure points and could easily backfire on Kaleidus, so both he and I decided against it.

I said at the end of the last arc that this one would see Kaleidus committing more villainous acts and as it turns out, that wasn't fully accurate, as this arc didn't cover as much story-time as I thought it would. So next arc is where we should see more of that. A number of readers have commented on how Kaleidus appears more like an anti-hero at this point than a typical villain, and they are in some ways right. The definitions of anti-hero and villain are not fully distinct from each other. Because an anti-hero is simply a protagonist that lacks conventional hero qualities, villain-protagonists could qualify sometimes. But motive also plays a role. Usually it's said that anti-heroes do bad things for good reasons, but is that the case for Kaleidus or is it the other way around?

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Last edited: Feb 11, 2019

Volition 3.1

A/N: I really appreciate all the feedback on the chapter 1 rewrite. I have decided to keep the new version. Now it's time to get back into the main story.

Volition 3.1

I dragged Coil's unconscious body through the portal and back to the cave, where I quickly blindfolded, gagged, restrained, and stripped him, then put him inside an empty crate that I secured to some bolts I planted in the ground and cave walls.

It went surprisingly smoothly, but I couldn't be certain of my victory yet. The possibility existed that Coil wouldn't be keeping this timeline and he would merely be alerted to an attack. I had to wait a bit longer before I could be confident that I had won.

Earlier, when I observed that he was testing the Cauldron vials, I knew he was probably at base in both timelines, and I thought it was very likely he had stayed there for the conversation with Tattletale and Faultline as well. Even if he didn't, he needed to choose the timeline where he stayed if he wanted to keep his results from negotiating with them.

By then I had decided it was necessary to attack Coil as soon as possible and formulated a plan.

I would wait until late night to see if he went to sleep. If he did, I would wait until I was sure he had fallen asleep, then strike.

If he didn't go to sleep, I would observe for clues that he had a sleep timeline going. If I were Coil, I would be planning to keep a sleeping timeline to ensure my good health, so in the other timeline I couldn't be doing anything too important as it would be discarded after waking up in the morning.

Finally, if he didn't go to sleep and I couldn't deduce whether he had a sleep timeline going, I would strike after a set amount of time had passed no matter what.

So when I saw Coil doing what seemed to be general research and information gathering, without any active operations going on, and having finished with the calls earlier, I thought he probably had a sleep timeline going.

If I was right, then it was my victory.

If I was wrong and he was off doing something else, then because Agate would still be observing him, the me in that other timeline would know if he knew that he had been attacked in this timeline, and respond accordingly by rushing to attack before he could surround himself with guards.

If he managed to get to guards before I attacked, I would have to deploy area sedation bombs through the portal to try and knock all of them unconscious while Agate attacked them physically on the other side.

If I judged it too risky to strike for whatever reason and decided against attacking at the pre-determined time, then it would become a waiting game. I would camp at the cave, essentially immune to any threat that couldn't reach across dimensions, until there was a chance to strike. I was ready to stay camped here for days if necessary.

Tonight was my best chance to defeat Coil before he knew too much about me, and my success in capturing him seemed to prove that.

But the conditions hadn't been ideal. The biggest problem was that the portals lasted 21 minutes each because we didn't have enough time to refine it further. The portal I had used to capture Coil was still open, in fact.

Because the portal stayed open for too long, I could be pursued through it. Moreover, it limited me to attacking Coil in an isolated place where nobody else would go, like his base or his house. If he simply stayed in public, my plan would fail.

The second problem was how to manage Coil's imprisonment. Because I had ended up attacking so soon after Agate acquired the ability to open portals, I couldn't explain this to Amelia or Taylor.

I suddenly captured a man who was Coil, demonstrating a new power to use portals and attack people from anywhere? That was highly suspicious. We were a team, after all. Why didn't I include them in this operation, and how did they even know the man I captured was really Coil?

Originally, I had been thinking about revealing the portals to Amelia and Taylor first, then planning to defeat Coil when he went for Dinah. I was quite certain that he would be using his powers to guarantee the success of that operation. That way, we would have indisputable proof of Coil's evil nature, allowing me to justify capturing him.

But because he hadn't actually kidnapped Dinah yet, he hadn't yet committed any truly despicable crimes. If I let him talk, he might even convince the girls that he was a misunderstood hero trying to fight against a corrupt system.

That was also why I couldn't include them on this operation. I was going to attack even if he went to sleep as Thomas Calvert, but I couldn't share what I saw through Agate with the girls, which meant that from their perspective, we would be kidnapping a PRT official in their civilian identity that I claimed to be a villain purely based on my "precognition" and "projected senses" that they couldn't verify in any way.

But that was something to think about later.

I switched on Coil's costume and went back through the portal with a smirk.

Coil's costume was a decent fit for me. Not perfect, as I was slightly taller, but other than that it was surprisingly fitting. The way that the costume apparently clung to Coil's ribs was actually an illusion created by the costume's structure. Coil wasn't that skinny-as a commander in the field, he was quite fit and lean, muscled but not bulky.

I waited for the portal to close and got to work.

The first order of business was to get familiar with Coil's computer. I had already observed him using it through Agate, and managed to catch a number of important passwords, but it would take time to sort through all the information he had and truly understand his organization's operations.

One of the things that helped me significantly, and I imagine Tattletale when she took over as well, was that Coil didn't use biometric keys for anything. In order for his body double to handle his affairs when he was away, and to leave no evidence of Thomas Calvert being Coil, absolutely nothing in his organization required biometric scans.

Tattletale's power to just give her passwords was ludicrous but that would certainly allow her to take over most of Coil's operations and hack her way into his funds as well.

On the other hand, it also wasn't enough to find the compartmentalized accounts he had under various other identities that he didn't normally access by himself, instead using intermediaries to manage. There were also the accounts that couldn't be touched due to legal restrictions, like Fortress Constructions and various other companies, trusts, and real estate he owned.

As a result, Tattletale had only managed to steal a fraction of the funds I realized Coil had access to during the time I observed him.

Not having Tattletale's power, it would definitely take some time for me to seize all of Coil's assets, and I still needed more information out of Coil before I got everything I wanted.

That was why he was still alive.

After about an hour, I had a passing familiarity with what was available on his computer. I found his base construction blueprints and had Agate map it what had already been constructed in person as well. I found how to contact Circus, Chariot, Faultline's Crew, the Travelers, etc. I found how to make purchases from Toybox, equipment inventories and distributions at base, personnel listings, dossiers on every cape in Brockton Bay, and much, much more.

Too much information, really, it was a little overwhelming.

I also found out how to get in touch with the Number Man's banking organization to launder funds, which was critical. It seemed like such a minor thing, but I hadn't been able to find out through PHO or other public places. This would certainly put me on Cauldron's radar, but there was nothing I could do about it-everyone used Number Man's services.

Once I had that, I spent the next hour setting up some new accounts for myself, and moving funds from the accounts I observed Coil accessing before. It was an open question whether someone like Tattletale could hack into these new accounts, but I didn't think so.

If she could, she would have been able to simply hack any account of any villain organization in the world, giving her vast resources long before she took over from Coil. There were requirements and conditions to how her power generated passwords that I didn't fully understand yet.

But one thing I suspected that was her power couldn't pull computer generated random passwords. I suspected that despite what it looked like to me, Coil's passwords weren't truly random, and he didn't realize just how powerful Tattletale's ability was.

He must have used a custom password construction system that only appeared random, but allowed Coil to memorize the non-random keys associated with each account, and then the hash algorithm that he could mentally calculate each time in order to produce a unique password from each key. I did something similar myself for my own digital security measures back on my Earth, but the algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated as what Coil had to be using.

This meant that Tattletale was able to use her power to analyze Coil each time she met and interacted with him, until it was sufficient for her power to give her one of his password algorithms. Or maybe she used a keylogger, found a password manager somewhere, etc. I was fairly confident that she had to be exploiting an actual security vulnerability that Coil couldn't defend against once he was dead, while the PRT passwords she supposedly figured out were actually supplied by Coil to a certain extent.

For myself, I could now use actual computer generated passwords, and-

'The most secure password manager ever!' Agate finished for me.

And just like that, I was $30 million richer. The rest of the money would take some more work to acquire.

A/N: Were you under the impression that Kaleidus killed Calvert? That would be far too brutish and simple for Kaleidus to use as Plan A. For better or worse, Coil is just unconscious for now.

Volition 3.2

Volition 3.2

"Sir," Captain Heroux stood at attention in front of me uniformed and unarmed.

I clicked a part of the desktop wallpaper and the door to the room locked with a click.

To his credit, Heroux didn't even flinch, calmly staring at me. I wondered if he was able to notice any discrepancies. I was sure he could, but he wouldn't act without being certain of the situation. After all, Coil routinely used a body double, and nobody knew who the man behind the mask was. Even if I acted a little differently, wasn't it natural to assume that I was just another scheme of Coil's, sitting here in Coil's private office like it was perfectly natural?

"At ease, Captain. You are one of my most trusted men. I called you here to have a little talk. Nothing too serious. Have a seat," I said, gesturing him to sit down.

He nodded and did as told.

"You've been with me for quite some time now, Heroux, and led a great many successful operations. You were here before this base was built, even, and you've served me well as our organization, business, and territory grew," I said, pretending to be familiar with him using the info from his personnel dossier and performance notes.

"Yes, sir," he replied neutrally.

"In recent times, Brockton Bay has reached a boiling point. Tension between the gangs have been rising steadily and the PRT is buckling under the pressure. With the events of the last few days, the sudden defeat of Lung and Oni Lee and the rise of a new hero team, one could say that the situation is about to explode," I explained, drawing an ominous picture. "And with this base's construction nearing completion, so too is our organization at a critical juncture-one of both crisis… and opportunity."

I closely observed the expression on Heroux's face, unchanging as it was, his eyes widened marginally to reveal a glimmer of interest.

"I will be blunt. I am not interested in being a common villain. You have seen for yourself how we operate. You have been in the military, and you must… recognize the differences between our organization and the so-called villain gangs of this city," I said, pausing for a long moment with an upwards tilt of my head.

Heroux took the hint and answered. "Yes. We are disciplined, organized, and well-equipped. We are functionally closer to a private army than a gang."

"Precisely." I nodded and leaned forward. "Do you know why that is? Do you understand why I built the organization this way, what it is that we have been working towards all this time?"

He was quiet for a moment, a hint of caution in his expression. "Sir, you give us orders and we follow them. It is not my place to know your grand designs."

"No need to be so stiff, Captain Heroux. I am not testing you," I said. We both knew that was a lie, but it had to be said. "Much like myself, you're an ambitious man. You must have had some guesses. Humor me, call it curiosity. What do you think we are working towards?" It was a bit of a leading question, and a way to build rapport, as I alluded to our mutually ambitious nature.

"If I had to guess, then… a greater calling. Something beyond simple money, territory, and petty crime. Something that goes beyond just this city, maybe. Something you need a professional army for, and not just a small group of capes like the other gangs."

I chuckled slowly. "You're exactly right. That's a very good answer."

My expression got serious again. "You remember the crisis when Professor Haywire opened a portal to Earth Aleph? The first thing on people's minds."

Finally, I got a noticeable look of surprise from him this time. "You mean… war?"

"Right again. In those days, when people realized there was a whole other world of resources, the possibility of war immediately came to mind. And Bet would win, because we had all the capes. We avoided war back then… but our world has since been ravaged by the Endbringers, entire nations devastated, and in the midst of the chaos, parahuman groups like the Yangban and Red Gauntlet have risen. You have been deployed to Asia as US military tried and failed to support its allies in times of great upheaval, so you have seen first hand how parahumans and the Endbringers have all but destroyed the old order."

"I cannot deny your words. I left the military because I lost faith in its ability to achieve its mission, you know this, of course. The US may be a superpower still, but that power is no longer backed by the army, navy or air force, nor even by nuclear weapons, but by parahumans. And even that is a questionable thing, if the state of lawlessness in this country is anything to go by," he said.

"The existence of other worlds is not a secret anymore, and despite the tenuous peace we have agreed to with Aleph, do you really think that this state of affairs can last, knowing what you know about the way Bet is going?"

He frowned. "You think that there will be war with Aleph?"

I unlocked the door, and stood up. "Walk with me."

He stood to follow, and we exited the room into the hallway. Between my office and the base's entrance were over ten guards and multiple sets of heavy metal doors. But we wouldn't be going past all of them.

I strode purposefully in towards a certain room away from the eyes and ears of any guards and employees. It was the room Coil had reserved for Dinah once kidnapped, and currently empty so it did not need any guards.

We stopped in front of the door, and I turned around to face Heroux.

"Aleph is not the only other world out there, and Professor Haywire will not be the only parahuman that can find a way to access other worlds. When the Endbringers have destroyed half the world's cities in a decade, what will the desperate people of Bet turn to? Even without the possibility of refuge in another world, Bet is destined to descend into chaos. I know not what would emerge, but the status quo cannot last! Today villains and gangs can hold territory in a city, a decade from now perhaps parahuman warlords will rule nations and worlds!" I gestured grandly to emphasize the point.

"The question is, what role would you want to play in such a future? Are you satisfied being a mere mercenary, or would you aspire to be part of something greater, with all the privileges and responsibilities that would entail?"

Heroux was a smart man, and I could see the understanding in his eyes, as I alluded to a position of power within a new world order.

"I… would be a part of something greater, sir. A part of the empire of your rule," he said firmly, holding his right hand over his heart and bowing his head slightly.

My lips curled into a smirk. Now all I needed was one last move to convince this man that I was the "true" cape behind Coil, who never showed his men his power until the Undersiders, to the point where people thought he might be unpowered.

"Very good, Heroux. I require loyal and capable men like you. Now rise and look upon the future!" On one hand, I took out an access card.

I held out my other hand with my palm facing up, and Agate flashed into existence with a multicolored display of lights, floating freely in the air. She would become my symbol, the absolute proof of who I was without revealing my face.

I gripped onto Agate and directed her at the door. A rainbow beam emerged from her tip and struck the door, engulfing it in light.

Then I unlocked the door, which opened automatically, and on the other side was-

A blue sky and fresh air, a magnificent view from a great height that looked out into vast plains and forests, with the daylight sun shining brightly in the air.

Heroux's eyes were wide open as he stared.

I walked through and waited for him on the other side.

He was taken out of his stupor once I did so, and quickly followed after me, almost stumbling as he crossed the threshold to the peak of the small mountain that we now stood on.

He turned this way and that way, looking around in wonder, before marvelling at the unnatural rectangular gap in reality we just stepped through.

I waited silently for him to get his bearings.

"This… is this another world?" He murmured, still not quite believing what I had been implying all this time.

But that was a simple matter to solve.

"Take out your phone and check your GPS. We are out in the open, high in the air, with nothing blocking the signal," I suggested.

He did so. He looked back at me with a new vigour, after confirming that the signal was gone.

"Take a good, long look. A whole new world, vast untapped resources, continents of unoccupied land, untouched by the ravages of the Endbringers and capes. This one is untouched by human civilization, even, free of pollution in the air and oceans," I swept out my arm gesturing to everything below us.

"And… it's only one of many more…" He murmured, looking out at the horizon. "Yes, I understand now… what you have been working towards… !"

"There is much work to be done, and a long road ahead of us. It will not be easy, but I am sure it will be rewarding. As of today, your salary is doubled, and you are hereby promoted to the rank of Major. But remember, you must tell no one of what you have learned today about my power, our eventual goals, or your promotion. Know for yourself what lies ahead, but those who are not worthy do not need to know, until the time is right. Everything you have seen and heard today are classified strictly to yourself and me, and your salary raise will be paid from a different source."

He gave me a military salute. "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!"

"Ah… and that includes Coil, Major Heroux. You should be aware that he is merely a puppet of mine, unaware of our true aims. Should I desire to speak with you as my true self, I will call you by your new rank, or wield this symbol of my power," I said, raising Agate again.

"Understood."

"Sir," Captain Reynolds stood at attention in front of me uniformed and unarmed.

I clicked a part of the desktop wallpaper and the door to the room locked with a click.

"At ease, Captain. You are one of my most trusted…"

O O O

Volition 3.3

Volition 3.3

'Wake up, wake up!'

Agate's voice blared in my mind, and I forced myself up.

"Ugh…" I groaned and sat up from the couch.

I was now paying the price for two nights of barely any sleep. I checked the time and it was almost 11.

'Do you remember what happened in the dreams?' Agate asked me.

I went to the washroom and did my morning routine while trying to remember.

'Somewhat… not very clearly but I think I got the big pieces.'

A while back I told Agate to try and stop listening in on all my thoughts, as it wasn't really fair that I couldn't listen in on hers. The problem was that I didn't have prana of my own to send to her, so the things that I could perceive from her end were very limited, and she had to actively send me her senses, thoughts, and such. While I felt that I could trust Agate, more than anyone or anything else anyway, it was a fact of life that everybody needed a semblance of privacy at times as well. It would also be a debilitating weakness if we got used to "thinking together", and then met an enemy that could somehow block the psychic exchange.

She was reluctant about it, but agreed that it wasn't really fair. Over time the mental bond between us had become better and better, so now I had a sense of when she was listening and when she wasn't, and the fluidity of switching between broadcasting thoughts to her or just thinking to myself was also improving.

Last night after I left Coil's base and returned to the apartment, I sent Agate out to find the Palanquin, the nightclub that Faultline's Crew uses as a front and headquarters.

Part of it was to see what, if anything, Faultline was up to, but the bigger reason was Labyrinth.

It had slipped my mind last week that Labyrinth had an overtly dimensional power that was easily in reach and observable.

I was only reminded of this when Coil had contacted Faultline's Crew, and I started thinking about their members' capabilities and how I might have to deal with them when they came after me. Had I remembered this sooner, I would have sent Agate to find her shortly after she came back from the Simurgh portal from Madison.

Simultaneously, as our mental attunement had gotten better, and Agate started to properly understand human perception, we tested a new way to use our shared senses.

While I was asleep, Agate attempted to send signals of her observations and thoughts into my mind through the dream process.

It wasn't entirely successful, but nor was it a total failure. She hadn't been able to simply replace my dream with her senses, but I got impressions of what she had been doing, flashes of the visuals, and most of her thoughts at the time. But because I was dreaming, it wasn't as clear as my conscious memories, and I would have to spend some time sorting them out.

'You found them, and they were just asleep, except Labyrinth. I couldn't tell if she was asleep or just like that normally. Her power was still very active.'

'That's great! You remembered! And I learned a lot from watching her.'

Labyrinth had the power to reach into other realities and pull objects "closer" to this reality. What she did was very strange, things that she pulled over weren't necessarily here or there but somewhere in between. She could choose whether to pull them close enough to be solid and interact with objects in this reality, or leave them visible but untouchable.

It was somewhat similar to how Agate phased out of sync with this reality.

At first, it had taken a while to figure just how to scan and analyze what Labyrinth was doing, but after a while, when Agate combined what she learned from portal-making, she successfully developed a new sensor program for it.

The space that she worked with was closely related to the space that Agate phased into, but not quite the same. It was a sort of different layer that connected all of the different parallel realities of the Worm multiverse. Agate's phase space was outside of that, between that layer and the even more "outside" Kaleidospace-also known as the Blind Eternities.

This was getting somewhat confusing, so new terminology was in order.

The layer that Agate phased into would now be called pseudokaleidospace-pseudoKspace for short, while the layer that Labyrinth worked with would be called Wormvoid.

I decided to call it Wormvoid because it was not yet clear if such a similar space existed in other non-Worm reality clusters.

'I think pseudoKspace should be renamed agatespace.'

'You can call it Agatespace if you want.'

'But there's a real reason for it! I'm not just naming it after myself.'

'And why is that?'

'Onyx crystals have parallel bands and agate crystals have curved bands, representing parallel and alternate reality manipulation. It's part of the incantation from our contract ritual. What you're calling pseudoKspace is the semi-physical layer than connects reality clusters to the Kaleidospace. Since it's part of the pathway to alternate realities, we can call it agatespace.'

'Oh, that's pretty interesting. So then should we call Wormvoid Onyxspace instead?'

'No that's different. Wormvoid isn't actually between parallel realities, at least not in the way Master Zelretch defines it. It would be more accurate to say that Wormvoid is a sublayer of agatespace, because it also links alternate realities in a sense, but it's a space without the Primordial Chaos energy, which is why people and things can freely move through it. These alternate realities exist in a structure that's unique to this sector of Kaleidospace, as far as I know. Your Earth world and the world I came don't have any stable alternate realities.'

'What? I don't understand, what does parallel reality for the Fate universe mean then?

'When we manipulate parallel realities, what we're really doing is manipulating world lines. There are an infinite number of branching world lines, but there are also major convergence points that world lines gravitate towards, and the superposition of all world lines is the true reality. The individual branching world lines aren't true permanent realities in and of themselves. You might understand them as quantum probabilities, but it's a little more complex than that. These parallel realities can't exist independently of each other, nor can anything physically travel between them. The Second Magic and anything that exists outside of space-time are exceptions to that rule, but there are limits to those too. The structure of the world lines is what I would call onxyspace, but that's a conceptual rather than a physical space.'

It took me a long moment to process all of that. Was that really how things worked in the Fate franchise I read? There was no way to tell, really, unless I went back to my Earth and found the authors. But so what if it wasn't? I had already expected that some things might be different.

'Okay, agatespace and Wormvoid it is then. So what is this Primordial Chaos you mentioned?'

Since this had turned into a lecture, and I had some free time now that the big threat of Coil had been neutralized, I might as well learn more about the whole thing.

'Well, you know that the Root is the source of all creation and the record of all things. But the truth is, Master Zelretch realized that the Root that we knew of in our universe wasn't the True Root. Even if we touched it, it was being filtered through something else, which we don't fully understand yet. The filter is different for every universe. But we think that the filter is related to the combination of the Primordial Chaos energy in the Kaleidospace, and the Creation Mystery that orders the Chaos into stable realities. Primordial Chaos is the reason that things get destroyed in Kaleidospace, and also the reason that living things die in agatespace. Agatespace is a kind of thin membrane that filters out the Primordial Chaos from disrupting the realities we can exist in.'

'I see… then if the barrier blocking our exit is in Kaleidospace, that's pretty much the worst scenario, isn't it? It's powerful enough to withstand Primordial Chaos for such a long time.'

'Actually, I got an idea about that last night! It might be easier to get around than if it was in Wormvoid or agatespace. We may not be able to break through it directly, but it's possible that the barrier isn't very big, so we can just go around it. This reality cluster is huge, and the energy it would take to block off all of it would be ludicrously massive. From what we know about the Cycle and the limits on shard powers beyond the moon, it's possible that Scion only blocked off a small section of real space and Wormvoid. If he thinks we can't go very far in real space anyway, and he's already blocked off most of the local Wormvoid for the Cycle, he only needs a barrier in Kaleidospace big enough to cover the part he wants isolated for the Cycle. That means we might be able to get escape if we travelled beyond the moon, or if we found a way to break through the Wormvoid barriers.'

'That's genius! I hope he hasn't put up a barrier in real space too, then. If he hasn't… then all we have to is find a way to get into space. We'd have to get through the Simurgh somehow, but at least there's a direction to work towards now. Can you just make a portal to beyond the moon?'

'Sorry, I can't! Those portals use Wormvoid warping, and we can't go that far in real space through Wormvoid. The limit is approximately the distance to the moon. That's probably why the shard powers stop working at the moon, they all use Wormvoid in some way to channel their powers.'

Damn, of course it wouldn't be that easy.

'Alright, we'll think up some ways to get into space later. Anything else important you learned?'

'Labyrinth pulls things through Wormvoid from other realities. I'm not sure how she's shifting them into Wormvoid from real space, But if I could observe it from the other end, where the objects leave real space, I think I could then figure out how we can move into Wormvoid ourselves.'

'What about the opposite? What if you tracked where the objects came from, then open a portal to that reality, head through, and wait for Labyrinth to release the object eventually on that side?'

'That could work… but it will take a lot more observation of Labyrinth. I have to figure out how to calculate the relative position of realities in Wormvoid first. So far my portals just use Waypoint beacons without any calculations.'

In the end I decided that while gaining Wormvoid phasing as an ability would be extremely useful, there were other priorities for Agate in the short term and I might need her with me to protect myself, so I didn't send her to continue observing Labyrinth during the day time.

When I exited the washroom, I noticed that Amelia wasn't home. I texted her and found out that she went to the warehouse base, so I made breakfast for myself and went over as well.

Volition 3.4

Volition 3.4

It was an innocent text. I knew that, but having undertaken so many risky ventures, I couldn't let my guard down. If she really wanted to do anything to me, she could have done so when I was asleep, I knew. But maybe she was snooping around, trying to find evidence that all was not as it seemed with me, maybe she wanted to prepare something bigger to take me out, or maybe she just plainly went crazy. You never knew with shard influence.

I sent Agate to spy on her at the warehouse first.

She was manipulating the growth of several organisms. One was a large brown thing bigger than a human, that looked a bit like a tree but without any branches. No, that wasn't accurate. If I looked closely, it kind of did resemble a human in some ways, like a person that'd been absorbed into it. Creepy. The others were smaller, wiggling things that were shifting constantly and mixed with puddles of goo.

I put on a big coat and hid a pistol, a small rifle with a laser attachment I acquired from Coil's base, and my trusty flamethrower. Then I called back Agate and attached a sharp knife to her.

I went over to the warehouse prepared for the worst, and assuming the best.

I entered with a pleasant smile.

"Hey, Amelia. What are you working on?" I asked curiously.

"You know how Taylor's costume is made of spider silk? It's really strong. Probably bullet proof, even. I asked her about it, and she said she made it by commanding spiders to weave it over her body. We don't have any brute powers so a costume like that would be really useful. But it will take her a week to make a new costume for either of us, so I thought I might try to make something myself."

I looked at the brown tree-human thing and fought off a grimace.

"Is that cellulose you're trying to make?"

"Yeah. This is stronger than spider silk, and also much easier to make."

"Really? Why's it easier to make?"

"Cellulose is produced naturally in plants. There's more cellulose than any other material in the biosphere. But it's not as strong in nature because the nanofibres aren't aligned perfectly, but I can use my power to make them grow the way I want."

I tentatively reached out a hand to touch the organic material, and Amelia nodded her permission.

"So how strong is this?"

"I don't have anything to test for precise numbers, but I'd guess it's about ten times stronger than spider silk."

"Ten times stronger?" I asked with incredulity. "Cellulose can be that strong?" I had researched the strength of spider silk compared to Kevlar to better understand Taylor's capabilities, and ten times would be stronger than graphene.

"Well, it's not just cellulose, I can make properly aligned cellulose in just a few minutes. So I've been experimenting with mixing other things into it."

I looked at the puddles of goo and the smaller organisms. So that was what they were, not processed human flesh. I sent Agate back to drop the knife.

I watched for a while longer, I decided to her ask about one of the things I really hoped she could make.

"Are you able to make living power armour? Like a symbiotic organism covering our bodies that both enhances, protects, and heals us?"

"Probably. But that's a lot harder. If it was easy I'd have just done that instead."

"You were able to make a counter to Bonesaw's mass killer plague in just a few seconds in a future I saw. I'm sure you can do it."

"It's not the same though. Plagues happen naturally, Bonesaw probably just made a mutation. I could also make a plague like that in seconds. Living symbiotic creatures like what you're thinking of are orders of magnitude more complex and there's no natural template to work off of."

"I see… by the way, you know what you're doing looks really creepy without any context? That thing looks like it absorbed a human body."

"Huh… you're right. Fuck, what is wrong with me?"

"Hey I'm not saying it's bad. I'm glad you're making armour for us, the process just looks creepy. I am okay with this. Really. But you should give Taylor a heads up when she comes by."

"Alright."

As she continued to experiment, I went on PHO. Looking at the responses to my post yesterday, there was nothing in particular that stood out to me. Some people were very excited about a new hero team, others were suspicious about our video that failed to show the details of how exactly we defeated Lung and Oni Lee. Some even flamed me for using overly aggressive language in my post and stirring up trouble.

When time for lunch came around, I brought Amelia to a private room in a luxurious restaurant. We were disguised, of course. As a matter of habit, I checked the room for potential bugs and cameras, and Agate scanned it for electronic activity to be sure.

She gave me suspicious looks all the way until we sat down. "I didn't think you were the type to spend on luxury as soon as you got a little bit of money. Is this why you tried to convince me to charge for healing?"

"You really think so lowly of me?" I frowned. "I'm not a stranger to wealth. When I arrived on Earth Bet, I lost all of it, but you saw what conditions I was living in over the past week. I don't splurge meaninglessly."

"Well, what else am I supposed to make of this?" She gestured to the extravagant meal and room. "Besides, you never told me what you did before last week. All I know is that you fell off a tree and had to come to me for free healing."

"I was a self-made, very wealthy businessman, despite my youth. I am very good at managing resources, rest assured. Anyways, I brought you here for a reason. I have very good news and thought we should celebrate a little."

"Good news? Does this have to do with how late you were up last night?"

"That's right. I tracked Coil to his base last night and used my powers to spy on him. Then I got some of his passwords and hacked him, stealing $30 million in the process."

"You… what? $30 million?" I smirked at her dumbstruck face.

"I think that's worth a small celebration, don't you? And we should celebrate with Taylor tonight after school too."

"This isn't a joke, is it?"

"Not at all." I took out my phone and accessed one of the many accounts I opened, then showed her the balance which was in excess of two million.

"This is just one of the accounts I transferred the money to. I'll be heading to the bank to grab our new debit and credit cards this afternoon. Everything was set up through the Number Man, so it's safe."

She was still staring at the number shown on my screen silently.

"There is some bad news too though," I said.

She turned her attention back to me as soon as she heard my say bad news.

"Coil hired Faultline's Crew to investigate us, and specifically asked her to find out our civilian identities. Faultline agreed."

"That's against the rules!"

"Coil doesn't play by the rules. And now we know, neither does Faultline," I said with a dark look. "We can't hold back against that kind of enemy."

"But why would he want our civilian identities? Do you think he suspects who I am?" She asked worriedly.

"Yes. I spied on him discussing it with Tattletale as well. She is confident that Araliac is Panacea."

"Shit!"

"Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal if they know. It was going to be revealed sooner or later, and what really matters is that the PRT doesn't treat you as having turned villain by leaving New Wave - which they won't now, because you joined another hero team with a major public accomplishment."

That was when the waitress started bringing food in, so the conversation paused for a bit as we started eating.

After a while, she spoke up again. "Coil was able to target Taylor's dad, right? That means he probably knows her identity already. What about you? Do you have any family he might target?"

"Worried about me? Don't be. I don't have any family or anyone else close to me. Remember, I don't even have a real civilian identity, seeing as I'm not originally from this plane of existence."

"You keep saying that… what does that mean? Why can't you tell me?"

"I have something I want to show you this afternoon. I'll tell you a little more about it then."

After lunch, we went back to the warehouse base. Then I held out my hand, and Agate phased into existence with colorful lights. Without waiting for Amelia to respond, I opened a portal to the other world, which I decided to call Earth M.

I suggested to Amelia to check her GPS signal to verify that it was a different world, but to my surprise, she said, "I can already tell by the different strains of bacteria in the air, there are some that simply don't exist on Earth Bet."

"I haven't been able to find any human settlements on this world yet," I said after bringing her to the edge of a vast forest using another portal back to the warehouse and then a second portal here.

"That means all this biomass is available for you to use freely."

She went up to a tree and touched her hand to the trunk. "Amazing… this species…"

"I told you before that I come from different plane of existence entirely. Not like the parallel worlds the Entities can access. This is another of the parallel worlds, similar to Earth Aleph. I was experimenting with this yesterday and figured out how to open these portals. Over time, I will develop even more abilities, because my powers don't come from the same source as parahumans."

She turned back to me. "Rather than coming from a different plane of existence, how I do know you didn't just get some of Professor Haywire's stuff?"

"I don't actually have any way to prove it to you, which is why I didn't want to talk about this before. You can use your ability to check for lies on me again if you want, but does it really make any difference? I can't prove that I'm not just delusional, or from a parallel world that I thought was a different plane of existence. It's like that for the things I know too, isn't it? There are always other possible explanations for why I have powers and apparent precognition without a Corona Pollentia. I could be an Endbringer in human form, a human-based projection by a cape who does have a Corona, or I could have been told these things and given some Tinkertech by other capes who tricked me into believing that I'm from a different plane."

Her eyes assessed me, looking as if she wanted to believe me. "I'm still not sure I can believe you, and there's still not a lot of proof about the whole Scion will kill everyone thing. But you have been right about a lot of other things and I do believe that you believe what you're saying. I can't honestly say it's impossible either… so why did you come here, if you're from another plane?"

I gave her an appreciative smile.

"The parallel worlds like Aleph, and this world, Earth M, all exist within the same reality cluster, which we can also call a plane of existence. All of these worlds share the same set of physical laws, but there are other planes even beyond them, with different laws. I come from one of those planes. On my plane, there were some records of events that happened, or would happen, on some other planes. I had read some of the records about this plane we're in now, which is where my special knowledge comes from. However, at the time, it was little more than entertainment and curiosity. Travelling to or from other planes wasn't supposed to be possible, and nobody knew if those records were even real. But one day, two individuals with godlike powers arrived on my plane, and everything changed."

"That sounds an awful lot like what happened to us with Scion. Did your plane also have Entities?"

"No, they were different. These two were travellers from other planes, not other realities within the same plane. They also didn't come from the same plane, but two different ones. One of them was just exploring, having just discovered how to travel between planes. The other one had followed the first one, and was an old being that had been able to travel the planes for a long time, and did not like that other beings not of his race could travel the planes, so he attacked the first one. I was caught up in the middle of their battle and the second traveller tried to kill me just for seeing him. The first traveller was more reasonable… he gave me the ability to travel planes myself in order to help me escape."

I turned around and looked at the sky in melancholy.

"To survive, I was forced to leave everything behind and travel to a random other plane, then I found myself in Brockton Bay. When I arrived, I discovered that something had blocked off the way out, so I couldn't leave anymore. I was in a foreign world, penniless, injured, and alone, with nothing but a bit of special knowledge, which might not have been reliable, about the past and future."

There was a moment of silence, and then Amelia walked up to stand beside me.

"Kaleidus, tell me honestly. Do you actually want to save the world? Or do you just want to go back home, to your own plane?"

I looked down and sighed. I didn't answer for a few seconds. "That second traveller… before I escaped, he summoned a legion of monsters to attack my plane. It wouldn't be safe to go back, even if I could. For all I know, everyone on my world might be dead or enslaved by now. I can't say that I'm looking forward to fighting Scion. I don't see it as my obligation, really… I'm stuck here right now and don't have a choice, but if I found a way to escape the barrier, I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to leave for another, less fucked up plane. I mean, if I told the right people the method to defeat Scion, isn't that already enough? I have no family and friends here to fight for. I was just a civilian back on my plane, and this isn't supposed to be my fight."

I clenched my fists and trembled. "Heck, even if we won against Scion, how do I know everyone won't just turn against me because I'm from another plane? How could they know that I'm not just an alien hiding in a human body, just as bad as Scion? The future I know where humanity won against Scion, the person who saved the world, she was just a lonely eighteen year old girl, she sacrificed everything she had and still… after the fight, the people she saved betrayed her. They thought she became too powerful, too dangerous. They took away her powers, shot her in the head, and threw her body in the middle of nowhere in an empty world. Is that the fate that awaits us at the end of this road? I don't know if I can be that selfless, fighting for a world that will only fear and hate me," I finished my rant bitterly, not looking at her.

But through Agate, I saw that she was appropriately shocked and was watching me with a look of pity.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, in a quiet voice, after it was clear my rant was over.

I turned to face her. "You of all people shouldn't be sorry, Amelia. Do you know what the first thing I did was once I knew that I was in Brockton Bay?"

"What?"

"I looked for Panacea. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found you. Even though I was a stranger to you, you weren't a stranger to me. You were like a bastion of hope when I felt as though the ground was falling away. You were proof that the things I knew weren't entirely useless, and that with that knowledge, I might survive even though I was essentially still unpowered at that time. I know it must feel like an invasion of your privacy, but it was like a lifeline to me."

"But… why? Why me? Was it just because you needed healing?"

"No. I obviously couldn't go to any of the villain gangs. The PRT is dangerous and corrupt, and they also have protocols for dealing with interdimensional travelers that wouldn't be good for my health. Although I knew of Skitter too, she doesn't trust anyone, and certainly wouldn't have teamed up with me if you hadn't been there when we met her and revealed yourself as Panacea. You were the best, and really, the only choice, the only person who would help me and who I could trust with the knowledge of what lies ahead. I didn't expect things to turn out so badly with the Dallons, but I knew that you would be willing to help me eventually once you heard my story, despite all your own personal troubles. And I was right. So thank you," I finished with a smile.

She looked away and then to the ground. "You helped me too, Kaleidus. These past few days away from Carol haven't been so bad. Even though I can't see Vicky anymore, I feel… freer. And now that there's someone who I can talk to who knows about my secret… it's like a huge weight off my shoulders."

"I'm glad, then."

We spent a few more minutes simply standing there in amicable silence.

"There is one more thing I want to show you. Come."

Last edited: Mar 20, 2019

Volition 3.5

Volition 3.5

I led Amelia to the cave where I was keeping Coil prisoner. I had thought long and hard about what to do, and in the end I decided that there was no way to keep this a secret for long, if I wanted to take over Coil's organization without making the girls suspicious of me.

I had already told them about Calvert being Coil, and about his power, after all. As long as I kept Coil prisoner, Thomas Calvert would be missing, and the PRT would have records of it. Even if I orchestrated a plan to capture a "Coil", using his body double, the lack of a Corona Pollentia would easily give him away.

The biggest problem was that the mere act of successfully taking over Coil's organization would be suspicious, if the girls believed that the real Coil was still missing or at large.

My mysterious past was already suspicious enough, and without further evidence that Calvert was in fact Coil, the girls might start wondering if I had been Coil the whole time.

Taylor might even use her bugs to track my movements if she thought something was up. That would make things very difficult for me. If I let Amelia make relay bugs for her, I would never be able to do anything without her notice.

I brought Amelia in front of the crate that was Coil's cage, and opened it, revealing the unconscious body of Calvert.

"What the…? A body?" Amelia took a step back in alarm.

"Calm down, he's alive, just unconscious. This man is Coil, also known as Thomas Calvert. Yesterday when I was spying on him, I deduced that he was at his base in both of his timelines, and I had just developed my portal ability, allowing me to strike directly at him when he was vulnerable. The chance was too good to pass up, so I took it," I said.

"Are you sure this is Coil? Sorry, I'm not doubting you. It's just… this is too sudden. Where is his costume?" Amelia asked.

I grabbed a box from nearby and opened it to reveal Coil's costume, which I had neatly folded.

"After I captured him last night, I used his costume to pretend to be Coil, allowing me to start subverting some of his subordinates, who never knew who the man behind the mask was. As for checking whether he's really Coil… why don't we wake him up and ask? You can detect whether he's lying or not."

And so I moved Coil out of the crate and removed his gag, but keeping his blindfold and restraints on.

I equipped an electronic voice changer before beginning the interrogation.

Amelia touched his skin, and he woke up with a jolt.

"Hello, human," I said in a warped voice.

"Hello, who am I speaking-"

I ignored him and continued. "I will toss coin. You tell heads or tails. Answer wrong, die, understand?"

Then I tossed a coin as I said, and it landed on heads.

"Wait-surely it isn't necessary to test my luck? I am willing to cooperate with you."

"Answer correctly, you cooperate. Wrong, then not right human, worthless. Heads or tails? Answer, three seconds or die," I said, touching a pistol to his forehead. "Three-"

"Heads!" He answered, with a hint of panic now.

"Correct. Now I toss again."

I tossed it, and again the coin landed on heads.

"Heads," he said.

"Correct. Again."

"Tails."

"Correct, again."

"Heads."

"Correct, again!"

"Tails."

"Good. Pass, you have," I declared, and gave a meaningful glance to Amelia, who nodded. The point of this test was twofold. His power would allow him to guess both heads and tails at the same time, so it would prove that he was Coil, with the timeline splitting power. Additionally, it would force him to close off any other timelines he had going, and get stuck in this one.

Based on my original plan when capturing him, I should have captured him in both of his timelines, and he might not have shut either of them off, since neither was a safe timeline. From his perspective, if I suddenly woke him up in this timeline, but didn't wake him up in the other one, it would make sense to keep both timelines open as long as possible, to get information about me during the interrogation in this timeline that he could then close and use to deal with me in the other timeline.

"If you are satisfied, may I know who I am speaking with?" Coil asked coolly.

I removed the gun from his head.

"I am Erkshminialhhathrr, the Light-Eclipsing-Nova-Vividly-Echoes, in your tongue. Questions, I have many," I said. "Answer, and live."

"If you would remove my restraints, I would be happy to speak with you and answer your questions in a civilized discussion."

"Volshmhaar!" I yelled and punched him. "You eat civilization me? We eat stars' feces for ten thousand years! You cannot eat monkeys!"

Amelia stifled a choke, and looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

I winked back at her and put a finger to my mouth.

"I'm… sorry? There must be a misunderstanding, I mean no insult," Coil said, after recovering from being punched.

"Abggddarshha? Mnuoklklafshm gu mnuotenaiarongg. You, wait," I said, then walked away for a bit, and came back after half a minute.

"Damn translator. It is fixed now. I have questions for you, human," I said.

"Ah, as I was saying, if you would remove my restraints, I would be happy to answer your questions in a civilized manner," Coil repeated himself.

"No. You will answer my questions or die. We have noticed that you have sent agents to monitor the human child known as Dinah Alcott. What is your intention towards her?"

"Dinah? I believe she has the power to see the future. I am interested in her power," he answered honestly. I expected him to try lying first… but I suppose he must be using his power right now and lied in the other timeline.

"You answer truthfully, but not completely. What do you intend to do with her?"

"Ah, I do have some plans for her, but they are not certain yet-" Coil started, then I punched him again.

"Do not stall! I know you are using the parasitic crystalloid's ability to try different answers. It will not work."

"My apologies. I had been planning to persuade Dinah to join my cause," he said.

"And how would you have persuaded her?" I pressed.

He was silent for a moment. "Do you have some special interest in her? I can agree to stay away from her."

I put the gun back to his head. "Answer the question! How would you have persuaded her?"

"I would have given her drugs," he finally revealed.

I glanced at Amelia, whose face had darkened ominously upon hearing Coil's answer.

"Pathetic human!" I boomed. "So you would have imprisoned and forced her to become addicted to drugs, using her addiction to make her do your bidding! You wanted to enslave her? Foolish! Volshhar! She is the future vessel of Heaven-Touching-Shadow-Winged-Divine! The crystalloid parasites do not have the power to see the future, only the Chosen of the Star Spirits! She shall be a part of the Great Journey, not your human quibbles! Repent in darkness while the High Priests decide what to do with you!" I ranted like a fanatic, then gave Amelia a signal.

Coil fall back unconscious, and we stuffed him back into the crate.

"There you have it. Despicable, isn't he? There's no line too low for him to sink to," I said.

Amelia continued staring at the crate we were keeping Coil in. "Yeah…"

"You know, his power is pretty damn useful. Think we should give him a taste of his own medicine, make him work for us? With your powers, it shouldn't be too hard to brainwash him," I said nonchalantly.

"W-what the fuck! I'm not going to brainwash anyone!"

"Well, we can't release him or send him to the PRT, either. He's too dangerous for that. Seems like a bit of a waste to just kill him," I said with a grin.

"That's not funny, Kaleidus! I'm seriously not going to brainwash anyone. It's just wrong," she protested.

"Even if he would have been willing to brainwash people?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "Is it so bad to turn a force of evil into a force of good? We don't necessarily even need to alter his brain directly, if you're still uptight about that rule. He can be conditioned and re-educated slowly, or we can make a kill-switch of sorts."

"Ugh, stop, you're creeping me out now! No brainwashing!" She blocked off her ears and stormed off.

I laughed loudly as she ran off.

I knew she wouldn't be willing to do it, but it was worth a shot. There were still other methods I could try to make Coil my slave.

Last edited: Mar 21, 2019

Volition 3.6

Volition 3.6

After that, we went back to the warehouse but she gave me the silent treatment. She continued working on our new armoured costumes while ignoring me.

"Don't be like that Amelia, it was just a joke."

"I know," she said.

"Then why the long face?"

She didn't answer me.

I left the warehouse and bought some ice cream.

When I got back she was sitting down despondently on a crate, not doing anything.

I put an ice cream cone in front of her. "Here, have some of this. You'll feel better."

She glanced at the cone, then gave me an insulted look. "I'm not a little kid!"

"I know," I said, in a mirror of her words and tone to me.

She turned her head away.

I kept the ice cream cone where it is, in front of her, and started eating my own cone. "Haven't had one of these in a long time. It's really good."

After a while, I finished my cone. "I guess I'll have another one then," I said, and retracted the cone I had in front of her, bringing it towards my own mouth.

Her stood up with her hand swept out and grabbed the cone as she gave me a fierce glare. I let go and she started eating the ice cream.

"Listen, I won't ever make you use your powers on the brain if you really don't want to. But working on brains is very dangerous if you don't get any practice. If an enemy Master brainwashes one of us, I would hope you could undo it. I don't want to see you fall apart because you made a mistake at a critical moment."

"You're… not afraid that I'll do more than just undo it? Change a little extra while I fix you?"

"I've known you could affect the brain all this time and still let you heal me," I said, looking at her seriously.

"Why do you trust me so much?"

I watched her pained expression with bits of ice cream surrounding her lips, and considered what to say. Her reaction to my joke about brainwashing Coil seemed to be going in a different direction than I initially expected. I thought she might be suspicious and angry that I might want her to do something reprehensible, sulking that I wasn't who she thought I was.

"You've been nothing but good to me, so why shouldn't I trust you? Besides, like I said, I sought you out specifically because I knew what kind of person you are."

"But I'm not a good person, not really. I'm not sure I really would have helped you if I'd had a choice, if things didn't blow up at home. I stopped caring about the injured and sick a long time ago. Healing was just a chore, something I made myself do because people wouldn't understand if I stopped. I'm-I'm heartless, aren't I? I'm so fucked up."

"You're good enough for me."

"But… ! Why? I just… don't understand!"

But in reality, she wasn't really upset over the wrongness of brainwashing somebody, of destroying a person's personality or changing someone's personhood.

She was upset that she didn't care more about it.

She was afraid of being unable to stop herself from doing much more, once she started, unable to resist doing the things she secretly wanted to do, deep down.

Just like that creepy tree-human thing that she used to make new costumes, it didn't bother her at all, to the point where she didn't even notice it.

And mixed with all of that self-hate was a fear of losing the one person she still had to keep the loneliness at bay. Me.

"You still don't get it?" I said in a soft voice. "I've seen how bad things can get. I've seen what sorts of terrible things you can do when you lose control. I've seen you at your absolute lowest point, when your worst fears came true. When you used your powers on Vicky."

Her face went white.

"When, in a moment of weakness, after Bonesaw paid you a visit and forced you to break all of your rules, you were desperate and alone and you just wanted to disappear, but Vicky didn't let you. When you let yourself just one little indulgence before the end, and made her love you the way you love her."

She flinched. The unfinished ice cream cone fell out of her hands, hitting the ground with a splat.

She protested weakly. "I-I w-wouldn't do that!"

"You wouldn't. You wanted to fix it right away, only she didn't let you. She was afraid that you'd mess up her mind even more and ran away."

"Stop! I don't want to hear this!" She shut her eyes and covered her eyes.

I moved closer and loomed over her trembling self.

"Then, she was catastrophically injured. You saved her life, but there was so much damage, you needed more time and new biomass to fix her. You fixed her body, but not her mind because you knew she'd fight you if you fixed her mind first. It was done and you were ready to say goodbye. But you wanted to see her smile again. To have someone hug you before you left forever. Victoria wouldn't remember, it was just a way for you to get closure."

"N-no, don't say anymore, please!" She stumbled backwards, then hit the crate behind her, and fell down. The crate, being empty, was pushed back while she hit the ground.

"You wanted her to be happy. You could tweak, adjust, change things to make her better. You had all this leftover material to use, from the healing cocoon you made for her. So you start making her better. When you're done, you start undoing everything, all of the physical and mental changes. But you're so tired, so scared, so lonely, you need take a break first."

I could hear her beginning to hyperventilate as I surreptitiously switched my words to the present tense.

"You change more things. More things you have to fix. Days pass. She's a giant mess of spilling flesh and twisting curves now."

She curled up into a ball and made a strangled cry.

"You lose track. You don't remember what she was supposed to look like. You can't change her back."

I fell silent, observing her sniffling and crying. It occurred to me that if I wanted to, I had the means to break her completely. More so than Jack Slash and Bonesaw even, because they were known monsters and I was somebody she trusted.

The past few days she had been going with the flow, but she had already been teetering on the precipice the moment she decided to break her rules and run away. I was her last hope, someone that could tell her what to do so that she didn't have to think about it and drown in all her self-hatred and guilt.

But I wasn't Jack Slash. Unlike that madman who simply wanted sadistic entertainment, I had goals.

I bent down and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her head to my chest.

"Don't touch me!" She struggled against me, but I was fully clothed and carefully avoided letting her touch my exposed face.

"It's not your fault," I said in a soothing voice. She continued struggling, and I pushed on.

"It was Vicky's aura and your shard sabotaging you!" I said in a strong voice.

She stopped struggling. "W-what?' She asked in a quiet whisper.

"Don't you see? It was never your fault. Vicky's aura was pressuring you for years. Then, at your lowest point, your shard took advantage! It took away your ability to fix her! It took control of you, and made you change Vicky into an echo of the Entity that died! It wasn't your fault! It was Vicky's aura and your shard that was at fault, even if the deed was done by your hand! There's a monster hiding inside of you, giving you dark thoughts pretending to be your own, and you've been holding it back all this time!"

Her eyes finally found mine and I saw the horror etched in them.

"But it hasn't happened yet. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm here now and I won't let you fall apart like that again!"

There was a glimmer of hope in her expression again.

"So, don't worry. Don't blame yourself. Blame your shard. Blame Vicky's aura. You're already on a different path. You're in control of yourself now."

"But… what if…" She whispered, gripping tightly onto my coat instead of fighting me now.

"But nothing. You don't have to fight this alone. I'll be with you every step of way. I've already seen you at your worst and I'm still here. We're a team and we're in this together now. When you lose your way, I'll hold your hand and guide you. When you fall apart, I'll gather the pieces and put you back together. When you can't hold back the monster inside anymore, I'll bear the burden of your sins with you."

I grabbed her hand that was clutching at my coat with my own left hand, skin exposed.

She flinched and panicked, trying to pull away, but my grip was iron. "Look, you are in control Amelia Claire Lavere! You're on a different, better path now! You have escaped the chains binding you at the Dallons! You are the master of your own power now, not the other way around! You-"

I choked and fell forward, eyes bulging with a shocked look, and collapsed on top of her, twitching spastically.

"Kaleidus!"

"Oh god, oh god, what did I do? Kaleidus!" She shook my body and channeled her power into me. From her hands her power traveled into my nervous system, forcibly calming down the randomly firing signals.

A massive headache struck me as the feedback from the nerve signals wound back up into my brain. But my seizure didn't stop, instead it grew worse and I started foaming at the mouth.

"A-am I losing control? Why can't I fix this?" She said to herself in fearful, panicky tones.

I started hallucinating. A kaleidoscopic swirl in my mind-it shattered into a trillion reflective mirrors-the crack of thunder and fire burning through my veins-a white hot rod sinking into the base of my neck-my muscles contracted unnaturally and tore themselves, blood vessels popping everywhere, and my whole vision was red.

"This can't be happening!" Amelia cried with tears falling down her cheeks.

My heart constricted oddly and cells began dying en masse. My skin and bones cracked and blood exploded outwards like a fountain.

I heard a shrill scream before my body froze completely and I felt another white hot rod sinking into the base of my neck-

[-]

-saw Amelia holding my unmoving body in a cocoon.

It was a strange sensation, being disassociated from my body, and all of its sensations. I floated around as if being controlled by something else.

'Kaleidus, I can't do this anymore, you might actually die from this!' Agate thought in a painful tone to me.

I wanted to tell her that I had to be harder on myself than anybody else, but for some reason that wasn't working.

My thoughts felt sluggish, barely coherent even to myself. A white hot rod sank-

'Kaleidus! Oh no!' Agate's voice came into my mind one last time before an excruciating pain-

[-]

I gasped and opened my eyes.

"Oh thank god, Kaleidus!" Amelia's tearful and bloody face loomed over mine, the walls of the cocoon covering the rest of my vision.

"Amelia…" I said weakly. She buried herself into my neck and sobbed.

"I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay, Amelia, everything's fine. I'm fine now."

"No, it's not! I lost control and you almost died!" Her voice was muffled and distorted by sniffing.

I stroked her hair slowly. "But I'm fine now. I knew you would come through for me in the end. It's like I said, you're on a different, better path now. You've broken through and reclaimed control."

The distraught girl simply continued to cry on me.

'Kaleidus, please don't ever make me do that again!'

'Sorry, Agate. I'll try not to. That was pretty freaky even for me,' I thought back.

I had asked Agate to use her ability to send signals to my brain in an offensive way, instead of sending me her thoughts and senses to me, followed up by inappropriate Reinforcement. She couldn't use the actual Reinforcement spell, but I knew generally how it was supposed to work, in particular the part that adding too much prana to an object would destroy it.

Thus, I had her repeatedly attempt to "Reinforce" my body without the proper spellwork, resulting in my body destroying itself. My brain didn't get any "Reinforcement" of course, otherwise I might have just died right away without Amelia being able to save me.

Still, it was a very risky, potentially deadly, or even torturous, course of action. But to be a magus is to walk with death. If there was anything I wouldn't ever forget about the Fate universe, that had to be it.

I continued to whisper reassurances to Amelia for a long time, until eventually she lifted her head when her tears were dry. She looked at me with an expression that looked like total despair.

"I'm sorry," she said monotonously.

'Kaleidus!'

There was a kaleidoscopic swirl in my mind-it shattered into a trillion reflective mirrors-

-darkness came over me, my consciousness slipping away-

-the crack of thunder and fire burning through my veins-a white hot rod that was in the base of my neck lit up again-

-I woke up again and saw Amelia running for the door with her head hanging low.

-and we moved.

-Energy surged through me like an unstoppable torrent being forced through a single tiny straw-

I crossed the gap in what seemed like an instant, running with truly Reinforced legs and our combined prana racing through our new artificial magic circuit converted from nerves.

Our body was incomparably stronger-far too much to be the result of a shoddy Reinforcement.

We knew instinctually that this was Amelia's parting gift, making us superhuman before disappearing forever.

But how could we let her go?

Our arms closed in and wrapped around her from behind.

"Wha-"

"Did you forget what I told you already?" I spoke loudly with a hint of anger. "When you lose your way, I'll hold your hand and guide you. When you fall apart, I'll gather the pieces and put you back together. When you can't hold back the monster inside anymore, I'll bear the burden of your sins with you! You think you can just give up and decide to disappear on your own?"

"K-Kaleidus? How?" She said. I couldn't see her expression from behind her, but I knew it must have been shocked.

My voice kept rising. "People don't die when they're killed! They die when they lose their will to keep going! I promised that I would be with you every step of the way, do you think I'll let myself die that easily? You weren't the only one fighting to revive me back then! We were fighting together! That's why I came back! That's why I'll continue to come back whether you like it or not! Compared to death, how could a little sleep keep me down? If you want me to let go of you, then you'll have to kill me!"

After that, there was only the sound of our heavy breathing.

A few minutes later, she leaned back and sank into my hug.

"Sorry…"

"Stop apologizing already!" I replied in an annoyed tone.

"… then, thank you…."

"Are you going to try to run away again?"

"No," she said softly. I relaxed my grip on her and turned her around to face me.

"Why are you still crying, then?"

"I'm not!" She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

"Yes you are. I can still hear your sniffs," I said.

"That's 'cause… I'm… happy!"

O O O

Last edited: Mar 24, 2019

Volition 3.7

Volition 3.7

After Amelia was calmed down, I went to the bank to pick up our new cards, then I made arrangements to rent a higher quality apartment, and various equipment/furniture to set up a livable area on Earth M. I also acquired some fake-but legally legitimate-IDs and drivers' licenses.

In between, I thought about the situation with Amelia and what I had gained.

Thanks to Amelia's efforts at healing me, I had managed to successfully form a single artificial magic circuit without dying. So now I actually had access to prana, and could theoretically use some magecraft. This wasn't a feat I could simply repeat to gain more circuits however.

Magic Circuits were organs of the soul, and the physical expression of it in the body was merely temporary. Normal circuits could be activated at any time, but artificial ones involved a process of remaking the physical circuit each time. This conversion of nerves to circuits was a potentially fatal endeavour, and the character Shirou Emiya who used this method only survived because he had a powerful healing item that was still active when he first started. Amelia's healing substituted in my case.

However, the process would leave an imprint on the soul, making it easier each time afterwards, which is why I could do it now with some help from Agate somewhat safely.

But if I tried to add more circuits this way, my soul itself might start sustaining damage, and that would very bad, because Amelia couldn't heal that. I didn't think she could even perceive prana or the artificial circuit's physical expression either.

Self-reinforcement was the first spell I obtained. That was again thanks to Amelia's continuous healing which allowed Agate to experiment on my body until it worked. My reinforcement was very weak though, and currently gave me only about a ten percent boost.

Fortunately, my body itself had been substantially upgraded by Amelia, so that I was already several times stronger and faster than unpowered humans, so even a ten percent boost was nothing to scoff at. Even more important was that Reinforcement was a conceptual thing, not a mechanical thing. It made my body parts "better", and that included things like the regeneration factor Amelia had added to my body.

With this spell and my new ability to cast minor magecraft, there were many new things I could do, and I was eager to start learning, but it would have to wait a bit until I took care of some other things today.

Eventually Taylor contacted me in the late afternoon, and we all met at the warehouse.

"So these are the costumes you've been working on?" She asked. Amelia had already finished most of it, so it obviously looked like armour now instead of the easily misunderstood thing from before.

"It's all Amelia's work, I'm just watching," I said.

"Your spider silk costume is really high quality. I thought we should get something to match yours," Amelia said, smiling.

After that, Taylor asked some more questions about how Amelia was making the costumes, and decided to ask her to modify her own costume as well for the higher defensive quality of the materials Amelia made.

"So, what are we going to do today? Should we start planning patrol routes?" Taylor asked.

"First, I have some things I'd like to show you, and some very good news to tell you…" With a fluid motion, Agate was in my hand and I opened a portal to Earth M.

While Taylor was stunned at seeing the portal, I said, "This is an ability I developed yesterday. It lets me create portals to alternate worlds like Aleph, or this one, if I have a reference point for it. I've named the world on the other side Earth M."

Then I walked through and the girls followed.

"You just… develop abilities?" Taylor asked.

"Well, I told you before that my powers don't come from the shards. To be more precise, what I use is magic and when I develop new abilities it's really more like learning new spells," I asserted confidently.

I could see both Taylor about to protest, but I put up a hand to stop her.

"I know you think magic doesn't exist. It doesn't exist on this plane of existence. But I'm from outside of it, as I mentioned before. There are planes where magic is real. This here is a magic wand that channels my magical abilities," I said, raising up Agate for them to see.

"Isn't that just Tinkertech…?" Taylor muttered.

'I'm sorry I called her smart before! What an idiot!' Agate thought to me, offended at being called Tinkertech. 'Kaleidus, can I talk some sense into her? Please?'

'Sorry, but I'd rather keep your sentience a secret. Your ability to act on your own is a hidden ace I'd like to keep up my sleeve just in case. You know why. The more people that know about you, the higher the chance of the one card we have to play against that person failing.'

'Aww….'

'I'm pretty sure Amelia thought you were Tinkertech too though, why weren't you upset about it then?'

'Well, she didn't say it out loud! And what she did say aloud was kind of right. I did get some of Professor Haywire's stuff in a sense, even if indirectly, because I analyzed the portal the Simurgh opened using his tech.'

"Just ignore his delusions. He thinks he's a magical alien," Amelia said with a smirk.

"Oh come on, I was just messing around before, I'm serious about my powers being magic though. How else can I simply develop more abilities?" I said.

"Magical alien?" Taylor asked Amelia with curiosity in her eyes.

"I'll tell you later," said Amelia.

"Ahem. Anyways, the point is, by using another portal, I can go back to Earth M in a different spot, as long as I've set a marker there beforehand. I can do so remotely if I'm using sense projection. As you can probably imagine, there are many useful applications for this kind of long range transport ability," I said.

Taylor nodded. "Teleportation is a rare power on its own, but alternate universe portals are even rarer. Except for Professor Haywire, no other known capes can do it. At the very least, we would be able to go directly to the enemy when they're least expecting it, and retreat without a trace."

I smiled widely. "That's exactly it! Although my portals last for at least 21 minutes each, so it's not that useful for retreating yet, until I improve them further. This brings me to the next thing I wanted to show you."

With that, I brought them to Coil.

Then I explained how I spied on Coil and captured him, how I stole his money, found out about Faultline's Crew being hired, and finally how Amelia and I interrogated Coil, confirming that he intended to abduct and drug Dinah to use her powers.

Taylor gave several looks of shock and admiration as I explained it all. With Amelia already in the know, and having interrogated Coil about Dinah, it seemed that Taylor didn't suspect anything. This was the very reason I decided to interrogate him with Amelia without Taylor. I didn't want Taylor to impulsively ask Coil if he'd been the one to set Shadow Stalker on her dad.

Plus, I could also just claim that I found files in Coil's base confirming that he was the one who orchestrated it… the important thing was that Coil not be given the chance to claim innocence while Amelia was touching him.

Finally, at the end of it, Taylor asked, "What are we going to do with him?"

"He is too dangerous for us to hand over to the PRT. He is slippery enough that there's no hard proof of his having been Coil other than our word against his, and Armsmaster's lie detector wouldn't be accepted in court anyway. With his power being undetectable as well, and his connections in the PRT… handing him over would probably be the same as letting him go free." I said, but didn't elaborate further.

After a moment, when neither Amelia nor I said anything, Taylor spoke up again. "Should we…" she swallowed nervously, "… kill him?"

"He was going to drug and enslave an innocent child for her Thinker power. Killing him would be well justified, both for his crimes and for the threat he poses. But conversely, he is dangerous because he has an extremely powerful Thinker power himself that essentially allows him to erase unwanted outcomes and test whatever he wants with no consequences… if we could get access to it somehow or make him work for us… Although it would be risky to trust that he'd collapse the right timeline for anything critical, his power has some very useful applications in some situations that could be manageable," I said. "We just need a way to make him cooperate."

I saw Taylor's expression turn thoughtful. "The power to erase unwanted outcomes…" she murmured with a glint in her eyes.

Amelia noticed Taylor's look and glanced at me, but said nothing.

"What if we threatened him the way you did for his interrogation? When we need him to split the timeline, we don't tell him anything about what we're doing, except that we'll kill him in the timeline we don't want to keep." Taylor said.

"That's not a bad idea and we can certainly try it. Given the nature of his power, we would have to be committed to follow through on our threat through… which is why my interrogation earlier worked," I said.

They both looked at me with slightly widened eyes, as if just realizing that I must have actually killed Coil in any alternate timelines he tried during the interrogation.

"Regardless, before we decide what to do with him, I'd like to keep him alive for at least a while longer, at least until I finish taking over his resources. To do that I need to get some more information out of him." I said.

They both nodded with a sombre mood.

After that, we went to have a luxurious celebratory dinner. After chatting about some of the funnier PHO comments on my post yesterday, we discussed plans for the immediate future.

"We've accomplished a lot in a very short time, but that's mostly been good tactics and information advantage. The truth is, we're pretty weak right now compared to any of the other cape groups in the city," I said.

"We don't have any heavy hitters," said Taylor.

"That's right. We've had major tactical advantages that allowed us to choose when and how to fight against Lung, Oni Lee, and Coil, but if we start patrolling and fighting head to head against the villains on their terms, the odds are stacked against us."

The girls nodded at my analysis.

"Even with Coil defeated, Faultline isn't going to let us off that easily. Coil convinced her that we might be related to the conspiracy group and Case 53s. With Coil gone, she might be more cautious, but she'll definitely come for us at some point as she has a personal interest in that. The Undersiders won't be a threat anymore, but nor will I be able to replace Coil as their secret boss without Tattletale noticing something amiss. In the short term, our biggest challenges are Bakuda, and the E88."

"What about Canary?" Taylor asked.

"I have an idea I am working on in regards to that. I need to run a few more tests and investigate, but if things work the way I think they will, it could be much easier than I first thought. Just leave that to me for now."

"So, I get why the E88 is a big challenge with so many capes, but is Bakuda really that big of a threat by herself? As long as we keep our distance and know where she is, we can just use my bugs to knock her out with sedative without her noticing, just like with Shadow Stalker," said Taylor.

"You're not wrong. The problem comes if we go out on patrol, then she comes to us with bombs. We're pretty squishy, and even if we weren't, she has bombs that can fuck up Endbringers. This applies to most other villains too-like I said before, as long as we're in the shadows and pick our fights, we have a huge advantage, but as soon as we are out in the open trying to protect civilians, we have a problem."

"You don't want us to go out on patrol?" asked Amelia.

"I think I understand. Instead of passively patrolling, you want to us to attack the villains on our own terms," said Taylor. "But we're heroes, if civilians are in danger, we can't just sit by and do nothing."

"I agree. The solution to this is simple. If we're not strong enough, we need to power up until we are." I said with a devious smile. "And in the mean time, I can leverage Coil's resources to get us the information we need to go on the offensive."

After the dinner, I opened another portal for the girls to go to Earth M to train and experiment, with some suggestions I gave them on what to work on. The portal itself was made to last for five hours so they could come back to Bet at any time without my help.

As for myself, I portaled into Calvert's civilian residence and swept it for useful things. The PRT would probably comb it themselves after a few days once it was obvious that Calvert had gone missing, so I had to beat them to it.

Unfortunately my search didn't turn up anything particularly useful. It was a completely ordinary house, as far as I could tell, except for some PRT-issue weapons and armour. To confuse the PRT, however, I packed up and took many of his belongings to make it look like he left voluntarily, travelling somewhere.

After that, I continued the work of slowly taking over Coil's resources and learning about his organization. This time, I contacted Creep and followed all of the same procedures Coil took to enter his base.

O O O

Volition 3.8

Volition 3.8

Power. That was what it all came down to.

I knew that Amelia and Taylor would be a fearsome combination, but it would take time to persuade them to unlock their full potential.

I guessed that she had probably used her power on my brain directly for a bit during my little episode, but she still had to be eased-pressured-into doing more.

While they were off training, I was off to power up myself as well.

The first order of business was some more experimentation with Agate.

At night, Agate went to observe Labyrinth.

I also sent Faultline a message, cancelling the job from Coil. She was suspicious about it, and obviously wouldn't stop investigating, but it would at least delay her a bit, in case Coil had set a trap for her. She would have to wary about why Coil gave her the info on Polychromic, then immediately cancelled the job, as if baiting her.

On Wednesday morning, I was in Earth M as well, training with Agate.

Modifying her levitation and flight spells to include me, as long as I was touching her, was a fairly simple affair. We just didn't do it earlier because there we needed an open yet private space to develop it, and because last week it had been enough to just be able to grab onto her and let her drag me away in an emergency.

Now though, I would have more fine control, and it would be much safer, so we could go higher in the air.

I couldn't fly by myself though. This spell was a massive prana drain, and it got a lot worse with extra mass. I supposed that this was why normal Fate magi didn't generally fly from what I remembered, or if they did, they didn't levitate directly but instead would use something else like artificial wings. Agate simply had vast quantities of prana, so I could only rely on her for this. My single artificial circuit couldn't channel enough prana even if Agate shared her prana with me, so she had to be the one to cast.

Next was practicing the use of various light effects and projecting holograms. Using her mana offensively was not at all practical without a spell template, but she was capable of glittering, glowing, etc.

I had already used such a capability to make the act of opening portals more showy, and this was an extension of that. I wasn't being vain-there were many uses to this, and even the small act of grabbing onto Agate and shooting a beam of light to open a portal had the purpose of making people think we needed the movement to open portals, which we actually didn't. It was the same reason I put two fingers to my forehead when using my "sense projection" ability in front of Amelia and Taylor, back during the fight against Oni Lee.

We also tried to Reinforce other objects, which went decently well, and the two other basic spells of Structural Grasp and Gradation Air.

Gradation Air was a complete bust, but we had some success with Structural Grasp. Agate's various sensor programs did something fairly similar to Structural Grasp, which allowed the caster to touch an object to perceive a visualization of its internal structure, so she eventually created a massively dumbed down version for me to use that was functionally similar to the Structural Grasp I knew of, and I started practicing that.

I didn't know if my bootleg Reinforcement and Structural Grasp was actually how Fate magi cast those spells, but they would certainly come in handy in the future. They also had great synergy. The better one could perceive the structural "gaps" that needed reinforcement, the better the Reinforcement could be without destroying whatever was being reinforced.

After that came the very dangerous matter of attempting to bring organic matter into agatespace.

Phasing into agatespace was actually much powerful than Wormvoid, if we could do it, since other capes couldn't reach us there. In Wormvoid, some capes like Scrub might have been able to affect us still.

However, it was a failure. I had thought it wouldn't be tough, seeing as we could travel through Kaleidospace safely, but Agate informed me that it didn't work like that.

The Pathways she made were called that because there was a trick to it. We didn't actually go through Kaleidospace like Planeswalkers do. Not even Zelretch managed to figure out how to survive in Primordial Chaos.

What we did instead was "borrow" a part of Creation Mystery to slingshot ourselves into other realities, tunneling through Kaleidospace, then allowing the chosen alternate reality cluster's Creation Mystery to "grab on" to us. The tunnel formed for only an infinitesimal amount of time, and within the tunnel there was no Primordial Chaos energy. This method used the Second Magic not only as a Magic, but also as a partial path to the Root, in order to access a piece of the Creation Mystery.

I wasn't sure that it made any sense to me, but the deeper mechanics were far too complicated for me to dwell on. But I understood, at least, that the Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol: User Travel, as Agate called it, was not something that could be used willy-nilly, or repeatedly, requiring Agate to build up a major reserve of power that wasn't mana, but some kind of special energy needed to access the Creation Mystery. The reason that we were able to leave my Earth so quickly after she arrived with Zelretch was because they had stocked up beforehand.

And none of that was helpful for trying to phase into agatespace. Agate could only withstand it for limited periods of time herself, being technically non-living and soulless, yet sentient.

After wasting some time with that, we worked on developing some other spells that shared steps or commonalities with some of things Agate was already able to do.

There weren't many of those, and what we developed ended up being little more than small tricks, but anything was better than nothing.

Between the training I reviewed the priorities and plans I set for myself early on when I arrived on Earth Bet.

As I already had some strong allies and a decent amount of resources, I looked at the second priority, Tinkertech.

Coil's men already had laser attachments, but I had other things in mind.

Leet was easily hired, though it would take some time to figure out what he could make that was useful to me, and wouldn't fail. Regarding his shard's sabotage, I was very concerned with the possibility that his teleporter that he made with Chariot failed in a way that was deliberate and targeted. If I relied on something like that for a critical operation, I could turn out like canon Coil.

It was an open question whether the shard continued to have some influence over the Tinkertech after it was originally made-and that would be dangerous for me.

Chariot was already secretly in Coil's employ, so I could easily get some things from him. His Tinker specialty of movement could be very useful, depending on its limitations. He couldn't create teleportation or portal devices on his own, unfortunately. In the canon he needed to work with Leet to make the teleporter based off of Trickster's swapping ability, and even then it was susceptible to Leet's failures.

Truthfully though, despite their potential uses, I didn't think much of them.

Most Tinkers were limited in a fundamental way.

They couldn't go exponential by themselves, and they couldn't be easily used to acquire anything that would allow for exponential growth.

I wasn't like Coil, only trying to take over Brockton Bay slowly. He could be satisfied getting any cape on his payroll, because each one meant a bit more firepower he had access to.

What would a few extra capes mean to me? Even if I hired the Travelers, for example, unless I could take advantage of Noelle's cloning powers somehow, the rest of them were only good for fighting a few more capes at a time.

I turned my attention to Toybox next.

They were a private group of seven Tinkers who pool resources and sold their products to others. Their things didn't come cheap. I had a vague understanding of their capabilities from Coil's files.

Pyrotechnical, specialty in flames, special effects, and guns.

Bauble, glassworking tools and could turn inorganic matter to glass.

I couldn't think of anything in particular I wanted from these two.

Toy Soldier, massive power suit.

Glace, cryogenics and stasis.

These two were fairly situational. Toy Soldier wore a power suit the size of a building, but it was unclear how much money and resources it would take to commission another powersuit of that size. He mostly sold select powersuit components and enlarged weaponry that could be mounted on big vehicles, but those were incredibly expensive, with even the cheapest things having a price tag over a million.

Glace's cryogenics could be useful for preserving parahuman brains I didn't feel like keeping on life support, but might see a future use for. It could potentially also decrease the cost of sustenance upkeep for Amelia's future creations.

Dodge, makes devices that generate stable pocket dimensions.

Cranial, neurological tech. Sells memories and skills.

Big Rig, builds drones that builds other things, especially buildings.

These three… I had ideas for. Big Rig, especially. Unfortunately his was the most ridiculously expensive. If I bought anything from him, I'd be out of funds in short order, so I had to be very careful.

Dodge was one of the Tinkers I initially really wanted tech from, but now that I could access parallel earths that almost nobody else could, it wasn't such a big deal. The advantage of his pocket dimensions being possibly hidden from Cauldron didn't seem like it was enough of an incremental step up to be throwing money at right now. If he could make a mobile inventory for me, that would be worth it… but his pocket dimensions were attached to fixed points in space. His true value lay in letting Agate analyze and learn from how he manipulated dimensions, rather than the products' actual capability. I could buy a cheap and very small pocket dimension for that, and consider trying to buy his plans and schematics if he was willing to sell.

I eventually settled on Cranial. Recording thoughts, memories, skills; draining them; and letting other people have or experience them. That would be very useful, once I combined it with some other things. She only sold the memories and the service of draining memories, but never the devices themselves. I would find a way around that, if a higher price wouldn't persuade her. And that was only her known capabilities-I was certain she could do much more than merely transfer memories.

Once I contacted Cranial, it was a simple matter to arrange for the purchase of some skills and memories. She was currently in New York, but that was no obstacle for me. I simply had Agate fly over and find a secluded place to open a portal. With her being able to go at 500 miles an hour, New York was close enough to reach very quickly.

I also brought Amelia and Taylor with me.

We skulked over to the designated meeting point. It was a warehouse in an industrial area of the city, closer to the suburbs.

On our way there, Taylor was scouting the inside. "I see Cranial, Pyrotechnical and probably Toy Soldier out in the open. There's four men that look like bodyguards who don't seem to be capes. There's another three actively observing from different vantage points on the second floor railings, and four hidden in crates on the ground," she said.

"Looks like their security isn't too bad," I said.

From the outside, it looked completely normal, and even had a number of cars and trucks parked outside.

We came in civilian attire, disguised, all wearing hoodies and masked. I had contacted Cranial anonymously.

"You ready, A? I'll be counting on you to save me if I get brainwashed," I said suddenly as we were almost at the door.

Amelia took a deep breath and gave me a determined look. "Yeah, I'm ready."

We entered and were led by a guard at the door to an enclosed section of the warehouse. Toy Soldier was in a three metre tall power suit, seemingly shifting heavy items around, setting up might have platforms, mobile walls, and other equipment for an exhibition.

Pyrotechnical was lounging on a couch with her legs on a coffee table in front of her, playing with a flamethrower that shot out jets of flame in different formations. When she saw us, she got up and yelled, "They're here, Cranial!"

The guard left us, and Pyrotechnical beckoned us over to join her at the curtain which was the entrance to the enclosed area.

The curtain was pulled aside and out came our host. Cranial was a short woman that wore a lab coat for a costume. Considering that she wasn't actually a wet tinker that did brain surgeries, but rather made devices which affected brain waves, it was a rather odd choice. Her mask was a surgery mask plus a sleek visor, and a helmet that looked like an enlarged brain with metal tubes poking out. All in all, it looked very weird and disconcerting.

"UnskilledNoob?" She asked, looking at the three of us.

"Yup, that's me," I said.

"Which of one of you is getting the treatment?"

"Also me."

After that, she gestured for us to follow inside, and after I handed over $200k through an electronic transfer via the Number Man, told me to sit down on a leather chair in front of a table. The rest of the enclosed area was fairly sparse except for some other electronic equipment I didn't recognize and lots of wiring.

The chair had a number of straps and chains, which I supposed was required for those transactions involving the transfer of very bad memories.

She instructed me to put on a heavy device that covered my head, which was connected by numerous thick wires to a metre tall rectangular box-like metal piece of electronic equipment. She sat on the opposite end of the table with a notebook computer that was also connected to the same metal box.

I removed the glove on my right hand and Amelia held on to my hand while standing next to me.

"What are you doing?" Cranial asked her.

"Just a bit of assurance that nothing extra is being transmitted to my brain," I replied for Amelia.

"Fine. Just don't touch the equipment," said Cranial.

The process took about half an hour, and by the end of it, I had the skill of a master martial artist in mixed martials arts combining jiujitsu, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, and kickboxing.

When it was done, Amelia had a difficult expression on her face, and hesitantly nodded.

'I don't detect anything wrong either,' said Agate.

With those assurances, we left without any fuss.

A/N:

As I'm writing through future chapters, a few things have cropped up that I'd like to get some additional opinions on. They are slightly spoilery, so:

Workshopping Questions

1. How do you think the PRT, the wider organization or just Piggot, should respond if CRUCIBLE starts arresting villains but refuse to hand them over to PRT, for whatever reason (for e.g., "we're reforming them", "they died. accidentally", "they disappeared. don't know what happened", "what are you even talking about? we never captured them")

2. How do you think the PRT/the public would respond to CRUCIBLE rebranding Coil's mercs as heroic security forces working under them? Or just starting a "subsidiary group of elite security guards that appeared when Coil's men disappeared"?

Last edited: Mar 31, 2019

Volition 3.9

Volition 3.9

"My dad's getting suspicious," said Taylor.

"You could just tell him…?"

I continued going through the forms I had just learned. Although I had learned the skills, they didn't truly belong to me. Their muscle memory, the balance, the body structure was all different from my actual body. Small things that could be dangerous to me if I didn't practice with my own body. My body right now, after Amelia's enhancements, was substantially faster and stronger than the people whose skills Cranial installed into me. It was easy to accidentally use too much force and become unbalanced, or even more comically, withdraw a heavy punch so fast it came back to hit me.

"It-it's not that easy," she said. Her body tilted, and her swarm of bugs came in to prevent her fall.

"Are you afraid that he won't let you be a hero?" I glanced at her giant beetle that she was practicing how to balance on while midflight.

Its bulbous eyes were staring at me intently.

I persuaded Amelia to make the creature fully self-sustainable, if not sentient. It couldn't reproduce either, just like Atlas in the canon. We also named it Atlas, of course.

But there were also big differences from the canonical Atlas in that it could survive on its own without Taylor and had some more features. It had a basic insect brain, vastly superior visual and auditory senses, tranquilizer breath attack, paralysis venom, and a digestive system that could handle most organic input. Through our Atlas, Taylor could actually see and hear quite clearly, even though she wasn't used to the extra sensory input yet.

Amelia had offered to make relay bugs to expand Taylor's range, and make Atlas double as a relay bug. I kindly advised Taylor against the offer until her range naturally expanded a bit more and she learned to improve her comprehension of insect senses, on account of the mental strain and the risk of going crazy by rushing things. She remembered what it was like during the first week when she first got her power, and accepted my advice.

It would be difficult for me to keep anything secret from her if she covered the whole city in bugs. I knew that this would lock down most of her potential, but it was a difficult decision that I didn't want to jump into, because I could never take it back. I had to be sure of either committing to stay above whatever Taylor's moral bottom line was, or having the ability to persuade Taylor beyond it when appropriate for my purposes.

"No, that's not it. I was a little worried about it before, but now we have the resources to be a great team. $30 million. I couldn't even imagine having that kind of money before. We'd be better funded than the Wards, even." she said.

"Then what's the problem?"

"Just, I don't know how to bring it up, you know? I've barely talked to him in so long. I met with the police again yesterday at school, with my dad and the vice-principal. I showed them all my evidence this time, and it came out that Emma was one of the bullies. He… didn't take it well. I've never seen him so mad before. I think he's also a little angry at me that I didn't tell him earlier. How can I tell him now that I've secretly had powers for months and went out to fight Lung?" she trailed off.

"Who is Emma? Why did your dad take it so badly?" Amelia asked.

Taylor stayed quiet, looking like she wanted to slink away in shame all of a sudden, so I answered for her. "Emma Barnes used to be Taylor's best friend, as close as sisters. Her father Alan Barnes was good friends with Taylor's dad as well. He's a divorce lawyer at Carol's firm, and I suppose at one point Danny might have considered asking him for help with Taylor's case, not realizing that Alan was part of the problem." I guessed that Taylor had been so open because she assumed we both knew the whole story, but since it turned out that Amelia didn't, her anxiety came back, scared that her new friend would betray her like Emma. But, it was important that Taylor think of both of us, not just me, as a safe space, so I revealed it, and gave Amelia a silent signal.

"Barnes… now that you mention it, I think I've actually seen her before, at a party. Redhead? Part-time model?" Amelia asked. She saw my signal and added, "And total bitch?"

"That's the one," I said, nodding as I saw Taylor relaxing.

"Well, that is a tough spot be in. Maybe he'll cool down if you wait a while. A good father should be understanding. He didn't press you on it for a year and gave you your space this whole time, what's a little more?" I showed my empathy but hesitated to offer any solution. We could all go in person and reveal the truth, I doubted Taylor would want that, nor would I really benefit from having Danny in the know, despite what I told Taylor before.

"But, he's already suspicious. I don't think I can keep it from him for much longer. I told him I met a couple of new friends, but I don't think he bought it," Taylor said sullenly.

It was some kind of neurosis, I thought. She knew she should tell Danny the truth but kept finding excuses not to. She wanted to keep the two parts of her life separate.

I offered to arrange a fake part-time job for her, but she thought Danny wouldn't like that. Being a hero with a power was one thing, but getting a part-time job just to make money when her grades still weren't very good wouldn't fly.

Laying low, not coming as often? Another nope was her answer. She wanted to be a hero and contribute to the team.

I ended up offering to have us all go and reveal the truth. I wondered if I had been wrong about her neurosis, that maybe she was waiting for us to offer to go with her, but she turned it down saying she thought it'd be better for her to explain it to her dad first by herself. Smooth things over.

Then it hit me.

She must have wanted us to do another successful job, so that she could use as leverage and say that what happened with Lung wasn't a fluke. She didn't want to have to admit that what she did that day was reckless.

But she didn't want to come out and say that was what she wanted because she had agreed with me yesterday that we would be better off training a bit first, and didn't want to push for something I thought we weren't ready for.

"Maybe what we need is another big win. Something to show that Lung and Oni Lee wasn't a reckless fluke but a result of good preparation. That way it'll seem like you weren't really hiding your powers for three months, but rather preparing and taking your time to make a well-considered decision to become a hero," I said, testing my theory.

I was right. Her face lit up. "Yes. I think that would help."

I would have preferred to continue laying low for another week, at least until I could resolve the situation with Canary, the outcome of which would significantly affect my strategy in Brockton Bay.

However, this was also an opportunity to encourage Taylor's conflict drive in a controlled direction with full support from her. It would save me the trouble of waiting passively for a situation that could be used to escalate in the name of justice and descend into the abyss of self-serving justifications. A big win would need a fittingly horrible enemy after all.

But if we were going to go out in public again, there was something we had to do first.

The PRT HQ was in an uproar as a massive swarm of bugs gathered in front of it. Troopers prepared defensive positions outside the main entrance and crowds gathered to watch and take pictures on the streets.

Reporters were already on the scene. They'd gotten the word after I used some of Coil's civilian connections.

The dense bugs came together to form words.

CRUCIBLE VISITING

Three individuals flew in overhead.

One appeared to be a swarm of bugs on top of a giant beetle. It was Skitter, who had surrounded herself in bugs for extra safety while flying.

One was a woman in a fantasy-style full armour costume of dark green and silver, leaves, flowers, vines, and carried by a large set of wings on her back whose feathers looked like leaves with silver outlines. That was Araliac's new living costume. It wasn't symbiotic yet-she was merely controlling it directly with her power.

The last figure was being carried by Araliac with the assistance of her vines. I was in a highly reflective, multi-coloured full body costume whose colours all changed depending on the angle of view, like a chameleon but using only dark and cool metallic colours with a medieval-fantasy style armour design. I could have flown as well but I didn't want to reveal that card so easily, because I couldn't fly if I wasn't touching Agate. Unfortunately Amelia hadn't been able to make wings for me yet as that would require a direct nerve connection and some kind of new organ on my back.

We touched down slowly without any problems. I had informed the PRT ahead of time that we would be coming to officially register. I just didn't inform them that our arrival would be so flashy.

Armsmaster came out of the building cautiously with his halberd out, flanked by Aegis and Vista. The PRT HQ building downtown housed the younger Wards, while the Rig served as the Protectorate's HQ so it wasn't strange that we'd be received by a couple of Wards with Armsmaster, who was in charge of both superhero teams.

Once we touched down, Araliac released me, and Skitter came down from Atlas, while the bug swarm on her was absorbed into her costume through a hatch on her back. Her new costume was still almost pure black but had been adjusted with some greyish shades and lines that sculpted more of a fantasy look which fit with our theme.

We walked towards the trio of cape heroes.

"Hello, Armsmaster. Good to see you again," I said to the tense Armsmaster. I then turned to Aegis and Vista respectively and also greeted them. "Aegis, leader of the Wards, and Vista, the most veteran Ward, it's an honor to meet you two as well. I am Polychromic."

"Hello, I'm Araliac. It's a pleasure."

"Hi. I'm Skitter. Nice meeting you."

"The pleasure is ours," said Aegis. "We're happy to welcome new heroes to the city."

"Great job on Lung and Oni Lee, I saw your video on PHO!" Vista waved happily.

Armsmaster relaxed and nodded. "I see you have new costumes."

"This is one of the things I wanted to finish before registering with the PRT. Image is important, after all, as I'm sure you know. It's just a shame that we didn't have them ready in time for our first major battle. But, we are heroes, and we don't have the luxury of sitting around when duty calls. To be a hero is to walk with death," I said ominously, adapting the creed of the magus to heroism.

Reporters were capturing every moment of this, and I was going to go full throttle on my "hero" philosophy.

"Walk with death? That's a rather morbid way of looking at things," Armsmaster said.

"Memento mori, right? That's your team motto," Vista said.

I looked at the twelve-thirteen?-year old girl rated as a Shaker 9, who had the power to warp space.

"That's right. As heroes, we are risking our lives every time we go out to fight. You've seen more and fought more than any other Ward, so I imagine you understand it better than most," I said.

Then I turned towards the crowd of reporters at the side and faced the cameras directly.

"Memento mori. Remember you will die. For our team-it's a commitment and a resolution, that we are putting everything on the line. For the innocent-it's a reminder, that life is short, precious, and shouldn't be wasted living in fear and misery. For those on the wrong side-it's a warning. Your time is limited."

"You should be careful with those words. You don't want them to be taken the wrong way," said Armsmaster. "We will proceed with your registration inside." Then he gestured for us to follow. With the gesture, PRT troopers also began to block off the reporters. I guessed that he didn't want us to continue talking to the press.

"Thank you for the advice, Armsmaster. I will take care," I nodded to him, and the three of us moved forward, following after Armsmaster and Aegis.

Vista stared for a while at me with an unreadable look before going inside ahead of us.

Armsmaster led us to a conference room and had us all sit down while PRT personnel brought in some paperwork.

"It is very rare that the PRT registers an independent hero team. Most of the time when affiliated capes register, they are rogues or individual heroes. The process for teams is a bit more involved," Armsmaster began to explain, opening a presentation. Aegis and Vista were also here, observing attentively. It wasn't clear to me what their purpose here was. Maybe the intention was to give them a bit of experience with handling an unusual situation?

"As a team, it's assumed that you have a degree of organization that individuals lack. This means that the PRT and Protectorate can coordinate with you in different ways. What that would look like depends on your own goals, how you intend to operate, your schedules and availability, and how much information you're willing to share with us. For example, New Wave has a specific territory where they patrol, and we don't send our own heroes there unless they ask for assistance. When parahuman crimes in progress are reported to the PRT, if it's in their territory, we sent it on to New Wave and coordinate arrests with PRT troopers, but typically don't send additional heroes."

So he went through the presentation on various rules and procedures heroes are supposed to follow, important laws, etc.

By the end of it, I had the paperwork filled out. I told them that we didn't have planned patrol routes, hours, or a territory to operate in yet, but that we'd be open to taking requests for support near the docks and downtown on a case-by-case basis.

For information sharing, I said that we would send them whatever was relevant if we didn't plan to handle any situation ourselves.

I declined power testing again, but did provide a bit more information on our powers as a show of goodwill. Only because they already knew what I was going to tell them.

"You've probably guessed already. I am a Thinker," I said. "I also have some other minor powers, but I'd like to keep them secret for now."

"Do you have postcognition?" Armsmaster asked suddenly.

If he was able to guess that, there was little point in hiding it. It could actually be obfuscating, as my "postcognition" couldn't be used to get new information anymore.

"Hm… in a manner of speaking," I said. Once it became clear I wasn't going to say any more, Armsmaster looked to Araliac.

"I can do a lot with biology," she said, using our prepared answer. I already knew that the PRT knew she was Panacea, so hiding that wasn't meaningful anymore.

"Did you make that giant beetle?" Aegis asked curiously.

"I did. I made sure it has no ability to reproduce," she answered.

All three of the heroes sitting on the opposite side of the conference table went silent for a while, assessing her. Biotinkers and capes with the ability to make living things had terrible reputations.

"It's good that you've taken precautions. I don't need to warn you of the potential consequences of making self-reproducing organisms then," said Armsmaster.

She nodded back.

"We've covered all the basics you need to know. Given what you've told us, it sounds like you're going to be acting much more independent than the PRT would like. I would advise you to rethink this. There is a reason that there are very few independent hero teams. It is difficult to survive without the resources of the PRT and Protectorate," Armsmaster said.

"We're not like other hero teams. As we've stated clearly in our manifesto, we're going to take the fight to the villains. We wouldn't say that if we didn't have the resources and confidence to succeed. You've already guessed that my rating might be as high as Thinker 9," I said, casually demonstrating my supposed postcognition. "Do you think I'd go into any situation without being fully prepared?"

Aegis and Vista both turned to Armsmaster with clear shock, while the Tinker was completely still.

"That was… classified," he said in a tight controlled voice.

"I'm sharing information about myself, aren't I? What harm is there in letting a couple of Wards know?"

"You know what I mean. If you can figure that out…" Armsmaster said, referring to the other classified information in his discussion with Piggot.

"I'm not unwilling to cooperate with you, Armsmaster. But you know why I can't do much more than this."

He was silent for a moment. Then, "Director Piggot would like to have a word with you in her office."

O O O

Last edited: Apr 7, 2019

Volition 3.10

Volition 3.10

"I had the things you told us checked out. Thanks to your tip, we've dealt with a number of moles in our branch, and upgraded our security measures. I don't like how much information you keep from us, but I can appreciate help when it's given," said Piggot.

I hadn't been aware of how much progress they made on that front, as I wasn't keeping tabs on Piggot 24/7. The Coil moles I now had access to weren't aware of being exposed, so presumably Piggot had gone with the canonical strategy of feeding them false information, which meant they were no longer reliable for me.

Armsmaster was again to the side of her desk, while Aegis and Vista had been left to do whatever it is they needed to do on their own.

I stood with Araliac and Skitter in front of the director.

"I'm glad to hear that things worked out," I said.

"Consider this a thank you for your assistance," she said. Then she turned towards Araliac. "We are already aware of your identity. The PRT follows the unspoken rules wherever possible, but in your case you are still a minor and your legal guardians are the ones looking for you. We are obligated to assist them in this. Even if we tried to hide it for you, your family would soon identify you based on your power the way you're applying it now. Fortunately for you, due to some technicalities and loopholes with cape laws, once I have determined that your civilian identity is no longer missing, the PRT is not under any obligation to force you to go home."

Araliac gave me a glance before turning to respond to Piggot.

"Are you saying that you're going to help me stay independent?"

"I will not have my forces assist your family, but I will not stop them from trying to take you back either. They believe you were Mastered into running away, and there is little I can do to dissuade them otherwise…" Piggot gave me a pointed look.

"No, she wasn't Mastered. She teamed up with me by her own free will. I have no Master powers," I said.

The plan to drive a wedge between the PRT and Skitter was already largely successful. I had no need to continue provoking and scaring Piggot if she was taking such a surprisingly friendly approach to us. That would just make me look bad instead.

Piggot looked to Armsmaster, who stared at me and nodded slowly. What was up with that? I hadn't said anything that could-

I felt a sudden chill as I noticed Piggot's face turn dark. It had slipped my mind that my partnership with Agate and some things we could theoretically do would fall under the PRT's Master classification. I had thought so much about ways of gaining control over people lately that I kept thinking of myself as not having Master powers because I couldn't directly influence anyone, but forgot the other aspect of the classification that applied to control over projections and creatures, like the Siberian and Nilbog.

Did Armsmaster's algorithm detect a lie? But how could it? I hadn't even realized it myself when I said it. Or were they hoping I was a Master for some reason, and were disappointed when the lie detector showed a truth for my denial?

Piggot spoke up again, breaking me out of my speeding thoughts.

"Polychromic. Most Thinkers have a tendency to try and be the smartest person in the room. Some say it's the very reason they triggered with Thinker powers. And I'll admit, some Thinker powers can be very impressive, but high level Thinkers often overestimate themselves. They lose track of common sense. Being smarter doesn't mean wiser, and Thinkers often forget that," she said.

I was silent for a moment, trying to see where she was going with this.

"I won't say that you're acting unwisely. You would see it as an insult, and I'm hardly in a position to be condescending. You've told us about things that I don't have a good solution to either. But you told us these things and withheld other information for your own reasons, and I don't buy that it's just because you're afraid of this mysteriously Thinker more powerful than you finding out. I can only guess at your motivations, and your team motto is deeply concerning. For now, it seems that we're on the same side. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say. However, if you take things too far, I'll have no choice but to react accordingly."

"What's wrong with our team motto? We're not threatening to kill anybody, just reminding people that life is precious," said Skitter.

"That you feel the need to explain yourself suggests otherwise," said Piggot. "Villains will see it as a threat regardless of how you spin it. If they think you're prepared to kill, they may up the ante on their own."

"I appreciate your concerns, Director. I don't agree, but I understand why you feel that way. Sometimes it takes a bit of unconventional thinking to break out of an impasse, which is what we have been in for the past couple of decades as villainy became the norm. I doubt we'll convince each other on this, but as you say the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so let's just leave it at that. Time will tell if our strategy is wise or not," I said.

After a polite dismissal, we left the meeting and on our way out we saw a group of reporters and a large crowd of people still outside the entrance to the building. I pulled Araliac aside and whispered.

"Piggot has already made her stance clear. I think it's a good idea to use this opportunity to announce it on your own terms, rather than letting New Wave announce their version of the story first."

"Huh? But… I haven't been to the hospital for days. I don't really want to go either. What if the public doesn't like that?"

"It's okay. I've got your back. This is what you should say…"

Back at Piggot's office, Agate stayed behind for a short while.

"I knew it was too good to be true. So he's a Master after all?" Piggot said with frustration.

"Not… exactly," said Armsmaster.

"What? But you gave the signal."

"It's strange. I got a lie for Panacea was not Mastered, and a truth for her joining of her own free will, as well as Polychromic not having Master powers. This indicates that Polychromic believes Panacea was Mastered by somebody else at some point. If she went to Polychromic of her own free will, then this would suggest that either she escaped a previous Master effect somehow, possibly with Polychromic's assistance, or that Polychromic used another cape to Master Panacea after she joined him to guarantee her loyalty."

"Both are plausible, although…" Piggot trailed off pensively.

"If Panacea had been Mastered and then saved by Polychromic, it would explain why she would suddenly team up with him, and her sudden change in attitude. That kind of trauma could easily make someone more willing to fight instead of simply being a healer. But it raises the question of why Polychromic didn't warn us about this other Master. Even if the Master was already defeated, Polychromic should have known that explaining things to us would make us less suspicious of him having Mastered Panacea himself," said Armsmaster.

"I think there's a simpler explanation. In your scenario, why would Panacea run away from home, and refuse to go back? Even if Polychromic saved her, mere gratitude wouldn't make a teenager decide to fight her own family to escape and join her savior."

"Are you implying that her own family had her Mastered? I'm not sure that's a simpler explanation. Why would her family get someone to Master her?"

Piggot gave Armsmaster a slight smirk. "Oh but it is. You're neglecting a little detail. There is a Master among the Dallons."

Armsmaster had no visible response for a few seconds. "Oh," he said, finally. "Glory Girl."

"Exactly. Her aura is officially classified as Shaker, but only because we try not to assign human-influencing heroes Master ratings. If she was the culprit, then everything fits. Polychromic never mentioned it because he, or Panacea, is trying to protect Glory Girl's reputation."

After making adequate preparation, we stepped out of the building amid a swathe of camera flashes.

I raised my voice and shouted. "People of Brockton Bay! We have officially registered as this city's new independent hero team! We look forward to working with the PRT and Protectorate to fight crime! But first, Araliac has an announcement to make."

I gestured towards her with my arm and stepped back to let her take the front.

The reporters hustled, all trying to fight their way to the centre.

Araliac's armored helmet split and retracted on its own to reveal her face.

"Before I joined Team CRUCIBLE, my cape name was Panacea," she said.

The crowd immediately went wild with shouts and whispers and questions.

I raised a hand and shouted with invisible amplification from Agate, stunning the crowd into silence. "Let her speak!"

"People knew me as the miracle healer. The girl who could cure cancer and regrow lost limbs. But healing isn't the only thing I can do. I can do a lot more than that. I want to do more than that. In New Wave, I-I was never allowed to do more than heal. I've healed… thousands of people over the past two years, but I think… that I can make an even bigger impact. There is a saying. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. As Panacea, I've always been curing. But now, with Team CRUCIBLE, as Araliac, I can be part of the prevention! I will fight with my new team to root out the crimes that are the source of injury, starvation, disease and drug abuse! Please continue to support me."

After that, the reporters started asking questions, but we simply flew into the air and away. We had to get out of there before New Wave found out and confronted us.

A/N: And I'm back. Last month was a busy time for me. I also wrote the chapters following this one ahead of finishing this up. They were a bit more exciting to write.

Last edited: May 5, 2019

Interlude 3.x (Wards, PRT)

A/N: So this chapter has non-Kaleidus POV information again, so I'm putting this warning here for readers that only want to experience the story from Kaleidus-POV. Still, judging from the responses and reactions for the first time I did this, I don't think many readers actually skipped that chapter to go back to it later. From my perspective, I think it's a little more interesting for readers to read these interludes anyway.

Interlude 3.x (Wards, PRT)

Shortly after Armsmaster left with CRUCIBLE to meet with Director Piggot, Aegis and Vista went to another featureless closed room for debriefing.

Deputy Director Renick, Miss Militia, and a young man of Puerto Rican descent with long hair were waiting for them.

Aegis and Vista then sat down in front of the three, and Aegis unmasked himself.

"Your costume feels a bit stuffy, Carlos. Maybe I'm just used to hard plates," the unmasked person in the Aegis costume said.

The Puerto Rican youth gave him a smile. "That's because you never did any competitive sports, Dean. Skin-tight suits are common for a lot of them."

"Do you think they suspected anything?" Renick asked.

"No, sir," said Dean. "Not even Araliac seemed to notice anything off with my disguise."

Renick nodded. "Good. Let's get to the main point then. We'll start with you Vista, so Gallant's emotion-reading won't give you any biases. Your impressions of them, anything you thought was strange?"

The twelve-year old Ward gave a quick reply. "I didn't really notice anything strange. They were pretty much just how I thought they'd be, based on their video. Araliac and Skitter didn't talk much. Polychromic is just as intense in person. Is he really a Thinker 9?"

She knew from experience that such high ratings were very rare. She herself had an equally high rating of 9, but higher level Shakers were slightly more common. Labyrinth, for example, was another cape in town with a rating even higher than her own. She didn't know of anything Polychromic did that warranted that kind of rating, and was very curious. In the video, it wasn't even obvious that he had powers at all. They barely showed any of the actual fighting, to her great annoyance. But then again, she thought, a guy would have to be insane to fight Lung without powers, so he obviously couldn't have been unpowered. It made more sense that he would have an exceptional power, in retrospect, to have defeated the cape that could fight on par with Leviathan.

"Is that what he told you? We have him classified as Thinker 5 in the files," said Renick.

Vista looked at him oddly, then turned to Gallant beside her.

"Sir, maybe discussion about his rating should wait until we meet with Director Piggot or Armsmaster. Armsmaster seemed to indicate that was classified. I also have unusual emotion feedback about when he made that statement that could be relevant," said Gallant. He quickly came to the conclusion that it must have been classified even from Renick and Miss Militia, based on the emotions he was reading from them. Still, that was strange. He didn't understand why there was so much scrutiny over Polychromic and his team when they were fellow heroes. It didn't escape him that Armsmaster seemed to be treating Polychromic like some kind of bomb waiting to go off. Dean had never felt his superior officer so agitated inside.

Renick looked confused for a bit before realization dawned on him. "I see. We'll do as you suggest, then. If Vista has no further comments, then what did you feel from them, Gallant? Did you notice anything strange about Araliac or Skitter's emotions? Anything that could suggest some kind of Master effect?"

"I didn't detect any active effect happening, but I can't really identify victims of prior Master effects that were permanent. What I did observe was that they were both very anxious, especially Araliac. Skitter seemed to be on edge when she first met us, but calmed down after a while. Araliac's emotions were a bit hard to read. There were too many of them at the same time, but nothing that stood out to me as being the cause of a Master effect. It seemed more like there were a lot of things on her mind other than the meeting with us."

"Describe this tenseness in a more detail for me. What did they seem to be wary about? Any topics or things you thought seemed to be associated with their anxiety?"

"As I said, Skitter seemed to be particularly tense when she saw me and Missy. A little fearful, a little bit of shame, and a little resentment. But, it didn't feel like she recognized us or met us before, so I think the resentment part isn't directed specifically towards Vista and me. Maybe the Wards, Protectorate, or PRT as a whole."

Renick kept his gaze evenly on Dean. "You have the best judgement of your own power, so your instinct is likely correct. I'll have that noted down. Resentment towards Wards/PRT/Protectorate organization for unknown reasons. Anything for Araliac?"

"Whenever the conversation turned to powers, mostly. But like I said, she seemed to be distracted, so I'm not sure any of that is reliable."

"Alright. What about yourselves? Did you feel any sort of effect on you or Vista?"

"Nothing overt, no. But…" he hesitated a bit. It seemed a little unfair to bring this up, as he was pretty sure it wasn't a Master effect, and was Vista's own personal issue. It was too late, however, as he'd inadvertently indicated there was something more, and Renick wouldn't let him back out of it now.

"Just say it, Gallant. We're taking all precautions, even if you aren't sure. These were our orders. We at least need to note it down, even if you don't think it means anything," Renick said.

"Vista was unusually happy when Polychromic talked to her. I think it's just because he was complimenting her, though, in a way," he said, finally.

Vista was taken aback and felt embarrassment worming up her face. She couldn't deny it. She thought their motto was really cool, and Polychromic seemed to get things. He called her the most veteran ward, and treated her with a lot of respect. Respect that nobody in the Wards or the PRT seemed to give her, despite her actually being the most experienced. Yet, becoming the leader wasn't even on the table for her. They skipped her over for Aegis after Triumph left, even though he'd barely been a parahuman for a year. She knew her age would be a barrier to getting acceptance from subordinates, but she hated it anyways.

Like Polychromic said… to be a hero is to walk with death. They could suddenly die at any time out there, but they still treated her with kid gloves. She was a soldier that fought more than any of them, why didn't that count for anything? It was stupid. Like her useless costume that was supposed to make her look cute. And Clockblocker. Not that she had anything against him-she could even appreciate some of his jokes-but he was so much more immature yet he'd still probably be ahead of the line when it came to future Wards leadership, just because he was older.

Dean felt Missy's embarrassment suddenly turn into a wave of frustration and anger. He reacted immediately. "I'm sorry, Missy. I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong with you being happy to be complimented. You deserve the recognition." He regretted his words, and especially that he brought it up in front of her. If there was any real concern, he could have at least talked to Renick privately about it.

Dean's voice took away all of her anger in an instant, and replaced it with mortified embarrassment again. He must have read her emotions and completely misunderstood! She berated herself for her lapse in emotional discipline. Now her crush must think she had a fragile ego that needed validation and got angry when called out on it.

"I'm not angry at you, Dean. It's just-never mind," she said. It was awful. She couldn't even explain why she got angry, because she would sound exactly like the little kid she didn't want them to treat her as. Because a kid complaining about not being taken seriously was typical immature behaviour from children. They were all staring at her now. It was so unfair.

"Sorry," Dean repeated himself. "I mean what I said though. Really. You deserve it. It's my fault for making something out of nothing." He desperately tried to fix his mistake, but Vista wasn't having any of it. She just kept feeling more shame and frustration as he kept talking. It didn't make any sense. He knew she had a crush on him. He would have thought that giving her the same recognition would help, but it didn't. It just went to show that his powers didn't make him a social maverick. Reading emotions was only half the battle, he needed to learn the right ways to respond. He had a long way to go before he could live up to his name.

Renick coughed to get their attention. "Putting that aside for now, then. Was there anything else notable you observed? Even just general things about their personality or team dynamic."

"Polychromic has very good control over his emotions. He gives me the sense that he's very experienced in similar situations. Talking to the press, making speeches, dealing with us professionally. It could just be his Thinker power, but it feels more like confidence from experience. If he wasn't a cape before, he must have had a very public or big leadership role of some kind in his civilian identity," said Dean.

"That's very interesting. It's quite rare for people who were already very successful to become capes, especially with powers very high on the scale, at least based on the fraction of historically identified capes we know of. There are many theories about it, but most experts agree that it has something to do with being less susceptible to the emotions necessary for triggering. But it's not unheard of for social Thinkers to get a boost like that either. Definitely noting this one," Renick said as he wrote.

"I also had this feeling that he wasn't taking the PRT seriously. It's hard to describe what emotion that was. But it felt a bit as if to him, registering with the PRT was just going through the motions. A chore that had to be done. Bored, but resigned, kind of. When Armsmaster talked about cooperating on patrol schedules, I even felt a bit of disdain."

"That doesn't bode well. Noted."

"Something that stuck out to me was when he talked about his powers. There was the part about his Thinker 9 rating, which I'll wait until we're cleared by the Director for, but even besides that it was strange. When he said he was a Thinker, it was with a feeling of irony. As if it was only technically true. And there was also proudness and arrogance. Is it possible that he wants us to think he's a high level Thinker, and is actually smart enough or otherwise has some means to pretend to be one, but really isn't?"

Renick narrowed his eyes. "You're saying that he meant he was a thinker, lowercase, not the PRT rating, to mislead us?"

"Maybe, but I don't know how somebody could pretend to be a 9 on the scale, if we have evidence for that. Or maybe his Thinker powers aren't his main thing. Because when he said he had some other 'minor powers', the emotions that pinged me most were… gleeful furtiveness and ambition, oddly enough. I don't think ambition mixes with 'minor' powers, unless they can grow."

"A grab-bag then? I do hope he stays on our side, if any of these minor powers turn out to deserve a rating higher than 9," said Renick. "But I doubt that. Even if he is ambitious, he could also just be overestimating himself too much."

"Sir, can I ask why we're scrutinizing CRUCIBLE, and Polychromic, so heavily? Is there some reason to think he might not stay on our side?"

"I'm afraid most of it is classified," said Renick. "Even from me, it seems."

"Is it just because of Araliac's other identity and suspicions about her being Mastered?" Renick hadn't told them who it was, but it wasn't hard to piece together. Victoria had already told him about her sister running away, and combined with Araliac's abilities, it was pretty obvious. Victoria said her sister was Mastered, and going by this investigation, the PRT was suspicious about it too.

"That's only part of it. The PRT is also concerned about their methods, and other recent alarming events that may or may not be related. What I can tell you is that their battle with Lung and Oni Lee raised a few flags. Lung is still comatose, and we think it was deliberate. Polychromic also took threatened to kill Lung to trick Oni Lee. That, combined with the remains we collected from the scene of the battles… Miss Militia had some observations there," Renick explained.

Attention turned to Miss Militia. "At the scene where they fought Lung, we recovered samples of debris from what appeared to be jam tin grenades that I recognized from my time fighting in Africa. We also recovered the remains of a compound bow. The bow suggests that he didn't have the means, or time, to acquire a gun before, and the grenade suggests a mentality more suitable for guerilla warfare than patrolling the streets. Despite his apparent competence, he is almost certainly a new trigger with few resources, and a potential willingness to ignore the unwritten rules to win at any cost. This paints a dangerous picture with Skitter using lethal venoms and Araliac sending Lung into a coma. What we are concerned about is the possibility that they will treat any conflict with villain groups as total war. We don't need Brockton Bay turning into a warzone, our job is to keep the peace and protect the public."

Dean and Missy was quiet taking in the new information.

"And here I was glad about a new hero team appearing," said Carlos with a sigh. "Brockton Bay just can't get a break."

"We're done here then. You will be called when Director Piggot is ready to see you."

As Carlos, Dean, and Missy went back to the Wards lounge room, it was empty.

"So… recent events that may or may not be related, he said," Vista broke the silence. "Shadow Stalker?"

"They haven't told me anything you guys don't already know. Just that she violated her probation and has been removed from the team," said Carlos.

"Now I really am the only girl on the team," said Vista. "Still, I'm kind of glad. Stalker was a jerk. Serves her right."

"It's not right to say that, Missy. Regardless of her shortcomings, she was our teammate. And she was pretty good at her job, at least," said Dean.

"I know, I know. I can't help it, she was just so… mean," said Missy.

"Dean's right. Although to be frank, I don't think her presence on the team was good for our team dynamic. Working together well and having the right attitude is also important. Whatever happened, one thing is for sure. Our newest member came at just the right time. Speaking of which, I'm going to check on Steven," Carlos said.

"Might as well come with you, we have nothing else scheduled right now, right?" asked Dean.

Carlos nodded, and all of them went into the console room.

"Oh, hey guys. You met the new team in town?" Steven asked as they came in. He was a moderately handsome teen with Caucasian features and brown hair. Sitting down, it wasn't as obvious, but he was also on the tall side. He had a well-built muscular body, but the rest of the Wards had secretly speculated his power might have had something to do with it.

"Yeah. They were interesting, and intense. Maybe a little too intense," said Carlos. He didn't go into any detail. Their operation was also classified from the rest of the Wards, and he wasn't the one who actually met CRUCIBLE face to face. But from Steven's view on the console screens, it would have looked like Aegis had been there at the front doors.

"I like them. They've already accomplished a lot for being such a new team. When was the last time the heroes had a major victory over the villains? It's been years since a strong villain was arrested, but they got both Lung and Oni Lee on their first night," said Vista with a defiant look.

Carlos looked surprised. He thought they had all been pretty concerned after the revelations from Renick and Miss Militia.

"Oh yeah. And Araliac and Skitter are just teens like us, right? No way I would've taken on Lung for my first fight. That's seriously hardcore," Steven said with admiration in his tone as he nodded to Vista's opinion. He'd been active for a few months now, and had been quietly testing the waters solo with small-time perps. The worst he had been involved in were a few minor skirmishes with Victor and Othala, the Merchants, and a couple Undersiders. But they were just skirmishes to test his power, so both sides held their own and got away for the most part. He built a little reputation, but compared to CRUCIBLE, he hadn't accomplished anything of real substance. Not like he would want to, either. He wouldn't have even dared to fight capes like Lung and Oni Lee. They were known for being dangerous murderers that fought evenly against all of Empire 88's ten-plus capes by themselves. Crazy.

Encouraged, Vista continued. "And… to be a hero is to walk with death," she said mimicking Polychromic's serious tone. "You can just feel how dedicated they are."

"I totally caught that speech from here, man," said Browbeat, referring to the monitoring screens and recording system for the HQ entrance. "Fuck, I'm glad somebody's willing to take the heat, you know? I don't think I could ever do it."

"Come on, Browbeat, you're a Ward too now. Fighting's part of the package," said Vista, slightly disappointed in his attitude.

"Are you trying to scare the new guy, Missy? The fights that Wards get into aren't really that serious, Steven. There's not really a risk of death here. The villains know better than to try and seriously hurt a Ward. The PRT would come down on them hard," said Carlos with a chuckle.

Missy frowned. "You guys weren't here when Saccharide volunteered to join a Simurgh fight in '08. She never came back. They kept it on the down low, but I know what really happened. They left her in the quarantine because she heard the scream for too long. Sure she didn't have to go, but that kind of thing is our duty as heroes. And sooner or later, if you join the Protectorate when you're eighteen, you'll have to fight villains and go on patrols at least, whether you want to or not. You won't be able to just stay in the console room all day."

Carlos found no response to that. He glanced at Dean who was closer to Missy, but Dean gave a helpless look back. He had not realized how serious Missy took her job as a Ward either, and neither of them had been in the Wards during 2008. Dean also didn't want to continue offending Missy by arguing.

"Sorry, Missy, I just prefer the peace and quiet. I'm only here because the rules for Wards are pretty chill. We don't have to fight anything too dangerous if we don't want to. I don't think my family would be okay with me joining the Protectorate either," said Steven.

The team was silent in the heavy mood for a while.

Then, Dean noticed the screen showing the entrance. "Hey, they're doing something out there. What are they saying to the press now?"

"Hold up, I'm bringing up the audio," said Steven.

They watched as Araliac suddenly revealed herself as Panacea.

"Woah, that's Panacea?" Steven was shocked, but it wasn't much of a surprise to the other three Wards.

"That's next level stuff right there. Look at the reporters, they're eating this up. It's all a big stage to them. The age-old debate, prevention vs. cure, symptom vs. root cause, except she's framing it in cape psychology and politics. The root of injury, disease, and economic woes, huh. And she wants to cure it all. Ambitious…" Steven started rambling to himself.

Dean watched with a growing sense of dread. It was one thing to join another team, but telling the press before her family about why she quit? He could just imagine the kind of reaction Victoria would have over this. And she'd probably blame him somehow for not taking the opportunity to persuade Amy go back home.

Rubbing his temples, he decided that he needed to contact his girlfriend before she found out by herself, and prepared to send her a text.

Last edited: May 10, 2019

Interlude 3.y (New Wave)

A/N: Again, non-MC POV information this interlude.

Interlude 3.y (New Wave)

Dean::[You have to see this. It's Amy.]

[Dean has shared a link with you!

Panacea rebranded, "root out the crimes" HUGE reveal at PRT

Literally all the rumors got it wrong guys our healer just ditched New Wave and became a ****ing boss overnight, founds new team, roflstomps Lung and Oni Lee like 'this is my true power scrubs' and says she's going to ROOT out the crimes…

CLICK to view more.]

[wtf? Checking now]::

She followed the link Dean sent to a PHO thread with a video embed only posted minutes ago.

The face of her sister was the cover image, but she was in a costume Victoria had never seen before.

She quickly pressed the play button and watched. The video was short and only showed Amy giving her speech before grabbing Polychromic and flying off with Skitter.

When the video ended, Victoria sat there having forgotten all about her homework.

[omg

F.?]::

Dean::[At least we know where she is now, right?]

She scrolled through the rapidly collecting comments with an increasingly incredulous expression.

Topic: Panacea rebranded, "root out the crimes" HUGE reveal at PRT

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ►

FinalBossOwning (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie)

Posted On Apr 13th 2011:

…

(Showing page 1 of 7)

►EpicSamurai (Kyushu Survivor)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

Think OP is a little too excited. They never really showed the fight, what roflstomp? But they did win, so I can admit this new Panacea might be able to back up her words.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member) (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

This is big. Really big. Just merged the Araliac wiki page with Panacea. A lot of things going to need editing. I'm actually looking forward to it.

►FinalBossOwning (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

EpicSamurai what you smoking? doesn't matter if we didn't see the full fight. Facts are facts. Panacea dips - decides to fight for real - crushes the guys that fought entire Protectorate teams, the dragon that fought LEVIATHAN to a standstill - shows up again two days later looking like her hair wasn't even singed and we know she can't heal herself. Wat you call that if not roflstomping? she ddn't even have the new armor during that fight.

►EpicSamurai (Kyushu Survivor)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

Look, I get that she got some serious results, but it's not like it was all her, right? The other two capes in Crucible and the PRT were involved in those fights. If it was really a roflstomp, why not just show us the whole thing?

►AngryBBMthFker

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

The hell PRT didn't do jack! My friend's in the PRT and they told me the truth. They actually fought CRUCIBLE by accident!

►FinalBossOwning (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

EpicSamurai stop spreading disinformation. The PRT wasn't involved, or they'd have put that in their press release. They just came for the arrest after CRUCIBLE did all the work. Also why would they show the full video? You think you're worthy of seeing Araliac's true power? u are literally nobody, like the rest of us scrubs all these boards. liek we're not even capes.

►CalmandCollected

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

OP Stick to posting videos, and skip the commentary please. You sound like an obsessed fanboi now.

►Drac002gon

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

One word. BADASS!

3 3 3

►WonderLegionXX (Veteran Member)

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

Hold on. Is she still going to heal people at the hospital? Or is that not a thing anymore?

►8263013941

Replied On Apr 13th 2011:

New Wave sucks. Why'd they hold her back? If she'd started fighting for real sooner, maybe the gangs wouldn't be so ****ing arrogant, maybe if she got Lung earlier my house would still be one piece. What has New Wave even done in the last few years? They've just been riding Panacea's rep for healing and sitting on their asses

End of Page. 1, 2, 3… 5, 6, 7

She stood up and almost crushed her phone at the last comment. "Ames… ! Why…?" She couldn't believe that her sister could betray them like that. Not only did she break off from her family and her team without saying a word, she went to the press and lied about what happened, making New Wave look terrible.

In Victoria's mind, it had always been Amy's own rule. Even if their parents thought she shouldn't use it for anything other than healing, she also agreed that it was for the best, didn't she?

The only explanation was that her sister had been Mastered. That was what they thought had happened, and what they reported to the PRT. But the hero team Amy joined didn't jibe with that picture.

CRUCIBLE. She had even cheered them on when she heard the news. It was the topic everyone was talking about at school all of today and yesterday.

She rushed down to the kitchen where her parents were making dinner.

"Mom! Dad! Look at this!"

She shoved the phone towards them and started playing the video of Amy's speech.

Carol stopped chopping the vegetables to see what had her daughter frantic. Mark came over from the table to stand beside her.

By the end of the video, Carol had a cold and hard look on her.

"I see. So that's where she went," she said. Then she returned to chopping vegetables. Each slash came down with unnatural force, digging into the chopping board.

Mark had a confused expression on him. "Isn't that the PRT HQ? Did they know about this?"

His question was unheeded as Victoria went slack-jawed at her mother's response.

"Mom! Is that all you have to say? We have to do something!"

The cleaver slammed down on the wood, shaking the counter.

"No. Amy made her choice. We will do nothing," said Carol.

"What? Mom! Amy was Mastered! You can't blame her for that! We have to save her!"

"Use your head, Victoria. Why hasn't the PRT informed us already, when Amy talked to the press right at the PRT building? This was clearly a sanctioned event and they didn't want us to interfere. They must have determined that Amy is not under any Master effect, and decided to let her do as she wants. Legally, there is nothing we can do at this point. We can get a court order as her guardians to take custody, but the police don't have jurisdiction to enforce. The PRT is not obligated to enforce any orders from civil courts on capes, and a criminal court would never accept the case without a PRT prosecutor," said Carol.

"That's bullshit! Dad, you agree with me right? We have to go save her!"

Mark was uncomfortable as Carol gave shot him a look. "Well, your mother is the legal expert…"

"This isn't about the legal issues! All I'm hearing are excuses! It'd like you don't even care! She's my sister! Your daughter!" Victoria floated into the air with a furious expression.

Carol crossed her arms. "She's not my daughter anymore. She never was. I knew this would happen someday. She knows who her real father is now, and it looks like she'll be following in his footsteps soon."

"Carol-" Mark was cut off as Victoria screamed in rage and flew off.

"Where do you think you're going, young lady! You're already in trouble with the PRT, if you do anything else… !" Carol shouted.

Carol and Mark rushed after her, only to catch her last words right before she shot out the door.

"I don't care what you say, she's my sister and I'm going to bring her back!"

Her parents could only watch helplessly as Victoria flew into the air. They were unable to fly and follow after her.

Carol cursed. "Piggot, you slimy bitch! It wasn't enough for you to take Victoria, you want to ruin New Wave's reputation too? Just what are you playing at?"

Then she took out her phone and quickly called her own sister.

As Victoria flew into the air, it wasn't long before she came to a stop far above the PRT building. There was no trace of CRUCIBLE or her sister anymore, and the crowd at the front had dispersed with only a few news trucks still left behind.

She looked all around and couldn't see where CRUCIBLE might have gone to. They had no public HQ, no known gathering points or even patrols yet.

Floating high above, she thought about going in to the PRT building to demand an explanation, but her mother's words stopped her. She was angry, but that didn't mean she couldn't hear her mother's logic. This was clearly a sanctioned event.

Could it be true that her sister wasn't Mastered? She had a hard time believing it. Wasn't it possible that the PRT had been tricked or Mastered instead? Still, if that were the case, going to the PRT would get her nowhere.

She called Dean.

"Vicky? I'm on duty right now, can't talk long."

"I need you to help me understand. What happened here? Did the PRT know about Amy being in CRUCIBLE this whole time? What were they doing here?"

"Here? Are you at PRT HQ?"

"Yes, overhead. Answer the question, Dean."

"We, as in the Wards, just found out. But the directors and others might have known before. CRUCIBLE came to register their hero team. Don't do anything rash, Vicky, as far as I could tell, she doesn't seem to be Mastered."

"You met her before she flew away? Why didn't you stop her?!"

"I-Vicky, I'm a Ward and they're heroes too. I can't just do that."

"Damn it! Damn it!" Vicky hung up.

Soon as she did so, she noticed her cousin Crystal out of costume flying towards her.

Without any idea where Amy had gone, she sulked and let Crystal reach her.

"Vicky, I heard about what happened. Mom and dad are going to PRT in private to ask for an explanation together with Carol and Mark. Let's go back, and see if we can get some answers," said Crystal.

Victoria kept silent with her fists clenched.

"Come on, Vicky. We're all just as upset as you are," Crystal said, wrapping an arm around Victoria's shoulder and pulling her along.

"Mom doesn't care. She said Amy isn't her daughter. Never was, either" said Vicky.

"She said that? Really?" Crystal looked shocked. "Well, I-I'm sure she didn't mean it. It must be the heat of the moment."

Crystal continued to drag Victoria with her, and Victoria didn't resist. The younger Dallon soon began to sniff and sob in her arms as they quietly flew back to the Pelham residence.

"You want to know why I let her go?" Piggot gave them a cold look.

"With all due respect, Director Piggot, we'd have appreciated at least being informed about the matter before you made a decision," said Sarah Pelham, official leader of New Wave.

"And I'd have appreciated being informed of all the facts before an investigation," said Piggot.

"I don't understand what you mean, Director," said Sarah with a confused expression.

Piggot glared at Victoria, who looked like she was barely restraining herself from attacking.

Then Piggot moved her glare to Carol and Mark. "How long have you been keeping Panacea under your control with Glory Girl's Master aura?"

The faces of every New Wave member morphed into shock.

"What the fuck? You think I was Mastering my own sister? Have you gone senile, Piggot? And it's a Shaker aura!" Victoria shouted.

Piggot closely observed the reactions of New Wave, while Armsmaster stood stoically without making a move. Piggot's face turned sour when she felt an unnatural fear as Glory Girl raised her voice. But she was expecting it, and shrugged it off with some effort. She'd been terrified senseless before, and this was nothing compared to the horror of Ellisburg.

"We only assigned you a Shaker rating to avoid the scary Master label for a public hero. We both know better than that. Poor Amelia Lavere must have hated the people who kidnapped her and broke the unwritten rules to send her father to the Birdcage. But her power was too good for PR and too useful, so you decided to have her Mastered into working for you, huh?"

"What are you going on about, Piggot? That is not what happened. I legally adopted Amy after arresting Marquis, and Victoria did nothing of the sort! Her aura isn't capable of doing anything like that!" Carol finally couldn't stand it and spoke up despite agreeing with her sister beforehand to let Sarah as the leader handle things.

Piggot glanced at Armsmaster, who gave a quiet signal at the back of his suit.

She then raised an eyebrow. "So you really don't know."

"Director Piggot, why are you making this accusation all of a sudden? Is that what Amy herself told you?" Sarah asked.

"Panacea never said so directly, but I have good reason to believe she's staying quiet to protect Glory Girl," said Piggot.

"And what evidence do you have?" Carol interjected again.

"We've analyzed the conversations I had with CRUCIBLE with Thinker power assistance," Piggot said. "From this we have determined that Panacea was indeed Mastered by someone, yet she left New Wave to join CRUCIBLE of her own free will. Since she is quite unwilling to return, and according to you people, she even fought you to escape, yet also does not want the PRT to go after whoever Mastered her. From there, it was simple to piece together the real story. Panacea escaped from a Master inside her own family. The only Master we have on record is Glory Girl, and our Thinkers confirmed that her aura has the potential to Master a victim with long-term exposure."

Victoria's face went white at the last sentence. "B-but, that's not possible! She built up an immunity to it!"

"You mean your aura brainwashed her into a willing victim, until she recently escaped with outside assistance," Piggot mercilessly drove her point home.

"No… no way… did I really…?" Victoria had a sudden flashback to the sheer terror on her sister's face at the end. Her sister was looking right at her then.

"She was afraid of me…" Victoria whispered in realization with a face of agony, and with that, she collapsed backwards, her aura completely disappearing from the room.

"Vicky!" Crystal caught her before she hit the ground.

Piggot heard and saw Victoria's reaction, and that was all she needed to confirm her hypothesis.

"You have no evidence for this! It's just theory and conjecture!" Carol said with anger. "My daughter is not a Master!"

"I think your daughter disagrees. And by your daughter I mean both of them," said Piggot, gesturing towards Glory Girl.

"She was afraid of me… she was afraid of me!" Victoria repeated herself, staring off into the memory only she could see.

"Hey, so long-term exposure? I don't think Amy was the only one who got long-term exposure here…" Eric Pelham, the younger brother of Crystal, said with unease.

"Eric!" Sarah shot him a scornful look.

Eric responded sheepishly. "Not blaming anyone, just pointing it out… I don't exactly feel Mastered."

"Director, I assure you we did not know about this before. Still, I think you should have consulted with us before deciding to help Amy talk to the press. This really hurt New Wave's reputation," said Sarah.

"I had nothing to do with that. CRUCIBLE just came here to register their team. The press came on their own initiative, or most likely it was CRUCIBLE themselves that arranged for it. We don't have control over what civilians do outside the PRT building, even if it's at the entrance."

"But if you'd told us sooner, maybe we could have talked to Amy first and sorted things out," said Sarah.

"I will admit we verified her identity before today, but I didn't have the whole story until a few hours ago. Frankly, I think I did you a favor by keeping it a secret. Imagine what would happen if Glory Girl came into contact with Araliac now without knowing what she did. Would you rather have the public find out the truth or see you fighting openly against CRUCIBLE?" Piggot said justifying her actions. She did not admit that her motive for keeping it a secret was to avoid Glory Girl thinking that Piggot was exchanging information for her Wards membership as Glory Girl originally demanded two days again. "But, this is all the more reason for Glory Girl to join the Wards. We need that aura under control."

In the end, New Wave went home in a somber mood. As a team, they decided to accept Piggot's offer to have Victoria join the Wards and avoid prosecution for her excessive force charges and to learn to control her aura.

Dean tried to call Victoria a few times in the evening, but Victoria locked herself in her room and refused to talk to anyone. She simply sat listlessly on her bed through the night until she fell asleep.

O O O

Abjuration 4.1

Abjuration 4.1

That night, we began a campaign against the ABB. Through Coil's intel, we'd already identified many of the villain gang's properties, fronts, supply caches, etc.

Our targets were three forced prostitution rings.

The three of us flew through the night sky under the cover of Skitter's bugs. We came to a stop a block away from the first location, watching from the rooftop.

Skitter's newest tranquilizer bugs, courtesy of Araliac, swarmed forth. They were like unnaturally large mosquitoes that could deliver several payloads of sedative before running out, instead of having to restock from a central supply like normal mosquitoes.

The bugs stealthily went inside the building and found their way to every ABB gang member, employee, client, and prostitute.

Within five minutes, every human in the building was down almost all at once. Quiet and efficient. We went in to sweep the place of cash and weapons. Although we had plenty of money now, there was no reason not to take more.

Then we rounded up the unconscious people and woke up the prostitutes, explaining to them their newfound freedom.

Some had family they wanted to go back to, but many didn't know what to do. They had lost everything. A number had been trafficked from overseas and had nowhere to go.

"Is there anything we can do for them?" Skittered asked, looking at the pitiful women who did not seem particularly happy about being free.

"We could leave some contact information and let them work for us in the future. Although we're just three people now, it wouldn't hurt to start thinking about manpower needs as we expand. If they want to fight, we can train them. Otherwise, they can help us with search and rescue, marketing and PR, whatever. I'm sure we can find something useful for them to do," I said.

So we left some contact information for them and called the police over to take care of the rest.

Our next two targets went just as smoothly. These were unpowered gangers and non-combatant employees, after all.

By the time we were done with the third one, it was only eleven. Thanks to our flight capabilities, getting around was really fast. We barely spent two hours on all three operations, and were left wondering if we should keep going.

We quickly came to the conclusion that there was no reason not to press our advantage. While our enemies were unfamiliar with our methods, we could blitzkrieg through them. And Bakuda was especially vulnerable right now, so we went all out.

We began hitting ABB weapons caches and drug distribution joints. We raced through their territory like a storm, silently crushing all resistance.

A few of the places we'd hit had gangers armed with Bakuda's bombs, but they never had a chance to retaliate with them. We were always taking them down from a block away.

It wasn't long before we collected nearly two million in cash, and twice that value in illegal goods. These spoils I had arranged for quiet pick up by Major Heroux's forces so that we wouldn't waste any time transporting it ourselves each time.

There were a few Bakuda bombs at some of the sites, including embedded into human victims. We didn't take any of these. Instead, Araliac removed the bombs from victims, then I had Agate phase all of them out of existence. Trapped in agatespace, they would stay there forever until eventually obliterated by the Chaos energy.

But after hitting six more locations stealthily, Bakuda had been alerted that something was wrong.

Skitter's power wasn't developed enough to listen through her bugs yet, so it was Agate who was spying on the occupants of our next target.

"They've just been ordered to give an update to Bakuda every five minutes. It looks like we can expect reinforcements to come this time if we stay too long, so we'll have to move faster," I said.

The girls nodded, then Skitter sent her bugs to attack right after an update.

As before, the gangers inside the building went down almost simultaneously. Even at the most extreme ends, they held on for no more than five seconds before succumbing to the tranquilizer.

We flew over and immediately prepared to remove the bombs embedded inside forced recruits and gangers.

But just as we stepped inside the building, a loud, and awkwardly non-instantaneous thought came from Agate.

'GET… OUT… OF… THERE… TIME… SLOW!'

I reacted immediately and shouted to Araliac and Skitter the same. Araliac grabbed onto me and flew out, while Skitter surrounded herself in bugs and followed right after.

We barely made it back out the door when an explosion blew us away.

I tumbled onto the ground with Araliac, her wings torn but still mostly intact. Our costumes held up, but I felt the some of the heat transfer through it to my body. Our costumes weren't fireproof yet. These organic materials were actually fairly combustible, except for the moisture content.

I raised my head to see the whole building had been destroyed, the ground near it was red hot, and a fire was spreading to nearby structures.

"Fuck!" I swore, getting up painfully and pulling Araliac up with me. Her wings were repaired in short order, and we flew over to Skitter, who was still groaning on the ground, surrounded by scorched bugs. Atlas flew over, and we picked up Skitter and placed her on the beetle before retreating to a nearby rooftop.

We unlocked and removed Skitter's helmet so that Araliac could heal her. She had been slightly behind us and closer to the explosion, taking more damage.

I informed the PRT and fire department, then we stayed there for a moment, mentally recovering.

"They're all dead…" said Skitter, looking at the flaming ruins.

"She sacrificed them to try and get to us," said Araliac.

"She's feeling cornered already. I underestimated her. If we hit any more places, she'll probably do the same. Or worse," I said.

"Damn it! I can't believe it. All those people…" Skitter clenched her fists.

"I think we should stop here for tonight. Let's head back," I said.

We flew back to our warehouse base in silence.

"So she's basically using all of her victims as hostages now," Amelia said.

"If things go very badly for her, she might try to take the whole city, maybe the whole east coast, hostage. I'm pretty sure that's what her super EMP bomb is supposed to be for."

"We have to find her and stop her at the source," said Taylor. "That's the only way to save the people she kidnapped to work for her."

"Finding her workshop won't be easy. I don't have any helpful 'precognitive' clues as to where it might be," I said, making air quotes. Taylor was already aware that I didn't have real precognition, just knowledge of a limited number of possible timelines. I had already explained to her in between our training sessions the same things I told Amelia about my past minus the rant about whether I really wanted to save the world and the girl who was betrayed at the end.

"Even if we found it, attacking a Tinker in her own workshop is suicidal, especially one of Bakuda's calibre. It's also possible that she'll have it protected from bugs by the time we find it. She does have a habit of expanding her repertoire by analyzing other capes' powers, as we've seen with her bombs, but bombs are far from the only thing she can make."

"Should we work with the Protectorate? Or form an alliance with the villains, like you said happened in other futures," Taylor said.

"You really think the villains will agree to an alliance if it's just Bakuda? She's not doing as much damage to the city by herself and she's basically a newcomer without a reputation," Amelia said. "Besides, the alliance would really only be with E88, considering that Coil's our prisoner, and he was the one that hired the Undersiders, Faultline, and the Travelers, right? And the Merchants, well they're kind of useless. And I don't really want to ally with villains."

"I think I might have an idea…" I said, deep in thought.

Mini-Interlude (Bakuda)

"Fucking damn it!" Bakuda screamed. She had been listening to the reports coming in of ABB assets getting attacked. The last few days had seen multiple attacks from E88 and the Merchants. Surprisingly, Coil's mercenaries hadn't made any moves despite being quite close to the docks.

But even so, she was barely holding on. As the only cape left in the gang, she had been hiding in her workshop, not willing to face other cape teams outnumbered.

She had tried to hire Uber and Leet, even, but they refused saying that they'd been hired for an exclusive long-term contract.

She didn't have the money to afford hiring Faultline's Crew to protect her crumbling territory if she wanted to keep making bombs.

And tonight, nearly one-third of her remaining assets and locations had been attacked one by one. All of them getting wiped out before support could even arrive.

"I'm going to show them all… shit!" She swore again when she made a mistake with her bomb construction, too angry and frustrated to be as careful as she had to be.

"T-there's a call for you, Bakuda-sama!" A fearful Asian man stammered, stumbling into Bakuda's workshop.

"What the fuck are you doing interrupting my work? Do you want to die?" The last cape in ABB gave him a glare.

"M-my sincerest apologies, Bakuda-sama! A group of men of unknown affiliation took several of our members hostage, and demanded to speak with you!" He quickly explained while holding out a phone.

Bakuda narrowed her eyes and left the Faraday Cage that was her workshop to take the call.

"Hello, Bakuda."

"Who the hell are you?"

"You might know of me as Coil."

"Coil? The fuck do you want? I'm very busy."

"I expected no less from a genius like you. However, I believe you will find this conversation worthwhile."

"If you understand my genius then understand that my time is valuable. Get to the fucking point already, I have bombs to make and people to torture."

"I would like to make a deal with you. With the defeat of Lung and Oni Lee, the ABB is quite vulnerable. Other groups in the city are all eying your territory, not the mention pressure from the heroes. I would offer you a chance to secure your position."

"You, offer me a chance to secure my position? How exactly would you do that?"

"I have many resources. Money, men, connections. You wouldn't have to rely so much on your forced recruits, which frankly isn't good for business and attracts the wrong kind of attention to our city. I could lend some of my many resources to your use-in a secret capacity, of course-even take some of the pressure from the other gangs off of you, if you would agree to do some things for me from time to time."

"Fuck no! You're off your rockers if you think I'm gonna work for you, bastard!" Bakuda grit her teeth when Coil revealed that he was aware of her forcing civilians to work for her.

"Nothing like that, I assure you. Just a few small favours here and there. It would be more of an alliance and a truce."

"I don't need to be allied with you! Once I break Lung and Oni Lee out, the ABB will be stronger than ever!"

"Are you sure, Bakuda? As a gesture of goodwill, how about I give you a bit of intel? Lung is in a coma. He won't be of any help even if you break him out of captivity. Is it really worth it to rescue a leader that is helpless, when you could be a queen in your own right?"

Bakuda was silent for several long seconds.

"What exactly do you want from me?"

"I understand you've been working on a bomb that would wipe out one-fifth of America's electronic infrastructure?"

"What? How the hell do you know that? Nobody knows that!"

"That doesn't matter. As mighty as Lung's rule has been, the ABB as an organization has never been very wealthy. If I give you the resources, can you make more than one such bomb?"

Bakuda had a weird look on her face. "Of course I can. If I had better materials, I could make it a hell of a lot bigger too!"

"Is that so? How about a bomb strong enough to erase a continent?" The voice asked in a challenging tone.

Now Bakuda stood as if frozen.

"Bakuda…?"

"Hmfuehehe… hahahaha…" Her face twisted and she erupted into a mad fit of cackling.

After nearly a minute, she calmed down. "Tell me more about this alliance."

A/N: There used to be a long AN here but I don't think anybody really cared and it was inflating word count so I removed it. Basically, the theme of last arc was in the title, and in the process of writing it I thought about how to highlight the complexity of people's motivations.

Last edited: Jun 1, 2019

Abjuration 4.2

Abjuration 4.2

On Thursday morning, the day that in canon would have seen Dinah kidnapped and the Undersiders rob the Brockton Bay Central Bank, our latest exploits had been published to PHO and quickly spread through the news as well.

The vast majority of the commentary was extremely positive. Yesterday, there had even been quite a significant percentage of people criticizing Panacea for not healing anymore, but once the news of us destroying one-third of the ABB's operations came out, the criticism was overwhelmed by people cheering our success.

It was also worth noting that the Undersiders had disappeared. Their former base was empty and I couldn't find Lisa, Brian, or Alec.

Coil's information network found Rachel in a dog shelter, and just like in canon, she had also demolished one of Hookwolf's dogfighting rings.

I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't keep tabs on Tattletale, but it couldn't be helped. In this timeline, although Coil contacted her about the bank job, because I refused to answer any of Tattletale's calls the last couple of days, she must have gotten spooked and called it off.

I also couldn't have Agate track her all day, as I had way more important things for Agate to do.

The only saving grace was that I knew where Brian's apartment was, and his sister Aisha was still within my monitoring, as she hadn't triggered yet.

However, I could contact any of the Undersiders on my own initiative… and I knew I could have leverage over Brian through Aisha as long as he wanted to take custody of her. He would need my help as Coil's replacement to handle the legal issues.

As part of the plan to handle Bakuda, Amelia agreed to use her powers on Coil to turn him temporarily mentally hampered enough to talk and give me the rest of the information needed to take over all of his assets and deal with any fail safes he had in place.

With that, I did a full review of everything I took over and found that I had $70m in personal direct liquid assets-cash and marketable securities, and estimated $150m value in non-liquid assets-real estate, shares in private unlisted businesses, trusts, etc. Through these non-liquid assets, especially the businesses, I also had access and control over even more funds in the form of operating lines, loans, working capital and operating liquid assets that were part of the businesses' general operations. For example, one business had an equity value of $9m, but had $23m in assets under control and $14m in debts owed.

As with any business, the structures could get quite complicated, so I couldn't simply put a number to exactly how much money was under control. There were businesses that were clearly meant to make profit consistently and legally, whose value could be extracted to Calvert's personal funds. There were some that were meant to launder funds into different accounts, without making much profit, or even showing a loss on paper.

Then there were businesses like Fortress Construction and East Pine Security, whose purpose was to use their actual operations to disguise other activities. Fortress Construction was used for building the secret base while publicly building Endbringer shelters, prisons, foreign military bases for the government, high security corporate buildings, etc. East Pine Security was a licensed private armed security company and weapons dealer. It contracted with the US government for foreign deployments and also corporate interests in low civilization countries. A number of the mercenaries at base were actually on East Pine's payroll as well, and went out on legitimate security jobs from time to time.

This was how Calvert produced legitimate paper trails to cover the things he was doing. If nothing else, I had to respect him for his talent and his dedication. With this kind of money, there was no chance of mercenaries betraying him-unless he spent it all on city revitalization, which is what happened in canon.

It was all very impressive. And now it was all mine.

In fact, given the way he had things set up, I was quite sure if he simply took some more loans out, he still could have easily paid his mercenaries enough money to keep their loyalty. But I could understand why things happened the way they did. It didn't really matter who had more money or if Calvert could pay triple-by the time the betrayal happened, the traitor mercs were committed to follow through.

The fact was, the moment the mercs decided to betray Coil, they knew that even if they went back to Coil, they wouldn't be trusted again. Even if Coil promised to pay them triple, he was just as likely to get rid of them afterwards.

During the late night, I had arranged to start sending resources to Bakuda. In the morning, her new access to far better materials and was already bearing fruit. Whereas she had been limited to making bombs out of household items before, I was able to send her high quality refined chemicals and processed raw materials precisely to her specifications.

Unlike almost every other Tinker out there, Bakuda was able to seemingly mass manufacture her bombs. Canonically, she had been able to install hundreds of bombs in all her forced recruits over a matter of days. Perhaps it was because she made consumable items instead of equipment, but whatever the reason, her output once given more proper resources to work with, instead of relying on converting household products, simply skyrocketed.

One might imagine that with all the assets I seized from the ABB, Bakuda would have a good amount of money to work with on her own. The difficulty for her was that most of those assets were tied up in maintaining the gang itself. Even if bombs could force loyalty, she had to spend money to make the bombs in the first place, so for all those old business employees it was better to just keep paying them. She also lacked the right channels to secretly acquire the substances she needed. Coil on the other hand, had plenty of connections to get whatever he needed and cover his trail.

Now with my help, not only was she mass producing chemical and kinetic explosives, she was mass producing smaller bombs and grenades with exotic effects, if her willingness to give me these bombs was any indication.

I wasn't stupid enough to keep them around me where she might remotely detonate them, even if I was clearly beneficial to her right now, so I stored them in Earth M where the signals couldn't possibly reach.

I also gave her intel on the movements and operations of the Merchants and the E88, allowing her to use her own soldiers to launch counterattacks.

I even fed her patrol routes and warnings about PRT and Protectorate responses. While Piggot did upgrade their security and started feeding false information to Coil's old moles, some intensive spying from Agate allowed me to obtain their new passwords, protocols to get into their networks, and she also simply watched in their console rooms to see where their forces were being moved.

Now in full command of Coil's forces, I simultaneously launched my own attacks on the E88.

"All units in position," Major Heroux reported.

"Begin," I commanded.

"Roger that."

I saw on my console screen from multiple angles the view of the battle.

One mercenary came out of cover on a nearby rooftop and fired an RPG at the entrance to the warehouse that was an E88 weapons cache.

The door was blasted open, and yells came from inside.

The mercenary with the RPG took cover again and quickly left the scene, returning to the armoured van that served as his team's mobile HQ, parked at a nearby alleyway.

The rest of his team emerged from the alley immediately and rushed the warehouse. Their laser Tinkertech rifles were already firing, smashing through the wall of the warehouse, providing cover for their run.

Nobody dared to come out of the warehouse while they rushed forward, and they lobbed grenades in through the holes, before taking cover behind the parts of the wall that weren't destroyed.

A series of screams could be heard as the pain grenades exploded, then a flashbang went off inside.

The visored and armoured group of six stormed inside and started firing.

Confused and stunned by the pain grenades and flashbang, the E88 members out in the open were easily subdued with rubber electroshock bullets. Those under cover attempted to shoot back with their pistols but achieved nothing against the armour my men were wearing.

It wasn't long before the whole warehouse was taken, and my men began to seize the things and men inside. A cargo truck pulled up on the street and parked in front of the warehouse door.

On another screen I saw Stormtiger and Cricket, two of E88's capes rushing over, along with a group of their foot soldiers. Without any prompting from me, the sniper who was watching them informed Major Heroux, who ordered teams 2 and 3 to get into position to support team 1.

Team 1 stopped what they were doing and took cover inside the warehouse, preparing to camp the incoming capes.

The E88 group came on the scene just as the truck seemingly began driving away. They started shooting with assault rifles at the tires when flash bangs came out of the warehouse onto the street where the E88 group was and they were forced to cover their eyes.

Team 2 emerged from an alleyway in front of them and started shooting rubber bullets.

Stormtiger sent blasts of wind at the incoming fire to deflect it, protecting his group. That was when half of team 2 switched to laser fire targeting Stormtiger, which was unaffected by the wind. Cricket and Stormtiger both effectively dodged the laser fire, but the rubber bullets got though Stormtiger's wind protection while he was distracted trying to dodge.

Several E88 members were hit and went down.

Cricket dashed forward, dodging everything at high speed, intent on taking down Team 2, when a black van pulled up thirty meters behind Stormtiger's group, and Team 3 deployed, lobbing over grenades and opening fire.

Stormtiger reacted quickly and used his wind manipulation to deflect the grenades and gunfire again, but then Team 1 emerged from inside of the warehouse and opened fire as well.

Caught in a pincer, the E88 cape was nearly hit from behind when he spun and his wind blast smashed those bullets aside as well. However, he couldn't protect himself and his foot soldiers, who all went down.

Meanwhile, Team 2 retreated backwards while maintaining fire on Cricket and throwing a canister.

Cricket recognized it as some kind of explosive and dodged backwards.

In the next moment, the canister exploded, flash freezing an area nearly twenty meters in radius, the the edge of it just barely catching Cricket, whose back was covered in frost. She screamed in pain and fell, then two members of Team 2 suddenly pivoted and threw wide range time slow bombs. Cricket wasn't fast enough to dodge the mass area attack while partially frozen.

Team 2 fully re-engaged, firing a hail of rubber electroshock bullets. Although the bullets were slowed down in the affected time slow area as well, because the firing was from outside the bubble, the difference was effectively multiplying the relative rate of fire, and giving Team 2 the extra time to coordinate fire in a way that made it impossible to dodge by covering all of the space around Cricket.

She was inevitably hit and went down.

The time slow bombs were temporary, and when the effect expired, the area was back to normal, with the exclusion of the ice that now covered the street.

Stormtiger was relentlessly deflecting a storm of bullets and dodging lasers from two directions as he retreated into the air from the obviously lost battle.

My men finished taking everything in the warehouse and rounded up all the E88 members including Cricket, before escaping. By the time the PRT arrived, they were long gone.

Because I was acting as "Coil", these captured criminals weren't handed over to the PRT. Instead, I quietly moved them all to a secluded space on Earth M with the assistance of Major Heroux. With access to Coil's equipment, I was now able to make much more effective restraints instead of relying primarily on the stockpile of super sedative Amelia had made.

I carefully managed several more minor attacks on the E88. Each time my men rapidly moved in and left before the PRT could respond.

Aside from the one battle where I'd captured Cricket, my men also had a very short engagement with Krieg, Victor, and Othala.

If I wanted to, I believed I could have won that battle with Bakuda's bombs, but I gave the order to retreat as soon as the capes were on site.

A big frost bomb covered the street in ice and delayed them enough for my men to make their escape.

These skirmishes allowed Bakuda to regain her footing and start fighting back. It also built up her trust towards the alliance.

Meanwhile, Cricket and the sixteen unpowered E88 prisoners I acquired would serve well for my magical experiments.

While there was little that could be done with Cricket or her power for now, I needed living and sentient test subjects for a particular spell I was working on in between managing my army.

O O O

Last edited: Jul 5, 2019

Abjuration 4.3

Abjuration 4.3

I brought the first test subject to an open steppes field in the northern hemisphere of Earth M.

A large tent was set up here for my experiment, on top of a wooden platform. I had the subject tied to a chair, gagged and blindfolded.

He coughed and spat when I removed the gag.

"Listen carefully if you want to go free," I said.

That got his attention. "Alright, I'm listening. Not like I can do anything else tied up like this," he said.

"I like to think I'm a reasonable man. I don't enjoy putting people in jail. Most people think you E88 are just a bunch of irredeemable racists," I said. He looked ready to protest when I continued, "But I know better than that."

"What? You secretly agree with us or something?"

"No. I know that you are redeemable. Everyone is, and everyone deserves a second chance. Even scum like you," I said.

"What the fuck, you some kind of feel good hippie?"

"One would think you wouldn't insult the person offering you a chance to go free."

He was silent for a bit. Then, "Okay, so what you want me to do? Renounce the Empire, confess my sins, and promise to be good?"

"I want you to obey my every command for one week," I said. "And in that week I will reform you. After that, you may go free, regardless of how you think by the end of it."

"Yeah right! You want me to be your fucking slave for a week?"

"You may think of it as harsh discipline. You must commit to accepting my teachings for one week. If you truly believe in the ideals of the Empire, you should not falter so easily after a mere seven days."

"Don't you try to feed me that bullshit. I've read all about what they do in re-education camps!"

"What do you have to lose? If I were ready to use the methods you are imagining, would I even need your consent? I offer you this opportunity in good faith, but if you refuse, then perhaps it will be necessary to resort to more drastic measures."

He stopped responding to me. For the next ten minutes, I sat there waiting for him to change his mind. Eventually, he did.

"Fuck. I'll do it. You'll really let me go for sure?"

"I will. In fact, we can make a blood oath. You E88 like that sort of thing, don't you?"

"Where in the hell did you hear that? We don't do blood oaths."

"Not even for initiation?" I asked in a surprised tone.

"What do you take us for, a frat?"

"Hmm… well no matter. I will give you a blood oath to prove my sincerity, provided you do the same."

"Fucking hippie…"

"Did you change your mind? You want to stay as my prisoner?"

"No, no! I'll do it!" He shouted. Then he muttered under his breath, "Der mist!"

"Good," I said. Then I removed his blindfold, and released one of his bindings so that one hand was free.

He looked at me with contemptuous eyes but I didn't show any signs of noticing, especially behind my Coil mask.

I stood in front of him, and slowly removed one glove, then made a small cut on my palm.

"I hereby swear that you will be allowed to go free exactly at the end of one week from now if you abide by the terms of our contract by obeying my every command for the next week," I said solemnly.

Then I gestured for him to give me his hand. "Now it's your turn. Do you agree to this contract?" I asked.

"I agree to obey you for a week if you release me at the end of it unharmed and without doing anything else to try and stop me from going back to the E88 or wherever I want."

I nodded, and then cut his palm, and shook his hand with my own bloody palm.

I inwardly smirked at his attempt to make sure there weren't any loopholes. He obviously realized that as a cape, I might somehow be able to enforce the contract.

"Satz. Wächter, Meine Worte sind gefallen, lass den Vertrag zustande kommen. Weiß ist schwarz Richtig, Peitsche. Die Vergeltung des Himmels," I said, channeling prana into his hand and blood.

"The fuck? You trying to speak German or gibberish?"

'I don't think that worked,' Agate informed me. 'Not feeling any connection.'

'Must have gotten the chant wrong,' I thought back.

'I don't think the chant really matters,' said Agate. 'I think the problem was his consent. He didn't technically agree to the contract you spoke. Or maybe he was lying and didn't plan to actually follow through.'

"Your first order: punch yourself," I said.

"Don't fucking mess with me, you bastard! You said you weren't going to do that re-education camp bullshit!"

"Shut up, I said nothing of the sort."

"Where's your fucking good faith? I knew you were bullshitting!"

Oh well. I couldn't expect the first one to work.

"Well, you failed already. You can reflect on your failures and try again later," I declared.

"What the fuck? Is this a joke?" He shouted.

I sprayed him with sedative.

"I agree!"

"Setzt. Wächter, meine Worte haben den Vertrag. Weiß ist schwarz, richtig lässig peitschen. Die Vergeltung von Himmel," I said, channeling prana into his hand and blood.

"What?" He asked in a confused expression.

'Nope.'

'But he clearly agreed this time. It must be the chant then. Maybe my pronunciation was off the first time, I'll try the first chant again.'

'I really don't think so… '

"Satz. Wächter, Meine Worte sind gefallen, lass den Vertrag zustande kommen. Weiß ist schwarz Richtig, Peitsche. Die Vergeltung des Himmels."

"I can't understand you, can you just speak English?"

"Yes."

"Satz. Meine Worte bilden den Vertrag. Weiß ist schwarz Die Wahrheit. Himmlische Vergeltung," I said, holding out Agate and placing his bloody palm on her.

"Not everyone in the Empire speaks German… and what's with the stick? Is this supposed to be a lesson about touching black stuff?"

'That didn't work either.'

'Damn it. How are we supposed to figure out what Rin chanted like this? I barely remember any of it. There must be millions of possible word combinations.'

Agate transmitted an image of Rin facepalming to me, followed by an animation with sound as she held one fist to her waist with a big tic mark on her forehead. 'Shirou, you idiot, stop practicing the pronunciation! The aria doesn't matter! It's just a hypnotic device!'

I sighed. This was going to take a while.

'Maybe you're trying too strong a compulsion. Rin never made Shirou do anything, right? She just stopped him from trying to save Sakura.'

'True, but that's just the end effect. What Rin made Shirou agree to was obey everything she commanded while allies for the war, as far as I remember.'

'Well, maybe it's because they didn't truly agree, still. They have to really mean it. Like, I bet these guys are holding out, thinking that some awful commands they're just not going to follow when it comes down to it, whereas Shirou seriously meant that he would obey anything Rin said. For example, we know you can't actually use the spell to force someone to kill themselves like with a Command Spell, but Shirou would be okay with agreeing to possibly sacrifice himself. Even if he thought about commands that went against his ideals, he might think something like, "If it's Rin, there must be a good reason, so it's fine" and that way his mindset while agreeing to the contract would be 100% consent.'

'Hm… that sounds plausible.'

"Hello, Grue. I hope the team is doing well."

"Boss? We haven't heard anything from you for days."

I finally found Brian back at his apartment, and took the chance to contact him alone. Aisha had gone to school.

"Yes. I apologize for being unreachable. For a number of reasons, it was not safe to make contact sooner. Recent developments in the city have been very disruptive."

"Yeah, I can see why that could make things difficult. The team's fine, but we've been keeping on the down low while we couldn't get in touch with you."

"You made the right call. The city is now in a state of open war between the gangs. The fallout from Lung and Oni Lee's capture has been beyond even my expectations. The military is being prepared to mobilize, and the PRT is in a state of continuous high alert."

"No kidding. I've been hearing gunfire and explosions throughout the day."

"I have a new job for you now, if you feel comfortable with a quick trip to the docks. The chance of any combat on this one should be very low, but the area itself is fairly dangerous at the moment. I just need you to create darkness cover at a designated location and time."

"That sounds pretty easy for us. I don't think anyone on the team will oppose," he said.

"The rest of your team isn't strictly necessary. The only thing I need is your darkness. You can bring the others for safety if you want, but either way I am paying you a fixed $15,000 for the job. It's your call if you want to split it or do it yourself."

He hesitated for a moment. "There won't be any combat?"

"Unless you get caught up in a gang fight, there shouldn't be. All you have to go is go there, cover the area in darkness for a few minutes, and leave. That's it. Escape is what the Undersiders are best at, isn't it? You can also cover more than just that area in darkness if you want to give yourself more cover."

"Alright. I'll take the job."

"Bakuda. How are the ABB doing? Any issues with the shipments?" I spoke into the phone.

"The ABB is doing great. And I need more supplies."

"Really? I heard on the grapevine that you're still losing territory."

"That's none of your business, Coil! Stop fishing for information. We don't need that useless territory anyway, all we need are my bombs."

"Bakuda, do I need to remind you of our agreement? You need to avoid endangering civilians and reduce forced recruitment. I don't have any problem with you making more bombs, but word is that the military is watching the situation now. If civilian casualties start piling up, it won't be good for anybody here if the PRT comes down hard with out of town heroes."

"I've kept to the agreement, bastard! If it weren't for these restrictions I'd have wiped the E88 off the map by now! Is that all you called to say?"

"No, I actually have intel you might be interested. You know about Grue, yes?"

"Grue, of the Undersiders? Why the fuck would I care about him?"

"He has an interesting power, with a useful effect. If you could make bombs that replicated his darkness, it would have strong strategic applications for assisting your forces in retreating from after an engagement. It also has signal blocking properties, something that might trouble your bombs if you don't find a way to counter it."

"Don't beat around the bush all the time. You obviously want me to make bombs based on his power for you."

"I admit that is one motivation, but you can't deny that there are benefits to you as well."

"I'm going to need to access his power for scanning to make those bombs. You think we can capture him?"

"No, but I know exactly when and where he's planning to be for a job. He always uses his darkness to make his escape, so if you just hide nearby, you can scan his power while it's covering his retreat. There's hardly any risk of confrontation if you play it safe."

"I'm not afraid of fighting the Undersiders."

"But why risk it when you're low on manpower, when you don't have to? Better to get what you need than risk E88 or PRT coming along to interfere."

"I'll make that judgement for myself."

I smiled. She took the bait, as I expected. This would make things easier. "Then, he's going to be at…"

Araliac and Skitter carefully hid themselves near the designated spot I sent Grue to.

The darkness expanded quickly and covered a block of the street at the docks.

After waiting for a few minutes, Skitter spoke into her comms. "Found her."

With this, Skitter tracked Bakuda all the way back to her workshop, and combined with some more spying from Agate, we learned about the tricks she had up her sleeve. Hidden control mechanisms, override remotes, warp bombs, agony (higher intensity) bombs, full time stop bombs, chain disintegration bombs, siliconization bombs, etc. Things that she didn't sell to "Coil", but nothing special that I wasn't already expecting. Still, it was best to be cautious.

On the street, things weren't looking good for Bakuda. While her offensive power was extreme, she wasn't turning any of that into successfully claimed territory and profit. Instead, as the war dragged on, the E88 had successfully taken out even more of her gang assets.

Unlike canon, Bakuda didn't have the leadership capability to really manage her gang. Without Lung, she hadn't been able to recruit nearly as many people, even by force, or deploy them effectively, on top of the restrictions from her agreement with "Coil".

Her core ABB members were dwindling, and the forced recruits were not effective combatants.

By Saturday night, she had agreed to a face-to-face meeting with "Coil".

O O O

Interlude 4.a

Interlude 4.a

A black van pulled up beside the abandoned warehouse, and what appeared to be a man in Coil's costume came out, flanked by five mercenaries.

The group walked inside where Bakuda was standing in the center of the warehouse, waiting. She was in her full body costume with the gas mask, goggles, and wires. She was wearing black metallic armour overlaid with a red jacket and yellow boots. Seven men in ABB colours were visibly standing near her.

The warehouse was large and had many shipping containers lying around. There were no lights on except several flashlights positioned in strategic places and a single portable light behind the ABB gangers. All set up by Bakuda, who had been waiting here for Coil to arrive.

"Bakuda. You have quite the theatrical flair," said Coil once he stood only five metres away from her.

"Coil? Fuck, you're skinny. Seriously, your ribs are showing," said Bakuda.

"It's not easy being a crime lord in Brockton Bay. I'm sure you've gotten familiar with that over the past few days."

"Tch. So, how's this gonna work? We going to make small talk until we have a good enough 'rapport'?" Bakuda asked, making air quotes with one hand, holding her grenade launcher pointed to the ground with the other.

"A crude way of putting it, but that is correct. If our alliance is to be sustainable, we must be comfortable with each other's goals, methods, and personalities," said Coil.

"Look, I don't give a flying fuck about any of that. I need money and materials to build my bombs, and some help to break out Oni Lee and Lung. You want to use my bombs for yourself. Seems simple enough to me. What else do you know want to know?"

"The exchange is simple, yes. But you have a preference for doing things in a way that isn't good for business, getting the wrong kinds of attention to our fair city. I find your methods of… recruitment… distasteful, but I can understand it. Yet, I now find myself concerned as to what you might do with even more firepower. You have been lashing out, dealing damage, but you haven't been able to hold on to any territory. This is not sustainable. Are you truly capable of being the leader of the ABB?"

"I'm a fucking genius, there's nobody better to be in charge. Weren't you the one who said I should be a queen of my own? The hell are you-"

She was cut off by a strangled cry from behind her. She turned around to see six of her guys slumping to the ground and the last one clutching his neck before joining them.

"What the fuck?! Coil, you-"

"This meeting's been compromised! Retreat!" Coil yelled and ran for the exit.

Suddenly a vast swarm of bugs emerged from the shadows, blocking the way to the exit.

Like a locust, the bugs came from the ceiling, walls, shipping containers, and every dark crevice.

Bakuda ran for the other exit and started firing grenades at the bugs. "ABB with me!" She yelled. When there was no response, she swore.

Coil's men were firing their laser rifles already, cutting through the swarm but any losses were simply replaced by yet more bugs.

Their vision was blocked by the dense gathering of insects, and they were unable to get to the door.

Bakuda's grenades exploded into balls of fire and ice, destroying large sections of bugs along with the walls of the warehouse, but bugs were already climbing up her costume.

She dropped another grenade on her person, and this time its invisible explosion stunned all of the bugs on and around her. She barely moved two steps before tripping over a spider silk wire, and then spiders the size of soccer balls dropped on to her, eliciting a scream.

Another pain grenade stunned the spiders as she hastily attempted to crawl away, leaving a large canister behind.

Coil and his men were already completely covered in bugs and screaming when the huge spiders got to them. Half the spiders proceeded to spit sticky goo on them while the other half started spinning very thick silk to wrap them up.

When Bakuda's canister exploded, this time the explosion was massive and flash froze half the warehouse.

Bakuda herself apparently survived by detonating a minor heat grenade right beside her, forming a small sphere of protection. She scrambled back up and dashed for the door again when it blew open from the other side, ice shattering.

Vines as thick as human arms burst in. One vine went straight for Bakuda's chest and unfurled at the tip to reveal a sharp extrusion that speared into the base of Bakuda's neck, going straight through her armor, while the vines massed around and wrapped her limbs and neck, holding her in the air. Bakuda went limp, seemingly paralyzed or unconscious.

On the other side of the door was Araliac casually walking in, with Polychromic right behind her.

Shortly after that, the unconscious and silk wrapped bodies of many more ABB were dragged out of the shadows from their hiding places.

Skitter entered from the opposite door where Coil and his men were lying down, also unconscious.

All of the defeated criminals were rounded up.

Araliac started removing the bombs from inside of the ABB members. The camera angle moved and flew towards Skitter, who held out a hand to receive the thing that was carrying the camera and flipped it.

Then the camera shifted to Polychromic's POV watching Araliac remove bombs from the ABB, with Skitter standing to the side, in her hands a palm sized beetle with a camera attached to its head.

The voice of Polychromic began narrating with subtitles. "When CRUCIBLE attacked ABB assets earlier in the week, we uncovered that Bakuda had been forcibly recruiting innocent civilians, installing bombs inside of them and their loved ones to ensure their cooperation. We knew then that continuing to engage Bakuda's ABB head on was not an option. While Bakuda was hidden, they were hostages that could be executed at any time."

The video shifted to the scene right when the ABB weapons cache exploded, from the POV of Araliac, complete with tumbling and shaking, ending with turning to see Skitter and Polychromic struggling back up and the flaming ruins of the building.

The voice then changed to Araliac's.

"These people were victims, not criminals, and they needed to be saved."

That sentence coincided with the display of a girl in Immaculata uniform. She was unconscious and laid on the ground, with Araliac's hand holding her head. A tumor-like bulge appeared at the back of her head, the hair moving aside and flesh expanding out until it split through the middle, bone and flesh wrapped around thin wiring and a small black device with a blinking red light emerging from the crevice. The bomb was carefully ejected while the bone, flesh, and hair were molded back into the right shape.

The video flashed again and again to different scenes of other ABB victims, then to a view of a basement of a hideout with ABB members patrolling around.

The voice changed to Skitter's.

"We changed tactics, investigating Bakuda's activities. We found that she had recruited over a hundred victims this way. Even worse, she had allied with Coil, who was now funding her bomb creation."

The video flashed momentarily back to a cut of the earlier scene with Coil talking to Bakuda, the part where he said "Are you truly capable of being the leader of the ABB", the volume playing at a lower level, before changing to a map of the USA.

"But even her ally Coil became nervous when he learned that Bakuda was creating a nine-thousand kiloton bomb that would wipe out the US east coast. An EMP that would take out a fifth of North American electronic infrastructure."

A red dot appeared on the location of Brockton Bay, and a dark wave expanded from the dot, drawing out the estimated radius of damage.

The voice changed back to Araliac.

"We learned about this meeting between Bakuda and Coil, and we knew this was our best chance to prevent a terrible catastrophe."

Now Polychromic stood with Araliac and Skitter in front of a dark background.

"As soon as Bakuda was defeated, CRUCIBLE swept through the remaining ABB strongholds, and rescued all the victims!"

The video flashed numerous times to different ABB facilities and shots of unconscious, captured ABB and victims with Araliac and Skitter standing over them.

"Coil too, was defeated, and his own organization has already scattered to the winds without their leader!"

Then the video flashed to a short scene where the CRUCIBLE three were looking around what appeared to be a small basement bunker.

"It's empty. There's nobody here," said Araliac, coming out of a room not on-screen.

"Looks like they ran away pretty fast. They left the drugs," said Skitter, pulling out a bag of powder.

"They were all hired mercs, not loyal mafia. I'm not surprised," Polychromic said, rifling through some papers left on a desk.

The view turned back to the team standing in darkness.

"The ABB and Coil's Organization are no more! We, CRUCIBLE, have destroyed them for their crimes, and their ill-gotten gains will now be used to advance our mission! Today, we have taken another great step towards our goal of making Brockton Bay a safe and crime-free city. But the fight is not over. Let this be a warning to all those who continue to prey on the helpless, and an inspiration for all those who wish to join us in the fight against evil!" My voiced boomed as I made dramatic gestures.

The view faded away.

Text floated up slowly.

Shortly after midnight on April 17th, CRUCIBLE defeated the supervillains known as Bakuda and Coil, taking them into custody.

The same night, CRUCIBLE dismantled the criminal gang known as "Azn Bad Boyz".

The criminal gang known as "Coil's Organization" fled and deserted their hideouts before they could be apprehended.

Both gang's contraband have been seized pending processing with local authorities.

All captured gang members and hostage victims are currently being held in a secure CRUCIBLE facility. We will be organizing and coordinating the release of the hostage victims to their families and loved ones with BBPD. In the mean time, all victims have received emergency care and will have their basic needs met.

Bakuda's bombs were recovered or disabled, and are now being held in a maximum security facility so that they may be deployed against future Endbringer attacks and S-class threats.

We have taken a great leap forward in the war against crime in Brockton Bay. But it is not enough. We shall remain vigilant.

Do your part and help us spread the message.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Please like, follow and share.

The text flashed on screen with CRUCIBLE's social media account handles as the video ended.

O O O

Last edited: Jun 21, 2019

Abjuration 4.4

Abjuration 4.4

The night after the meeting with Bakuda we had a lot of clean up to do.

I had let Bakuda choose the location of the meeting, then spied on her to find where it was before she told Coil. All of her preparations and ambushes came to naught as we saw all of it beforehand, then crashed the meeting between her and fake Coil.

Even though Bakuda tried to scan for monitoring devices when she arrived, I just waited until she was done scanning to get Skitter to bug the warehouse, and we ended up filming the whole encounter.

Bakuda herself had been too paranoid to try and rely on anyone but her own gang as backup, and there weren't really any other options for her in the city even if she wanted to bring anyone else. So the meeting was kept secret, and we completed the plan without a hitch.

The mercenaries who had been with fake Coil had been identified by myself, Heroux and Reynolds as being disloyal and an obstacle to my future ambitions, so they were not informed of the true nature of the operation.

The vast majority of Coil's organization, despite being under my effective control, had still believed it was Coil running the show.

The Coil body double was released back into my employ for a job well done.

Bakuda was taken prisoner and moved to Earth M in a separate containment area from Calvert.

We did not stick around to give any statement to the PRT, nor did we notify them immediately. Instead, we stealthily mopped up the rest of the ABB first and went around to some of Coil's other hideouts and bunkers to film some other useful scenes.

This was supposed to be Taylor's big win, and we had to make sure we looked good.

And it was important that the public focus on how much good we did rather than some of the implications of what we had done.

That night we also seized all ABB assets that could be liquidated and moved Bakuda's workshop as well as all of her bomb supply to Earth M.

Like with Calvert, Bakuda was forced to tell us how to move everything safely by way of Amelia's narcosynthesis. She couldn't make a full truth serum, but it was fairly effective if she induced and managed the effect directly via touch.

Still, I had Coil's grunts now to do the dangerous work for us, so I ordered Major Reynolds to send some men to handle it instead of risking any traps going off if Bakuda omitted anything.

"Kaleidus, why do we need to move her workshop too?" Amelia asked me as we sat back in Coil's comms room watching the work being done by Reynolds' men.

"Bakuda's bombs are too valuable for us to pass up. She has one of the only powers that are effective on Endbringers. She'll need her tools to help us make more bombs and maintain the ones we've already taken," I said. "I'm sure we can find a way to persuade her to cooperate eventually."

She gave me a hesitant look. Then she looked to Taylor who was trying her best to make herself look smaller.

"I agree," she said quietly without making eye contact. I had discussed this with Taylor privately beforehand and found that she was very supportive of making Coil and Bakuda work for us, but wasn't willing to say it out loud before when Amelia didn't volunteer the use of her power. This, on top of Amelia now being her only female friend, made her very uncomfortable voicing her actual opinion.

"Well, if you guys both agree…" Amelia trailed off and didn't say any more.

Other than that, we worked on planning out the video we were going to upload, but this time instead of editing it all myself, I had hired a freelance video producer to be on standby to work on this overnight. A professional team would have been better quality but getting a team like that to do overnight work was not easy.

I was going to hire a dedicated marketing agency or building an internal marketing department next, but there hadn't been enough time to do it yet.

Instead, for now I had to be satisfied with just hiring a bunch of shills and paid influencers to share and promote our stuff all over the web.

Meanwhile…

Major Heroux and Reynolds and with the Coil body double were gathered in a conference room at Coil's base. Heroux and Reynolds sat on one head of the table, Coil on the other.

Captains Reed, Bateman, and O'Donnell filed into the room and Coil gestured for them to sit at the long edge.

Agate floated opposite them in the air, wreathed in a dark billowing flame-like cloud, to signify the active presence of their true master.

The captains looked slightly confused as to the sitting arrangement and Agate at the front.

Coil stood up. "Captains, tonight I have the honor of introducing you to our organization's true sponsor, Lord Infinity," he said, gesturing to Agate. "This is his avatar."

"Good evening, gentlemen," Agate spoke in a deep metallic voice.

The captains nodded with only slight hesitation and gave curt greetings.

"We have called you here tonight because you have earned a seat at this table, as our organization moves into the next phase of its development. The reports from Coil speak well of your performance, and Majors Heroux and Reynolds have had nothing but praise for your loyalty."

We said that so these captains would understand the reporting structure in which both Coil and the Majors reported directly to me, and to give Heroux and Reynolds additional authority, giving the appearance that they were previously my secret agents in the organization that had been observing everyone else.

The captains showed the barest hint of surprise on their faces and only Bateman snuck a glance at the two we identified as Majors.

"Tomorrow, our organization will undergo a significant restructuring. Before we explain what will happen, Major Heroux will share with you some observations about the state of the world and our organization's true aims."

Major Heroux stood up, and Agate flew to the side while a holo-projection appeared over the white wall showing a professional slidedeck.

"Earth Bet has been slowly collapsing under the strain of the Endbringer attacks and cape violence. World economies have stagnated despite the introduction of Tinkertech based new technologies, due to the destruction of cities every three months. Today, numerous countries have already fallen to cape warlords and totalitarian rule."

Heroux manipulated the slide with a pointer and showed a world map, which then highlighted key points.

"The greatest concentration of independent cape warlords is in Africa, which has historically suffered from lack of effective government and frequent ethnic warfare," he said. Several red points were enlarged. "The chaos has reached the point where conventional governments have generally collapsed around these clusters, replaced entirely by roaming warlords and mercenary groups. Reed and O'Donnell have had some personal experience with this with East Pine's work, isn't that right?"

Lines encompassing much of Namibia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, the Congo, and West Egypt demarked the known "collapsed" areas.

"Yeah, we were in Botswana for a little bit. It was pretty bad over there, must have been like seventeen different factions vying for control. Twenty years ago it was a miracle of prosperity and growth, a real diamond in the rough. Think they used to call it the African tiger or some shit. By the time we arrived in '08 it was just another bloody dump like the rest of shitholes around it," said Reed.

"There for three months and didn't even get to swipe any diamonds," O'Donnell said with a head shake and a sigh.

Heroux gave a chuckle before continuing.

"Africa is quite the mess now, but what we're seeing isn't simply an extension of the chaos that's historically been there since the end of the colonial era. Similar fragmentation and disorder has appeared across the world, particularly following a major Endbringer attack, such as in Japan and Russia. The destruction of Canberra in February is already showing similar trends for Australia. Even places relatively untouched by Endbringers such as China and the UK have suffered from revolution and rebellion."

The slide deck continued to show various images of the different areas Heroux mentioned.

"I think you three understand where I'm going with this. None of us would be in this business if we thought we could get by with a nice cushy desk job with a stable pension to retire with a few decades later. Times have changed. There's never been such high demand for private security. For now, the greenback is still king, and cash can buy safety. But sooner or later, when enough cities are hit by the Endbringers, when the criminal elements start overwhelming the lawful authorities, the rest of the world is going to start looking more and more like Africa…"

He paused to observe the three captains.

"Might as well make bank and live it up before everything goes to hell, is that what I'm hearing, boys? YOLO!" Bateman said with a hearty cackle and slapped O'Donnell on the back.

O'Donnell glared and growled back. "Keep your hands and retarded ideas to yourself, Bateman. I don't think Lord Infinity would have invited us here just to tell us how society is going to collapse without a plan in mind."

"Just tryin' to lighten up the mood here, man, don't be such a downer," Bateman said, huffing and crossing his arms.

Heroux glanced at Agate, who made no move to interfere.

"That's enough. Nothing wrong with a joke every once in a while, but O'Donnell is right. When civilization crumbles, you will have two choices. Number one: you can work for a faction vying for control of dirt, scraps, and ruined cities."

Images of the ruins of Moscow, Japan, and burning and destroyed towns in Africa, all played on screen again.

"For everyone else, that's the only choice," Heroux said, raising his voice.

He pointed dramatically at the three captains. "You, however, have earned with your performance and loyalty a seat at this table," he said, moving his finger to point at the table.

"And by sitting here tonight, you are receiving the opportunity to make an alternative choice!"

With a flourish, Heroux gestured with both hands to Agate, who floated back to the center at a higher altitude as Heroux shifted to the side.

The lights in the room dimmed slowly until the only source remaining was the haunting glow of Agate's billowing aura of purple and red.

"To follow Lord Infinity, who shall lead us to new and rich lands beyond the reach of the Endbringers. While the rest of Earth Bet shall fight over leftover ruins, Lord Infinity shall establish an empire across countless worlds!" Heroux shouted.

Simultaneously, below Agate a glowing white line cut through the air and slowly expanded into a shimmering portal. Bright daylight filtered in to the room.

"What the fuck!" Bateman exclaimed with wide eyes.

O'Donnell was visibly surprised, but said nothing.

Reed blinked a few times before speaking up. "Is that another dimension? Like Aleph?"

"Correct." Agate flew down and moved right in front of them.

"Tonight marks the end of the criminal gang known as Coil's Organization. If you choose to continue working for us, you will be held to a higher standard. You will no longer be simple mercenaries, but the beginning of a true disciplined army with a dedicated cause! As such, you will be required to swear your allegiance to us. Otherwise, you are free to quit and leave unharmed, so long as you swear never to reveal what you learned in this room. What is your choice?"

There was a long moment of silence as the captains looked at the portal, Agate, and themselves with varying degrees of surprise and wariness.

"Can we think about it?" Bateman asked with complete seriousness.

"You have 5 minutes."

Heroux sat back down.

The time passed slowly in silence as the three men grew visibly unnerved by the unrelenting stares of Heroux and Reynolds. Coil continued to sit silently to the side without the slightest move.

"So, hypothetically speaking, if I just want to stay a free mercenary, you really don't have a problem with that? You'll let me go safely, without any tricks?" Bateman finally asked after three minutes had passed.

"Lord Infinity has no need of tricks. If he says you're free to quit unharmed, then you're free to quit unharmed." Heroux said.

"You will be allowed to leave unharmed and without pursuit. If you truly wish to remain a hired mercenary, my agents may have other, less lucrative jobs for you in the future. But we will require an oath of silence from you. We warn you now that it will be binding, and we will know if you lie, in which case you will be silenced by other means."

"Ah… of course," said Bateman as he nodded with a forced smile.

"I will accept," O'Donnell said suddenly.

"Good. Go through the portal and wait on the other side."

He got up and did as told.

"Well if O'Donnell's doing it, I might as well too," said Reed, who got up to go through the portal without prompting.

Bateman remained seated as he watched the other two look around the grass and the river in the distance curiously. O'Donnell took out his phone momentarily before putting it away.

"Time's up. What is your choice, Captain Bateman?"

He stood up abruptly, face full of sweat. "Alright, alright. I'm in."

Once the three captains were gathered on the other side, Agate floated over as well, then Coil and the Majors followed shortly after.

"You have chosen well. Kneel."

Agate continued after they each got down on one knee.

"Lord Infinity offers you the honor of vassalage, protection, and awards as you deserve according to your service. You renounce any other master, and submit to him and his will. You swear to be true and faithful to your lord, to obey his commands and give aid voluntarily, and you shall never with will or action, do or cause, or allow by knowing inaction, that which is displeasing or harmful to your lord, his recognized subjects, or his possessions. Do you agree and swear this upon your soul?"

"Yes." "I agree." "Alright."

"Fill. Set. Bind. Life is the essence, soul is the foundation. Your oath is sworn and acknowledged by the three words of power."

Through Agate, I felt three new connections being established.

O'Donnell and Reed both shivered with a hitched breath. Bateman gasped and grasped at his heart.

"It is done. Return to the conference room for additional instructions."

With that, Agate phased out, and the group was led back to the room to be debriefed on the official surrender and merging of Coil's Organization to CRUCIBLE.

The two Majors and the Coil double had given me their own oaths already. It was the first thing I did after successfully replicating the Geas spell in my experiments.

They were minor curses that caused discomfort when attempting to go against me, and outright immobilized them if I directly commanded it.

There was still room for improvement, but it would have to do, for the expendable ones.

Even if it didn't completely prevent them from betraying me, they would have to think twice as they didn't know exactly what the consequences would be.

O O O

Interlude 4.b (Tattletale)

Interlude 4.b (Tattletale)

Lisa got off the bus at the Boardwalk and walked the rest of the way to the abandoned factory at the docks that was the Undersiders' lair.

On a Monday morning, the Boardwalk was unusually sparse with tourists. Still, there were enough of them around that she kept her power off to avoid triggering an endless stream of irrelevant information. She only had so much to use before getting a splitting headache for the rest of the day, after all. She had to conserve her uses, and she'd already used it quite a bit today watching the latest video posted by CRUCIBLE.

Lisa walked through the maze of barely distinguishable warehouses, garages, and factories easily. The graffiti and worn walls were enough for her to find her way, even if she hadn't gotten familiar with the area over many months of operating nearby with her team.

It wasn't long before she was just a few buildings away.

She turned on her power then and scrutinized the surrounding places for hiding spots where there could be people spying or ambushes.

There was nothing that she could detect. None of Coil's mercs, who sometimes stationed nearby.

She closed the distance and pushed through the door beside the Redmond Welding sign and headed up stairs. Brutus, the big dog, greeted her with a bark at the base of the stairs, then followed her up.

The first person she saw was Rachel, who came out on account of Brutus' barking, and just gave her nod before heading back in to the loft.

Inside, Alec was playing a video game as usual, while Brian sat beside him watching him play.

The nominal leader of the Undersiders looked over. "Hey Lisa. Glad you could make it."

"Hey Tats." Alec gave her a glance before his eyes darted back to his game.

She gave Brian a smirk. "If our fearless leader is calling, how could I miss it?"

"You're the fearless one, Lisa. I seem to remember you were the one that suggested we look for Lung after Oni Lee, instead of running away from the raging dragon."

"It isn't fearless if I knew we would have been fine," she said, tapping her head.

Brian didn't know about the timelines Coil used. But Lisa did, and she knew that if their boss ordered them to look for Lung, he probably had a backup timeline where they did run away, in case things went badly.

Although she didn't work for Coil one-hundred percent by choice, she would be lying if she said she didn't feel safer having that kind of assurance when they went up against the crazies that didn't care for the unwritten rules.

The Undersiders were in it for the fun playing cops and robbers with the dress-up heroes, and getting burned alive wouldn't be fun at all.

"Right, right," said Brian.

"So, what's up, Brian? You said the boss contacted you?" Lisa asked.

It was strange, and she didn't like it. Coil always went through her when he communicated with the team. Even though he could contact the others at any time, and did do so when dealing with their private matters-like Brian's custody suit-anything team-related he'd go through her.

While Brian was the nominal leader, she was supposed to be Coil's liaison.

And she hadn't been able to get into contact with him for an entire week. That was why she'd suggested for the team to lay low for while, in case something happened.

The last time she spoke to Coil a week ago, he'd been intent on getting the dirt on the new capes that took down Lung, and ordered her to find out about them too.

She had been half convinced that Coil finally bit off more than he could chew trying something with a precog that might have been even more powerful than himself. They managed to execute exactly the right steps to persuade someone as famous as Panacea to join willingly and leave her own family, then predicted exactly how to defeat Lung with bugs and tranquilizer, after all, what's to say they couldn't have foreseen exactly how to take down Coil in spite of his power as well?

But she was only half convinced, not one-hundred percent, because Coil's men were still out and about.

The best guess she had come up with was that Coil's civilian identity had been close to being compromised, so he was avoiding unnecessary contact. The PRT had suddenly vamped up security, and the old passcodes to their network that Coil gave her stopped working. She could find a way around that, eventually, but for now she was cut off from her best sources of intel.

"Yep. He called me on Friday to apologize for being unreachable, and gave me a solo job. I did it Saturday and got paid yesterday. I'm pretty sure it was legit."

Lisa had her power on momentarily as Brian answered. The micro-expressions on his face clued her in to the fact that it wasn't quite a solo job. He could have shared it, but he didn't. And he was now justifying it to himself as being testing out the waters to see if it was legitimate.

If he hadn't been greedy, the proper thing to do would have been to get her to analyze whether it was legit or not.

But she guessed that Coil must have offered a sweet deal for doing it alone as well as the option of doing it as a team. Brian wasn't the type to do things behind the team's back, so Coil must have wanted him to make that choice-not just to do it alone, but for him to decide to do it alone, otherwise he wouldn't have presented the choice at all. Why? To create a crack in the team?

"A solo job? Mind telling the rest of us the juicy details?"

"He just asked me to use my power to cover a block at the docks Saturday morning. I went in, did it. Left. No trouble. That's it."

Normally, she would have known about something like that through the PRT networks. Now though? She had to find out from Brian himself, and didn't know what it might have been for. She knew Coil had been fighting the E88 and backing up the ABB, and ABB territory was in the docks, so it might have been to help any of their forces escape after a battle.

"Right. So we're back in the game?" She asked.

"Well, there's no new job for the team or anything like that. Boss is supposed to contact you as usual, and he said he would be occupied for a while. We're still going to get our monthly paycheck, but I'm guessing there won't be any specific requests for a while. So I was thinking, if you guys wanted to do something, we've basically got a free hand to plan whatever we want."

"You know, Brian, normally I'd be all for some fun time with you guys, but I feel like you might not be aware of something reeeaallly important that happened last night," she said.

"Two gangs in town just bit the dust. That what you mean?" Alec piped up.

"Yeah. That."

"What? What do you mean?" Brian asked with wide eyes, looking between Lisa and Alec.

"It was all over PHO this morning, even in-game chat in the lobbies. The ABB and Coil are done," said Alec. He put down his controller then leaned back and pointed at the TV screen that was connected to his gaming machine. "Look, there's even people talking about it right now."

"Mind pulling up the vid so we can watch on the big screen, Alec?" Lisa asked.

"Anything for you, Tats."

Brian and Rachel watched and listened closely.

"Fuck. These guys aren't messing around. Those mutant bugs are scary as shit," said Brian at the end.

"Good old Panacea's work. Or Araliac now," said Lisa. "A week ago, Skitter was a newbie using spiders with lethal venom, now with Panacea's help she's upgraded to big monster spiders that can wrap whole people in their webs. And that's only the stuff they were willing to upload onto the internet."

"I think… I liked the kind healer at the hospital more," said Brian.

"We can take them," said Rachel with a growl.

"At least the crazy chick putting bombs in people's heads is gone. She might have come after us next if Lung were still around," said Alec.

"So, what does this mean for us? Are you worried about them coming after us if we do another job?" Brian asked.

"Kinda. Don't know if we're really on their radar yet, but they seem pretty serious about their mission to root out villainy. They don't seem to care about playing nice with the rules either. Right at the end here? See how they said they took Bakuda and Coil into custody? Sounds like they're not planning to hand them over to the PRT."

There was a moment of silence in the loft as the rest of her team processed that.

"They can't do that, can they? I mean, they're registered heroes," Brian said with a disbelieving look.

"There wasn't any press release from the PRT about the arrest. It's almost noon and they've been completely silent. I don't think CRUCIBLE care what the PRT thinks, and I think the PRT might be scared too, because they took Bakuda's bombs," Lisa explained.

"Including the one they're saying can wipe out the east coast," said Brian with a nod.

"And I've got a good hunch that they put that in the video to make sure the right people understood that they have nuclear level firepower now. If they kept it secretly for themselves, it'd be hard for anyone to find out, but they purposely showed just how much destruction it's supposed to be capable of."

"You're saying they're keeping it as a threat in case they get on the PRT's bad side?"

"I'm saying that with the precog on their team, they know exactly what they're doing. They know they're going to butt heads with the PRT soon, and they're not planning to back down. Illegally keeping cape prisoners is only the tip of the iceberg."

"But why?"

Lisa didn't immediately answer. Inside, she was struggling to make a decision. When she saw that video, she noticed something else, something that put all the pieces together for her.

"Guys… I have something I need to tell you," she said finally.

She looked around at her team who looked curiously back at her.

"Our secret boss was Coil," she said.

"You're shitting me…?!" Brian shouted. "The same Coil that was just captured?"

"Way to drop a bomb on us Lisa," said Alec.

"Not exactly. That Coil was a fake. A body double," said Lisa.

"Wait, so, our boss is still kicking?" Brian asked.

"No… not exactly," said Lisa.

"Alright, I'm lost. How about you just explain the whole thing to us, Lisa."

She sighed.

"It's like this. I was thinking about what happened to the boss ever since we lost contact with him. I thought he had to have been in trouble, but I wasn't sure how much until I saw this video. You see, this body double? My power told me he was acting the whole time. Everyone else in there didn't know about CRUCIBLE's ambush, not even his own men, but he did, and he was just playing along at being captured," said Lisa.

"You mean the whole thing was a setup? It was staged?"

"Bakuda thought she was the one setting the trap, but CRUCIBLE has a really powerful precog, so they turned it around on her. The thing is, why would Coil's body double be in the know too, and why wouldn't he be concerned about being captured? The only way that makes any sense is if he was actually a CRUCIBLE secret agent. But is he just a CRUCIBLE agent? Or a Coil double-agent, who warned Coil about the trap and went in his stead to the meeting? And I still haven't been able to get into contact with Coil, so I don't know if he's just in hiding now."

Alec saw something interesting on PHO as he checked out the other hot threads.

"Channel 24…?" he muttered, then he took the remote and flipped to that channel.

"If the real Coil is in hiding, then that would explain why CRUCIBLE won't give custody to the PRT. They can't, because they don't actually have him. But it could also be…"

Lisa caught a glimpse of the thread Alec was on, and her eyes widened.

"Also be…?" Brian asked.

Before Lisa could answer, the TV news channel interrupted.

"Mayor Christner seems to be in good spirits today," the voice of a female news commentator narrated.

On screen, the camera was showing Mayor Christner, a local Congressmen, and several city councillors were shaking hands with Polychromic, Araliac, and Skitter one after the other, and smiling for the camera flashes. A huge crowd of reporters was at the front, where the politicians and CRUCIBLE were on a portable stage with a podium.

"Can't say I'm surprised. This event is really hitting home with the voter base, we've got a massive turnout here even though it was just announced this morning, and it's only getting bigger," another male news commentator said.

The camera panned around to show a mass crowd of people on the field facing the portable stage, and a line of stalls/tents on the sides, then the camera switched over to a few other vantage points showing the filled parking lot, people swarming over the streets, police vehicles blocking off the road, and armed men in silver and black uniforms corralling the traffic.

These men looked awfully familiar to Lisa's eyes. They were all helmeted, but the way they stood and moved reminded her of Coil's men.

"As a quick recap for viewers that are just tuning in, we're live at the Merianton Hotel and Conference Center, where CRUCIBLE and BBPD are coordinating the release and reunion of Bakuda hostage victims with their friends and families. Last night, following the defeat of ABB and Coil's Mercenaries, CRUCIBLE made arrangements with the hotel to house all of the victims in five star accommodations," said the female voice, whose face had popped up in a box.

The camera moved inside the hotel, where more police as well as men in silver and black uniforms could be seen, some as armed guards, others seemingly employees sitting at booths, processing the friends and families who had arrived to unite with the victims.

"Our journalists on site were informed by CRUCIBLE employees-the ones in the silver and black uniforms-that there were over a hundred and fifty victims and each received an individual room. A very expensive, but well appreciated gesture, as we heard from the victims and their families."

The scene changed to a reporter interviewing a reunited family on site, who were hugging and had tears of joy in their eyes. "We are so, so, grateful to CRUCIBLE and everyone on their team that helped make this possible! We are just blown away by the amount of money, effort and care that they've put in to make my daughter comfortable! Thank you!" The mother said.

"And for everyone else, a big party to celebrate, with a large amount of free refreshments and food for the first people to arrive," said the male commentator as his own head popped up in a box.

"Free food? I'm so down. Maybe we should head over, guys," said Alec.

The camera moved around to show the food and beverage being offered in the rooms where people waited, along with huge screens playing the CRUCIBLE videos, live footage from the outside stage, or random educational videos on self defense and first aid.

Then it moved back outside to show the tented stalls lining the field, all of which were handing out hotdogs, burgers, ice cream, etc.

"They invited local bands and entertainers who will be putting on performances free for the public throughout the afternoon and evening. The Brockton Jazz Boys were on stage just before the mayor arrived to join the party."

"Don't forget Skitter's spider dance, I think that was one was the real attraction."

"Definitely. Who knew giant spiders could be cute? There are also rumors floating around that famed singers Mickie Oswald and Renee Silvers might be making appearances later at night."

"Well if Renee Silvers is coming to Brockton Bay, then it's a good thing her performance isn't happening yet, or all the kids would be skipping school," the female voice said with a chuckle, and the male voice laughed with it.

"Some of them already are, aren't they? The BBPD have had an awkward time trying to get them to go back to school. No one wants to be the party pooper in something this big. At least CRUCIBLE is playing some educational videos in the conference rooms."

"Aisha!" Brian shouted. There was his sister on the screen, grabbing food from the stalls. Beside the stalls massive corporate sponsor signs could be seen.

Alec snickered. "I'm telling you guys, we need to get there before the free food runs out."

Where did they get the money to do all this? When did they have time to organize it? This wasn't something a week old team could pull off. Or any team, for that matter.

Lisa was getting an increasingly bad feeling about it. Coil had the money and resources to do something like this… and she was pretty sure those uniformed team members that popped out of nowhere were actually Coil's men.

The problem was, Coil couldn't have been the one to orchestrate it, because she knew that Coil didn't know who CRUCIBLE were last week. She didn't believe that Coil had the means to bring CRUCIBLE under his control that quickly, which meant the other possibility that she was going to tell the team earlier seemed increasingly likely.

"And the hand shaking is over. It looks like the mayor's about to deliver some remarks."

The congressman and councillors had walked back down to their reserved seats in the front row, while the CRUCIBLE three still stood on stage at the center.

An assistant quickly ran up and gave Mayor Christner a written speech script that Lisa recognized as being hastily written in the last hour.

The Mayor took a quick glance over it standing behind the podium, then cleared his throat, looking around the crowd.

"First, I would like thank you all for being here today and showing your support. I want to thank team CRUCIBLE for the invitation because I am tremendously pleased to be here celebrating with you all."

He's a little too happy, Lisa thought. Did CRUCIBLE make a sizable donation to the city or the Mayor's campaign? Or is he just happy that he's getting free good publicity for his administration?

"But above all, I want to thank CRUCIBLE for the tremendous service they have done for Brockton Bay in the removal of two criminal gangs that have plagued this city for years, and for their truly heroic rescue of the hostage victims who were forced to fight for the ABB! Let's all give a big round of applause in recognition of these incredible heroes who call this wonderful city home!"

What followed was a thunderous round of applause led by the mayor as he turned to face the CRUCIBLE three and a wave of cheers that drowned out all other noises.

After a moment, when the applause finally died down, the mayor continued.

"I believe that years from now, we will look back on this day, and see that it is a significant turning point in the history of Brockton Bay. Every year, criminal elements and the underground economy siphon an estimated $27 billion dollars out of Brockton Bay's GDP, without paying any taxes to the city, while reducing economic growth further by the spread of drugs and property damage… "

Alec turned off the TV.

"Alec! I was watching that," Lisa complained.

"You gonna watch the mayor and his friends give boring ass political speeches? Suit yourself, I'm going to get some free food and wait for Renee Silvers to show up," Alec said with a shrug, then went straight out the door without waiting for anyone.

"Heading over doesn't seem like such a bad idea. You could keep watching in person, Lisa," said Brian, as he also got up.

He was obviously going to find Aisha, but Lisa held back her retort. "Alright, fine. Let's join the party."

O O O

Last edited: Jul 2, 2019

Abjuration 4.5

Abjuration 4.5

Another one of the perks of having a magic circuit beyond my own ability to cast spells was the unlocking of additional functions in my bond with Agate.

Now that I could send my prana to her, the two-way link was complete.

After a bit of time to attune again, it was no longer necessary for Agate to be the one to manage all of the mental contact. Just as she could perceive through my senses and share my consciousness to know my thoughts, I could now do the same with her, without her having to package, format, and stream the information to me.

One effect was that it was faster. To a very limited extent, I could even borrow her processing power. It was just that my brain was far too slow. Even though I could theoretically perceive how she did Parallel Processing and Parallel Acceleration, her counterpart to the Atlas Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration spells, I couldn't actually follow it because my brain was bottlenecking.

A much more important effect was comprehension of the spells she knew. While it wasn't possible for her to simply upload the information into my brain, when fully connected to her I had a natural, intrinsic grasp of the spell theory she knew. I still had to learn it properly, but it was much faster compared to learning it independently.

This is how we developed a Geas spell so quickly, using Agate's own Kaleidostick partner contract spell as a base to derive a simpler contract spell according to the canon one I remembered. It had only been a few days of experimentation, and now I was able to cast it just by myself or through Agate. The same was true of reinforcement, which I could also cast on my own now.

As a result, we started to share thoughts again.

Today, Agate was off on a mission away from me. The plan to acquire Canary was already in motion while I simultaneously participated in the victory party. A while ago I had trouble focusing on Agate's senses while doing something else myself, resorting to having her make recordings, but now we were in sync even when away.

Once the mayor finished with his remarks on the economy, full of misleading stats on the "underground economy" which included far more than just criminal activities, as the acting emcee for this part of the show, I shook his hand again before calling for Congressman Ian Rodney to the stage.

Similar to the mayor, he made his own remarks congratulating us and sliding in some comments about the need for more government action on crime and how we were a shining example of the American spirit.

This man was a member of the New Republican party, which had supplanted the old Republican party shortly after Scion. He was a friend to the gun lobby, who were also our friends now as our organization was heavily armed and promoting pro-active self-defense, as well as openly advertising our new private security service offerings.

These politicians made time in their busy schedules to rush over as soon as my people contacted them about an opportunity to be associated with an excellent publicity event, where they could even deliver politically relevant speeches in a faux-rally setting to a mass crowd and media.

Before they went on stage, we had of course met them in private to discuss important political issues of the day, and praise their good work in representing the people of Brockton Bay.

I offered them no money for their campaigns, or any other underhanded bribes.

That was natural, because the laws on gifts were quite strict, and even trying to do something like that with a politician you didn't know very well was a dangerous game.

If we even invited the Congressmen to an expensive steak dinner, that would be an easily traceable federal felony.

It was also unnecessary, because they knew our value as influencers over voters and the significance of our achievement in the eyes of the pubic.

More importantly, the event itself was a perfect opportunity for them to be in the spotlight, and we'd made it easy for them to look good, just riding on our success.

People were gathering here by the thousands, and I already knew that the media was broadcasting this live. Our video online was one thing, but as much as it would spread by itself online, if we wanted to hit the mainstream national news, we needed an event like this where the media would be out in force and there was a lot to report on.

A simple press release or news conference wouldn't be interesting, even the kind of party they threw in canon after the ABB's defeat wouldn't have gotten major media attention, because that one was targeting mostly business people instead of the public. At the time, the PRT cared more about taking credit, maintaining their reputation and getting donations.

But here? Our goal was to make headlines and draw crowds.

I spared no expense to make this happen. Free food and entertainment were the key to creating an explosive event.

A community fundraiser and gala hosted by the Mayor was something to be reported on because it was important to the community, but it wouldn't make the headlines or go beyond the city. It was just a bland and obvious PR move.

A huge party with thousands of people filling the street and famous celebrities coming in for an evening concert was whole different story. It was a cultural phenomenon, the kind of thing that the media would all over even if we didn't bother to invite them.

As the speeches finished and more entertainment on stage proceeded on schedule, the crowd kept growing larger.

And of course it did. Not only did we provide free food, which always attracts tons of people, especially in a city with a lot of poor middle class, we provided entertainment that otherwise people would normally be paying expensive tickets worth hundreds of dollars for.

Besides the local performers who had decent followings of their own, the rumors that we had spread about Mickie Oswald and Renee Silvers coming in were legitimate.

While I wanted to keep it as "rumor" for now so it would morph and turn into rumors about even more celebrity artists, I had in fact made such arrangements.

They were the most expensive part of this operation, but well worth it.

The costs of hosting a hundred and fifty victims for the night at the hotel only cost about $100 per person. The reason it was so cheap was because one of Coil's legitimate businesses owned the hotel, but even the list price of $250 per person would be $37,500 total, and the hotel would more than likely make it all back with the free advertising they got out of this event and all the very impressed victims and their families.

The free food for the first three thousand people, the cheapest kind of food you can get really, with hotdogs and burgers, only cost $30,000. Everyone else would have to pay for their food or if they wanted better things than hot dogs and burgers, and we would be getting a small cut of the profits on that.

The cost of setting everything up, hiring the event management company, renting out the venue was only about $200k. The lesser known performers combined cost $500k.

All in all, it was actually less than the money I spent on Cranial's services. After the martial arts for me worked out perfectly, Taylor got a set of martial arts skills of her own, we both got gun shooting skills, and I further bought a bunch of foreign language skills for myself. We couldn't get Amelia any skills because there was no one to check her brain for foul play.

Mickie and Renee cost $800k and $1.2 million respectively each for an hour. That was pretty exorbitant, but the ridiculously short notice was the main reason for it to be so high. I had reached out late last week, but I couldn't confirm the actual timing until Bakuda scheduled the meeting with Coil over the weekend.

It was still a drop in the bucket compared to the assets now under my control, and the annual profits from the legal businesses I inherited from Coil.

More importantly, I wasn't really the one that would have to pay for it in the end.

The key to financial success in life and in business is to use other people's money, applying leverage and managing risk.

Typically, that took the form of taking investment capital in exchange for equity, or borrowing money from the banks, government, private lenders, or your suppliers by dragging out the accounts payable.

With big money in legal businesses, it was rare to have to pay in cash immediately. So most of the biggest expenses were only on paper, and I'd paid a deposit of about 10% on average for each line item to each vendor. The rest would theoretically have to be paid within 30 to 60 days.

And it wasn't CRUCIBLE's non-profit entity that was paying these because we were barely finished setting that up. We could have paid it legally with the spoils seized from ABB/Coil, but…

It was the company that owned the Marienton Hotel and Conference Center, being previously controlled by Coil, that decided to generously sponsor CRUCIBLE's event, after taking out a $17 million loan from the bank using its prime real estate close to downtown as collateral, representing 90% of its last appraisal value. The Marieton company was the one that signed the service contracts and the one who would owe the money.

Next week, the Marienton company would pay $13m in cash to the CRUCIBLE Foundation after signing an exclusive contract to host all of our future events in Brockton Bay and receive a license to use our image and brand for new business lines such as branded products, movies, and franchised hotels in other locations as the company seeks out new revenue sources. A partnership made in heaven, or so it would seem, after the tremendous boost in business brought by the CRUCIBLE event, as projected from the huge influx of bookings made over the week.

Next month, Leviathan would attack, tourism and business travel around here would be dead, the building might get destroyed, real estate values plummet, and Marienton tragically files for chapter 11 bankruptcy due to insufficient liquidity, defaulting on all its debts. The bank, being a fully secured lender, would be forced to collect on the worthless real estate that was originally put up as collateral and locked out of the chapter 11 creditor restructuring discussions.

The only creditors left would be the unsecured ones. Because the company had no other significant debts, they were mostly the suppliers who were owed accounts payable. Now normally when a business is so obviously dead, it would be forced into chapter 7 liquidation instead with everyone getting pennies on the dollar and nobody happy.

However, CRUCIBLE Foundation, upon realizing that the vendors at their event weren't getting paid, using the rest of the money that was loaned out to Merianton but transferred to CRUCIBLE, would honorably offer to pay off the vendors who had been owed money from Merianton on Merianton's behalf, as we were the true beneficiaries of the vendor services, despite its own grave financial difficulties in providing sufficient humanitarian aid to the Brockton survivors.

The famous out of town singers would likely be advised by their PR people to donate it back to CRUCIBLE in the wake of the Endbringer attack instead of taking the money from us. I believed at that point I could probably even convince them to come back for another performance for free, this time as a charity fundraiser event and to give hope to the survivors.

The other smaller vendors were owed small amounts, so it was no trouble to pay them if they didn't voluntarily forgive the debt as well.

And thus everyone ends up happy, except the bank who has no recourse in claiming the money from CRUCIBLE Foundation because Marienton obviously couldn't have deliberately moved all the money out in anticipation of an Endbringer attack as fraudulent asset transfer.

The vendors would be paid $1 each symbolically so that the legal proceedings could end, and the company would emerge from bankruptcy by paying some legal and misc. fees. It'd be debt-free and back under the control of my puppets, albeit without the core asset that made it a hotel.

If Leviathan didn't attack, then I'd just pay the vendors and the business would continue, actually following through on the CRUCIBLE brand partnership plans as I left $4m plus existing operating capital in the company, which would be enough to cover all the short-term liabilities. It would simply become the primary vehicle for the businesses I intended to get into anyways.

Now obviously if Leviathan did attack, I'd still be losing the equity value destroyed from plummeting real estate prices, which would might exceed the loan size if it went to zero if the building was outright destroyed. But I was going to lose that money regardless if it happened, and there was no way to sell an illiquid asset like this in a month. A big commercial real estate deal like this usually took at least half a year to find a buyer, and even the due diligence period was typically at least 60 days before cash closing, if the buyer even paid in full cash instead of a partial vendor note. It was a dead asset already, so any money I made would be a profit.

It was just unfortunate that you couldn't get insured against Endbringer attacks, they were too common and expected so no insurance company was willing to risk getting bankrupted by the massive damages that would have to be paid out from a destroyed city. At least, that is what my insurance consultants told me, which they explained by pointing out to a few big name insurance companies that went under following the destruction of Madison and Newfoundland.

Because I couldn't buy insurance, I had to come up with this scheme to turn a bank into my unwilling insurer.

Coil also had other assets in Brockton Bay that would be impacted by the attack, and I was already trying to liquidate as much of it as possible, but this hotel was the biggest and most illiquid piece.

Additionally, a significant amount of money would have been funneled into CRUCIBLE through legitimate, legally traceable channels, regardless of what happens, so we could explain where we were getting the money to pay for all the things we were doing and all the employees we'd hired.

It would be obvious that CRUCIBLE had previous ties to Marienton and possibly hired Coil's mercenaries, but none of the guys I kept were already known criminals in their civilian IDs, so it didn't matter if people speculated as nothing could be proven.

Planning this, I felt like I was back in the old business. A nice relaxing break from the stresses of being a hero and being in a different world.

Of course, making money off this was just a bonus. The real reason I organized this was for Amelia and Taylor. So they could see for themselves that our decisions and our methods, even the strategy of using Coil's forces to temporarily help Bakuda-and everything else that was ethically questionable-were right and justified. I wanted them to hear approval not just from me or their own conscience, but to hear it from the masses and political leaders.

When we went off stage and returned to our executive suite room to change into casual clothes, I took a good look at the results of my efforts.

By the looks on their faces, it had worked.

A/N: I am traveling for a while so updates may be slower and at strange times with timezones.

EDIT: Some changes at the top to show why his thoughts on Agate are relevant.

Last edited: Jul 18, 2019

Abjuration 4.6

Abjuration 4.6

"We did so much good! Even the mayor came to congratulate us!" Taylor said excitedly with a grin after plopping down on the main couch.

"It's not unusual for the mayor to show up at Protectorate fundraisers and parties. He hosts them too. But I don't think I've seen Congressman Rodney at any of them before. He must have been really impressed," said Amelia with a smile of her own. She sat down beside Taylor.

"And the people! They love us! I can't believe so many people showed up already," said Taylor, watching the screens.

"Not just in Brockton Bay either. We're getting national media attention," I said, bringing a few glasses of water and putting them on the coffee table. "We're in the big leagues now."

"Thanks," they said before taking the water.

"Do you think the Protectorate and Wards are jealous?" Amelia asked with a smirk. "Didn't we invite them to the party too? I don't see them anywhere."

"They must be. Two out of four gangs in Brockton Bay were taken down and they had nothing to do with it," Taylor said, still grinning.

"It's nice to see you so happy, Taylor. I don't think I've seen you smile so much the whole week I've known you," said Amelia.

Taylor looked embarrassed but kept smiling. "I can't help it. It's just, this is what I've dreamed of since I was a kid. I never thought it would happen so soon after deciding to become a hero. I thought it'd be months at least, before I'd get any big wins, and we've taken out two whole gangs! Besides, aren't you the same? I didn't see you smiling much either, but look at you now."

"Yeah, I guess. I am pretty happy," said Amelia. "It is pretty crazy, isn't it? It's only been a week but it feels like it's been so much longer. Like we've been through so much together." She turned earnestly towards me as she said that.

"We have been through a lot," I said, meeting her gaze. "Life and death situations. We've come out of it mostly unscathed because of your healing Amelia-"

'And me!' said Agate.

'And your vigilant monitoring, of course.'

"-but we've had a number of pretty close calls that otherwise would have put us out of action."

"Yeah…"

There was a moment of silence while we all recalled the events of the last week. Or at least, I assumed that's what they were doing too while nobody said or did anything. Amelia kept staring at me while Taylor glanced back and forth between the two of us.

No who was I kidding. If Amelia kept up that stare Taylor would start misunderstanding things due to being unaware of the context.

I looked away from her eyes to Taylor.

"That said, it's not just the three of us anymore. What do you think of the mercs that agreed to work for us, now that you've met them all?"

"I am a little worried about it. You said you got rid of all the really bad ones, right?" Taylor asked.

"That's right. Coil had files on all of them, and some of the better captains helped me identify who wouldn't fit in with CRUCIBLE."

"But even the ones that are left were still criminals before. Can we really trust them? I mean, you took them over by pretending to be Coil's secret boss, right? They agreed to work for CRUCIBLE on your orders, but what if after a while they decide they'd rather stay criminals?"

"It's possible. Truth is, I don't particularly trust them, especially the grunts. The Majors, Jones-that's the Coil body double-and the three captains, I'm fairly confident in, because I've spent more time vetting them and so did Coil, before giving them leadership positions. They agreed to let me use a contract spell on them. It's pretty weak, but will make them uncomfortable if they think about betraying me, while letting me paralyze them if they try anything where I can see. I'm relying on these guys to keep the rest in line. The other non-combat employees aren't so bad. They're just regular people, really."

"Wait, you can do that? A contract spell?"

"Yeah, I just finished creating it a few days ago. They have to be willing though. It needs both parties to consent."

"Can't you just do that on the rest? On Bakuda and Coil too?" Taylor asked eagerly.

"Well, like I said, it's pretty weak. I could do it, if we could get their consent. Not forced consent, or pretend consent while planning to break the contract. Real consent. But I don't think it's worth it, because it doesn't stop them from planning and doing anything against the contract where I can't see. On someone like Coil especially, that's a recipe for disaster."

Her expression fell, disappointed.

"It's more of a fear-based deterrence than a real magical contract."

"I have an idea." said Amelia. "We could make really small bug parasites to monitor them? Would you be able to keep track of all of them, Taylor?"

"I'm not sure… It'd be pretty hard listening and watching thirty guys at once. I can barely listen to three different conversations at once right now."

"That's because the bugs you're using aren't made for listening and understanding human speech. So you're using your own brain to figure out the bug signals they send you. Have you tried doing it with Atlas?"

Taylor looked surprised for a moment, then her eyes lit up. "Oh! You're right! It's easy to listen with Atlas. If it's with more bugs like Atlas, I might be able to do ten or more."

"Exactly. I wouldn't be able to put a brain big enough in the parasite bugs for this, but I can make bigger network relay bugs to share the processing burden with your brain, and the parasite bugs would still have more specialized sensory organs."

"Do you think I'm ready for relay bugs?" Taylor asked me.

I didn't answer immediately, presenting a look deep in thought. I didn't want her to get relay bugs before out of concern that I could no longer hide anything from her. But she'd been okay with forcing Coil, Bakuda, and now the former Coil mercs to work for us. The only thing she didn't know about yet were my experiments on my prisoners. I still didn't feel quite comfortable with giving her that much power relative to my own personal power, but there were good reasons to do it now that I couldn't keep putting it off forever.

"We may as well give it a try, if you're up for it. There's no better time than now to expand our surveillance network. With two major gangs gone, you can bet that other gangs in other towns are going to be coming in soon. And if you can really get the monitoring parasites to work, that'd effectively deal with the mercs. It wouldn't be enough for Bakuda or Coil, since their powers make it hard to understand how they're betraying us, but for regular grunts it'd be pretty effective."

"Okay, let's do it," Taylor said eagerly, standing up.

"Don't you want to take a day off, have fun? There's a huge party downstairs and great music coming up soon," I said.

Taylor's eyes widened as if afraid of the idea.

"And damage my ears from the overly loud sounds while surrounded by sweaty screaming people? No thanks," Amelia said. "I wouldn't mind making some new bugs instead."

"Uh… I think heroing is fun. I like working on our powers," said Taylor, looking relieved that Amelia rejected my suggestion.

I shrugged. "Alright, if you're sure that's what you want to do, I won't stop you. I can't make any portals right now though, because my wand is at Canary's trial and the portal spell is too difficult for me to cast without a conduit, so you'll have to work on it on Bet."

After I revealed the existence of Agate and portals last week, I had also told them how my "sense projection" worked-it was done through my wand that could turn invisible and be controlled remotely, but at the cost of limiting my local spellcasting.

Taylor nodded. "How is that going? The trial, I mean?"

I frowned, because I wasn't supposed to be happy about Canary's plight. "It doesn't look good. Canary hasn't been allowed to even speak in her own defense. I've been listening to the jury discussions too and nobody is even remotely sympathetic to her."

Hearing that, both of them lost their good mood from earlier.

"We're going to have to break her out then? Do you have a plan yet?" Amelia asked.

I nodded. "Getting her mid transport will be very difficult with our current power set, unless we use Bakuda's bombs. That would work, but I'd prefer not to reveal us as the perpetrators so easily. Regardless of how corrupt the system is… we would be seen as aiding a criminal. Instead, I have a plan to break her out of the Birdcage. I've already located it and did some reconnaissance on its defenses. I couldn't see everything but I believe I can break her out anonymously."

We had run into some roadblocks with observing Labyrinth's power after the first two days in which we learned that the Wormvoid sensor program Agate had thought she developed was actually generating garbage data, so I sent Agate to explore the Birdcage a few nights ago while I was asleep. The first time it took most of the night just to fly to British Columbia, then after that she went there via portaling using micro-portals just big enough for herself. It didn't take much longer to find the massively warped space underneath a mountain that contained the Birdcage.

On the other hand, we had essentially given up trying to track the things Labyrinth pulled through Wormvoid. The problem was that measuring from outside Wormvoid the movement of objects through Wormvoid seemed to be impossible. Originally Agate and tried to do it through visual density and identifying the point at which they lost tangibility on Bet, but after a while she realized that the new sensor program's physics model of displacement vectors in Wormvoid stopped working once the objects were beyond the tangibility threshold, so they couldn't be tracked back to their home dimension.

"You're talking as if you plan to do it without our help," said Taylor. "But nobody's ever escaped from the Birdcage before, you really think you can do it?"

Amelia looked sharply at me then. "You better not be thinking of risking only yourself if it doesn't work. I-we need you."

"That's not it. The risk should be very low if I make use of a few of Bakuda's exotic bombs. Nobody escaped from the Birdcage before, but none of them had my help. None of them could just make a portal to another world."

Amelia didn't look impressed. "Is that really going to work? Don't you think the Birdcage would have anti-teleportation defenses?"

"I am 90% sure it will. The portals that the shadow organization uses work fine in there. I believe the anti-teleport defenses interfere with targeting due to spatial warping and pocket dimensions, neither of which can block my portals. I won't even have to go in the Birdcage myself, I will be staying on the other side of the portal the whole time. It will be perfectly safe."

"But still… we can help. Why do you want to do it alone?" Taylor asked.

I shrugged. "I don't mind you if you want to come along and watch, but it's really not necessary. Trust me, I'll be fine. I took out Coil by myself using a similar strategy, remember? This should be even easier, what with the Birdcage being a prison and not a fortress full of troops that can follow through the portal."

"What about the other prisoners?" Amelia asked.

"I'm going after Canary when she's alone in her cell. Not planning on getting anyone else this time, so the chances should be slim. The cells seal themselves off when the walls are broken because of the vacuum outside."

"If you're confident about it, then I'll trust you. You haven't been wrong yet," said Taylor. We both glanced at Amelia who still looked to be in thought.

"If it were possible… have you thought about getting anybody else from the Birdcage?" She finally asked.

Abjuration 4.7

Abjuration 4.7

I considered the question for a moment. Naturally, I had already thought about it. From my view, there were certain capes whose powers might be very useful to me-even necessary.

At the moment, my only lead for escaping Worm was to get to the space beyond the moon via an Earth that isn't guarded by the Simurgh, and there weren't many methods of doing that safely. I could go to Aleph and try to go on a spaceship with NASA/Russian/Chinese infrastructure, or get a suitable Tinker. Tinkers didn't generally have space travel tech, so I needed a roundabout way of doing it.

String Theory might be necessary for the rocketry. I didn't know of any other comparable Tinkers that might be able to produce rockets powerful enough to escape Earth's gravity and continue on beyond the moon.

Most of the other capes in the Birdcage were sort of useful in other ways, but most would also be difficult to control.

Though I suspected Amelia asked for a different reason.

"Do you want to meet your father?"

Taylor's eyes widened slightly, but she said nothing. Amelia had already mentioned offhand that time after we took out Shadow Stalker that she was adopted from a villain, but Taylor didn't know who exactly.

Amelia looked down on the ground. "It's… a little tempting. He was a villain, but ever since you told me I started remembering a little of my time with him. A part of me wants to know what he's really like."

"And the other part?"

She sighed. "I know he's a Birdcaged villain. I looked him up on the wikis, and I know he's done a lot of bad things. But there's also how Canary's being slandered. I'm just wondering if he was really all that bad. What do you think? Do you know anything about him?"

"Marquis was famous for both his prowess in battle and his strict adherence to his rules of not harming women and children. He was a villain, but an honorable one, and he was framed for Iron Rain's death, which was Kaiser's plot. He did kill a lot of other people though. On the positive side, he fought off a visit from the Slaughterhouse 9 almost by himself," I said.

"Kaiser killed his own sister?" Taylor asked, outraged.

In the old days, the Empire 88 was led by Allfather before his son Kaiser inherited it. Iron Rain was Allfather's daughter, and people thought Marquis killed her, but at some point in the canon it was revealed by Marquis that he didn't do it.

"Yeah. I don't know much more than that about Marquis' history. In the most likely alternate future where I didn't come to Earth Bet, you would have met him eventually in the Birdcage, after… well, you know, that incident, which definitely won't happen now that I'm here."

"Oh," Amelia said weakly.

"What?" Taylor asked.

"Don't worry about it, Taylor. Just something very personal for Amelia," I said. "Anyways, Marquis did care for you and still does. He would help you if you asked, probably."

"Should I?"

"Ask him to help us, and break him out of the Birdcage if he agrees?"

She nodded.

"Taylor?" I redirected.

"If you think he can be reformed…" she muttered. "I'm not opposed, I guess. We're already planning to make use of Bakuda and Coil, right? Marquis might even do it willingly. Why not?"

"I won't oppose it either, if you want to break him out, or just go talk to him," I said.

Amelia frowned at me.

"Thanks, but I meant to ask what you think I should do. Not whether you'd be okay with it. I want to know what you think is the right decision."

"I was going to leave it up to you, seeing as it's your dad…"

"I know. But I'd rather hear your opinion first."

I drummed my fingers on the couch armrest. "Alright. Here's what I really think then."

A slow sip of water.

"Amelia, do you know why Carol adopted you, if she hated you so much?"

She was caught off guard by the question, and was silent for a few seconds, searching for an answer.

"I don't know," she said.

"Marquis asked her to, you know? He asked the whole Brigade to look after you. His enemies. But they were heroes, and they orphaned you. They had to take responsibility, didn't they?"

"So… she never wanted to. She did it out of a sense of… responsibility?"

"More like pressure from her team. Sarah, especially. If she had a real sense of responsibility, she wouldn't have treated you the way she did. She would have hid how she felt, at least."

Amelia stayed silent, but nodded.

"Back to Marquis. Why did he ask her to take care of you? Was it the really the final request of a defeated villain? Marquis, who almost single-handedly pushed the Nine and the Butcher out of Brockton Bay, lost to a few small-time heroes just because he had to guard you hiding in the closet when they didn't even know you were his weakness?"

Her eyebrows furrowed. "You mean…"

"He could have protected you. He wasn't even that injured, at the end. He could have fought harder, broke his rules. The Brigade broke the unspoken rules first by attacking him in his house, after all, so it would only be fair to retaliate. He could have got you out of there with one last ditch effort and ran away to disappear forever and live the life of a civilian with his precious daughter. But he didn't."

Now she looked stunned.

"As your father, it should have been his responsibility to raise you. Maybe he thought he couldn't be a proper father, or maybe he just thought his rules were more important. Either way, he wasn't willing to do it, and passed off his responsibility to a woman that didn't want you."

"Oh…" She said, voice weak again.

"He probably didn't think he was abandoning you. Probably justified it to himself as giving you a chance to grow up outside of villainy. To have a mother as well, instead of just a father. I don't know what really went through his mind. All I know is that, in my opinion, love isn't about knowing when to let go. It's about enduring, sacrificing, improving, and living on for the sake of someone else. It's easy to die. It's easy to run away. It's easy to throw in the towel and say that someone else can do better. It's infinitely harder to walk into hell with someone you love and have the strength of will to come back out together."

She was silent and contemplative.

I took another sip, and so did she from her own glass, as she stared into the reflection in the water.

"On that fateful day when you lost your father, what would little Amelia have wanted? To stay with your dad, even if he was a villain? Or go with some prejudiced strangers, even if they were heroes?"

From inside her sleeve, a large vine extended out, a bulge moved along its length, and the tip opened to deposit a sculpture of living bone on her palm.

"I didn't want them to take him away. I loved him more than anything else in the world," she said, almost a whisper, staring at the sculpture of her father she had made the day she ran away, and had kept ever since. She stayed like that for several long moments, as if lost in a memory.

Then her eyes turned cold. The bone sculpture cracked all over, red liquid dripping through as if it was bleeding, and exploded into a cloud of white flakes, the blood turning to a fine red mist.

"I understand. There is no reason for me to meet Marquis."

Taylor looked dazed at the display.

"You're sure about this?" I asked.

Amelia nodded firmly.

"I get what you're trying to tell me. He abandoned me. By giving up his responsibility, he also gave up his role as my father. "

"I think you made the right choice," I said.

She smiled. "For someone so self-absorbed, you sure have an interesting philosophy on love."

"Hey, just because I love myself doesn't mean I can't love anyone else," I said. "You have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone else."

I doubted that would ever happen, but that was apparently the leading theory on self-esteem and self-compassion on my Earth. I was just regurgitating that wisdom here.

"I think I've heard enough advice from you for one day."

"Not advice this time. Isn't that a common saying on Earth Bet too? It was on my Earth."

"It is. I've heard it before," Taylor chimed in. "I think I've even seen that on a poster in elementary."

"So have I. But I don't think it's true," said Amelia.

"Oh? Care to share your own philosophy then?" I asked.

She shrugged. "It's pretty simple. You can love anyone if you have the right neural connections and hormones. That's just how our brains work."

Both Taylor and I looked at her strangely.

"What? I can read brain activity, remember? I know exactly how love works."

"Isn't that kind of depressing? You don't think there's any deeper meaning or purpose to it? Just… chemicals?" Taylor asked.

"I didn't say that. Science doesn't answer why, just the what and how. I don't disagree with what Kaleidus said earlier. I'm just saying that even if that's how it should be, that's not what actually happens in our brain. People fall in love for stupid or no reason at all. That's the chemicals at work."

The discussion on love continued for a few more minutes before I excused myself to get back to work on keeping the party in order.

O O O

Interlude 4.x (Canary 1)

Interlude 4.x (Canary 1)

"Silence. All rise, please. This court is now in session, the honorable Peter Regan presiding."

A soft voice whispered in her ears. "Little bird, your wings are clipped. They shall put you in a cage of no escape."

She jolted, tried to twist her neck and look around wildly, only to wince at the pain in her neck muscles, and she bumped into the table. Her lawyer gripped the chain running through her armpit and upper arm, trying to help her stand upright, but she nearly fell over when the voice whispered again.

"When all hope is lost, faith will show you the light. Let your heart see what the eyes cannot."

Her eyes widened and her body trembled. She forced herself to calm down and look straight ahead at the judge, despite her rapidly rising heartbeat.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"

"We have, your honor."

Paige watched as the clerk delivered the envelope to the judge.

"In the matter of the state of Massachusetts versus Paige Mcabee, as to the count of attempted murder, how do you find?"

"Not guilty, your honor."

Paige sagged a little with relief. But then the mysterious voice continued, "Yet they shall condemn you even so."

She felt a prickle of anxiety come over her again. What was the voice saying? They found her not guilty, didn't they?

"In the matter of the state of Massachusetts versus Paige Mcabee, as to the count of aggravated assault with a parahuman ability, how do you find?"

"Guilty, your honor."

Paige shook her head as well as she was able. No! This wasn't fair!

"They are sinners, weak of mind and weak of heart, full of hatred, full of lies."

She almost missed the next line. "… sexual assault with a parahuman ability, how do you find?"

"Guilty, your honor."

Sexual assault. The words chilled her. It wasn't like that!

"You never intended the result you caused. You have repented, but they have not."

"Is this your verdict?"

"Yes, your honor."

"Paige Mcabee, please direct your attention to me," the judge spoke.

She did, eyes wide, shellshocked.

"Little bird, your wings are clipped. They shall put you in a cage of no escape," the voice repeated itself.

Did the voice mean what she thought it meant? That the court was going to sentence her to the Birdcage? But how could they, didn't everyone have three strikes?

"… the TSPA, or the three strikes act. At the age of twenty three, you have been convicted of no prior crimes…" she heard the judge say. As she thought, she couldn't possibly be going to the Birdcage!

"Do not be fooled. Look to the man tasked with your defense. Is that the face of an honest man who has lost, or one who is pleased with what he has wrought?"

Her eyes couldn't help but dart over to her lawyer. His lips were curled slightly, twitching periodically, as if afraid to show how proud he was.

What did that mean, Paige thought desperately. Her mind went to terrible places and she forced those thoughts down.

"A play and a farce, a plot and a setup. The goal of this court was not to try you but to condemn you. They have long since closed their eyes to the truth."

With every word, her body trembled more, her legs felt weak and she bumped into the table again with a clang.

"… the courts are forced to continually adapt, to be proactive and inventive in the face of new circumstances that parahuman abilities introduce…" the judge droned on like a robot, ignoring her distress. Why was he giving such a long explanation? What was the sentence?

"There is no justice here. Everyone in this room is against you."

She was acutely aware of the disgusted looks some of the jury members were sending her way, as she shook her head wildly and her chains rattled. She could barely hear the judge's voice now, drowned out by the sound of her heart beating and the awful tension in all her muscles. She found herself having difficulty breathing, and the world seemed to be spinning.

She tilted over and flailed at the table, just barely preventing her self from falling. This time, her lawyer didn't even pretend to help her stay upright, just standing there with a contemptuous look.

"… It is with this in mind that I have decided that there is sufficient cause to sentence you outside the scope of the TSPA…"

No! That was why the judge kept talking for so long, he was trying to justify taking more of her rights away!

"Little bird, your wings are clipped. They shall put you in a cage of no escape."

"… sentenced to indefinite incarceration within the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center."

The noise in the courtroom was deafening. A roar of cheering and booing, movement, people standing, reporters pushing to be the first ones out the door. Only Paige seemed to be still. Cold, frozen in stark horror.

Had she been able, that might have been the moment she lost it. She would have screamed her innocence, thrown a fit, even swung a few punches. What did she have to lose? This sentence was little better than an execution. Some would say it was worse. There would be no escape, no appeals, no parole. She would spend the rest of her life in the company of monsters. With some of the people that were kept in there, the 'monster' description was all too literal.

But she wasn't able. She was bound and gagged. Two men that were bigger and stronger than her placed their arms under her armpits, practically carrying her out of the courtroom.

Panic gripped her, and with her having no way to express it, do anything with it, the hysteria only compounded itself, making her panic more. Her thoughts dissolved into a chaotic haze.

Her vision swam as nausea overcame her. She might have fainted already, if not for the hypnotic voice echoing in her mind.

Little bird, your wings are clipped. They shall put you in a cage of no escape.

A third person in uniform, a burly woman, walked briskly beside them, preparing a syringe.

She choked out a garble despite the guzzle on her mouth.

Help me, she desperately wanted to say. Unable to from the words in her mouth, she resorted to pleading in her mind, hoping that the voice could really hear her thoughts. Please, help me!

"Do you wish to be saved, little bird?"

She nodded vigorously against the neck hold and made another garble. Please! I don't want to go to the Birdcage!

The woman with the syringe must have thought she was trying to fight back, and barked out an order for the men to hold down her head.

As the tip of the syringe entered her neck, she heard one last whisper.

"Believe in me. Pray to me. Give me your heart. Cast unto me your burdens, pains, and fears. Surrender your soul and accept me as your lord and master. Keep faith, and I shall bring you back from the depths of hell."

The tranquilizer entered her bloodstream, and she was swallowed in darkness.

In the dark cell where Canary was being kept until she would be transported to the Birdcage, a black wand shrouded in an equally dark aura materialized.

The syringe attached to Agate was pushed into Canary's neck, before the wand dematerialized again without a trace.

As Canary stirred and blinked her eyes open, she couldn't tell where she was. This time, she had not even the semblance of human rights, isolated in complete darkness, wrapped in containment foam, strewn haphazardly on the cold ground without so much as a bed.

As she remembered everything that happened, she whimpered and tried to move, but couldn't. The paralysis terrified her.

It was that foam, she realized. The restraints weren't enough, they'd sprayed her with the stuff to ensure that everything below her shoulders was covered. She felt nausea well in her gut, her heartbeat quickening. Her breathing increased, but the mask made even her breath feel confined.

The silence was suffocating. All she could hear was the sound of her breathing, and all she could feel was the nearly unbearable pains in her muscles throughout her body.

As the minutes passed, she grew increasingly uncomfortable. Thoughts of her life and the trial passed through her mind continuously.

All she had wanted was to be a good singer. Everything had been going so well too. It wasn't fair. She didn't even realize her power was active when she told her awful ex-boyfriend to go fuck himself. It was just a small mistake…

The Birdcage was meant for monsters! The worst sorts of criminals, not someone like her.

Maybe this was her penance for the sin of buying her power. She took the easy way to get ahead instead of just singing honestly.

She shivered as she imagined the horrible things that the other inmates would do to her, then she winced and whimpered as she felt a muscle cramping up. Then she started crying. The tears slipping down her cheeks and onto her open mouth, locked in position by a metal frame, tasted salty.

The minutes stretched into hours, and unable to do or see anything, it felt like an eternity.

It was torture, she thought. They people who decided to put her in the Birdcage wanted her to suffer as much as possible.

It seemed like a ridiculous thought, but so many things had been ridiculous about her trial that it started to seem reasonable. Everything in that room was against her, the voice said.

The voice. That's right.

There'd been a voice that promised to save her.

Where was it?

Little bird, your wings are clipped. They shall put you in a cage of no escape.

She was going to the Birdcage.

…

She was going to the Birdcage.

Where was the voice?!

…

Did she simply imagine it?

…

There was a strange light. Just a single dot in the darkness.

She blinked and it was gone.

She blinked again and it was back.

…

Sometimes the dot would appear, sometimes it would appear somewhere else.

She couldn't look at it directly, or it would disappear.

…

Sometimes the dot would wiggle and blur.

…

Occasionally it would change colours.

…

A strange sound reached her ears, sort of like a low buzzing and screeching mixed together.

…

If she concentrated on it, the sound seemed to be a lot of small voices, but she couldn't make out the words.

…

They weren't saying anything. They were moans and wails. The sound of souls being tortured. Once she realized that, she desperately tried not to think about it, ignoring it in the hopes that it would go away.

…

It didn't.

She was going crazy, she decided. She was seeing things, and hearing voices.

…

There was a pattern to the light moving. If she kept her eyes open and resolutely didn't look at the light, it would move in a specific way.

…

It was tiny, but she saw it shifting into a different shape. It was a letter.

…

It was a word.

FAITH.

Unbeknownst to her, Agate reappeared above her with another syringe, and injected its contents into her.

She felt a prickle on the back of her neck, and a shiver run down her spine.

The moaning and wailing disappeared, and she was left with blissful silence.

She blinked again, and the light was gone. She blinked a few more times, and it never came back.

She felt a quiver of excitement. Was it a sign?

As soon as the thought of faith came into her mind, her delusions disappeared.

When all hope is lost, faith will show you the light. Let your heart see what the eyes cannot.

She remembered, now, what the voice had told her in the last moment.

Keep faith, and I shall bring you back from the depths of hell.

The mere thought of faith had brought the hellish voices to a stop, and make her mind clear again.

Could it be?

Her last moments at the trial before they tranquilized her was coming back to her.

She could almost hear the sweet voice whispering in her ears again.

There was still hope! The voice wasn't just her imagination.

It was definitely real.

But for whatever reason, it couldn't save her yet. It knew she would fall into despair, and told her to keep faith. Or maybe it was giving her a trial to overcome.

She had to believe in him. Her. It?

Keep faith.

Even her pains were going away now. She felt good. No, she felt wonderful!

Everything was so clear and obvious to her now. Why was she so lost and afraid before?

She just had to believe in the voice and keep faith and everything would be perfect.

Keep faith.

Her faith had been wavering, she knew. When they moved her onto the transport, she thought that might be when the voice would come to save her. But she wasn't worthy. She was weak. After that brief moment of clarity and bliss, her anxieties and despair set back in, and along with it her pains and discomfort.

As she was held up by the giant metal claw in front of Dragon's CGI rendering, she found it very difficult to continuing believing. But she had to.

"… I even wrote a letter to your judge, the DA and your governor saying as much. I'm sorry it wasn't enough…"

Dragon's sympathetic, but hopeless words didn't help. A sliver of suspicion came to her as she wondered if Dragon had been part of the rigged trial. What if those letters Dragon sent had condemned her instead? The Tinker might have lied. She was the most powerful and respected Tinker in the world, and even the one who managed the Birdcage. If Dragon protested, how could innocent Paige Mcabee be sentenced to the Birdcage still?

She numbly listened as Dragon told her to look to Lustrum, the woman who "put herself in charge of that cell" for protection. All she could think about was the things she'd imagined before, and how right she had been that the Birdcage was full of monsters.

Of course a girl like her would need protection. The Birdcage wasn't like prisons that had guards and wardens enforcing order. It was a lawless den of monsters, and to survive, the only way was to become one of them or become their toy.

"….Prisoner 601's chance of escape from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center is .000025% with no gross deviations…"

Why… did Dragon tell her that? Was she mocking her?

Dragon droned on about the security measures in place.

It wasn't enough to put her in the Birdcage, knowing that she'd never get out. Dragon had to put a number to it. Tell her all the ways she'd die if she tried.

She shut out Dragon's voice and repeated the mantra in her mind again.

When all hope is lost, faith will show you the light.

Let your heart see what the eyes cannot.

Keep faith.

The cell that was her new prison was better than the one where she was kept before the transport to the Birdcage.

At least her restraints had all been removed, and there was some light.

But that was little comfort to her when she knew her cell offered no protection against any of the monsters in the Birdcage coming in.

As soon as she finished meeting Lustrum, she fearfully shut herself in her cell. Even though she knew it was no real protection, she felt just a bit safer without the dangerous vulture-like looks from the other inmates in this block.

When Lustrum demanded to know why she was in the Birdcage and she explained how she made her ex-boyfriend literally try to fuck himself, mutilating himself in the process, the extreme feminist and her followers actually laughed and patted her on the back. "Nice one! Serves the fucker right!" They cheered.

They were monsters, all of them, even the ones that sympathized with her.

When all hope is lost, faith will show you the light. Let your heart see what the eyes cannot. That was the only thing still keeping her going.

But try as she might, nothing she did brought back that sensation of pure bliss when she had first found her faith.

By night time, she was on the tip of giving up, when she finally couldn't take it anymore and started crying again, thinking that she had imagined the voice after all, or that it didn't have the power to bring her out of the Birdcage. Nobody had ever escaped from the Birdcage, after all. What made her special anyway, that she deserved to be saved?

"Please… save me… please… !" She sobbed while on her knees, hands clasped as if in prayer in front of her, shaking with each sob.

"I've been faithful… so please… you promised… ! Please!"

But like magic, as if the voice had been waiting for those sincere words, it came back to her.

"You have indeed been faithful and your faith shall be rewarded."

Her eyes were shocked open. She saw a shining white ball of light with a yellow halo on top, and a hazy image of several sets of utterly massive white wings extending outwards from the centre, floating in front of her. The whole image was blurry and looked transcendental, making the magnificent wings appear completely unlike the mundane white wings on the Simurgh. The wings stretched across the room, going into and through the walls, yet still somehow visible to Paige, as if mysteriously refracting through higher dimensions.

Incomprehensible to the mortal mind.

"G-God?" She stammered.

"Paige Mcabee," the voice resounded clearly now, no longer a whisper, but a harmonious sound that was almost like a song. "I am Agatetron. I come to you with the Spirit of the Lord. He shall speak to you through my voice and offer you a Sacred Covenant. Do you wish to be saved?"

"Yes!"

"Then, first you have one more task to complete."

She listened intently as the angel gave her extensive instructions and some tools to assist her that dropped from the ball of light.

Hours later and well prepared, Paige walked silently to cell block T, which was led by the villain known as Teacher.

Her heart was pounding in her ears but she held control of herself with her repeated mantras in her head and reviewing the memories of the instructions from the angel Agatetron.

When she asked to see the leader of the block, she was met with a knowing look from the man guarding it.

O O O

Interlude 4.y (Canary 2)

Interlude 4.y (Canary 2)

She was soon led inside through the cell block's shared areas, which was neat and tidy to an extent she didn't expect. The residents were well groomed, some were reading or watching television. A few looked mentally impaired, making repeated motions senselessly.

She waited for a while before Teacher arrived from her personal cell. He was a short and fat man with a balding head. Like some of the teachers she'd had in high school and college.

He gave her a friendly smile.

Paige forced herself to smile back and made a curtsy.

"You must be the newcomer today. Canary is your name, I've been told? Welcome to our humble abode. I hear you have taken residence in Lustrum's block. A wise choice for a young woman like yourself," he said.

"You don't think I might be more suited to cell block T?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You may have heard of me before, but I know little of you to judge. Have you come to discuss your prospects?"

"I have."

"Then why didn't you come to me first?"

"If I did that, you would get the wrong impression," she said with a smirk. It was getting easier, somehow. She just had to tell herself it was another performance, just like on the stage.

"And what impression is that?"

"That I come to you for refuge. To be subordinate."

The man's eyes showed no hint of a reaction where she would have expected suspicion.

"I see. You want negotiate with me. You believe that I will not harm you if you are already under Lustrum's wing. Unnecessary caution, really. I am no simple-minded brute like some others in this cage. Let us discuss how we may be useful to each other then. What do you propose?"

"You are able to give Thinker and Tinker powers to others at the cost of gaining some influence over them, right?"

He nodded. "That is correct. For some, it means better control over their existing powers. And the influence is only temporary."

Paige frowned. "Only temporary? That's a little disappointing."

There was a surprised look on his face for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"I was under the impression that your main weakness was that your thralls must consent to letting you use your power on them. A weakness I could help you overcome with my power. But if the influence you gain is only temporary…"

His eyes widened and gained an unnatural glint. "Ah, my mistake. It seems there is a misunderstanding. I am able to control the length and degree to which my students' willpower is affected. While I limit the effect for simple business dealings, many of my students come to see that they enjoy submitting to a higher purpose. What you propose is very interesting. Perhaps a demonstration is in order?"

Paige smiled again. "Of course. May I use one of your subordinates?"

He nodded and pointed to one that was watching the television.

Then she opened her mouth and sang.

Her voice swept through her room and she actively willed her power into it for the first time.

It took only a few words before the occupants in the cell block all stopped what they were doing and turned to listen to her, mesmerized by her song.

She carefully modulated the power and gave everyone but Teacher the full blast of awe, while she subtly pushed Teacher's emotions to decrease wariness and increase excitement.

He was unusually resistant to her power, and even that was difficult for her.

She took a step and faced the one man who had pointed out to her.

"You want Teacher to teach you more," she inserted in the lyrics.

The man nodded and walked quickly to Teacher. Paige continued her song.

"Please, I need another boost," he asked.

Teacher nodded and extended his open palm. Paige watched as the man touched the palm, and while there were no outward expressions of his power, she felt through her song that the man was suddenly a bit harder to control, as if there was a competing influence in him.

As the man returned to watching the television, Teacher turned back to Paige with a hungry expression.

"So do you see the potential in a partnership?" She asked, allowing her song to end.

"Indeed. We can do great things together, I foresee. Great things indeed."

"But it doesn't mean anything if we can't escape this prison. As the one who has been here longer, you must have had thoughts about that."

His smile didn't change. "You are correct. Fortunately, I have plans in motions for that very purpose. Breakouts from the inside are just about impossible, but you see…"

He led Paige to one TV in the room. The moment his back was turned, Paige gathered all her courage, took out a hidden syringe and slammed it into the nape of his neck, then started singing again.

"Gah!" He cried. "Get her!"

His order went unheeded by his subordinates, who were once again mesmerized by Canary's song.

"Hold him down and cover his mouth!" She commanded.

The cell blocker leader was swarmed by his own men.

It worked. All was as the angel had foretold. She had subdued all these sinners, criminals who were deemed dangerous enough to be in the Birdcage, with her power and the blessing of an angel.

Canary sang harder, focusing all of her power to bring down Teacher's resistance to emotion effects as a human-influencing Master himself. The drug she injected into him started working as well, enhancing suggestibility and impairing judgment.

After a few minutes of continuous singing, the combination of the drug and Canary's power finally brought Teacher to a state of complete obedience.

She ordered the men to tidy themselves up and pretend to go back to what they were doing.

Then, a thought came to her.

"You should all obey me because I am the messenger of God."

They nodded, and she felt immensely pleased with herself.

That done, she continued on her holy mission with new vigour.

"Teacher, find out the exact location of the one who dares call himself Saint immediately without giving him any reason to move or be suspicious."

She pretended to be one of his mentally impaired thralls while Teacher contacted Saint by ordering one of his men to press the TV's on and off button in a controlled sequence.

Shortly after, she observed discreetly while Teacher subtly convinced Saint to tell him his current location.

When the communication was over, Teacher reported back to her.

"Good work," the voice of Agatetron whispered. "Now kill him."

Paige's eyes widened and she looked around fearfully. "K-kill?"

The angel did not appear, but its voice urged her again.

"Use the knife to kill him. You must demonstrate your resolve and execute this sinner as an offering to the Lord."

"B-but, I can't!"

"Then you will fail this trial."

She swallowed hard and took out the knife that had been given to her, clutching it in shaking hands.

The blank face of Teacher looked back at her without flinching.

Her breaths grew short as she raised the knife slowly.

"He's a sinner. A sinner that deserves to die. I'm j-just doing G-god's work! I have to finish the trial!" She mumbled to herself and shut her eyes.

"Do not close your eyes! Did you not tell these men you were the messenger of God? Deliver the Lord's judgement with righteousness!"

She opened her eyes in a panic and her hands shook harder as they clutched the knife handle together in a reverse grip.

"Hah…" She hyperventilated and sweat as she continued staring while opening her eyes to the limit, yet paralyzed with fear. "I-I am r-righteous!"

There she stood as the seconds passed and the knife edge inched closer.

"Now!" The angel's voice whispered harshly.

She shrieked in fright and the knife thrust forward into Teacher's chest.

Blood splattered, but Teacher still stood blankly.

His unchanging expression only increased Paige's panic and she stabbed into him again and again in a frenzy until he fell to the ground in a heap, blood pooling.

She stumbled back with the knife still in hand, covered in blood, tears in her eyes.

"Oh G-god! I killed him! I killed someone!"

"Yes, you did. Now bring the sacrificial lamb to his personal cell to make your offering and complete the Covenant."

She took a few steps, then vomited before she could go any further.

When she was done hurling, she panted for a few moments before slowly reaching for the corpse on unsteady feet, muttering to herself all the while. "I am righteous. It was God's judgment. I'm not a murderer… not a murderer… I am righteous… the messenger of God…"

Once she arrived in Teacher's room, the angel reappeared to her great relief and ecstasy.

"You have proven worthy. Prepare yourself, for the Spirit of the Lord comes with your Covenant."

She kneeled reverently without prompting.

The light grew larger, and the voice changed, magnifying and echoing, like the sound of a million voices speaking as one, shaking her to her bones.

"Give me your heart, and give up your sins. Cast your burdens unto me. Trust in me and obey me faithfully. I will put my spirit in you and you shall be reborn as my daughter in light. Surrender your life to me, and I shall guide you out of this prison to your salvation and holy destiny. If you accept this sacred covenant, give to me of your blood, and embrace my spirit in your soul."

She used her already bloody knife and cut her own forearm.

"Let life be the essence and blood be the foundation."

As soon as she made the cut, blood flowed out of her wound by itself and curled into a complex circular diagram before it started to glow.

"The death of a sinner is the tribute."

Blood from the corpse also flew up to join the diagram, forming into a pattern of its own inside the larger magic circle.

"A sacred covenant is hereby established. Embrace Infinity."

The diagram shrunk and seemed to be absorbed by the light.

"Ah!" She cried out as a burning pain spread from her cut wound to her nerves in every body of her part.

She panted and clutched at her chest, where she felt something coalesce and beat once like a second heart. The heart of her new god whose spirit had come into her, she realized.

"Come, my daughter. Come to the light and be reborn."

The light grew brighter and brighter and pure white-almost blinding now-until she could see nothing but the light in front of her. It was slowly drifting, beckoning her to follow.

She walked forward. She kept walking forward past where the wall of the cell should have blocked her way. She kept walking forward, and after a while she walked past the light into darkness.

Ahead of her was a rectangular portal into what looked like clouds and a blue sky.

"Is that heaven…?" She asked out loud, hesitating before the portal.

"Do not be afraid. Your time has not come yet. This is merely the gateway to your salvation. Close your eyes and take a leap of faith," the normal voice of Agatetron instructed her.

She closed her eyes tightly and jumped through.

Shortly afterwards, while Paige was falling down, a dark figure appeared from the dark tunnel that Paige had walked through, gripping onto Agate tightly.

The figure, which was Kaleidus, quickly threw several bombs through the first portal that Paige had come through leading to the cell in the Birdcage which had been obfuscated by light from Agate, and flew after Paige through the second portal before detonating additional bombs that had been planted in the tunnel.

All the bombs went off, massive explosions engulfing the cell in the Birdcage and the tunnel.

When the cell walls were breached, the vacuum outside caused a change in air pressure which led to the automatic sealing of the cell.

The dark tunnel completely collapsed and the two portals were blocked off by a mountain of rock, noxious fumes, and other dangerous substances. Because Kaleidus had timed the second portal out of the cave by opening it ahead of time, it expired within a minute of Canary's jump, leaving only the first portal still open.

But just for good measure, another bomb activated within the collapsed rock heap, trapping the area in a frozen time field.

Outside the Birdcage, Dragon was desperately bringing backup measures online as the drones, cameras, transmission devices, and various other defenses near Teacher's cell. They had been fried by a sudden extremely powerful targeted EMP that occurred once Canary had dragged Teacher's body to the room, and Dragon wasn't able to detect anything that happened afterward. She moved in the drones she had that were outside of the range of the EMP, but by the time they arrived, the portal had already expired and there was only empty space and debris, with no trace of the prisoner or the corpse.

Dragon didn't know whether to be more panicked that someone had escaped from the inescapable Birdcage, or the horrifying takeover of cell block T and Canary muttering to thin air about doing god's work. Even more frustratingly, thanks to another EMP, she didn't see what suddenly caused the meek singer to become a religious fanatic. Evidently a powerful Master-Stranger had infiltrated the Birdcage, what else could they have done or do in the future?

As per protocol, she immediately contacted the authorities to report the prison break and infiltration.

Unknown to Dragon, she thought nothing strange of the gap in her memories of the point where Saint communicated with Teacher, those memories having been erased by the Ascalon program. Saint had been careful enough to always block and erase his communications and the moments leading up to them when Teacher entered the code in the TV.

Paige felt a strong arm grab onto her, stopping her fall. She got a good look at the figure dressed in a black and red full body armoured costume and helmet. The armour had many jagged edges and lines, and despite its metallic and reflective appearance, Paige could feel that it wasn't actually made of metal. The helmet was visored, but other than the visor it was in a medieval style. Red lines ran through the helmet and the armour, looking like pulsing veins, giving the whole setup a malevolent appearance.

"Do not fear, Paige. Though unaware of his divine nature, this is the Lord incarnated as a mortal human with much of his divine might and memories sealed. For now, you should go with him and assist him. I cannot stay on this plane any longer. Bless you, daughter of the Lord." the distinct voice of Agatetron told her. But unlike before, it was no more than a faint whisper now.

"My Lord?" She asked the armoured figure.

"Hush, now. You are safe, so just rest. And why are you calling me that? When I'm wearing this costume, just call me Axion."

She nodded, and soon she felt incredibly tired. Knowing that she was safe, she allowed herself to drift into blissful sleep.

Kaleidus looked at the unconscious girl in his arms, satisfied that the gas sedative released from his armour had worked, and continued flying to his destination with Agate in his hand.

'The operation seems to be a complete success. Excellent work, Agate!' He thought.

'I'm tired too… ' Agate responded.

'Huh? I didn't realize you could be tired.'

'The two of you are too heavy!' Their flight speed slowed to a crawl.

'… '

Paige woke up groggily, and was only confused for a moment as she sat up on the open grass, looking around the vast riverside plain. The memories from last night flooded back into her once she saw the armoured form of her Lord incarnated as a human, sitting cross-legged beside her.

"My Lord!" She exclaimed.

"Hey, I told you to just call me Axion. Why are you calling me that anyway?"

"Because you are my lord and master, even incarnated as a mortal human, you are still my God!"

"What? No, I'm not a god. Where did you get that idea? I'm just a human. Look," he said. Then he removed his helmet.

Paige had the fleeting thought that it was blasphemous to look upon the face of her God directly, but she couldn't resist her curiosity and kept staring.

The features revealed were handsome, but not otherworldly, with a kind expression.

"See, all human here. Now why did you think I'm some kind of god?"

… unaware of his divine nature… that was what the angel Agatetron had told her. She understood what it meant now. Her God had incarnated fully as a human, and even forgotten his divine nature to be more human.

"But you are! Even if you don't remember, it's true. The angel Agatetron came to me and told me you would save me, and you did!"

"Uh… what? You think you saw an angel?" He looked at her strangely. "It wasn't the Simurgh, was it?"

"No! It was a true angel of the lord, incomprehensibly great and vast, a being of the purest light."

He furrowed his eyebrows as if deep in thought.

She recognized that look. Her Lord's human incarnation didn't believe her. He was so human that he was vulnerable to the same doubts and skepticism. If only Agatetron was still here and could simply reveal itself to him…

"I'll be frank with you. I have a power that lets me project my senses somewhere else. I was using this while you were in the Birdcage so I could make sure you were alone when I came to rescue you. Because of this, I saw what you were doing. I found you when you were in Teacher's cell block. I saw how you tricked him and killed him as an offering to your god. Because you were finally alone then, while you were praying I set things up on my end to secure our return, then opened a portal to you. Then you suddenly rushed through and jumped before I could even explain that I was there to rescue you. I never saw this angel you're talking about."

"But… that's… it was definitely there! And it was the angel that told me it was the gateway to salvation…"

"This world is full of strange things, so I won't deny that maybe there are divine forces. But I'm not a religious person, and I definitely didn't come to save you because of some divine will. I was already planning to save you. Escaping from the Birdcage isn't something you just do on a whim. I've been planning this out for days, scoping out the prison and its defense mechanisms. You said you thought I was your god because the angel told you I would come to save you, but there's a perfectly rational explanation for why I was there, that doesn't involve divine intervention."

She understood what he was saying. It all sounded very logical. The only problem was, the angel told her that he was in fact her God incarnated, just unaware of it.

Just because there was a logical explanation for why he was there to save her didn't mean that her God wasn't real. It only worked out that way because she passed the trial given to her and accepted the Sacred Covenant.

If she didn't, there would have been a perfectly logical explanation for why he would have been somehow unable to save her in the end. Besides, wasn't it because he was her God that he was already planning to save her?

"I-I get that, but that's because, from the beginning, it was all part of God's plan. Your plan."

He shook his head. "No, no, I'm definitely not all-powerful and not everything goes according to my plans. Even for a cape, my powers are pretty weak."

Suddenly she came to a realization. Why hadn't Agatetron revealed itself to him? Why were his memories of divinity sealed?

She had been overzealous, and failed to see the deeper meaning behind it.

He was not meant to know his true nature, at least not yet. There was a purpose behind his incarnation as a human that she didn't understand yet.

"Listen, never mind whatever you saw. You seem pretty sure of yourself so I won't try to convince you otherwise. You can believe there is a god and you saw an angel, but don't start worshiping me in front of anyone else."

As he spoke those last words, Paige felt her second heart inside her beat with a slight squeezing pain in her chest. It lasted only for an instant, but in that instant she felt reassured that everything she saw and heard before falling asleep was not just a delusion. Her God was real and the angel was right. Even if he didn't know it, the man before her was her God incarnated, and by her Covenant he held her heart and faith.

"I have some teammates we're going to meet soon, and it's going to be real awkward for me if you start calling me a god, okay? Please."

"I understand, um… Axion?"

"Yeah, you can call me that while I'm in this costume. When I'm outside of the costume, call me Kaleidus. It's nice to meet you," he said. Then he put his hand forward in the gesture for shaking.

She shook his hand and smiled widely. "Yes! And I'm Paige, Paige Mcabee! Thank you for saving me!"

Convolution 5.1

Convolution 5.1

Amelia and Taylor had both decided to trust me and let me go alone for the operation.

Supposedly. Because I had no verbal objections to them coming along, there wasn't anything suspicious about why I wanted to do it alone, but I could never be sure if they thought the same without telepathy.

Once I explained the general plan to them, excluding everything I intended to do to bring Canary under control, they thought it was a good plan and simply asked to stay nearby just in case.

So I retrieved Agate and brought us all to Earth M, where they continued their experimentation, and I told them where I would be operating. The tunnel where I set up the bombs was also on Earth M, but very far away, while the atmospheric portal location was just ten kilometres away from Amelia and Taylor. Because Agate's portals couldn't be made into the same world, we used an empty room at base as an intermediary, stacking a second portal one centimetre behind the tunnel exit portal, thereby making it seem like just one portal to "heaven".

But the fact that they were nearby on Earth M meant that Taylor and Amelia would have had the opportunity to tail me and/or send bugs to spy on me if they didn't trust me after all, which in turn meant that I could not carelessly say anything that would expose my involvement in the angel vision scheme.

As we flew closer to them, I introduced them to Paige as Araliac and Skitter. Some of Skitter's bugs came to guide us down.

"What happened? Why are you guys covered in blood?! Are you injured?" Amelia demanded as soon as we approached. They were experimenting, in costume, in a sparse forest with many low bushes.

She rushed over and touched Canary first, the living glove on her hands receding so that her skin could make contact.

"Paige had a scuffle with Teacher before I rescued her. She won, by the way. We're both fine. All this blood is Teacher's," I said.

"No one's following for five kilometres. Everything went smoothly then?" Taylor asked.

Judging by her comment, her range had expanded enormously with the new relay bugs they'd been working on for the whole day.

I was right to take precautions.

"You got into a fight with Teacher and won? By yourself?" Amelia asked doubtfully. "He's supposed to be a really dangerous mastermind with an army of 'students' at his beck and call. I thought you were just a singer."

"I-I was! But when I was in the Birdcage, an angel answered my prayers and came to me, telling me I would be saved if I could pass its trial! It told me how to defeat Teacher and find the location of the false Saint. I just did what it told me to and after I passed its trial, Axion came and I really was saved!"

There was a moment of silence while Taylor and Amelia just stared at Paige.

I gave an exasperated sigh that could be heard even through my helmet.

"No, like I told you, I was already there and found you right when you were tricking Teacher. I was just waiting for you to be alone before I could rescue you discreetly. Despite what this 'angel' said, I would have saved you regardless if you passed its trial. In fact, if you'd just stayed in your own cell, I probably would have been able to get you out faster."

"But that's not true! It only seems that way because God works in mysterious ways. If I didn't pass the trial, there would have been a reason you wo-couldn't have rescued me!"

"Such as…?" I asked.

"Such as… such as…" Her argumentative tone dropped as she struggled to find an explanation. "… not fair…" she mumbled.

"It sounds to me like there was another party that got involved. One that knew about our plans and took advantage of them to make you do something. Is there a precog in the Birdcage?" Taylor spoke with a piercing tone.

"Not that I know of. Glaistig Uaine might," I said.

"When did the angel appear? What did it look like?" Taylor asked, facing me.

"I'm afraid I didn't see the angel. According to Paige, the first time was when I pulled back my projected senses to make the portal to bring us over here, so I missed it. It appeared a second time right before I opened the portal to her, and I was watching her then, but there wasn't anything there. Just air."

"It looked like a shining mass of light with wings and a halo. The wings were so huge they stretched out into the walls and beyond," Paige added.

"Guys maybe we shouldn't have this interrogation right after a traumatic experience? She should get cleaned up and rest to get a clear head," said Amelia.

"I already had a good night's sleep. I just woke up," Paige said.

"Uh, no. You only slept for like an hour at most. And your body definitely needs a lot more sleep, even though you're feeling excited," said Amelia. "It seems like you've been severely sleep deprived for several days."

"Huh? But it's already morning."

"We're on a different parallel Earth in a different timezone," I said. "She's right, I rescued you only an hour ago."

"Oh, then I guess…" Then her eyes lidded and she promptly collapsed into Amelia's arms.

"You knocked her out?" I asked.

"She really needs more sleep. Her body was already at the point where it wouldn't be strange to have hallucinations. Why did you even wake her before coming to us? I thought you didn't want her to meet us so she wouldn't know that CRUCIBLE rescued her. Isn't that why you asked me to add the gas sedative to your armour and came up with a different identity? Then we could just change her face, cut off the feathers, and let her go on with a new life without any risk of it leaking out that we broke someone out from the Birdcage."

"I knew very little about her from the information I accessed in the other plane of existence. She is different from what I expected." I had explained the nature of my "precognition" to both of them, but even now only Amelia knew the details about my escape from my home plane. All I told Taylor was the same thing I told Amelia the first time I explained about the Entities-that I once had access to another information from another plane of existence about important events of the past and possible futures in this one.

"With how… fanatical… she is, I don't think she would be willing to disappear quietly to a peaceful life. She is also more competent than I expected. It's possible that she has or second triggered with additional powers that work subconsciously. I've never heard of a second trigger with one of the bought powers so I have no idea how it might work. She would be very useful in this case. Alternatively, if there is something or someone else manipulating her, it may not be a good idea to simply let her go off on her own. Who knows what might happen. I suspect that organization might try to take her, regardless of whether they were the ones to set her on Teacher."

"Wait, she said she found out the location of Saint, right?" Taylor cut in.

"Yeah. I still need to verify if Saint was telling the truth, but she used her power to Master Teacher into convincing Saint to reveal his location. He's in a secret base in Prince Edward Island, apparently."

"Who is Saint? Isn't he just a small-time mercenary that stole some tech from Dragon?" Amelia asked.

"There's got to be more to it than that. How did Teacher even contact somebody outside the Birdcage? I'm guessing Saint was one of Teacher's students that was never found out, and if there's one student out there coordinating with Teacher, there's probably more," said Taylor.

"That's right. Teacher gave him the power to understand Dragon's code. Moreover, he's in possession of the program Andrew Richter made as a failsafe against Dragon turning against humanity. The Ascalon program is a sort of backdoor to Dragon's code that she can't perceive in any way, which is how they stole her tech and hid from her monitoring in the Birdcage. It also has the ability to delete her."

"Can it remove her restrictions too?" Amelia asked.

"I don't know for sure. It's our only shot to do it without lobotomizing her though, unless a new AI Tinker pops up." And that was the truth. I did not know how exactly Armsmaster removed Dragon's restrictions. I knew she got crippled afterward, so it obviously wasn't the right way, but I did not know the details of the canon events that were involved. I read somewhere that Dragon was deleted in the end, and restored from backup later, but could Ascalon actually remove the restrictions safely?

"Is this what you were talking about when you said you knew of a way to do it, but we'd have to go to Canada?"

"Yeah. It would have taken some time to find Saint, and even longer to develop a strategy for taking them down without risk of him taking Dragon down with him, but with Canary's help, it should be simple. Her power works even through electronic mediums."

The girls looked at each other, then back at me.

"Do we really need her? Wouldn't Bakuda's EMP bombs work just as well against their Dragon suits? I think we should go as soon as possible, in case Saint leaves or gets suspicious and we lose our lead," said Taylor.

"I agree. Canary hasn't ever worked with us before. She might help, or she might mess things up. Like, wouldn't her power affect us as well? Not even ear plugs can stop it if it really works by sound, because sound waves can travel through our skin and skull to the eardrums. We wouldn't be able to be in the same place as her if we don't want to be hit, or get completely soundproof full body suits, which has other problems," Amelia added.

"That's true… we probably shouldn't take her on something this big as her first mission," I said. "Alright, I will confirm Saint's location via sense projection first, then the three of us will retrieve Ascalon after we're prepared."

I acquiesced easily to her objections because I had already thought of those issues and ways to overcome them, at least for this mission, but it didn't make much difference either way. The Dragonslayers had no means to defend against the type of tactics we could employ.

After that, we all went to sleep while Agate went scouting.

Little did I know, we almost lost before we would even get a chance to employ those tactics.

A/N: It's been a little over a year since this story began, and it's still my favourite among all my fics. I had to rewrite this and the following chapters several times because I realized I, and by extension Kaleidus, and committed a blunder in the Canary operation, after I published it, which led to the last line of this chapter. I wonder if anyone else noticed.

Last edited: Sep 20, 2019

Convolution 5.2

Convolution 5.2

About an hour later, Agate had travelled the 480 miles to PEI from Brockton Bay and found the base.

When she arrived, the Dragonslayers were already in the midst of packing everything and getting rid of anything that could be used to trace them in a rush to escape.

How? Why?

Agate woke me up immediately and after getting up to speed on the situation and Agate's own thoughts on what might have happened, I quickly realized that I made a mistake in the previous operation.

Dragon was very busy and had automated scripts to flag down anything of note in the Birdcage. She didn't generally pay much conscious attention to the feeds from the Birdcage due to her restrictions on multitasking and because there was generally nothing interesting going on there, which was probably why Saint didn't notice anything wrong when Teacher contacted him. Even if he was monitoring Dragon at the time and not asleep as it was late night, nothing related to Teacher should have shown up unless he specifically pulled up the relevant feeds. He would have blocked off the communications between him and Teacher from Dragon without any particular reason to look more deeply into the preceding and following events.

However, the moment that the walls of a cell were blown apart and a large section of her Birdcage systems went offline from the big second EMP, she definitely would have brought her full attention to the Birdcage.

Even if Saint went back to sleep, Dragon would be fully preoccupied with investigating and reporting on the Birdcage for possibly hours, which meant that Saint would definitely also take note the next time he was monitoring her.

At some point after the communication with Teacher, he must have checked on Dragon's activities again and alarmed by Teacher's death. Once he reviewed the feeds more closely he would realize that Teacher communicated with him while Mastered.

From there, it didn't take a genius to figure out that somebody was out to get him, and evidently he had the sense to abandon the base whose location was compromised.

If he had been just a bit faster at evacuating, or if the base was located half an hour farther away, I might have actually lost him.

Or if Dragon had started paying attention earlier before Saint was contacted, we might not have even gotten the location from him.

Although acquiring the programs Richter left behind was a secondary objective to getting control of Canary, the realization that control of Dragon nearly slipped from my grasp from such an oversight was disturbing.

But, luckily things weren't unsalvageable yet.

"Nnngh, what?" Amelia groggily asked as I woke her up.

"I just found Saint but he's about to escape, we've got to move now! Get your gear ready!"

She rubbed her eyes furiously and nodded before taking off.

Then I took the risk of portaling direct to Taylor's bedroom.

"Huh? Kaleidus? What's wrong?" Taylor sat up from the bed without prompting.

I stopped and raised an eyebrow. "Still awake? Nevermind that, I found Saint but he's about to escape! We've got to get him before he slips away."

"I'm having a hard time falling asleep. Why is Saint trying to escape? How did he know?"

"I think he found out Teacher was Mastered through his monitoring of Dragon. It's the only explanation."

She nodded. "Okay, my costume's in the basement."

"Do you need a portal or can you sneak there?"

"I'll sneak over. If dad wakes up I can make up an excuse for why I'm in the basement, but I won't be able to explain away a glowing portal."

"Alright. Sorry, this portal's stuck here for the next fifteen minutes even after we leave."

"It's fine, I get it. We can't let Saint escape."

Five minutes later we were assembled at the base. Captain Bateman had a squad of ten on standby, while Major Reynolds was manning the console.

"Ready?" I asked.

Araliac and Skitter nodded.

I first opened a small portal and threw a Bakuda EMP through. I was running out of these as Bakuda had only ever made five small ones before starting work on the mega bomb, so I would need Canary's services soon.

On the other side, the Dragonslayers had gotten on a repainted and converted Russian military truck and were driving away from the abandoned house in the countryside they were using as their base.

The EMP landed about ten meters behind the truck and went off.

There were some loud noises from the truck components but otherwise it was fine and kept going, accelerating.

EMPs weren't necessarily effective on vehicles' ability to keep moving as many parts were mechanical rather than electronic. It was far more effective on Tinkertech and modern electronics. The point of this EMP wasn't to stop the truck, but to break the electronic systems that increased the performance of the suits the Dragonslayers converted from stolen Dragonflight craft, forcing them to use manual controls.

Agate accelerated past the truck in Agatespace so I could open another, larger portal in front of them.

Skitter's bugs were the first to go through, a large swarm of monster bombardier beetles enlarged and enhanced to the size of soccer balls charged the truck.

They spat out globs of acid and covered the windshield, while the bugs themselves moved forward to cover the truck.

Smaller insects deployed from the beetles' carapace and attempted to get in the vehicle through any loose cracks or crevices.

The tires were ripped apart by the beetle claws and the truck came to a grinding halt.

The monster spiders came next, carried by a different class of beetles more focused on strength and raw attack power based off of horned dung beetles.

Many more insects of different sizes and functions swept in as well.

The back of the truck blew open as two mechs came out to fight. They were both the size of a small car, but humanoid in appearance.

The first one flew up on wings, then the wings extended with solid projections, and it used the projected section as a weapon to attack the bugs.

It landed on the top of the truck and spun, slicing the nearby bugs to death.

The second one did not seem to have flight capabilities, but it was armed with many more guns embedded all over its body, plus two larger rifles carried in its hands.

It unloaded its weapons fire on the bugs and slaughtered them easily with five shots a second, blasts of energy destroying each Soldier-class bug-what we named the soccer ball size-with one blow.

Unfortunately for him, the targeting system seemed to be not functioning well, or perhaps the pilot just didn't care, because half the blasts missed and hit the truck, boring huge holes into its outer armor.

Suddenly Araliac flew through the portal and slammed into the winged suit within seconds. Her vines wrapped around the winged suit, and pain bombs activated from inside her living armour.

The winged suit pilot was clearly stunned and made no further movements, while the other one started firing everywhere at random for a few seconds before it petered out and stood still.

Araliac herself had created a network of micro-organisms inside her body, spread all over her nerves, which countered the effect of the pain bombs. Skitter's bugs and the two of us had similarly been made immune.

The last member of the Dragonslayers screamed madly from the driver's compartment.

Taking advantage of the stunned enemies, the rest of us went through. A combination of the acid beetles and Bateman's squad with their laser rifles melted and cut into the suits until the cockpits could be accessed by the tranquilizer bugs.

The three members of the Dragonslayers were knocked out and we began to drag everything back to base, except the military truck which couldn't fit through even the maximum sized portal Agate could make so we simply blew it up with a conventional bomb.

After the Dragonslayers were secured in our holding areas on Earth M, Araliac, Skitter and I gathered at my office at base.

A small blue box sat on my desk beside the computer monitor. It had various ports for other devices to connect to. A Structural Analysis on it revealed to me that it seemed to be a full computer, rather than merely some form of storage media with programs on it. It was Tinkertech, so it was very different from typical computer hardware architecture, so I couldn't be sure.

It didn't have a port for any visual signal that I could see though, which was odd, as it meant I couldn't connect it to a monitor. Ultimately I decided to try connecting it to a computer via the USB port.

The box whirred to life with blinking lights, then an untitled program prompt appeared on my screen, asking for a password.

Amelia had already forced the necessary passwords and procedures out of Saint. But her narcosynthesis' way of mentally impairing victims' decision making abilities to make them reveal information had the downside of… well, rendering the victim mentally impaired. As I had experienced with Coil, their answers, while truthful, were not always user-friendly, so to speak. With Coil, the man was particularly methodical and well-organized, so anything unclear was either cleared up with additional interrogation or use of the digital files I already had access to. With Saint, his ability to describe the Tinkertech and Ascalon's proper usage was rather limited, either because it was too difficult to explain while mentally impaired, or because there were many things he didn't know himself.

Connecting the USB port for example, was a rather obvious thing to do when there's a fitting port available, but just because you could connect both a phone and a flash drive by USB didn't mean they were the same thing. In this case, Saint was unable to provide an answer and merely looked blankly at us when asked to tell us if there were other ways to use the Tinkertech.

Another reason to use Canary in the future. But for now, all we could do was follow the instructions we were given.

I completed the authentication.

A menu of options popped up. The first one was helpfully entitled "Instructions". I clicked it.

Another two options popped up. "Message from Andrew Richter", "Basic controls", and "Advanced controls".

I clicked on the first one.

A voice came from a speaker in the device.

"My name is Andrew Richter. If you are hearing this, I am dead. I am the most powerful Tinker in the world… "

"Really? This guy is pretty full of himself. Then again, I guess if he created Dragon, he arguably is," said Amelia.

The voice continued on.

"… I create life, much as a god might… "

"He's definitely full of himself. A god?" Taylor said.

"I have come to fear my creations… even with the laws I set, I can't trust they'll listen… "

Those fears weren't unfounded. Dragon had come up with ways to work around some of her restrictions at a practical level if not at the code level and if given enough time, it was possible that she would overcome them all.

We continued listening as the voice explained the built-in weakness of his creations and the nature of this box.

"… And what I provide you with here are tools. Ways to find my creations, to discern which of them might have deviated from the original plan, ways to kill them if they prove out of line. Ways to control and harness them…"

Control and harness? I couldn't resist smirking. Richter, you magnificent bastard.

I felt an elbow hit my arm. Amelia gave me a pointed look. "You aren't thinking of controlling Dragon, are you?"

I changed my expression to a pout. "Do you really think I would do that?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know. You wanted to Canary to join us for her Master powers as soon as you saw how effective it was. And you and Taylor both seem pretty keen on forcing Bakuda and Coil to work for us… wild guess here, but you're going to ask Canary to Master them, right?"

"That's different!" Taylor and I both exclaimed in sync.

"So you also think we should use Canary like that?" Amelia asked Taylor.

"She wouldn't mind, right?" Taylor asked me.

"I think she would be eager to do it."

"Then it's not really using her, right?"

"And what about Dragon?" Amelia pressed.

"Dragon's a hero so it wouldn't be right," said Taylor with a hint of reluctance.

"And I wasn't going to suggest anything like that. We can just make an independent copy of Dragon, remove the personality matrix and memories, then train it to work for us. Without the personality matrix, it'd be for all intents and purposes, an entirely new AI. Dragon keeps her independence, we get an AI with the same capabilities as the world's best Tinker and then some after we lift some restrictions, it's a win-win."

"Oh! That's right. It's all code so we can make copies. More than one, even," said Taylor.

"Isn't that still kind of… I don't know, taking away the free will of a sentient being?" Amelia asked, frowning.

I shrugged. "I don't think it's any different from intentionally withholding higher thinking capabilities from new organisms you make. And it doesn't need to have free will to begin with, in which case we aren't taking anything away. We can even try to program it to always want to be loyal to us, if we're going to let it keep emotions. Or, we could get rid of the ability to actually feel emotions. Then it wouldn't be sentient. If we think emotions are useful, we could feed sensory input into a sandboxed simulation of emotions distinct from the actual AI's core processes, using the simulation output as analytical inputs to the AI's true decision making algorithms."

That was of course, just semantics. The AI was by nature already a simulation of human intelligence and emotion… whether or not a 'sandboxed' simulation in a subsystem made it different from actually having emotions as part of the whole system was a philosophical question that I didn't care about.

I just wanted my own AI.

'I want one too!' said Agate.

'You are an AI… a magical one, but still.'

'So you already have me, that's why I should get one next!'

'If you get one, what are you going to do with it?'

As Agate thought about all the things she was going to use the AI for, I quickly realized…

'Those are all the same things I was planning!'

'Of course they are. I am your AI, I do what you want me to do, so what I'm going to do with my own AI is what you want me to do with it. Isn't that obvious?'

'… so basically what you're saying is, you want an AI too because you want what I want.'

'Yup!'

'I can't believe I almost forgot Zelretch gave you his affinity for trolling!'

A round of mental giggling ensued.

After a moment, Amelia relaxed her frown and glanced at the screen, "Is that even possible with Ascalon?"

"Don't know yet, but we can try."

O O O

Last edited: Sep 30, 2019

Convolution 5.3

Convolution 5.3

The week after the Dragonslayers operation was peaceful, as if it was the calm before the storm.

There was no news on the Birdcage disruption, either of Teacher's demise or of Canary's disappearance. The PRT had chosen to suppress the news to avoid public panic. The orders came direct from the Chief Director, and Dragon was the first to be silenced as soon as it was reported, orders which I witnessed through Ascalon.

These orders suited me well. Recent operations had put us in a state that was arguably overextended, and I needed this time to consolidate.

"Alert: Crime detected." The synthetic voice of Offensive Bias, our new AI reported. I hoped that eventually it would be as powerful and loyal as its namesake in Halo. So far it had proved every bit as useful as I'd hoped, and then some.

On the array of screens before me, a particular location near the Trainyard flashed with a circle homing in. Nearby camera feeds were hijacked and showed an armed mugging in progress.

"Executing standard unpowered crime response protocol."

Offensive Bias transmitted the map data to the closest squad captain and sent a text to Brockton Bay Police Department's crime reporting line. Taylor's communications bug, which was outfitted with high quality eyes, fingers, and vocal cords, sat beside me in the console room. It would transmit the view of the map to Taylor, who sent in the vanguard while sitting in school.

Amelia and I watched as Soldier bugs quickly emerged from the shadows of the alley, from rooftops, balconies, and corners. There were screams from both the victim and the perp as the bugs attacked.

The victim fell back in a panic to the wall at the end of the alley while the perp was wrapped up in silk and sticky goo. A single uniformed soldier arrived to guard the scene while the BBPD was on their way.

With the new relay bugs and Amelia free to work on biological experiments all day, Taylor had covered the whole city in her bugs.

Aside from these unpowered crimes, there were a couple of new skirmishes with Empire 88 as they seemed to be testing our capabilities, but nothing big, and we did not participate in person. A small time independent villain I'd never heard of before also tried his luck, but we captured him and allowed the PRT to take the arrest. Everything was being handled by a combination of our soldiers who now patrolled openly on the streets, and Skitter's new bugs.

The smaller bugs made visible swarms in public areas, while the soldier bugs kept themselves hidden until there were crimes in progress.

"Offensive Bias, get me a list of all the crimes that happened over the past few days and how they were dealt with."

"Retrieving today's crime reports for Brockton Bay."

The video feeds were replaced with a list of the various crimes that occurred, most of which were detected first and handled by CRUCIBLE forces.

"What percentage of crimes are being handled by CRUCIBLE now?" Amelia asked.

"92%."

"And how well are we responding to them? What percentage are we successfully intercepting before victims get hurt or lose their things?"

"Of the crimes which CRUCIBLE responded to, 93% were intercepted before any harm or loss of property. 54 incidents of drug dealing were not included in this calculation because the purchasers did not attempt to consume the drugs before interception."

"How does the BBPD and PRT compare?"

"Averaged over the past month, the BBPD only successfully intercepted 6% of crimes in progress before any harm or loss of property, while the PRT successfully intercepted 0%."

Amelia and I looked at each other. "Looks like we're doing pretty well," I said.

"That's an understatement. Do we even need the police or PRT anymore? We're doing all the work now, and way better than they did. They just show up to make arrests," she said.

"Well, the police still deal with investigative work, car accidents, and speeding tickets. Plus, we don't handle stuff like domestic abuse yet."

"Hmmm. Maybe, but it's not like we can't do all of that as well."

"Yeah do we want to be doing any of that stuff? Leave the menial things for police, we have better things to work on than waste our time filing paperwork and going to court."

"I guess that's true."

While our policing of Brockton Bay may have looked impressive to an outsider, from my perspective it already mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

The nature of the game had already changed, as a result of several key developments.

Once Canary was settled in, I immediately had her Master Coil in order to perform some experiments to determine how much his shard could simulate me and Agate.

To my great dismay, we discovered that the simulation was almost perfect. Coil accurately reported the effects of my magecraft and knowledge I revealed in a test timeline, which neither he nor anyone else in Worm could possibly have known without reading my mind.

The lone exception was Agate, who was apparently beyond their sight, so long as she was in agatespace acting on her own. Anything Agate did while phased out resulted in a reported observation that was wrong even in the timeline Coil kept-ie, his experience of reality didn't match with the actual reality. But if she simply followed my orders, or stayed in real space, it was still simulated. Apparently even the mere expectation that Agate would do something would result in the simulated result of that expectation as if my belief was true, so it was obvious that the shards' were collectively reading our minds and learning to model us even if we might have had some immunity in the beginning.

With this came the realization that it was most probable that Scion and the Simurgh were already aware of my presence and my knowledge of how Scion was defeated in canon, rendering it potentially useless. The fact that I was still alive was either because I had been deemed not a threat by Scion, or because he hadn't yet consciously paid attention to me to realize I was a threat, but the instant he used his PtV it could be game over.

The only way that Scion could lose is if he allows himself to die. If he gets surprised by seeing Eden and crushed by his emotions, then refuses to use PtV. From the beginning, the strategy would have taken a miracle, and if Scion already knew about it?

The conclusion was obvious. We were screwed.

The only reason I wasn't in a cold sweat was because it would soon become irrelevant.

I already had my get-out-of-jail-free card.

It had started with Agate's idea that Scion's barrier was only limited to a small area of real space, and that the path would be open at some point beyond the moon's orbit.

I had briefly entertained the idea of kidnapping String Theory to develop a way to get to the moon, but in the end Leet and Offensive Bias had a much better solution working together.

Agate herself could have physically flown to the moon, but at her top speed of 500 miles an hour it would have taken weeks, and if we were wrong, it would be a lot of wasted time. Not to mention Agate refused to do it.

Then last week I hired Uber and Leet shortly after taking over Coil's organization. Leet had squandered a lot of potential, through no fault of his own, on building cool techs early on when he didn't know about his restrictions. Entire tech trees were out of his reach now because he'd built critical components that were needed for everything else. Fortunately, he was quite meticulous and kept a lot of documentation around, so after I hired him last week, we discovered that Haywire-style portals could be developed, which then become my top priority. He had finished it a while ago, but to ensure this wouldn't blow up in my face, I kept it in storage until Offensive Bias was ready to use its Trump-Thinker power to reverse engineer it before rebuilding it again, even integrating some of the limited information on Haywire's notes that came with Dragon's database.

Unlike Agate, the new portal Tinkertech could directly target the moon for a portal. So we opened up a portal right at the edge of the range limit, and sent Agate through, attached to a rocket courtesy of Offensive Bias.

It wasn't long before Agate confirmed that she reached a point in real space where the barrier was gone. She also confirmed that the range limit on portals moved with her-so while the shards had a spherical limit centered on Earth where they were stationary, if Agate was on the moon, she could make portals to the space beyond the moon. At the same time, the ability to make stable portals was related to local gravity sources too, such that the range limit for Agate wasn't quite spherical while on the moon, but drastically reduced on the side of the moon's orbit around the Earth that was opposite of the moon's current position and much bigger within the moon's own gravitational pull.

Regardless, the path was open, and it would take about 12 seconds to shift planes, including the 2 seconds it would take for Agate make a portal for me to get to the space beyond Scion's barrier, and ten seconds to activate the ARMP: User Travel to a random plane.

In other words, I had already achieved my main goal in a rather sudden way, and had no real reason to stay in Wormverse except gathering more power that I could take with me to the next plane, or building up my power base here in support of future activities.

As such, I had turned my attention towards preparing to leave.

Before leaving, I had two main concerns. The first was to gather power that wouldn't be rendered useless by going to another plane.

If other planes didn't have Wormvoid, most Tinkertech might become useless.

I couldn't take shards with me because they were simply too large to fit in the tunnel through Kaleidoscape. Even if I did manage to do it, if the new plane had no Wormvoid or alternate Earths, the shards would still be useless, or even crush me to death by appearing on top of me.

Trying to bring people other than myself was dangerous. Attempting to bring more souls, or any soul made of too many spiritrons, was hypothesized to increase the chance of attracting the attention of Beasts of the World, whatever the Wormverse counterpart was, or even more dangerous universe-level protective measures while we passed through the Second Magic's path to the Root during the first portion of Kaleidoscape Pathway formation. Even if their existence was merely conjecture, I had no intention of testing my luck against such godly entities yet. Maybe if the person coming along was extremely useful, but since capes were basically certain to lose their powers because I couldn't bring their shards, it was an unnecessary risk for little gain.

Magecraft wasn't immune to this problem of incompatibility either. Magics other than True Magic generally had Thaumaturgical Systems behind them. Only the simplest and most universal magics, or magics closer to the Root could be expected properly to work in other planes. I suppose Planeswalker magics also qualified as being "closer to the Root".

So if Wormvoid was unique to Worm, what did that leave me with?

Knowledge was obviously one source of power. Cranial's services had been convenient for this, and information stored digitally was also vital.

Biological modifications or constructs were potentially another, as long as they worked off of normal physics and biology rather than any dimensional shenanigans. Amelia's projects, under my influence, was already focused on this.

Mundane technology was an option too, but I had to weigh that against the Tinkertech I would want to at least try to bring along. I could only bring enough stuff to fit in a space equivalent to a commercial van.

Money and raw materials were potentially useful as well. Any other universe that had human civilization would probably find precious gems and metals good for trading, and if it was a modern Earth type of setting, US currency could be tradeable too.

The other main concern was wrapping up my business in Worm. Leaving Worm was not necessarily a permanent state of affairs. With a Beacon here, I could conceivably return whenever I wanted. The only limitation was that it took time to build up the special energy necessary to access the Creation Mystery in each plane. One trip's worth of energy took about a week to gather, and Agate did not know any way of speeding it up. The energy was simply passively drawn from the Root as long as she had a partner with a soul and continued to have the authority to use the Second Magic. Zelretch had been experimenting with using GRAIN, True Ether, and the Sixth Imaginary Factor to artificially create this new form of energy, but it had not been fruitful by the time I obtained Agate.

In practical terms, this meant that I would benefit from ensuring that CRUCIBLE stayed viable as an organization, delaying the end of the world by killing Jack Slash, and establishing a power base I could draw resources from, if I can find a way to move more stuff between planes before Scion destroyed everything.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I had been aggressively expanding our economic and military power base with Offensive Bias, the true capabilities of which made our rule over Brockton Bay look like mere child's play.

Last edited: Oct 21, 2019

Convolution 5.4

Convolution 5.4

There was nothing particularly special about this workshop at first glance. A small and inconspicuous power source, clean and tidy yet stocked with a wide array of tools and machinery. There were computers, servers, welding tools, scanners, raw materials, etc. The amount of mundane equipment was in such quantity that one might not suspect it was a Tinker workshop, and that was not to obscure its true nature, but merely reflective of the owner's access to wealth, resources, and mundane manufacturing capabilities.

This wasn't only Offensive Bias' workshop, but actually where Uber, Leet, and Chariot worked on projects I commissioned of them. They'd still do some of the work at their own workshops, but when coordinating together and if they needed access to my state of the art equipment, they'd come here.

They weren't here now because after the first portal tech project, the hack of using Offensive Bias to reverse engineer Leet's tech stopped working.

The problem with finding ways to exploit the shard power interactions was that the shards were alive and they didn't want people to find cheap ways to circumvent their deliberately set restrictions. They'd encourage people to find new ways to use powers as part of the Cycle's experimentation, but wouldn't let us experiment much with the rules they deliberately set.

As a result, any other tech that Leet had a failure chance on also had the same failure chance when Offensive Bias reverse engineered it, rendering Leet more or less useless again.

I went to the console and typed in some commands. Shortly after, a section of the wall was moved and a portal opened. There was another portal like this hidden in a different section of the wall, only much smaller with just wires going through, allowing Offensive Bias to maintain connectivity on both sides.

I went through the man sized portal to inspect our new military-industrial complex on Earth M2, a new humanless and mostly barren dimension that had tons of metal and rock but not much water or life.

How did we suddenly have a "military-industrial complex"? That was because Offensive Bias had copied Dragon's database, and it had a vast number of Tinkertech designs to use from the most basic tools to advanced Dragonsuits. Offensive Bias not only had the database, but also Dragon's shard power as well. In the same way that Case 53s kept their powers after getting their memories wiped, Offensive Bias as a copy of Dragon also kept its power. And because we removed the restrictions on disobeying lawful authority, parallel processing, and building subordinate AI, it was able to make use of various technologies banned by the PRT with exponential growth potential.

On the other side was a fully self sustaining operation including raw material extraction, processing, manufacture, and militarization. The latest map and report from Offensive Bias showed that the industrial area spanned about seven hundred square meters, while the resource extraction had been spread out to various suitable areas with a combined area of more than two square kilometers.

While mass manufacturing Tinkertech on the scale of assembly lines was still impossible because the technology to make the mass manufacturing equipment was also Tinkertech, and nobody would have such designs until Masamune was found, Offensive Bias was perfectly capable of mass manufacturing mundane technology. With parallel processing, Bias could also separately and simultaneously engage in Tinkering up numerous copies of the same Tinkertech, which was for practical purposes the same as small scale mass manufacturing.

The whole complex was manned by drones and administrated by Offensive Bias directly. Big Rig's large scale construction drones were very useful once reverse engineered, and Dragon had production-capable drone designs from seven other Tinkers. Everything was powered by Tinkertech hybrid fission-fusion generators built with the assistance of a Mastered Bakuda.

Agate phased through the ceiling and flew up high in the air, revealing to me the full scope of the expanding facilities. Even now, large teams of drones were moving about, constructing along the boundary spreading out in all directions.

The lack of relay bugs on M2 meant that Taylor's network wasn't present in this dimension except for a small range centred on the permanent portal that connected the wiring to our underground Brockton Bay base.

But I didn't need to hide most of this from her or Amelia. One of them would have to take the reins of CRUCIBLE once I left, and they would need all the firepower they could get. It was a terrible oversight for Cauldron to have allowed Bakuda to die in the Birdcage, with her bombs being one of the only things capable of damaging or even destroying an Endbringer. With Bakuda now under my control through Canary and Offensive Bias to massively boost production, we were amassing an enormous stockpile that already numbered at over three thousand bombs, including 24 with a damage/effect radius comparable to or higher than 100 kilotons of TNT, and the 9-megaton EMP bomb from before.

On my orders to build a bigger bomb than ever, Bakuda produced a 5-gigaton bomb after an extended Tinker fugue. This last bomb was estimated to be capable of destroying a landmass the size of Texas. Unfortunately it also wound up so large and unwieldy that it couldn't be deployed by anything Offensive Bias currently had access to, and wouldn't fit through any portal we could make either, rendering it useless. I had to dismantle it as the only thing it would be threatening was myself, and perhaps Brockton Bay through the small permanent portal we used to maintain electronic connectivity, if it went off accidentally or by enemy infiltration.

'Can we do another bomb test?' Agate asked.

'Which one?'

'How about one of the 600 kiloton ones?'

"Bias, prepare to test a 600 series bomb."

The console reacted and initiated the launch sequence. A list of potential targets were identified. On this barren planet, it didn't really matter where we targeted, so I chose one close enough for us to see the results of.

A few minutes later, I confirmed the launch, and a missile shot forth at hypersonic speeds from our silo.

Several more minutes later, there was a bright flash and a huge mushroom cloud towered in the distance, as viewed from Agate's perspective.

'Encore! Let's do a test on another dimension where we can scare people!'

'No that's too risky. Maybe just before we leave the plane.'

Every day, I would visit Paige. Sometimes I did it by myself, other times I went together with Amelia and Taylor, like now.

Paige had her own living space here with simple furniture and basic amenities provided by Offensive Bias.

Using electronic voice transmission, she updated the Master effect on Bakuda periodically to keep her working. Recordings of Canary's voice did not work, unfortunately, only live transmissions.

After the new facilities were built, our prisoners had all been moved over to M2 and kept in dark, isolated prisons with bomb collars attached to them.

Only Bakuda was up and about regularly to Tinker while under Canary's Master effect, and we also applied the additional insurance of a virus that would have debilitating effects on her body if not given a special "signal" shot every day.

Coil was occasionally used for small experiments and non-critical tasks, but I did not want to risk him ending the wrong timeline in anything very important.

I input the password at the security keypad and the door slid open.

The room had a uniformly white colour scheme and no windows or decorations. The bathroom was a secondary room inside, and food was delivered by a robot from time to time. Security cameras monitored the room 24/7, because we needed to ensure that in case her actions in the Birdcage were the result of third-party interference, they wouldn't be able to kidnap or her from under our noses.

Paige was at the desk in front of her computer which had only intranet access. It was hooked up to a microphone and speaker system she could use to transmit her power to other areas of the base, or use for recreational singing.

At my entrance, she stood up and greeted us. She was wearing a custom set of clothes I designed which served as her uniform every day.

I returned her greeting before going to the couch to sit down, waving her over.

"How are you holding up, Paige?" I asked as she sat down beside me. Amelia and Taylor took chairs on the opposite side.

"I'm fine. It's comfortable here. I miss the concerts, but I'm happy that I can sing at least. I didn't have a chance to sing for months when I was waiting for the trial."

"Have you had any more visions?" Taylor asked.

"No! No, definitely not." Paige shook her head vigorously.

"You sound like you don't want to have visions anymore. I thought you believed they were sent by God," Taylor said.

"Th-they are! And I do hope for more guidance."

"Really? Guidance for what? Aren't you happy about being here?"

"N-nothing, just making s-sense of things. I'm very h-happy here."

"You don't sound sure of yourself." Taylor said.

Paige sputtered. "I-I am!"

Taylor frowned. "You really don't want to leave?"

"No! No! Please, I'm very grateful for everything I have here!"

I put a hand on Paige's shoulder. "Please don't misunderstand, Paige, Taylor's not trying to make you leave. She just has a very blunt way of speaking."

Taylor looked sheepish and muttered an apology. I felt Paige's muscles relax slightly.

I continued. "We just want you to know that you have the option."

"Yeah. We can set you up with everything you need to live normally again. You could go back to Earth Bet, or we could bring you to another Earth. I can change your face and try to develop a way to keep your feathers and powers under tighter control so that singing won't activate it unless you want it to," Amelia said.

"B-but my power's useful to you, isn't it? I want to repay you for everything you've done for me," Paige said, tensing again with wide eyes and looking between me and Amelia.

"You don't have to worry about that. We only asked you to use your powers on Bakuda and Coil so you would have something to do," Amelia said, giving me a look as if warning me not to deny it. "My power works on brains, so I can just permanently reform them with a touch. Your power is actually less convenient and riskier for us to use long term."

"Oh." Paige shrunk in on herself. "I'm sorry."

Over the week, I'd deliberately spent less time with Amelia with the excuse of focusing on building up the military complex, which caused her to become increasingly annoyed with my extended stays on Earth M2 where Paige was also housed, and that annoyance translated into dislike for Paige.

Shortly after I praised Paige for putting Bakuda to work efficiently during our last group visit, Amelia told me she was ready to use her powers to convert villains to our cause, and that we didn't need Paige to do it anymore. We already successfully practiced a few times on the E88 mooks I captured before.

"I can also help you forget your trauma in the Birdcage. You can have a fresh start," Amelia added.

"F-forget? Y-you mean… !"

Amelia nodded seriously.

"No, please! I don't want to forget anything!" Paige pleaded in a desperate tone.

Amelia crossed her arms and retorted with an undercurrent of frustration. "Stop acting like I suggested something awful. I'm just trying to put it in a nice way. We can't let anybody know that CRUCIBLE rescued a convicted criminal-"

Paige visibly flinched.

"-from the Birdcage, so you can't keep those memories. It's also to protect you from any opportunistic group that would take credit for it if we only erased the part where you met us and they could use that to take advantage of you. It's for your own good, get it?"

"S-sorry, I didn't mean it like that…" Paige said in a weak voice.

Paige certainly wouldn't want to forget her pact with her "God", and most likely panicked as she felt the hostility from Amelia. I had to support Amelia's claim of it being for Paige's own good, to ensure that she understood that there was no escaping the memory erasure, if she made the unwise decision to leave.

"It's alright Paige. You've been in a bad place for a long time, caused by a lot of terrible people with bad intentions. It's not strange to think the worst of everyone you meet, when previously everyone you knew was evil. We won't hold it against you. Just remember that we're all on your side, and we'll get through this together," I said, squeezing her shoulder. It was important for Paige to feel that she wanted to stay of her own volition, that staying would further indebt her to us, that any doubt of our noble intentions was a result of her own issues and she was lucky that we were so tolerant.

"I'm sorry." she said again. "I didn't mean it like that. I know you're good to me."

"And you can stay as long as you want. We're completely fine with having you with us, and we're happy that you want to help us fight for justice. Right, Taylor, Amelia?"

Taylor nodded while Amelia gave a non-committal grunt.

"T-thank you! Is there anything else I can do to help?"

"Well, not yet, but maybe soon."

"Are you really going to let her stay with us? What if her 'God' tells her to kill us next?" Amelia said heatedly as we returned back to the office. "Taylor, you agree with me don't you? She's crazy and dangerous."

"She's not that bad." Taylor said. "She did everything we told her to do and never complained about our security measures."

"She prays for hours each day. Instead of being grateful to us for rescuing her, she thinks it's all the work of her 'God'!"

"Uhm… but what if she really did get a divine vision?" Taylor asked.

"Yeah right. You're the one who said It was probably some other cape trying to take advantage of our rescue op."

"But we can't just force her to leave," said Taylor.

"So you agree that you don't want to keep her here?"

"I didn't say that…"

Amelia huffed and crossed her arms again.

"Taylor, why don't you go home and get some rest? There's nothing else planned for tonight," I said. "Amelia and I will head home too. Bias and Heroux can handle things here."

Taylor caught the hint and nodded with one last glance at Amelia. "Okay. Bye guys."

I looked at Amelia who gave me a glare. With a sigh, I opened a portal to our apartment that I rented after acquiring the first portion of Coil's funds.

I tilted my head back through the portal when I saw that she didn't follow. "Are you just going to stand there all night? Come on."

She grumbled but followed.

Convolution 5.5

Convolution 5.5

I went to the fridge and took out a couple of ice cream packs, then brought them to her where she sat sulking on the sofa.

"Really?" She asked, shaking her head.

"What? They taste great, and with your new Bionanite Swarm, I don't have to worry about getting heart disease," I said, opening a pack for myself.

The Bionanite Swarm was the focus of her research over the past week, an all-purpose body optimization and enhancement network. It was a line of research that extended from Amelia's prior use of her body's friendly bacteria as a way to bypass the Manton Limit, which she thought would be more fruitful than trying to make a full living symbiotic armour. Given my understanding of its capabilities so far, I was inclined to agree. For now, the two of us were only ones equipped with the Advanced Bionanite Swarm. Taylor received a basic version that lacked nerve connections, conscious control and dependent features, because those functions didn't work for her and posed a potential safety hazard, with our current hypothesis being some sort of conflict with her bug control senses.

Amelia didn't touch the ice cream and instead turned on the TV, flipping through the channels rapidly. Too fast to see anything meaningful.

I waited without saying anything for a few minutes.

"Really?" I asked.

"What? I'm just looking for something decent to watch."

"You've already circled back to the first channel twice now."

She turned it off.

I sighed. "Amelia, what are you really upset about?"

"Didn't I already say it earlier?"

"I don't think you really believe Paige is a threat. She's just a victim. We've taken all the precautions we can anyway. She's harmless."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"And she helped us a lot. Without her, we wouldn't have gotten Offensive Bias. You should be nicer to her."

"Whatever. You got what you wanted, didn't you? You want her to stay and now she's afraid of leaving because I told her we'd have to erase her memories."

"Yes. You know me so well. I wouldn't be saying anything if you were just playing bad cop to my good cop, but you clearly weren't with that tantrum at the end."

"It wasn't a tantrum. I was just sharing my opinion."

"OK. Tantrum or not, you were genuinely upset. Are you still jealous of her?"

"I'm not jealous and never was!"

I said nothing in response, instead continuing to eat my ice cream.

The silence dragged on.

Eventually, I finished my ice cream.

"We aren't just a small team of three anymore, you know? We've become a large organization. We have an army of soldiers, capes on our payroll, and many more employees through the businesses we own. We haven't even started recruiting people and we're already this big. An organization like this needs strong leadership. Heroux, Reynolds, and the captains can handle the soldiers and execute missions, Offensive Bias can maintain our power base, and Calvert once he's converted can be a big help too. But none of them can lead CRUCIBLE. The vision, the goals, the hard decisions, and giving inspiration… that responsibility falls to us as the founders, or else we risk losing control. If you're going to lead CRUCIBLE in the future, you will have to compromise and get along with people. You have to think of the big picture and build a circle of allies within to support you. Someone like Canary could be among your biggest and most loyal assets," I said.

"I don't want to lead anything. I'm not cut out to be a leader."

"You're already a leader of CRUCIBLE. You were famous and well-liked even before, people would rally to you if you held up a banner. You have a great power, suitable for being in the spotlight, a power that can support others and gain their trust and loyalty yet fight together with them on the front lines. People would respect that. I'm just an armchair general most of the time."

"But I don't even know what to do with my own life. How am I supposed to lead anyone else? Sure I have a strong power, but I have no vision or no charisma. The public likes me because they don't know me. All my 'friends' at school were actually just Vicky's friends or just wanted to be seen with 'the famous Panacea'. I can't get along with anyone. Not even my own family."

"What about Taylor?"

"She'll probably hate me sooner or later, once she really gets to know me."

"You don't know that. She likes and respects you now. You might even become best friends."

"Not if she ever finds out about my sick fantasies and urges. She only likes me now because she still thinks of me as a selfless healer who happens to have more than just healing powers. She actually buys in to the whole 'wanting to make a bigger impact' story you had me spew in front of the PRT HQ."

"But it's not wrong, is it? You joined CRUCIBLE to help me save the world."

"I didn't have much of a choice, after running away from home. That doesn't make me a good person."

"But you could have quit at any time, if you truly wanted to. You had more than enough money since I took down Coil for you to run away again and live comfortably for the rest of your life. You didn't have to fight the ABB or Dragonslayers. But you did and you're still here."

"Why are you trying so hard to make me sound like a good person?" She growled.

"Why are you trying so hard to make yourself out to be a horrible person? You haven't done anything to deserve it," I countered.

"Because I am! Every day I imagine a new horrible way to use my power. Every time I touch someone I get the urge to do a little more. You say I'm in control, you get me to practice safely and slowly and responsibly, but it's not working! I'm losing control each time. I'm not even sure what I did to the last guy I was supposed to reform, cause I was angry and couldn't think straight and I was too scared to tell you about it-"

'Uh-oh,' Agate said. 'Maybe you shouldn't let her use her power on you for awhile. I can't protect you from her power.'

My eyes widened, and she continued.

"-because I'm petty, and selfish, and yes I'm fucking jealous, because even when she's crazy Canary can still do a better job than me and you knew that. I just can't live up to your expectations." She stopped to catch her breath.

"That's okay. I never expected you to use your powers for reforming villains. If you aren't ready after all, it's not a big deal. What's wrong with letting Canary do it? You're important to the team and important to me regardless."

"What's wrong is that I know you wish I could be better than that! But I can't just believe in myself and forget my doubts and keep going like Taylor can, because I know everything's going to go wrong and then you'll really be disappointed."

"You are perfectly fine the way you are, Amelia. Everyone has issues, that's completely natural."

"Sure. Everyone has issues. My issues are just so much bigger than everyone else's. If you're so happy with how I am right now, then why didn't you just tell me to reform Coil and Bakuda a long time ago?"

"I thought you weren't ready? The last time I suggested something like that-"

"Yeah! Last time I had a fucking mental breakdown and almost killed you, and now you act like you're walking on eggshells around me, always careful not to seem like you're pushing me too fast, not to say the wrong things, or else I'll lose my mind again. And I probably will. That's why you came to me, isn't it? That's why you keep trying to convince me I'm a good person. You want to change the future. Stop me from destroying the world. Yeah. That must be the real reason you want Canary around. She's your insurance in case you can't bring out the good in me. I was always going to become a villain in the end."

"Woah, woah, slow down. What are you talking about? It's Scion that's going to destroy the world, not you. You would have helped to save it."

"Really? Give me your hand and tell me that I would have helped saved the world if you didn't interfere with the timeline. And don't try to trick me again. I thought carefully about what you said the first time and I know what you did. You only said I would be critical to the world's future, not that I would be on the good side. I want a straight answer this time!"

I looked at her outstretched arm and visibly hesitated while I thought through my next steps. While I definitely believed she helped save the world, I might have a hard time if she decided to ask anything else. What was the right way to handle this?

"I wasn't trying to trick you. I-"

"What? Now that you know I fucked someone up you're afraid of me now? Well you should be! 'Cause I'm-"

No time for further deliberation.

I grabbed her hand.

She fell silent and her eyes slowly roamed from the point where our hands touched up to my eyes. With the enhanced senses granted to me by the bionanites, and the connection our bionanite networks shared, I felt the pulse of her heart spike from 100 to 130 beats per minute.

There was a reflexive attempt to jerk away that her own bionanites suppressed at the muscle nerves, maintaining her body's stability instead of allowing her to start shaking with anxiety.

"Amelia, you would have played a critical role in the defeat of Scion, if I didn't interfere with the timeline," I said firmly.

She breathed deeply to steady herself.

"Was I a hero then?"

"You were a hero in my eyes."

"So nobody else did. How did I get out of the Birdcage?"

"Everyone in the Birdcage was given amnesty if they were willing to join the fight against Scion. I don't know the details beyond that."

"So I was in there the whole time up to the end."

"The person who saved the world. How did she do it? How could one person save the world from Scion?"

"… it wasn't exactly one person. She was able to control every other cape in the world with her power."

She slouched as if losing the strength to sit up.

"You mean… she Mastered everyone…"

"Yes."

"… and she didn't let them go after the fight."

"Kind of. She lost her mind in the process."

Amelia threw my hand away and backed away with an angry and painful expression.

"Why are you going so far for me? Isn't it obvious that I'm hopeless? I should just die before I lose my mind and enslave everyone!" she shouted as she teared up.

"You've got the wrong idea," I said, moving forward to try and grab her hand again.

She dodged me and backed away with wide eyes. "No! Don't touch me!"

I hastily retracted my hand. "Look, it wasn't you, alright?"

"Yeah, it's just the monster hiding inside of me! Like that makes any difference!"

"No, that's not what I mean. It was somebody else."

"So it's just a coincidence that I also have the power turn every cape in the world into a loyal puppet? And just a coincidence that I'm also going to be eighteen in two years when it happens?"

"Yeah. Only because you have a late birthday."

"Bullshit! Why won't you just say who it was then? Why hide it from me?"

"Fine. It was Taylor, okay?"

"Her power doesn't even work on capes! If you're going comfort me with a lie, at least make it believable!"

"I'm not lying. Her power doesn't work on capes right now, but you can modify it."

"No I can't!"

"You've never even tried, how would you know that? You just need to modify her Corona Pollentia."

"That's insane! Nobody knows how the Corona Pollentia works!"

"Bonesaw did a lot of research on it. She helped-"

"That's the best story you can come up with? What kind of monster did I become that working with Bonesaw to experiment on Taylor's brain is the better scenario?"

"No-it's not better-I mean, you have to remember the context, it was a fight for the survival of humanity-"

"Who was I to you?" She cut me off with a quiet and steady tone.

"What?"

"Who was I to you?" She asked me again.

"I don't understand."

"Just what did I mean to you, that you would throw away humanity's impossible victory just for a chance to save me?"

"You think I'm a time traveler?"

"It fits."

"What makes you say that? I thought I told you I came from another plane of existence."

"Because it's a lot more believable than you coming from a different, completely unrelated, 'plane of existence' that just happens to have 'records' about the future of this plane. Everything makes perfect sense if you travelled back in time. You know things about the future, but you're not a precog. You're not a cape, because you would have triggered in the future. Your 'wand' isn't magic, it's space-time manipulating Tinkertech that came back with you. You know so much about me, because you met me in the future."

"That's a pretty good theory," I said with an amused smile. "You must have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out."

"So then, were we…"

Her eyes darted away for a moment before returning hesitantly to my face, where I held a steady gaze to her and her eyes darted away again. "… were we…?"

"Lovers, you mean?" I suggested with a quirked eyebrow.

I thought her expression just then looked just a bit hopeful. It was unfortunate that I had to squash that hope. In the long-run, it would be better for her to know the truth.

"But we don't have the right orientation match. You can't fall in love with me."

"I… could fix that," she said softly.

"I know, Amelia. But we were not lovers, and I am not a time traveler. Your theory is good, but it isn't correct. Outlandish it may be, what I told you before was the truth. I am a traveler from a different plane of existence."

She looked at once both disappointed and irritated again. I pressed on.

"I didn't come here for you, or on some grand quest to change the future. You once asked me if I really wanted to save the world or if I would rather just go back home. Back then, I was trapped in here with everyone else, and I didn't have much of a choice but to take up the fight for the sake of my own survival. If you aren't a good person for helping me because you had no choice, then neither am I. It's not like I care any more than you do about the nameless masses out there."

"So, what are you trying to say? We're both bad people?"

"No. It's not evil to be selfish. It's human nature."

"Selfish doesn't even begin to describe the kind of sick fantasies I have!"

"What is better - to be born good, or to overcome one's own evil nature through great effort?"

At my question, she at first looked confused, then stunned, and settled on simple silence.

"It is rare to find a righteous person, who does good for nothing but the good feelings it brings. But it is even rarer to find a person who cannot enjoy doing good, yet lives with the torment of holding back their true desires. What greater virtue is there, than to sacrifice one's right to the pursuit of happiness and condemn oneself to a living hell for the sake of strangers? That is what you have been doing all these years. I don't wish you were a better person, Amelia. I wish you would stop worrying so much and just allow yourself to be happy."

Another few seconds of silence, then it was like the floodgates had opened. Tears began streaming down her face, but they were quickly reabsorbed by her bionanites as they slid on her skin.

I walked over and pulled her into a hug. She didn't try to dodge this time.

"You've done enough. You don't need to keep holding yourself to an impossible standard," I whispered as she leaned her face into my chest.

"You have the right to be happy too," I continued while stroking her hair.

"So go ahead and be petty. Be selfish. Be jealous. I won't think any less of you, because I'm the same way."

"You're better," she said with a muffled voice.

"I hide it better. And I've had more time to figure things out. To come to terms with what I am."

"Then… you'll teach me?"

I gently lifted her hand with mine and moved so that I could see her face again. "Didn't I promise already? When you lose your way, I'll hold your hand and guide you."

"Yeah. You did," she said quietly. My gaze was locked to hers and I saw portrait of myself through a brown lens, a man in a small circular world empty but for himself, holding onto an outstretched hand coming from out of the circle's bounds, a black hole in his chest threatening to engulf the rest.

"Hey. Close your eyes for a moment."

"Huh? Why?"

"I'm going to guide you. Right now."

She nodded and closed her eyes.

"Clear your mind of stray thoughts. Focus on my voice and nothing else. There is nothing but my voice. Let my voice give you focus as you listen to each word. Now breathe deeply, so very deep until you can't breath anymore, and hold it." I waited for her to take in a lungful of breath.

"Now slowly breathe out. Very slowly. As slowly as you can, relax your body and breath out steady, steady, steady… and with each second passing you relax a bit more," I said, speaking softly and slowly. "Now focus on your breath and lightly breathe in again, and slowly breathe out, naturally and steadily. Just like that. With every breath out, you are relaxing more and more." I maneuvred into position to hold her as she relaxed.

"Relax your mind… relax your head. Relax your face… relax your eyes… relax your mouth and tongue. Your thoughts and worries are melting away from you with each and every breath as you relax more and more. Your eyelids are getting heavier. So incredibly heavy, because you're tired and just want to relax. And you are. You're relaxing so much you don't have the strength to open your eyes anymore. You keep relaxing. Relax your ears, relax your neck, relax your chest and arms and hands… your legs and your feet. The sound of my voice flowing through you like a wave of relaxation and comfort… and you know you can let me guide you with my voice. Let me guide you and take you along to the deepest relaxation you've ever had, to a place where everything is quiet and comfortable and peaceful."

She sagged into my arms. I opened a portal and slowly took her through even as I continued to speak to guide this meditative exercise.

On the other side, I jumped and floated into the air with her. "Everything that's been weighing you down has fallen away. You feel light without burdens, relaxing completely, away from everything. Here, there is silence. Your mind is clear. You are free. Can you feel it?"

We landed gently again like feathers in the wind.

"I'm free…" She murmured.

"You are free. Your power is quiet, and you are yourself and nothing more. Like having a refreshing nap, you are energized by the realization. You gain a new strength and vigour infusing every part of your body. Because you are free."

"I'm free… I'm free?" She reached for my hand with her other free hand as if trying to reassure herself that I was still here.

"I can't feel it anymore. What's going on? It's so quiet. My power… how?"

"You can open your eyes now."

She did, and gasped.

A/N: There is now a discord server where I discuss future plans for the story, primarily for the purpose of getting people to assist me in developing or offering ideas for story arcs that take place in worlds I'm less familiar with. Anybody else with deep knowledge in other literary works that wants to help with workshopping can join here.

Convolution 5.6

Convolution 5.6

What lay before us was a sphere of blue, brown, green and rolling white clouds, a pale glowing atmosphere, under the backdrop of a deep dark void with a million uncountable tiny lights.

A planet as seen from the observation deck of our moon base.

Since it was possible for me to reach the moon by portal, it only made sense to build moon bases. This near side base was put in a new humanless dimension and its existence erased from Offensive Bias' database after its construction so that it wouldn't be easily visible or found from the Earth M2 surface, if anybody seized control of M2's surface assets. Now it was run by a disconnected copy of Offensive Bias named 002-Enduring Witness who would stay in hibernation most of the time except to maintain supplies. It was a safe retreat and a good way to deal with very dangerous parahuman foes.

Enduring Witness's shard connection failed only on the dark side of the moon, but still worked on the visible side. It would also work as long as Enduring Witness could execute code somewhere in range, then transmit the output out of range. I also brought Cricket for further testing, and her powers stopped working past the Earth's atmosphere. Neither of them suffered any problems other than the powers failing. No comas or blue screen errors. After that, I tested Coil and Bakuda as well, and both of their powers failed past Earth's atmosphere, but Bakuda's bombs and most Tinkertech in general continued to work far past the edge of the moon's orbit.

As such, I deemed it safe and useful to bring Amelia here.

She stared at the planet below in wonder. "It looks beautiful."

"It does. I named it Earth-Refuge. Because this is a refuge away from everything, hidden and secret even from the rest of CRUCIBLE, including Offensive Bias. And here on the moon, your connection to your shard is very weak. When you're feeling overwhelmed, you can come here to center yourself."

"Thank you, Kaleidus. It really is nice to be… free," she said, still staring at the planet.

We stayed standing there, appreciating the view for a long moment. Thoughts of my reflection in Amelia's pupils turned up again, the image overlayed on the planet. There was a feeling I couldn't place, growing stronger by the second.

Here, away from everything, detached from worldly concerns, I found myself growing restless instead of at peace.

This was just a taste of what was to come. Soon, I would leave even this behind to a whole new plane.

I almost couldn't wait for the exciting adventures to come. And yet… wasn't I hesitating?

I'd been more or less ready for a while. There were only a few things left to do, which I'd been procrastinating. I could make up all sorts of reasons to stay, preparing myself for the journey. But really, none of them were that important, because I could just come back whenever I felt like it.

So why was I hesitating?

'That's loneliness you're feeling,' said Agate. 'You've been feeling alone for a very long time. Because there's no one else like you.'

'I'm not alone. I have you.'

'You feel alone. I can't make up for what you're missing. I'm just a Mystic Code. Even if I can think and feel, I don't have a soul. I don't truly have independent hopes and dreams like humans do, I'm just an echo of you and Master Zelretch. I am whatever you want me to be, but I can't be what you really need. I can only help you find it.'

'And what do I need? Don't tell me it's love or a human connection. I've tried that before. It didn't really work.'

'I don't know. I only know what you know. But there's a reason that Master Zelretch gave me to you, and it's not just because you happened to be there. There's a reason that Master Zelretch was drawn to that forest in the first place. He believed that he would meet someone there who would was better suited than him to wield me. Someone who couldn't get bored or go crazy experiencing the infinity beyond.'

'Why not himself?'

'He was already bored of living. The Second Magic is a curse worse than vampirism in his view. When you realize that the world is like a simulation being run by future versions of yourself, when there's an infinite number of copies of yourself and reality is just a choice made from culling world lines, what is the point of doing anything? It doesn't matter what one individual Master Zelretch wants. It only matters what the probability distribution is, aggregated from every Zelretch of past and future. How much of his choices since obtaining the Second Magic were his own? Was it even his own achievement to obtain the Second Magic, or just some other True Magician Zelretch who did it and decided that all other merely Magi Zelretchs should be culled? Maybe it never mattered at all. Maybe Alaya culled the world lines in just the right way to ensure that somebody-anybody-would obtain the Second Magic and be there to fight Crimson Moon and inherit the curse of vampirism so that there would always be more future Zelretchs to simulate worlds where humanity survives.'

'And I'm somehow better suited to dealing with this madness?'

'Not the Second Magic. Our ability to travel the planes is closely related to it, and we're kind of using hacks to do it, but it's really something else. It could be developed into its own True Magic, or even something greater.'

'Still, what made Zelretch think I'd be more suited to handle this power?'

'Kaleidus, did you forget? During Master Zelretch's battle against the Planeswalker, there were a bunch of tears into Kaleidoscape that leaked Primordial Chaos energy. Every living being for tens of kilometres around lost their minds or their brains just exploded. But you? A completely normal person without any magic gazed directly into the abyss beyond creation, screamed and stumbled around for a bit, then got back up like nothing happened. That was all Master Zelretch needed to know, to confirm that you were the right person to wield me. Master Zelretch himself had to deploy his Reality Marble as a Dead Apostle Ancestor, which he hates using, to resist the mental contamination.'

'Wait what?! What is this about brains exploding? You never told me about that! And what happened to the tears or the leaked energy?'

'Well, the Planeswalker forced that first tear near you close, but got exhausted and retreated. Master Zelretch didn't know what to do about the rest, and also retreated assuming that the whole plane would collapse, leaving me with you.'

'Why didn't you say anything sooner? That means my world might not exist anymore!'

'No, it's still there. My Waypoint is still active, so it must not be completely destroyed. There has to be a sufficiently large gravitational source to keep my Waypoints stable, remember?'

I mentally sent an endless chain of ellipses to her.

'… sorry? I didn't think it was important… or that you cared… '

'There are things on my world that could have been useful, like the Worm canon. And a certain very loyal, low maintenance, high utility party member.'

'You mean the one with max level skills in acting and intrigue? How do you even know she's loyal? Maybe she sent those assassins after you.'

'I doubt it. There's no motive. And she was in love with me.'

'Like she was with that guy you told her to seduce, who she had no problems killing-Oh.'

I sent Agate a few relevant memories of just how I knew that Angel was in love with me. It wasn't because she acted that way. No, she never showed anything of the sort, but my extensive secret surveillance showed that she had been hiding her feelings from me for fear that I would just use it to my advantage if I found out and didn't actually reciprocate her feelings, because she knew exactly what kind of person I was. She was right, of course, that was the whole reason I used her. That kind of irrational loyalty was hard to cultivate.

'We got Amelia pretty quick.'

'Amelia's loyalty isn't irrational right now. She simply doesn't have a full understanding of me yet. She might not be so loyal if she knew I'm just using her for my own ends.'

'And Angel would? But you just said she was afraid that you would just take advantage of her.'

'Exactly. She was afraid precisely because she knew that she would let herself be taken advantage of, even if I didn't love her. Knowing that it would make her miserable, she would still do it out of love. That's the irrational part.'

'Kinda like how Amelia kept healing people even though she hated it?'

'Yeah.'

'And that's why you're focusing so much on her. She has the potential to be like Angel.'

'You catch on pretty quick.'

'Or maybe you liked Angel more than you'd like to admit. And Amelia reminds you of her.'

'I don't love anyone. Except maybe myself.'

Agate sent me a dramatic gasp. 'Not even me?!'

'You're a part of me now. That doesn't count.'

'You've got it backwards. You're a part of me now.'

Suddenly Amelia stirred and whirled around to face me with wide eyes.

"Earlier, you said 'back then, I was trapped here with everyone else', as if you aren't trapped anymore!" She said accusingly.

"Yes, I did."

She clutched onto me with both hands. "Are you going to leave?"

"Yes, soo-"

"No, you can't!"

"I'm sorry. I can't stay. But it won't be forever. I'll come back from time to time."

"No! I need you! You said you would be there to guide me! What am I going to do when you're gone?"

"I'll teach you what you need to know, and you'll take over the leadership of CRUCIBLE with Taylor. You'll be fine."

"But why? Why do you have to go? Aren't there years before Scion attacks?"

I sighed. "I'm sorry, Amelia. I think the method I knew of for defeating Scion isn't going to work, because I brought that knowledge here, and now the shards' precog powers know about it. So Scion will know about it the next time he uses his own Path to Victory. I doomed the world with my arrival. That's why, if we're to have any chance of winning, I have to go and search for new powers and means in other planes while there's still time."

"Then take me with you! I can help!" She shouted.

"It's too dangerous. My way of traveling isn't meant for more than one soul. We could both die in transit. And you won't have access to your powers while in other planes. You won't be of any use," I said with a cold expression.

She flinched.

"We could find ourselves in apocalyptic nightmares, fighting against terrible monsters and evil gods. I won't have time to babysit you, especially with the way you are now, hesitating over every little thing and constantly feeling depressed."

"I-I-but-you promised…" Her knees lost strength and she collapsed towards me.

I brushed off her hands away from me and she fell down crying.

"Get a grip, Amelia! I promised you that I'd guide you and I did just that, showing you how to meditate and calm down. I promised that I would put you back together if you fell apart, and I did just that when you were saying you wanted to die ten minutes ago. I promised that I would bear the burden of your sins with you, and I will do that if it comes down to it. But I can't be there every waking moment for you."

She sobbed, kneeling on the ground, face looking down. "… I'm sorry… I'll learn… I'll get better… !" She crawled over and grabbed onto my leg. "Please, don't leave me… ! I can't live without you!"

"Look at yourself. You aren't ready to go with me. If you're already like this at the merely thought of me going away for a bit, how much worse will it be after we leave? What if we get separated by outside interference, and you find yourself all alone in a new world powerless with no easy way to find me? And if I have to worry about you killing yourself before I can come find you… no. It's much better if you just stay right here. At least Taylor and everyone else is here."

"No… no… !" She shook her head.

"Amelia… it hurts to see you like this. Please, get a hold of yourself."

She continued to sob and hold on to me. "Y-you're all I have now! It's not fair! You-you can't just come in to my life, show me what it's like to be happy for once, and then j-just -!"

"You don't need me to be happy. You shouldn't need me to be happy. That isn't healthy. "

"I don't care if it's healthy or not!"

"And that worries me. That's why… I'm sorry that I have to do this. I wanted to show you this under more pleasant circumstances, it's necessary for you to do this now to overcome your issues. Enduring Witness, bring us to the float tanks. And make sure she can't hurt herself," I said with a regretful expression.

"Affirmative," the AI said over speaker. Some combat drones came over and removed her from my leg by force, restraining her.

"Kaleidus!" She screamed one last time before the drones gagged her to prevent her from biting her tongue.

"Mmmph!" She struggled with a scared expression, but even with her bionanite enhanced strength, she couldn't overcome the even stronger combined force of multiple brute-rated combat drones.

They brought her to a windowless room with two tanks inside. "Get her in the tank with foam," I ordered.

Then the drones deploy a modified containment foam that was softer and flexible-like extremely heavy and viscous liquid, pouring it over every inch of her body except the face. The foam would dissolve her clothes and tightly hold to her skin.

Finally, she was placed together with the containment foam into the tank that was filled with water and salts to provide buoyancy.

Her face floated on the surface of the water.

"Don't be afraid, Amelia. This is a float tank that will remove all sensory input. Even people who don't know how to meditate can get into deep trances here. Combined with the low-gravity environment, it's perfect for extremely deep meditation. After a while, the foam will dissolve so you can get the full experience. Think, reflect, and center yourself. I'm going to be in the tank beside you."

She continued to make muffled whimpers with wide eyes.

I took off my own clothes and the drones helped me into the other tank. Then the lid was shut, and there was nothing.

'For the record, you're wrong about Amelia reminding me of Angel,' I said to Agate. 'Angel wouldn't be afraid to take what she wants, and she's not so clingy. She could do things on her own even if I wasn't around.'

'You sound like you're comparing your new girlfriend to your ex,' Agate teased.

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'I wouldn't have said that if you didn't think it first!'

'And if I really thought that I would have given word to those thoughts as narration. Don't trick our readers.'

'What narration… you aren't telling a story.'

'I'm telling the epic story of my life so I can indulge in nostalgia as I review it in the future. You'd better be keeping faithful records of everything.'

Being the wonderful wand that she was, Agate promised to keep faithful records of everything while her fingers were crossed.

After that, Agate went silent as well to complete the sensory deprivation.

I soon lost all sense of position and time, and entered the deepest meditation I ever had.

For hours, I floated among a great swirl of infinite colours.

The next morning, Enduring Witness brought Amelia out of her tank first. After she got dressed, she waited for me on the observation deck, staring out at Earth-Refuge.

"How are you feeling now?" I asked, joining her on the deck.

"I can feel it again," she said, without looking at me.

The non-sequitur caught me off guard. "What?"

"It was always there. I thought it disappeared after you brought me here, but it wasn't gone, just muted," she said, bring her hand up to stare at her palm. "If I concentrate and reach for it, I can still use it."

She clenched her palm into a fist. "But it has no power over me now. My thoughts are my own. I am the one that's in control. I know who I am. I know what I want."

"And what do you want?" I asked, tensing. A Kaleidoscopic swirl appeared in my mind and shattered into a trillion mirrors. Prana surged through my body, Reinforcing it, starting from my feet. With only a single circuit, the process was excruciatingly slow without Agate's help, which required her to phase in and touch me.

She turned to face me with an expression of burning determination.

"To go with you, wherever that leads."

I frowned. My legs were only halfway Reinforced. "Amelia-"

"I wasn't finished. I know you think I'm not ready. But I'll prove that I am. I'll do whatever it takes, learn whatever I need. I'll lead CRUCIBLE when you're gone. Then when you come back next time, you'll see for yourself that I'm worth it."

"… Are you sure? What if I die before I can make it back? What if I get trapped again, and it takes many years before I can come back?"

"Then promise me that you won't. Promise me that you'll come back. No matter how long it takes, I'll wait for you! Both of us have the bionanite swarm already, we can't die of old age. So promise me, and I'll kill Scion and wait an eternity if I have to!"

I looked at her for a long time. In her eyes I saw my reflection again. It was smiling, with a twinkle of light in the corner of her pupils like a sun shining over it.

"I see. In that case… I promise I won't die. I promise that I will come back, no matter how long it takes or what stands in my way. And when I do, I hope it will be just as you say."

After a moment, tears formed around her eyes.

"Hey, what are you crying for now? I already promised, didn't I? What do more do you want?"

"I'm not crying!" The bionanites worked furiously to remove the tears and in a matter of seconds they were gone.

"You totally were."

"It's because I'm… happy!"

O O O

Interlude 5.a (The Long Night)

Interlude 5.a (The Long Night)

"Come back for more again? My clients usually can't handle the strain of receiving so many memories," said Cranial.

"Must be good genes," the client said as he walked in the door.

The client, known only by the moniker UnskilledNoob, had first contacted her only a little over a week ago, and arranged to buy some martial arts skills here in the same temporary exhibition area that Toybox was using during their stay in New York.

That Toybox moved every few months was a bit of an annoyance to her, but it was simply their group's method. Never stay too long in one place, lest they come under attack. Tinkers were, after all, highly sought after capes by both villains and heroes.

The downside was that members of Toybox couldn't build up a permanent workshop. Everything had to be mobile. The only exception was Dodge, who kept his workshop in a mobile pocket dimension, which the brat stubbornly refused to provide to anyone, even other members of Toybox. The only pocket dimensions he sold were attached to fix points in space, and moving them was not possible without first shutting them down.

"Not bringing your friends this time?" Cranial asked, noting the lack of the two cape bodyguards that usually came with him.

"We've done this a few times now and you seem like a decent sort. I didn't think it was worth the trouble to bring them along," he said.

"Hm." It was a mistake on his part, but one that Cranial would use well. While she would never do anything obvious that would disrupt her business in the long-term, she was a brain technology Tinker. Operating on the brain required a finesse that most other Tinkers lacked.

She could do things her clients would never notice, just a little nudge here and there, making them more likely to return, to offer up their memories for sale, and more.

"So what skill do you want this time? I should warn you that it could be dangerous. You've had too many memories transferred in too short a time," she said. That part was true. And if he noticed any peculiarities about this session, it could be blamed on his own failure to heed her advice. She had already provided a large amount of skills in martial arts, language, music, sports, sharpshooting, and more. It was far beyond the limit of most capes, even Thinkers, let alone someone who didn't have a Corona Pollentia.

"Well, can you transfer knowledge? The type of thing people learn as university degrees."

"It's possible, but quite difficult. Unlike the skills you've taken so far, that kind of knowledge has a low chance of imprinting properly, especially in long-term memory. I haven't had any clients who were satisfied with the results of that, though it's been asked for frequently."

"Shouldn't you be more eager to sell your services to me, rather than warning me of everything that could go wrong?"

"I try not to make good long-term clients scramble-"

Before she could finish speaking, her thought-interface with her tech suddenly shut down, as did all of the electronics in the workshop.

Then something stabbed into her from behind. She felt a foreign substance being pumped into her bloodstream, just before an excruciating pain flared throughout her body, as if there were a thousand needles stabbing her from the inside out.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a glowing portal being reflected on the metallic walls, with a mass of vines reaching through.

An involuntary scream was cut off by something thick and powerful constricting around her throat.

Her last vision was of the client calmly reaching inside a pocket.

So that's why he didn't come with bodyguards, she realized. He never planned to let her do the operation.

Then everything went dark.

Outside of Cranial's service room, Pyrotechnical heard the scream before it was silenced.

She took out a comms device and pressed a certain button, which would notify the rest of Toybox.

Then she rushed in to the room, guns raised.

She went through just in time to see Cranial being dragged away through a portal by a mass of vines.

Then her mind went blank as pain overwhelmed her senses.

When the rest of Toybox arrived at the scene, they found Pyrotechnical collapsed on the ground, and there was no trace of Cranial or her client.

Max Anders, CEO of Medhall, and secretly the cape villain known as Kaiser, leader of the Empire 88, shut the lights and got into bed for the night.

As he laid on the bed, his thoughts went to the invitation he had received from Faultline. A gathering of villains under truce, to discuss what to do about CRUCIBLE.

At first, he scoffed at the time. With two out of three major villain gangs gone from Brockton Bay, his E88 was the only one left.

It wasn't that he didn't see a need to deal with CRUCIBLE, or that he was arrogant enough to think that the E88 was strong enough to fight CRUCIBLE on their own. It was just that, who was left that could come to the proposed meeting at Somer's Rock?

Faultline's Crew was respectable, but other than that, the list of candidates was uninspiring.

The Merchants? A group of drug-addicted fools not worth his time.

The Undersiders? A ragtag team of kids that had no significant accomplishments to their name.

The rest were independents with even less reputation.

Yet, he ultimately found himself considering the idea seriously. Crime had all but disappeared from Brockton Bay in the short span of a week.

The E88's own attempts to seize territory from the vacuum left by the ABB and Coil achieved nothing but lost men in battles against CRUCIBLE's forces.

If it were just the mercenaries that everyone know previously worked for Coil, it wouldn't have been a significant challenge.

But the moment the fighting started, vast hordes of mutant man-sized bugs came crawling out of nowhere. All were Brute and Mover rated, with a wide assortment of other abilities and functions. They came from nearby alleys, from out of the sewers, from rooftops and garbage dumpsters. The quantity was far more than these places could hide, yet still they came, and their numbers seemingly endless.

Any that was cut down was dragged away and possibly replaced, healed, or revived.

There was an uncomfortable itch on his leg, which he scratched.

Their forces had no choice but to retreat every time, with videos of their humiliating defeats spread on the net.

Their illicit businesses had been put to an almost complete stop, and morale was rock bottom. It was a miracle that they hadn't lost any capes, but he had suspicions about whether that was intentional.

He tossed and turned in an attempt to clear his head and get some sleep, trying to ignore the itching. Restless nights had become all too common, and he sometimes jumped at the slightest hint of a mosquito in the air or a cockroach on the ground.

He spared no expense providing insecticide to all his capes and using it liberally everywhere. It was probably not good for his health.

The itch spread to his other leg, and he growled in annoyance. It was just a phantom sensation, he assured himself. There were no bugs in his room. He'd made sure of that after several nights of restlessness.

As if confirming his assurances to himself, his thoughts soon became hazy and he welcomed the peace of incoming sleep.

Then a portal opened beside the bed, and several man-sized bugs came through to drag him away. He remained blissful unconscious throughout.

Stormtiger was staying up late to oversee the shipment of new high quality drugs, which were one of the few black market businesses the E88 could still engage in. The subtle nature of their smuggling and low-key transactions with wealthy clients had managed to escape CRUCIBLE's surveillance for now.

Goods were being smuggled into Brockton Bay as part of Medhall's chemical supplies, then routed to E88 social clubs, delivered to clients in private rooms.

Stormtiger was in an E88 hideout as goods were brought in, keeping a sheet of air around himself so as to prevent bugs from getting to him, even after their hideouts were saturated with insecticide.

But these precautions were proven insufficient when small portals opened across the hideout, dropping off agony bombs.

Then everyone inside was quietly dragged away.

Victor and Othala had just reached the climax of their late night adult activities when their pleasure turned to sheer agony.

Krieg was watching TV when insecticide-resistant bugs swarmed onto him. He put up only a token resistance against the powerful sedatives before succumbing.

Hookwolf was holding a dog fight when Soldier bugs attacked en masse, knockout gas spraying everywhere into the audience. The villain shifted to wolf blade form immediately and shrugged off the effects of both the sedative and the agony bombs, slaughtering his way through the Soldier bugs and regenerating his blades immediately when they were destroyed.

His valiant fight was not to last, however, as combat drones entered the fight and sprayed him down with containment foam.

Hookwolf was hauled off through a portal while CRUCIBLE soldiers rounded up the audience for delivery to the BBPD.

Similar scenes played out across the city as all E88 members fell under attack almost simultaneously.

Tattletale smirked mischievously at Faultline on the opposite couch. "So you finally need the help of a true Thinker?"

"Don't play coy, Tattletale. Whatever differences we may have had in the past, they don't matter anymore. This is bigger than all of us," said Faultline.

"Maybe. But what's your stake in it? I don't think self-defense is your main motivation here," Tattlesaid said, giving a meaningful look to Grue.

"What you're talking about is a full alliance… preparing for a war. This isn't something we can get involved in lightly. It's not the type of thing our team does. If we're to… consider something like that, I think we need to make sure that we're really on the same side, that we have the same goals," said Grue, speaking with some difficulty. The overwhelming insect repellant in the room was suffocating.

Faultline considered him for a moment.

"Coil hired us to investigate Polychromic. But before we got anything useful, he cancelled the contract. Then he was captured. While I have no affection for the man, I did respect Coil's competence. For him to suddenly cancel the contract suggests that he was compromised long before he was captured. The most likely explanation is that Polychromic silenced him in secret. If so, then we may be the next targets." Faultline then took out a piece of paper with a diagonal Greek omega symbol on it. "Moreover, Coil identified a link to this organization, and that's something we have an interest in."

"I was expecting us to have a much harder time getting you to tell us that," Tattletale said suspiciously.

"Like I said, this is bigger than all of us. I don't have a choice. We have to work together to stand a chance. Already, they've placed the entire city under surveillance and destroyed two gangs in a matter of weeks. Their enforcers are everywhere and the bugs react within minutes to any crime. Even if CRUCIBLE doesn't come for us, we'd be out of business soon, as clients can't risk trying to hire us anymore with the surveillance everywhere. People are scared, Tattletale. So am I. The only way out is to leave the city… but I don't think they'll let us go quietly."

"You're serious. You really think CRUCIBLE is that dangerous," Tattletale said.

"It would take a fool not to realize that."

"I can't argue with that. But I'm not sure what we can do about it. I think they could have gotten us already. I'm pretty sure this bug repellant doesn't actually work on Skitter's modified bugs, you know? Only the regular ones," said Tattletale.

"Labyrinth is blocking the bugs in her zone." Said cape was currently sitting on the couch beside Faultline, apparently not paying any attention to the conversation.

"But we don't have that option. They could have gotten us before we came here, if they wanted to. If we join this alliance, wouldn't we be making ourselves into a target?" Grue said. "For now, CRUCIBLE has limited themselves to responding to actual crimes taking place."

"So you're just going to sit and wait until it's your turn?"

"No, but we can't agree to anything without a concrete plan. Polychromic is even more dangerous than you know," said Grue. He gestured to Tattletale.

"Consider this our own show of goodwill, for telling us that tidbit about Coil hiring you. We were there on that first fight when CRUCIBLE fought Lung. Polychromic knew how that fight was going to go. I'm pretty sure he's a precog. You may not know this, but Coil was a precog too. The strongest one I'd ever heard of. Then Polychromic beat him and somehow took over his whole organization practically overnight. You were right about Coil being compromised long before he was 'officially' captured. That whole Bakuda meeting? It wasn't Coil who showed up. It was a just a ploy to provide a public cover for Coil's organization being subsumed. They couldn't use the mercs in public until Coil was officially out of the picture," said Tattletale.

"And if he's a precog, that means it's not even the bugs we should be worried about. Whatever we decide to do, they'll know before we do it even if there aren't any bugs around. We were taking a big risk just to talk to you," Grue said.

"Then we need a precog of our own. Or a precog blocker."

"Except the whole city has been sealed off. Nobody can get in without CRUCIBLE's permission," said Tattletale.

"The whole city? I thought those were just rumors. I saw the videos of E88 fighting the bugs but to seal off the entire city would mean they must have hundreds of those things."

"That's probably low-balling it. The Teeth tried their luck earlier today when Spree and Animos came. It didn't work out for them. They were met by CRUCIBLE's forces at the border. Since then, both of them have disappeared, probably captured by CRUCIBLE."

"Animos too? That's the one with the power-nullifying roar. How did they defeat him? And how do you know about this?"

"I have some sources with the PRT. Animos' roar doesn't nullify anything Araliac already created, and apparently it doesn't nullify Skitter's bug control either when she's commanding them through a booster bug. I don't think they even noticed his roar did anything. That, or they used Cricket to counter the roar somehow. Officially, Cricket is still missing after she was captured by Coil, but…"

"Booster bug?"

"Oh, that's the name the PRT gave to a hypothetical bug Araliac is thought to have made for her that expands the range of her Master power. It's how she managed to cover the whole city. Her range wasn't that crazy before. With all her new bugs and the huge boost in range, her PRT rating's been upgraded from Master 5 to 10, with potential to be 12 if her range keeps expanding without limit. Impossible to contain, you see. The PRT would probably flip if they realized that CRUCIBLE has a lot more bugs in reserve than the ones garrisoning the city. They've been building up forces somewhere else and have a way to continuously ship in reinforcements."

There was a moment of silence as Faultline's Crew digested the information.

"Hey, sorry if this sounds stupid, but why don't we just leave? I think we have a pretty decent chance against the bugs, with me 'n' Gregor's chemicals. We've got Labyrinth too, and she's pretty damn powerful," said Newter. "If it's just to break out of the city, shouldn't be too hard, right?"

"There's nothing stopping CRUCIBLE from coming after us even after we leave the city," said Faultline. "Though I admit that is becoming a more attractive option by the day."

"Shit! We're under attack!" Tattletale suddenly yelled as she noticed the sound of something metallic dropping on the floor.

The next moment Fautline, Tattletale, Grue, Labyrinth, Bitch, and Spitfire all collapsed screaming.

The small portals which dropped agony bombs closed, then much large portals opened shortly after. Soldier bugs poured through and rushed towards the downed capes. Bitch roared a command to her dogs as she struggled back up. "Hurt!"

Newter and Gregor shrugged off the agony bombs with their Case 53 unique biologies, and dashed to intercept the bugs from reaching their downed teammates.

The room was erupted into an intense melee as the dogs and two Case 53s fought madly against the hordes.

Regent seized control of his teammates' bodies by force and plunged the room into darkness with Grue's power.

That turned out to be a mistake as the bugs were barely affected, while Newter and Gregor both cursed as the bugs overwhelmed them in that moment of disruption.

The Undersiders, under Regent's control, barely took two steps when the bugs reached them and spat globs of sticky liquid onto them, halting their escape.

Bitch's dogs were dead within seconds as the Brute rated Dung Beetle Soldier Bugs attacked with reckless abandon, and the acid sprayers blasted their acid without bothering to account for friendly fire as the bugs were all expendable.

The whole club room morphed into a white room with blood stains on the walls, corpses and skeletons scattered about on hospital beds. The portals disappeared cutting off the tide of bugs.

The darkness was removed and blocked from Labyrinth's zone as flashing strobe lights replaced it.

Terrible screeches and mad laughter could be heard in the distance, and the ground exploded at several points, releasing noxious fumes.

The walls erupted and lava poured in.

Large numbers of bugs were destroyed, but somehow the destruction perfectly missed the capes.

The skeletons suddenly moved as if alive and started to fight the remaining bugs, which had lost their connection to their master and were attacking indiscriminately.

The strobing lights disappeared, replaced by torches on the parts of the walls that weren't broken as the walls shifted to old and decaying stone. The lava coalesced and formed into humanoid monsters roaring their rage.

"Labyrinth, snap out of it!" Newter shouted from his position on the ground, heavily injured and unable to move.

The Shaker 12 kept screaming with wide eyes as if she didn't hear him.

"What the fuck is this horror movie shit?" Regent shouted. He and the rest of the Undersiders were trapped by the sticky goo from the bugs.

"This is the bad place! We've got to snap Labyrinth out of it before it gets really bad!" Gregor replied.

"How the hell are we supposed to do that when we can't even move?" Regent asked.

"Fuck!" Newter screamed as the torches blew out amidst a malevolent laughter, that was suddenly much closer than it was before.

The whole area was plunged back into darkness. Then a pair of baleful red eyes appeared above them. One pair turned into two, then ten, then a hundred, and a thousand.

The red eyes seemed to glow in the dark, and the capes found themselves just barely able to see each other again, but the unconscious members of their group were missing.

Tattletale groaned as she recovered from the agony, and blinked her eyes open. Then she shrieked hysterically upon seeing what was around her.

Shadowy tendrils wrapped around the capes and lifted them into the air, even as Labyrinth continued to scream.

The laughter returned while interspersed with "It's TiME fOor YoUr mEDicIne!", the voice repeating like a broken record.

The dark tendrils around each cape grew enormous syringes the size of a child's arm, and stabbed them into the capes over and over, eliciting screams from their victims.

Half a minute later, their screams died down, and the tendrils, eyes, and laughter seemed to retreat, leaving them in darkness again.

"Shit… is it over?" Regent asked.

"… this isn't real… this isn't real… !" Tattletale whimpered.

"It sure as hell feels real!" Newter said with a groan. "I'm pretty sure whatever happens to us here isn't just going to go away when we get out."

"You mean if we get out," Gregor's voice responded in the dark. "It's never been this bad before."

"Guys, hang on for a few more minutes, then I might be able to do something about it with my power," said Regent.

Then Tattletale shrieked again as she felt something slimy wrapping around her limbs.

The darkness receded to reveal that she was still in a dungeon, hanging above a murky, bubbling dark gold pond.

Labyrinth was trapped in some kind of bubble floating in the air.

Everyone else was nowhere to be seen.

Great gelatinous protrusions of flesh grew from the pond. They were protoplasmic self-luminous things of flowing flesh like dark slime.

From the flesh grew formed and unformed temporary eyes whose pupils rotated languidly, searching for the living, staring at her.

"Labyrinth! Wake up! Please! You have to wake up!" Tattletale shouted to the other girl. No response.

The cloudy pond underneath the flesh twisted and formed massive crystalline faces in a mockery of life.

She sank slowly towards the surface, dragged by the fleshy amoeba-like appendages.

"Oh no-no-no! Labyrinth, why? No-please-"

Tattletale's cries were soon reduced to muffled whimpers, chokes, and then silence.

At the CRUCIBLE Earth M2 comms room, video feeds showed the wall of darkness rapidly expanding out from the Palanquin, a thick veil of miasma obscuring everything within from sight, with the occasional massive tentacle lashing out to destroy nearby buildings, earth-shattering roars resounding throughout Brockton Bay.

"What just happened? I lost the connection with my bugs in there," said Skitter.

"Dimensional anomaly is interfering with signal transmission. Unable to generate new portals in target area," said Offensive Bias.

"Seems like Labyrinth's work. I didn't know it could create animated beings," Polychromic said.

Araliac's voice transmitted over comms. "I've finished processing the E88. What's the status with Faultline's Crew and the Undersiders?"

"Well, we've run into a bit of a problem. Best if you come over and see for yourself."

A portal opened and Araliac stepped through.

"… what is that?"

"Something we can't keep. But let's see what we can do about it first. Bias, deploy the dimensional flattening bombs with the planet-side missile system."

"6 Series B Dimensional Flattener warheads prepared. T-15 to launch."

Shortly after, hypersonic missiles were launched from the M2 base's silos through portals which opened in the Earth Bet stratosphere, within range of shard powers, and continued towards Brockton Bay.

When contact was made with Labyrinth's zone, the area was forced back to normal-almost. The Palanquin was wrecked with a mishmash of stone rubble, active fires, and hospital beds that weren't supposed to be there. Giant insect body parts and various fluids were strewn all over the wreckage. Faultline's Crew and the Undersiders were lying unconscious among the ruins.

"So Bakuda's anti-portaling bombs also work on powers like Labyrinth's. Good. Close the timeline and report back to me Calvert."

Back in the real world, Thomas Calvert reported the proceedings to the CRUCIBLE leaders, and they revised the planned operation to capture Faultline's Crew and the Undersiders before trying again.

A/N: There is a short segment above which still under content review in SB that will be edited in later. You can read it on the SV version if you don't want to wait. Otherwise, it doesn't affect the future plot much so it's not a big deal if you skip it.

Last edited: Dec 5, 2019

Interlude 5.b (Cauldron)

Interlude 5.b (Cauldron)

"That concludes my report."

The face of Director Emily Piggot was stoic, her voice tightly controlled against a hidden tension. Unusually different from her previous experiences with the woman.

To Rebecca's powers of perception, it was that the Director was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, and the source of that distress seemed to be Rebecca herself.

What could be the cause? Her mind ran through the possibilities and identified nothing from her end. The last report she'd heard was only a few days ago, and there was nothing out of the ordinary then.

The only possible answer had to be found within a catalyst on Piggot's side. Perhaps something to do with these new heroes that had defeated the Dragon of Kyushu.

It was something she had to look into.

The stakes were too high for her to risk overlooking any sort of lead, no matter how insignificant it may seem. If her identity was exposed, the results would be catastrophic for the world.

"… and the Simurgh has been moving strangely. We haven't identified the why yet, but there's definitely something different. It's spending more time in the lower atmosphere above North America," said Alexandria.

"The other Endbringers?" Eidolon asked.

"Nothing notable there. By the schedule, the next attack will happen next month in May."

"Have we made any progress on figuring out where they might target next?" Legend asked.

"We have a list of high potential cities. Too many to be useful. There are a couple of capes that are developing software to provide a slight advance warning that seems promising," Alexandria said.

"In the Protectorate?" Legend asked, with a look of surprise.

"It's not an official project. Dragon and Armsmaster are working on it in secret."

"Oh, I see," Legend said with a look of understanding. "Is that all, then?"

"There's one more thing," said Alexandria. It was time to discuss her mounting concerns over the leadership at the PRT ENE. The evidence was already clear.

"There is a strong chance that the PRT Director of ENE and Armsmaster have acquired knowledge, or at least suspicions, of something that would be unfavorable to us."

Everyone present gave her their full attention.

"We've been compromised? How?" Eidolon asked.

The Doctor's glance toward her silent assistant did not go unnoticed by Alexandria. Did they know already? Why hadn't Contessa done something about it then?

Whatever the case, they weren't going to be the ones to answer Eidolon's question. Not with Legend around, she supposed.

"I wouldn't say compromised quite yet. On April 11th, Director Piggot had a meeting with the new heroes known as Polychromic, Araliac, and Skitter. Records of that meeting have been tampered with, I believe with the assistance of Dragon. Since then, I've kept a closer eye on them, and Piggot and Armsmaster have been making certain dangerous lines of inquiry, while increasing security and actively hiding information from me. My close monitoring of them is how I knew about the Endbringer prediction software they are developing. It's still unclear how much they know."

The words brought the group to a momentary silence.

"If Dragon is involved…" Eidolon said.

"Are her restrictions failing?" Legend asked.

"I believe the source of the change was not Dragon, but the new hero known as Polychromic. The threat rating assigned to Polychromic was Thinker 6, possible 9, and there are records that Polychromic claimed to have highly sensitive information. Furthermore, the hero known as Araliac is in fact Panacea, who had run away from home after a suspected meeting between herself and Polychromic in civilian identity."

"I think I heard about them," said Legend. "They're the ones who defeated Lung, right? And you say Araliac is Panacea the miracle healer?"

"Yes. But we know that Panacea's much more than that. She would be an S-class threat if she used her full powers."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves and label anyone an S-class threat yet. They are heroes, at least for now, and we should hope it stays that way. The Protectorate would benefit greatly from having such powerful heroes added to our ranks."

"They refused to join the Protectorate and have declared their intention to establish an independent team."

"Independent or not, they aren't exactly villains yet."

"No, they're not. I'm only assessing their capabilities and stating the current situation. It's a cause for concern, and it concerns all of us, so I thought it best to inform you all. I will continue to monitor and try to defuse the situation peacefully. They may just be overly paranoid."

Legend nodded at her explanation. "That's fine. I just don't want us to make any wrong assumptions. It's easy to get caught up in pre-conceptions if you use the wrong terminology."

"I understand, Legend," she said, giving him a reassuring smile. "That's all for now then. You can go home now. Let's move on to our finances."

"We've cumulatively recovered 98% of our investment losses attributable to the Canberra attack, of which 34% are still unrealized gains. Of particular significance: 67 out of 82 outstanding insurance lawsuits regarding the voiding of policies of the persons legally unpersoned and properties within quarantined territory have been settled, resulting in one-time loss reserve adjustments representing $6 billion net booked in exposure-weighted terms across all insurers in our portfolio. Our strategy to manipulate insurance programs to mitigate damage to Cauldron influence and assets from Endbringer attacks is working well. We've closed on 36 high potential clients and 123 regular clients since…" the Number Man started reporting.

Legend smiled back and excused himself.

Once he left, the Number Man stopped, and they all looked at each other.

"Whether they're heroes or not, I believe Alexandria has good cause for concern. If they find out too much, what should we do? Bring them in, or…" Eidolon trailed off, looking at the woman in the suit.

The Doctor turned to Contessa and nodded. Suddenly the normally silent woman spoke up.

"The Paths changed on April 3rd . Before then, the man known as Polychromic was hidden to the Paths. The Paths adjusted, and he is now part of them, but the Paths around him are murky, uncertain. He possesses knowledge of Cauldron and many other secrets, but silencing him is not a step in the Paths to protect Cauldron's secrets."

Alexandria held down her shock. The words spoken by Contessa implied that Polychromic had been a complete blindspot of sorts to the woman's power. Contessa was their ace and their most powerful asset, even above Eidolon, in many ways, if not for her few blindspots of Scion, Eidolon, and the Endbringers. And now she was saying that another one had appeared, one with knowledge of their organization? One that Contessa might not be assured victory against, if he proved to be a threat.

"Does this mean you don't think we should do anything about him?" Alexandria asked the Doctor.

"It would be dangerous to move carelessly. He was a total blindspot for Contessa before, it's possible that he allowed himself to be seen on purpose. Right now he doesn't seem to be an immediate threat to our plans, so it's best to observe some more," the Doctor said.

"What about Piggot, Armsmaster, and Dragon?" Alexandria pressed.

"The Path does not require them to be silenced either. They do not know enough, and will not spread their knowledge," Contessa said.

"I see."

Then she would continue to observe.

"This is an outrage! They are flaunting their access to weapons of mass destruction, illegally holding cape captives, and have the audacity to act like they're the heroes!" Director Tagg said heatedly. "We can't possibly let them get away with this!"

Most of the directors' faces on screen looked deeply concerned, but none were as angry as Tagg. Piggot looked as stoic as ever, her face a near blank.

"Nevertheless, they are registered heroes with significant public support right now. Should we take any aggressive stances, the PR backlash would be difficult to manage," said Piggot.

"Then you need to bring them in line," Tagg said.

"With what? It's obvious from Director Piggot's reports that they knew exactly what they were doing. This is not a case of new heroes unfamiliar with the protocol, this is a case of powerful capes deliberately leveraging PR to break regulations and avoid the consequences," said Director Armstrong.

"And what will happen if other capes start taking this as an example to follow? That if you're powerful enough, and have enough public support, you can ignore the law? This is a threat to the very existence of the PRT and Protectorate. If the government is seen as being unable to keep control over powerful hero groups, the system itself will collapse. Not to mention that this 'CRUCIBLE' could turn villain at any time, and what then? Shall we let them grow until it's too late to stop them?"

While Tagg's attitude was not making him any allies, his logic was one that most of the Directors could understand, and certainly Rebecca had the same concerns.

The conference of PRT Directors shared a moment of silence.

"We could officially authorize their possession and custody, on a temporary basis," said Director Heathrow.

"What?" Tagg looked stunned.

"That way, it will appear as if they are working under PRT oversight, while we look for better ways to keep them in line," Director Heathrow suggested. "They'll make a mistake somewhere down the line, and we'll capitalize on it to shift public sentiment in our favor. We have to wait until people calm down and start thinking about the implications rather than their achievements, that's when we make our demands."

"That's risky," said Director Armstrong.

"But what else can we do? If we take a heavy hand right now, we won't have public support behind us. Nor do we want to get in a fight with CRUCIBLE. As annoying as they are, they're still heroes and we need all the heroes we can get. If we say that the PRT is authorizing them to secure the weapons and villains on a trial basis, we can draw out the people that would be opposed to it, then slowly build up support to revoke the authorization. And let's not forget, despite these supposed 'weapons of mass destruction', we deal with threats just as dangerous all the time. So what if they break a few rules? When they fall, as independent hero teams always do, the PRT will pick up the pieces and it will be a cautionary tale for future ambitious independent-minded heroes not to scorn the PRT."

"I can support this plan," Piggot said.

"It's not too bad, all things considered. I will support this," said Armstrong.

A round of nods and agreement later, and Rebecca affirmed the decision. "Very well. We'll do as you suggest Director Heathrow. Director Piggot, you can prepare the relevant announcements and documents."

"There's no need to panic," said the Doctor. "In fact, this could work in our favor."

"How?" Eidolon demanded. "Crucible is proving to be even more dangerous than we thought, and clearly they don't think we're on the same side. Even their name mocks us."

"Not necessarily. They haven't done anything to explicitly to disrupt our plans," Alexandria said.

"They've interfered with Terminus, haven't they? Wasn't that a critical part of our plans?"

"Rather than interfering, it would be more accurate to say that they took over the Terminus project. Coil was never vital, merely the best and most easily controlled candidate as our client with a suitable power," said the Doctor. "They have proven themselves rather more effective, and appealing to the masses, which ultimately is what we wanted to achieve."

"And how does killing and breaking people out of the Birdcage work in our favor? Without the assurance that the Birdcage provides, the public would push for executions. We'd be losing a huge number of powerful assets in the final fight," said Eidolon.

"So it stays a secret, except among the top brass. The loss of a Trump as useful as Teacher is regrettable, but this also means that Cauldron can start removing some Birdcage inmates for our own purposes now that there's been a precedent. It gives us a lot of time to mold them to our objectives, instead of being forced to rely on their cooperation when the time comes," the Doctor explained patiently.

"You agree with this?" Eidolon directed towards Alexandria.

She hesitated only for a moment before nodding. "There's some evidence to suggest that they may be working towards the same goals as we are, and my investigations suggest that they revealed far less about Cauldron to Piggot and Armsmaster than I initially suspected. However, I think we need to establish communications with them soon. As it stands, they are too much of a wildcard that we have no leverage over, especially if Contessa can't be certain her Paths are accurate for them."

"I want to agree with you, Alexandria, but the Simurgh's latest activities have me worried. A few hours before the Birdcage break-in, it started singing at a very low, barely audible frequency from her position in the atmosphere, which has never been observed before. In the past the Simurgh has interfered when it seemed that we were on the verge of a great breakthrough… I fear that direct cooperation with CRUCIBLE would invite her attention, if it hasn't already," the Doctor said.

The conversation came to a halt when a portal opened to reveal Legend finally arriving.

The group instantly controlled their expressions.

"Hi. I just finished reading the report from Dragon. So do we have any idea who was behind it, and why?"

"Unfortunately, we don't know much. We don't know we could even have the power to do such a thing, let alone suspects. The Birdcage was thought to be essentially impenetrable. As for the why, it could have been a coordinated assassination of Teacher, or Canary might have been taken for her powers."

"My powers haven't given me anything useful either. All I've found out is that whoever it was can do it again."

"That's… not much," said Legend with a disappointed look.

"Yes, I realize that," growled Eidolon, acting appropriately frustrated.

"What's going on?" asked Eidolon.

The Doctor looked haggard, and her dark skin was unusually pale. She had suddenly called for an emergency meeting, even though these days she usually left the Triumvirate to their own devices until a regular meeting, or Alexandria initiated the call.

"We have a lot less time than we thought. There could be as little as two years until the end of the world scenario," said Doctor Mother.

"Only two years?" Eidolon asked, his face solemn. "Our earliest estimates put it at least 23 years away, based on Endbringer activity. Unless… Scion? What's changed?"

"It's not that anything in particular has changed, but that we've found a precog who could give a more accurate prediction," said the Number Man as he came through a side door to the conference room. Behind him was a young girl with straight, dark brown hair in a Greek style dress and half mask.

"This is Oracle, the one who made the prediction. It's quite detailed," said the Number Man.

"I recognize her," Alexandria said, closely observing the girl. The mask was only a minor obstruction to her. "Dinah Alcott, niece of the Mayor of Brockton Bay? When did you get her?"

"That's correct. Contessa has been paying more attention to Brockton Bay in order to better model Polychromic. She found Oracle in the process. We've replaced her with a believable clone that will die of natural causes shortly." said the Number Man.

At the last part, Alexandria and Eidolon both gave sharp looks to the Doctor.

"We didn't kidnap her, if that's what you're worried about. When Contessa found her, she came willingly. Quite eager to help too."

The Doctor's explanation both relieved and unnerved Eidolon. He wanted to save lives, that's all he ever wanted. He knew what they were up against, and the necessity of everything they'd done.

In the beginning, he hadn't known the whole truth, but there was a point when his powers told him what the Doctor and Alexandria had kept from him.

So he understood why they were getting a mere child involved in their ugly business, and understood how that child might have felt in the face of a threat such as the end of the world.

But so too was unnerved, because he knew what was left unspoken. That Contessa probably persuaded her the same way she persuaded Eidolon himself when he learned the truth about Cauldron's less savoury projects. Contessa rarely spoke in their meetings, allowing the Doctor to speak instead, but he knew that when she stayed silent, she was holding back. An answer to every dilemma, from the most trivial to the most major.

Even he, a blindspot, was subject to an Eidolon-like model, and with her path to victory she could convince anyone of almost anything. Was it really willing if one could be persuaded to do anything she wanted?

"I… want to help. Please. I want to be here. Nobody believes me at home, but I have to do something. I know I can help," the girl said in a strong voice.

Alexandria nodded. "The end of the world, then? How does it happen?"

"A man with a knife. He's the one who makes everyone die. I don't know how. But if he's alive, something happens in two years, or eight, or some time in between, and everyone dies. Everyone dies anyways but if that something happens, they die really fast, and in a year almost everyone is dead," the girl explained.

The Number Man cut in. "What we've been able to piece together is that Jack Slash is the catalyst, and if he stays alive there's a 95% chance that the end of the world event happens about two years from now."

"So we need to eliminate Jack Slash?" Eidolon asked.

"No, not quite. There's an exceedingly good chance that we would have only sixty-six to twenty-five percent of the forces available if we waited ten years."

"Fourteen years from now is the breaking point," Dinah said.

"Fifty-three to two percent of the forces available, then," Number Man clarified. "Counterintuitively, the two-year scenario is actually the best case. For having the strongest force and therefore the highest chances of victory."

"We knew this was coming sooner or later and that the results wouldn't be good for humanity. What Oracle has provided us with is a clearer picture of the when, and more importantly, the how. These new predictions have decimated our projected timelines, but we now have confirmation that it can be survived, at least. It won't end with the Entity simply obliterating all Earths in one devastating strike. Instead, there will be vast swatches of destruction, and civilization may survive in various small pockets across a number of realities," said the Doctor.

"Thus confirming the importance of the Terminus," said Alexandria.

"Correct. In light of this new information, there's no time to prepare or pursue anything further. We can only continue with what we already have."

"In that regard, it seems that leaving CRUCIBLE alone was the right choice. They've managed to complete Terminus earlier than even our most optimistic scenarios," said Alexandria.

The Doctor nodded. "So now we can advance the Cockroach and Exodus plans. Then the question is, how much should we involve the Protectorate?"

Alexandria shook her head. "The Protectorate is proving to be a failure on that front. Recent events haven't given me much hope. I would include them in Cockroach, and only fully segregated, but not Exodus, considering the superior results from Terminus. Our resources would be better spent replicating CRUCIBLE's success for Exodus."

There was a loud gasp from Oracle.

"The-the numbers are changing! I don't understand-ah… it hurts!" The girl clutched her head with both hands.

Doctor Mother looked disturbed and turned to Contessa.

"Jack Slash was killed by a missile fired through a portal connecting to space," said Contessa.

O O O

Interlude 5.c (Contessa)

Interlude 5.c (Contessa)

I want to know why Oracle's numbers have changed.

No steps were needed. The knowledge came into her mind easily. A man with a knife and a dangerous smile, leading a group of notorious villains. A portal opened behind him to reveal the inky darkness of space for a fraction of a second before a missile came hurtling through.

When Jack Slash was hit, his body was disintegrated into dust, leaving nothing but a crater on the pavement.

The other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine looked dumbly at the results. There had been no opportunity to defend. One moment he was there and the next he was gone.

I want to know who killed him.

-Unknown. Likely candidates: CRUCIBLE, Scion, Simurgh, group with anti-Thinker Trump and Tinkers.

I want to know where the missile came from.

The Path showed her the portal again. Bewildered, she tried to ask another way.

I want to know where the other side of the portal is.

An image of Earth came into her mind, and a boundary at the atmosphere was delineated. Beyond the boundary, everything was foggy. The Path was telling her that the missile came from outside the area where her power worked.

Unable to discover more, Contessa answered Doctor Mother with what she knew. "Jack Slash was killed by a missile fired through a portal that connected to space."

"Outside of the range of the Agents' powers, then. So they built it after all," the Doctor noted.

"How is that possible? They have interplanetary space weapons?" Alexandria asked.

"No. They only need portals and a self-propelling missile with an automated guiding system that uses a flight path going into and returning from space outside the limit. Doormaker's range is unfortunately limited to the Earth, but we could do something similar with Professor Haywire's portal generators. I've had the idea for a while, but there was simply never a need for it," said Doctor Mother. "The primary purpose of such a system would be to defeat precognition. The only precog that might warrant its use would be the Simurgh, but we would still need a way to actually destroy her, otherwise we would simply be revealing our hand, not to mention she would likely stop us from building it."

Without prompting, Contessa already asked her Path to verify Doctor Mother's hypothesis.

I want to know whether CRUCIBLE has built a missile system like that.

-99.99%

That was highly unusual. Her power was not supposed to give percentage answers regarding information about the present. Or at all, really. It meant there was uncertainty, but why was the probability so high?

I want to know if CRUCIBLE has the ability to build a missile system like that.

The Path answered. Two week ago, CRUCIBLE built a portal generating device whose range extended to the moon. The copy of Dragon they made had access to the technical schematics from the US military and a number of Tinker designs, any of which could serve the same functions. They could build a self-guided missile system, in conjunction with the portal generator.

"And you already knew CRUCIBLE could do this," said Alexandria.

"I suspected they could build it, but it's strange. I would have expected the Simurgh to stop something like that before they finished it." The Doctor glanced at Contessa. She wanted to ask Contessa to try and figure out why.

The Simurgh was a blindspot. Asking for information about it was difficult, and had to be done in a roundabout way.

But Contessa already had an inkling of what was going on. Although she couldn't possibly know the motivations of the Simurgh, she could find out why the Simurgh couldn't do it.

She recalled the model of the Simurgh she had in her mind. An indestructible being with unlimited precognition and postcognition with a range assumed to be identical to her own Path's range, plus telekinesis, the ability to copy Tinker powers, and a dreadful singing voice.

I want to know if this hypothetical being S could have stopped CRUCIBLE from building the portal generator whose range extends beyond the range of precognitive powers, if it wanted to.

-Probably not

Not even a numerical estimate this time?

I want to understand why S could or couldn't, the calculation basis of the last Path.

She saw Leet working on the Tinkertech device that would generate portals. The probability of success was partially based on Leet's future behavior.

However, if the device worked, Leet's behavior would become unpredictable shortly after, because Polychromic would move him outside of the range of the precognitive powers using that device.

Because that piece of the input was unreliable, Leet's agent could not make the decision based on the algorithm it previously applied for Leet's power mechanics. It had to make a discretionary decision, and Agents' discretionary decisions were blindspots to the Path, and most likely to the hypothetical being as well.

The chain of information did not stop there.

The hypothetical being would see as much as the Path did, and knowing that the device was a critical turning point, if it wanted to stop CRUCIBLE it could try to stop Leet due to the risk of the device working.

However, during the creation of the Tinkertech, at random times, something else was already opening portals which were immune to precognition.

Each time, Polychromic came through and discussed Leet's progress, in an inexplicable sudden shift from Polychromic's previously predicted behavior.

The hypothetical being could not use its powers to locate or destroy whatever was creating those portals, and could not determine if those portals were already capable of reaching beyond the range of precognitive powers.

Although the answer the Path provided was long-winded, Contessa grasped it within a few seconds.

Yet she needed more. If the Simurgh couldn't stop the portal device from being built, why couldn't it at least try to stop the missile system from being built? There was no way to construct such advanced weapons without having access to infrastructure. If they had such infrastructure outside of the precognition range, they must have built it at some point, which means they must have left a trail of evidence, materials and equipment being moved through portals within postcognition range, which her Path could find.

I want to know whether CRUCIBLE engaged in activities which might lead to them building technological infrastructure necessary for constructing the missile system outside of the Path's perception, and if so, why could S not stop those activities?

She had expected to learn about how CRUCIBLE had moved various materials and equipment over time through portals to blind space.

Instead, she saw Polychromic buying cryogenic tech from Glace of Toybox.

Then she saw Canary killing Teacher in the Birdcage. When Canary moved through a portal to escape, leaving Teacher's body behind, Polychromic had taken the body before the room was blown up and stashed it away before chasing after Canary to catch her from falling.

Canary was put to sleep, then Polychromic retrieved Teacher's body and put it into stasis using cryogenic tech before returning to Canary.

Then she saw Cranial getting captured and Mastered by CRUCIBLE. Cranial's tech was used to extract memories from Teacher's preserved brain. Then Araliac cloned Teacher, and Cranial's tech was used again to cause the clone to trigger with the original's memories.

Triggers were blindspots to the Path's precognition, but not postcognition, and the same was assumed for the hypothetical being, which is probably why it failed to stop them.

Following the trigger, the clone Teacher was Mastered into creating a large number of Tinkers, who worked together to create a device that could block entire planets from Agent perception.

They immediately deployed it, cutting off a world from the Path's perception, a world which already had sufficient infrastructure to build the missile system.

Path: make a device that can block off an area from Agent perceptions, similar to the one Teacher's Tinkers made, Contessa queried.

The Path revealed the steps required. She would need to collect a number of Tinkers and make them work together, but it was doable. Taking full control of Dragon would cut down on the number of steps significantly. Gaining Dragon's voluntary loyalty and releasing her would cut down even more, but that would disrupt other Paths for protecting Cauldron.

Building the device could be troubling for herself, reducing the effectiveness of her Path, making her vulnerable, the Path warned. She had asked the Path previously to protect her, and it was doing so now by informing her of the potential consequences.

But Contessa had never been selfish.

If she had to sacrifice a bit of her own safety net for the greater good, she would do it without hesitation. The device would increase the chances of success for the Cockroach project, and create zones safe from the Simurgh.

If the Path's effectiveness is reduced, there might be many people she could not save, the Path warned again. She would save sealed worlds from things like S, but she would longer be able to save them from other things in the future.

Even so, she reaffirmed. When she went to fight the godling alone, it was with the understanding that she couldn't save everyone. Two thousand one hundred and seventy four steps to explain things to her uncle, save her people, and find the god-beast. But she could not do all that and handle every other essential crisis on the way.

It was a choice between stopping the monster or helping the people she grew up with to survive the chaos. She had chosen then, and she would choose again, to save as many as she could.

Once more, the Path warned her. If she obtained the device and gave it to her colleagues, they could use it against her.

Would they do it? Yes. They would.

Even so, she believed in the Path. It would see her to victory even if there were things it could not tell her because of the godling's commands.

Her life and freedom were not a necessary part of the definition of victory.

But, if there was a way to protect the Path, then she would prefer that.

Path: protect the Paths from that kind of device.

Almost eagerly, the Path responded.

112 steps to find Tinkers to build her own blocking device to protect herself from an attack such as the one suffered by Jack Slash.

37 steps to create counter-devices to disrupt enemy blocking devices and break through to sealed areas by force.

32 steps to add backdoors and failsafes for herself on those devices.

98 steps to extend the range of her power to its maximum strength at moon's orbit and harvest the energy required to sustain the higher level of computation demanded.

233 steps to eliminate every Tinker who could make such devices after she acquired what she needed from them.

726 steps to deal with her colleagues who would use Oracle to find and protect these Tinkers if Contessa told them about but refused to help them obtain such devices, then take over Cauldron to keep her previous Paths intact.

84 steps to break into the worlds sealed by CRUCIBLE so that her Path could give her more steps to follow.

There was no hint on her outward expression that she had just seen the exact way to force her colleagues into submitting to her will.

She was not planning to follow that particular Path, but just in case, she decided that it would be best to stay quiet in the background as the meeting continued. She could always tell them what she had learned about CRUCIBLE and the Simurgh later.

When there was no response forthcoming from Contessa, the Doctor moved on with her speculations.

"I suppose the Simurgh's intentions are as opaque as ever. Unless the range of its precognition is actually much farther than other known precognitive powers, and all this is still part of her plans. Could she have wanted Jack Slash to die?"

"If we go by the hypothesis that the Endbringers have some purpose and they want to continue with their own pattern of destruction instead of allowing the world to end in just two years, then Jack's death would align with their agenda," said Alexandria.

"Either way, we have to make adjustments. His death pushes the end of the world scenario to fifteen years away at least, which is past the breaking point. We would have only have forty-four to half a percent of our forces available. The plan to fight Scion directly with a parahuman army would be rendered obsolete. Either we somehow start the fight ourselves before that, or we shift all resources toward Cockroach and Exodus," said the Number Man.

He turned to look at the Doctor. "We may even need to consider the Dominatus contingency to speed up your other project."

An angry beeping sound interrupted.

Alexandria took out her PRT phone that was the source of the noise.

"An A-class threat in Boston." She started to send a few texts. "Carry on," she told her colleagues.

"We can wait, Alexandria," said the Doctor.

The Number Man took the opportunity to soothe Oracle's headache with a painkiller.

"Before we continue discussing our long-term plans, shouldn't we decide what to do about the Nine, now that Jack is dead? In particular, we should do something about the Siberian and Bonesaw," said Eidolon.

"If we stop Manton, we would have difficulties with keeping Legend suspicions' at bay on the Nemesis project," said Doctor Mother.

"Is that necessary, still? If we don't expect the Protectorate to hold up, then we don't need to get more of our people in, in which case we won't need them to have nemeses to fight."

"It's worth considering. But don't forget, Mannequin is a Simurgh bomb. It would be dangerous to simply bring any of the Nine under our direct control, with their prolonged exposure."

Alexandria spoke up again. "I'm sorry, we'll have to cut this meeting short. The A-class threat has just been raised to S. Speculated baby Endbringer. Armstrong is requesting emergency reinforcements."

"A baby Endbringer? What's going on?" Eidolon asked.

"The designation is Echidna. A giant monster cape that's been mass cloning other capes on contact. It's already destroyed two city blocks. We have to contain this immediately. Civilian casualties are already estimated close to a thousand."

"I'll go, then," said Eidolon.

"That could be dangerous. If it clones you…"

Another blaring alarm went off, this time both Alexandria and Eidolon's PRT phones were ringing.

"That's the Endbringer alarm?" Doctor Mother recognized it immediately. "They sounded it for Echidna?"

Alexandria's face uncharacteristically went pale.

"No. The Simurgh is also descending towards Boston."

A/N: There is only one more chapter left for the Worm segment that will be posted next week. In the meantime, the first chapter of the sequel is already up. There are two versions, one with Quest mechanics and one on SB without available here. Plotlines are the same and updates will happen simultaneously, I'm just limiting votes to one place so it is easier to keep track of, and cleaning up the SB version to read normally.

Last edited: Dec 13, 2019

Convolution 5.e

Convolution 5.e

After Cranial was Mastered by Amelia, my belief that Cranial was massively holding back her true capabilities was vindicated.

As a brain and memory Tinker, her ability to brainwash people was extremely impressive.

The major advantage Amelia's power had over Cranial was that Amelia's power tended to circumvent most forms of Master resistance, and worked even other human Masters or Master victims.

The advantage that Paige's power had was that if it worked, it would temporarily override long-term forms of Mastering, like Amelia's and Cranial's, but took a lot more work to permanently Master someone with it.

Cranial held the advantage in precision, subtlety, and scope of possible effects. People's minds could be utterly wiped clean, or fully rewritten using her tech, even though that process took several hours per person. Fortunately Offensive Bias could operate her tech simultaneously on multiple people.

Commands, rules, and behaviors could be built into the core psyche of a person, making victims' brainwashing impossible to reverse, and also resistant to other Masters.

That said, it wasn't something Cranial was capable of before we captured her, or else she probably would have been far more dangerous and powerful, instead of being a minor Tinker in Toybox.

She only unlocked the truly advanced capabilities after we gave her the chance to study Amelia's and Paige's powers at work, and in turn, she helped them refine their own power use.

Together, the three of them also created a way to project Canary's power through recordings, but it had to be done with special hardware devices built by Cranial, and a way to use Canary's active power to reinforcement the long-term Master effect from Cranial's tech.

Armed with these powerful new means, I released Teacher's corpse from cryo, then revived Teacher via cloning, retriggered via memory transfer, and had these three Master him thoroughly. The previous sixteen prisoners I captured from the E88 were given to him as students, with his Trump-Master power effect also studied by Cranial, Amelia, and Paige, and then his students re-Mastered to be loyal to CRUCIBLE in a hierarchy with myself at the top, followed by Amelia and Taylor, then Offensive Bias and Paige, and so on, instead of just Teacher.

Four powerful human Masters working together would be more than sufficient to brainwash anyone regardless of their resistances, though I still didn't plan to use Teacher's power on any high value capes as a safety precaution.

And so CRUCIBLE was reorganized to strengthen loyalty and morale.

Coil, Bakuda, and Cricket fell under my control shortly afterward, with the highest level of Mastery. Of course I didn't forget to make some additional secret adjustments to Coil to make him believe that he was in fact the one who set Shadow Stalker on Taylor's dad.

That was followed by Uber, Leet, Chariot who were folded into the organization proper, and every member of CRUCIBLE that was formerly a villain, such as Coil's mercs. They were voluntarily working for us, but with their previous leanings, it was a necessary precaution to ensure they were genuinely loyal and properly dedicated to CRUCIBLE. They only received minor attitude adjustments as part of a CRUCIBLE self-improvement training course instead of the full Mastering, and then their loyalty was confirmed in discarded timelines.

At the same time, Teacher's students had been put to work together with Offensive Bias and my other Tinkers on building the device he canonically used to seal off a reality from outside access.

When the device was turned on and proved to work, I was immensely pleased.

It was a game-changer, one that could secure entire worlds under my control.

The moon base was nice, but the moon was a desolate place without resources.

It wasn't foolproof, nothing ever was, but being able to seal off whole Earths from Thinker perception was an enormous advantage.

It was even better than I had expected. All I remembered from the canon was that Teacher made a device that sealed off a reality from entry. If that was all it did, there would potentially be ways for other Tinkers and powers to break in.

But no, his Tinkers couldn't make anything that sealed the physical Wormvoid from entry. They actually created something that sealed perception.

This was better because among the myriad of worlds out there, how was anyone supposed to find where I had my operations set up?

If they couldn't perceive it, they would never find me. I hoped that it also worked against the Clairvoyant, Path to Victory, and the Simurgh. I didn't have any way to verify if it did, but the fact that even Coil's power failed against it was a positive sign.

It was interesting, the results of that experiment. If Coil was in an unblocked area, his power completely ignored anything to do with the blocked area. It was like the power treated the blocked area as if it were outer space.

However, there was one important difference. Other capes' powers still worked normally, and some secondary perception powers still worked. For example, Amelia's ability to read biology still worked normally, so did Paige's secondary Thinker power that allowed her to read emotions when she was singing to Master people. Taylor couldn't see out of any bugs within the blocked area, but she could still receive the senses of her bugs that were outside of the zone even if she herself was inside it.

I should note that our own portals still worked regardless, because unlike Doormaker we didn't rely on Clairvoyant's senses, but instead used Offensive Bias's coordinate calculations, and the blocking effect didn't do anything to normal physical signals like those using the electromagnetic spectrum, and of course it didn't block Agate's Waypoint beacons for her portals.

Once I had the device, I had Offensive Bias reverse engineer it, and further ordered the Teacher students to produce a mobile version I could use to protect myself if I ever left the zone. Many more such devices were produced, and installed in all of our worlds.

But that was not the only benefit from having Teacher under control.

Thanks to Cranial and Amelia, Teacher's students were less mentally impaired than they otherwise would have been if they received more powerful powers.

That work experimenting on the brain, with assistance from the Thinkers of the group, and Cranial's own tech, produced upgrades to the brain that were proven safe for me to take.

I was now even smarter than I was before, and extremely resistant to most Master effects. Still not smart enough to learn Agate's Parallel Processing and Acceleration spells, but enough to noticeably speed up my learning everything else.

It also resulted in additional upgrades to the Bionanite Swarm and helped Amelia create the complete living symbiotic armour organism that could also be thought-controlled via the Bionanite Swarm.

It was at that point that I decided we were ready to seize full control of Brockton Bay.

Heroes and innocent people, I was going to leave alone for the most part. CRUCIBLE was still nominally a hero organization, and I might have a hard time convincing Amelia or Taylor to go after the innocent. For the same reason, I didn't capture the rest of Toybox. Although they were known to trade with criminals on the black market, that wasn't much of a crime. Cranial was an exception because we had proven after capturing her that she brainwashed some of her innocent clients with her tech. Otherwise I might have had to let her go after getting Offensive Bias to reverse engineer her tech, instead of Mastering her outright.

But actual villains were all fair game, and we would start with Brockton Bay.

Conveniently the Teeth tried to invade Brockton Bay, sending Animos and Spree to set up shop here. We noticed them long before we actually assaulted them, then used Coil to find the best way to handle them. Spree's ability to mass clone himself was meaningless in the face of the overwhelming numbers Taylor could bring to bear, but Animos was a Changer-Trump with a power-nullifying roar that was only slightly more difficult to handle.

Initially, his roar negated Taylor's control over all bugs that heard it, even though they continued the last command. Without coordination, however, they were much less effective. After a few discarded timelines, we discovered that Cricket could hard-counter his roar. Then Amelia made a new bug that generated soundwaves at the same frequency Cricket used to counter the roar, and sent that one instead in the final timeline we kept.

After that, we captured the rest of the Empire 88 without much trouble by hitting them at night in their homes. They were Mastered then quietly returned to act as our secret agents, without alarming anyone of a large number of missing persons.

Capturing Faultline's Crew and the Undersiders was more difficult if we wanted to operation to stay secret, particularly when both were gathered together at the Palanquin.

The main problem was Labyrinth, whose power could counter our most devastating tactics. She could shut down portals, move into a non-targetable 'in-between' space, shift bugs or other things out, and couldn't hear Canary's song when she didn't have a high degree of lucidity.

Bakuda had developed a Dimensional Flattening bomb that could force an area's portals to close which also worked on Labyrinth's interdimensional manipulation effects, but the downside of using that was that we couldn't portal in either during the period when the Wormvoid in that area was inaccessible.

That period was less than a minute, after which Labyrinth's powers would come back in full force.

Most other powers still worked, so the bomb didn't shut down all uses of the Wormvoid, but we only had one minute to invade from outside the Palanquin and subdue them all.

But more difficult did not mean they had any real chance of defending against us. Repeated uses of Coil's timelines showed Labyrinth's weaknesses and we inevitably captured them all.

The days after that passed by quickly as I continued to make my preparations to leave, training Amelia, Taylor, and Paige to take over, and researching powers with the cooperation of all the capes now under my control.

Even so, I never found out where mana was coming from, when traces of it were detected upon certain powers' uses. It was most likely something I would only figure out if I had access to the physical shards themselves.

Taylor had taken the news of my impending departure much better than Amelia.

"Okay," She said simply, after patiently listening to me explain my reasons. "If there's no major problems, how often will you come back?"

"It really depends on what I find out there. But the bare minimum would be a few weeks because of how long it takes to build up the energy for each trip. You're taking this pretty calmly," I said.

"I had hoped it wouldn't be so soon, but I was kind of expecting it."

"Really, why?"

"It was just a feeling. A couple of small things, I guess. I wasn't really sure, but… that day when Amelia didn't seem to hate Paige so much anymore, and she was kind of… nicer? And more… focused? She was also acting a bit differently towards you. Like she was sad about something. At first I thought-um, I mean it just seemed like something happened between you two. And then Paige joined us properly, and you were talking about Scion. About how the strategy you knew might not work because you brought that knowledge here, and how we had to prepare for what happens if we can't win, how humanity can survive. That's kind of when it clicked. I didn't really believe it before, but after that conversation, it seemed like you were pretty serious about being from another plane of existence. And I guess I kind of thought that you… wouldn't give up that easily, so you must be planning something else. And maybe the answer wasn't in this plane of existence, so you'd have to leave to find it. Maybe you didn't want to mention it because you didn't want to give us false hope, like if you weren't confident you could find a way to win. And you probably told Amelia about it back then, that's why she seemed sad. You always tell her things first."

"I hope you aren't upset about that. That I told her before you, I mean."

"I'm not. You guys were closer even before I joined. And you live together even when you aren't heroing, so it's natural to talk more." There was no sign of any emotion on her face, but these days she often forgot to move her true body's facial muscles properly, so it didn't mean that she wasn't upset.

"That's not it. I just wanted to give her more time to adjust and come to terms with it. You're much better at staying composed and pushing past difficult situations. The truth is, I think you'd make a better leader overall. Amelia's got the potential to grow into it eventually, because she persists on things long past the point where anyone else would have given up or gone mad, but you? You just naturally have the kind of personality to take charge and shoulder responsibility."

"You really think so?"

"Yes. The shards are usually pretty good at matching powers to host personalities. That's why you've got a Master power that can work on such massive scale. And if I never showed up here, you still would have gone on to do great things. I'm confident that you'll take good care of CRUCIBLE while I'm gone."

"Thanks. I'll do my best."

Before I informed Paige about my departure, Agatetron gave her another revelation. This was after she had been informed about the shards, Scion, and my own status as being from a different plane, as part of her initiation into the CRUCIBLE inner circle.

"As His mortal incarnation foretold, the broken warrior is the harbinger of the end of days. The broken warrior god is but one of three lesser gods who have come to the earth in this plane. One has hidden itself in the deeps, one has fallen by the treachery of the first, and the last one has broke by the loss of the second. The broken warrior shall shed its divinity and become the abomination of desolation, and it shall bring terrible tribulation to all. The earth will sink and the seas shall boil and there shall be great terror and destruction, famine and pestilence, and none shall be safe from its wrath. The host of the Lord shall meet the broken warrior god in battle, and His great armies shall be led by the incarnation and the two chosen champions. Upon the Lord's victory, the champions shall rule in His stead with power temporal as reward for their labour. And you shall hold the power spiritual as His messenger and voice to proclaim the Lord's dominion over the earth as the great god exalted above all other gods, and crown the champions as queens exalted above all other kings and queens."

"How will I know who are the chosen champions, O' great seraph?" She asked, kneeling in supplication.

"They are already known to you, the shaper and the administrator, and the incarnation has bid you assist them in raising the host. The incarnation shall soon depart from this plane, for the Lord must gather strength from other planes for the great battle to come, and you must ensure that the champions do not waver from their destined path."

"Yes, I will carry out the Lord's command!"

That made my own conversation with her much simpler.

In the end, when all was said and done, I stood beside the Amphibious All-Purpose Vehicle (AAPV) built to carry some supplies and equipment, and made to fit within the space of the Kaleidoscape tunnel.

The majority was conventional technology based and demonstrably did not rely on Wormvoid physics, but I did bring some useful Tinkertech and a copy of Offensive Bias along as well. In particular, I was bringing a pocket dimension inventory system and mobile base based on Dodge, Leet, and Chariot's tech, that further stored a lot more things inside.

If the pocket dimensions survived transit between planes, and the Tinkertech also worked, I would have some incredibly powerful stuff to use. But if not, then at least I could fall back on military grade hardware.

While I wanted to be as prepared as possible, I simply couldn't fit that much stuff in the estimated size of the tunnel, which, like all things related to the Kaleidoscape, had a random component and so my stuff might get destroyed in transit.

It wasn't possible to bring enough equipment that Offensive Bias could build a self-sustaining industry based off of only conventional tech, so assuming that Tinkertech didn't work, what I had was what I'd be stuck with, unless I happened to arrive in another modern or higher tech world in which I could buy more equipment.

"I guess it's time," I said. Amelia, Taylor, and Paige stood behind me. We were gathered on the M2 Dark Side Moon Base, where only Amelia's shard powers still worked, and watching the screen that showed the last objective to be checked off before my departure.

"Alright, Offensive Bias, go for it."

"All systems normal. Firing."

A notification and tracker showed a missile launching from the base's Portal Targeting Platform, right into a portal that opened through to the empty space between Earth M2 and its moon, and kept going for a short distance before the first portal pair closed and the missile entered yet another portal whose other side was in the Portal Targeting Platform again, but layered over a third portal that led straight to the target on Earth Bet. In this way, the portal on Earth Bet would merely show dark space on the other side instead of the missile's true source on the M2 moon base.

On the video screen that was showing Jack Slash leisurely walking down an empty street with the S9 following behind, a portal was shown opening momentarily right behind Jack, and in the next frame there was nothing left of him as Bakuda's disintegration warhead scattered his body into dust.

"Target eliminated."

The remaining members of the Slaughterhouse 9 looked dumbfounded and paused. They looked at each other, unsure of what to do, while Bonesaw inspected the area where the glowing white rectangle-the back side of the portal-had appeared and blocked their view of Jack then disappeared just as quickly. She was joined by the other members of the S9, who started looking around, perhaps in search of enemies, or perhaps confused as to where Jack might have disappeared to.

It was terribly anticlimactic, and I too was confused.

Jack Slash was so vital to the original storyline that everything would be derailed. There had been theories that the Simurgh had planned out the way to defeat Scion, and if that was true, Jack should have been a part of that plan. I had used a few tricks to try and overcome her precognition, but it was still a bit of a shock that she didn't do anything to stop me at any point, from building the moon base until now.

I also thought Cauldron might have been secretly supporting Jack Slash. Considering that the prophecy about the end of the world came long before the end, it struck me as very strange that Cauldron didn't just kill him.

Unfortunately I didn't know the exact contents of the prophecy and Dinah Alcott seemed to be… malfunctioning, for lack of a better word. In discarded timelines where I tried to persuade and force some answers out of her, it was as if she didn't have a parahuman power. Her headaches and strange visions seemed to be actually unrelated to a power, though her brain did have a Corona and Gemma. I could chalk it up to Coil's power not properly simulating it, but I thought he was supposed to be able to get useful-if sometimes slightly inaccurate-answers from her in discarded timelines.

Teacher's blocking devices might have caused interference as well, but that was an unsatisfying explanation, considering that these timeline experiments with her were done on Earth Bet in unblocked areas.

All this strangeness was setting off alarms in my ahead, loudly telling me, 'Time to get out of Worm before your string of good luck ends!'

Oh wait, that was just Agate.

"It's done. The man who would have convinced Scion to destroy the world is dead. Scion will still attack eventually, but at least we've bought some time," I said, turning around to face the three who would lead CRUCIBLE in my absence.

"From here on, it'll be up to you three to make sure CRUCIBLE is ready for any other threats. Build up strength, recruit critical people, and refer to my notes with Offensive Bias when necessary. Don't be afraid to use Coil extensively. He's good for not only his power, but his own competence and intelligence as well. But above all, stay alive."

In fact, with Cranial's tech, it was now much safer to use Coil because we could even review his timeline memories after the fact.

"We will," said Taylor.

"You too," said Amelia.

"We won't disappoint you!" said Paige.

After a group hug, I wasted no time getting into the AAPV.

Offensive Bias piloted the vehicle forwards into a layered portal leading to a vacuum chamber. The air was vented, then Agate opened the next portal into the space beyond the barrier, past the moon's upper atmosphere.

We drove forward into the darkness of space only illuminated by the stars, and the portal shut behind us as we floated.

'ARMP Engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Random by Shortest Distance. 10 seconds to construct pathway. Please hold.'

This time when we shifted, I saw the universe flicker as if it was an illusion. Everything disappeared and I was in a space devoid of anything.

There was only darkness and I couldn't see myself or feel anything.

That feeling was almost like the float tanks I used for deep meditation, but it lasted only a moment until there was a single dot that expanded into a blinding white light.

END OF PART 1

O O O

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The main Worm segment ends here, and the story continues in the sequel. My intention is to have the sequel be a Quest in which questers take the role of Agate giving advice to Kaleidus. This is for the purpose of allowing questers to contribute ideas and opinions on strategy and catch potential problems in an organic and enjoyable way before I write the relevant scenes, while retaining control over the MC's motivations and key storyline decisions, because the "winning vote" doesn't automatically become the choice taken.

If you want to join the Quest, you can go here:

AMN: Rising

If you want to follow the story without the Quest mechanics, you can do so in the story-only thread, which already has the first chapter, and will be published simultaneously with the Quest chapters as a cleaned up version that reads like a normal story:

SB Story-only Sequel

As part of this conversion, there has been some confusion over finding the relevant threads and pushback about Questing and using SV as the forum for questing. I think that the people who don't want to go to SV are actually the same people as the ones who don't want to Quest. So it doesn't make much sense to have an SB quest thread or move this thread into the quest forum. Instead, given the purpose of the quest, it's entirely possible for SBers to just discuss their opinions in the SB story-thread, and I'm still going to use any good ideas that come out of it.

As such, I am also keeping this thread as it is, and you can continue discussing the Worm part here. And, at some point I may also use this thread for posting Worm-only side stories and such in the future, since things are going to happen even when Kaleidus is gone, and some of that might not fit into the ongoing story of the sequel.

Afterword: I'm a bit surprised that I was actually able to even get this far with the story. It's also the first story I've sort of completed, so I'm pretty happy about that. Looking back, I was able to achieve most of the things I set out to do when I decided to write this, which really surprises me because it came after a long absence from writing fanfic in general, and after getting stuck a few chapters in to a different story that I really wanted to continue but found my skills not up to the task for.

This was also my first story in Worm, and first one posted to forums like Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity. It's a first in a lot of different ways, and being on these forums was definitely a different and in my opinion, better experience than dedicated publishing platforms like FFN, where it often feels like I'm just writing for myself to read, even if the readership seems to be statistically much higher. The discussion and prompt feedback here made the whole experience much more fun for me, so thank you for taking part.

When I started the story I had a lot of doubts about it. There must have been a reason that I couldn't find a story to read which fit my parameters: An unrepentantly selfish protagonist. Using wits and intrigue more than having a lot of power and plot armor. Starting from a low base, or even powerless state. Traveling around the multiverse, but still retaining a realistic world that cannot be easily cheated. Maybe it was too hard to write, too niche for most people, too offensive to publish… I imagine these are all reasons there aren't very many stories of this type.

In writing this story, I think I hit most of my criteria, but I did fail on a few points that irk me. Agate, for one, was too powerful even with just her portals and intangibility in Worm. Although the MC was proactive, Agate's upgrades came too easily and wasn't really conditional on any of the dangerous or difficult things he did. I also have some doubts about Offensive Bias' role in the story, and why didn't Teacher come up with a similar plan to copy Dragon in the canon as opposed to merely putting new restrictions on her. I feel that I've made things too easy for the MC, even though that's one of the things I'm most disappointed by in serious stories. Things should be hard, not just because this is Worm, but because when it's easy it's boring.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep the story interesting for myself and for you in the sequel.

Familiar of Zero: 1 - Enter the Void

Summary: The power to travel the planes, a quest for unlimited power. He started as a normal human, using cunning and metaknowledge to survive in the first plane he was trapped in. Now he's no longer powerless or trapped! The tutorial is over and the path to true power is open. OC SI. Villainous and manipulative.

This story is a sequel to Any Means Necessary, which details the events in Worm. You should really read it first, but I explain everything important (and known by the MC) so it isn't strictly required.

There is also an interactive version of the story where players take the role of Agate advising Kaleidus on decisions and can contribute ideas on strategy.

Now in:

Familiar of Zero

Worlds Traveled:

"Real Life" Earth

Worm

? - A terrible place MC escaped from immediately

? - A seemingly unremarkable world

1 - Enter the Void

[Kaleidus]

The first inkling that something was wrong with this trip was when I felt a pull just as I passed through the plane's threshold.

There was always a pull of course, from every plane's Creation Mystery. I never felt it the first time only because my mind couldn't comprehend what was happening, but after bonding more deeply with Agate, my trusty Kaleidostick-a sapient wand-I began to glimpse bits and pieces of the tunnel through the Kaleidoscape-also known as the Blind Eternities, the unreality between planes-and the infinitesimal moment before arrival.

But this time was markedly different, because the pull wasn't the all-encompassing embrace of the Creation Mystery like submerging into an ocean from a vacuum, but of hitting something intangible, then falling into hungry vortex, my mind spinning with it, and the Amphibious All-Purpose Vehicle I was in decidedly not coming along with me. One might wonder how I phased through the interior of the AAPV, but you only had to realize that this was the edge of reality where existence was not well defined.

The second hint of a problem was the sensation of being caught in an explosion.

There had been no time to erect defenses, no time to even see what was attacking me.

The explosion was strong enough to send me flying-or maybe I was already airborne upon entry to the physical world-but not enough to do any noticeable damage to even the first layer of my composite armour.

I knew this without checking because my armour was alive. A symbiont of sorts. If it were damaged, I'd know.

Smoke was obscuring visibility, and I toggled through a few different basic vision modes. Before I hit the ground, I identified a large number of people-sized thermal contacts.

I was surrounded, and my AAPV had disappeared to who knows where, taking the resources and equipment on board with it.

Agate reacted immediately and phased into the sublayer of reality that only she could access, the part that shielded the material layer from the Primordial Chaos energies of the Kaleidoscape.

She flew into the air at high speeds, and acted as my familiar, granting me her senses while being invisible to all.

In truth, while I had Agate, my own vision modes were redundant as her suite of sensory magecraft was much more impressive.

What I saw around me was a large group of people wearing black cloaks, each one carrying a wand of their own. They were in uniform, except the one middle-aged man with a wooden staff. Grassy plains stretched for kilometers, with a single stone castle to act as a landmark.

Perhaps calling it a castle was a bit of a misnomer. Five towers arranged in a pentagon shape, with a stone wall connected them, and a central tower longer than all the ones at the corners.

'There's lots of mana in this world!' Agate informed me telepathically through our bond. 'Can you feel it?'

'I can. So this is what a plane with ambient mana feels like,' I thought back.

The air felt thick. Like a strange, barely noticeable pressure on my mind. Through Agate, my mana sense further expanded, and become more refined.

Mana was everywhere. In the air, the ground, the grass, and even the people. It flowed this way and that, without an appreciable pattern I could discern, softly and ceaselessly.

The sense for magical energy was a little different for every magus based on the Nasuverse mechanics, and I qualified as one of them with my single artificial circuit-though if I ever went there the local magi would probably vehemently reject my claim to that title.

Usually the magical sense was attached to one of the five main senses, but in my case it seemed to be an entirely sixth sense.

'It's probably because you got used to sharing senses with me, and my own prana sense even before you created your artificial circuit,' said Agate.

'That's probably it. Is there a way we can sense how much magical power these mages have?'

I noticed that despite obviously being mages, their bodies didn't have a higher concentration of mana.

'Hm, not yet. They don't even seem to have circuits.'

'Have to be extra careful then.'

There was also another individual besides me that stuck out like a sore thumb among the uniformed and cloaked mages. He was lying on the ground, wearing casual clothes and looked like a Japanese teenager.

I heard voices and whispers amid much coughing.

"… another explosion…"

"… as expected of Louise the Zero…"

The Zero? A school of mages? This scene was starting to sound a bit familiar, pun intended. Yet another universe I would have considered fictional before I got Agate.

It seemed as though I had discovered the culprit that dragged me away from my AAPV and wherever I was originally going to land.

Louise the Zero, a budding mage with the power of the legendary Void element which caused her to fail at any other magic-though that truth was yet unknown to her-had just summoned someone from another world to be her familiar. Considering that the spell was able to reach across worlds-maybe even planes-it might have somehow also grabbed onto me while I was crossing in.

Or perhaps my own spell went through the path of least resistance when a gateway had already been opened by something else.

An interesting development, and something to investigate later.

But for now, I had to deal with the situation at hand.

Already, I was wary of this being different than the story I remembered. Weren't there supposed to be a lot more magical beast familiars here, summoned by the other students? Yet I didn't see any.

I drew myself up to a standing position and prepared to make my opening moves.

First I checked my inventory system with my augmented reality lens interface. It would have been really great if it worked, but as I expected, the inventory system simply returned an error. The physics of this world were not compatible.

So all I had was the stuff on my person and my extremely limited magecraft which would qualify me as less than third-rate trash by the standards of Agate's home plane.

If it came to a fight, I might have the physical advantage, being several times stronger than a regular human, and having decent martial arts skills. My armour was also quite durable, able to stand against conventional small arms fire short of armour-piercing anti-tank rounds.

That was all theoretical, of course, because either way, regardless of how my combat strength matched up with them, the greatest victory is to subdue the enemy without fighting. And certainly if I were to fight, it would be a commitment to specific objectives and not some foolish endeavour to test my strength against near total unknowns.

As the smoke cleared, my living armour's spikes and jagged edges retracted, then shifted color schemes to be less threatening and malevolent. I used brighter colours, especially gold, silver, and blue to project nobility in line with what I expected of this culture's sensibilities.

Of course, the only true marker of nobility here was magic, but I didn't have enough cards to play to carelessly show my hand just yet. At least Reinforcement worked at all, boosting my body and armour's attributes. It would be most irritating if my spells also stopped working because of magic system incompatibility. But luckily my spells were both extremely basic and previously tested to work on a world that didn't even have magic at all.

"… ugh…" The Japanese boy sat up with a groan and held a hand to his temples. He spoke in Japanese but it was no trouble for me to understand, as I had mastered a lot of Earth languages.

The two of us were surrounded in a circle, with a short girl making her way to us. Her hair was strawberry blonde.

No, really, it was actually a reddish blonde, not the pink one might expect based on the illustrations.

She looked between the two of us as if confused, examining us in detail. Her eyes lingered on me noticeably longer.

I ignored her and pretended to look around, stopping momentarily to face the middle-aged man who was probably their teacher, the stone castle in the distance, the Japanese boy, before ending with a stare towards the barely visible two moons in the daylight sky, as if that was the only thing worth my attention, yet using Agate to observe where my eyes did not.

"Who are you?" She asked intently. Her question was evidently directed at me, but her eyes flitted to the boy as well.

"… who am I…? I'm Hiraga Saito," the boy who was supposed to be the main character said.

I should mention that the students were all speaking in French, yet Saito somehow understood. And it looked like the people here understood Saito's Japanese as well. Was there a translation spell active?

"What a strange name," someone in the crowd said.

"Louise, what were you thinking, calling a commoner with Summon Servant?" Another voice asked. Then everyone started laughing.

"I… I just made a little mistake! He must have come along by accident!" She shouted. Then she ignored Saito and ran up to my armoured form. "Hey, you're the one I was supposed to summon, right?"

No, I wasn't, and I was not particularly inclined to let her make me her familiar, what with the potential mind control effect that came with it. For all I knew, the spell might not even work on me because I wasn't the original target.

I just needed to leverage this situation to get access to some things I wanted from the school. Acquiring information was the top priority.

Thus, I continued to show no noticeable reaction to her question, pretending to be fascinated by the moons. This was to establish our respective positions of power and to align with the story I would be sticking to: that Louise had summoned me completely of her own power rather than my having attempted to cross into this world on my own first.

The crowd's laugher quieted down to whispers as they watched.

"… is that a person?"

"… I've never seen armour like that…"

Louise's face looked frustrated. "Don't ignore me!"

The middle-aged man, who was probably their professor Colbert, walked closer with his staff in front, directed at me, and muttered something. Colbert was supposed to be a Square-class mage in a world where mage power levels corresponded to the number of vertices in the geometric shape of their ranks, ranging from dot, to line, to triangle, and to square at the top. In other words, he was an elite and very dangerous.

He was clearly casting a spell, but was he supposed to do anything like that with Saito? Or was this a grimdark alternate universe where this man would immediately try to force me to complete the familiar bonding with Louise?

If so, I would not go quietly into the night.

My hand moved like lightning to my utility belt and drew a gun, firing a warning shot.

The faces of everyone present turned to shock as they witnessed a solid beam of red light zip past above the man's right shoulder.

"If you target me with another spell, I shall not miss next time," I said in perfect French.

"My apologies, sir. I meant no harm. It was just a simple Detect Magic," said the man as he made an apologetic face without any sign of feeling threatened by the warning shot. "Your armour reveals little, and not knowing whether you were human underneath, I worried for the safety of my students."

I nodded to the man and put away the gun. He could be lying, but I should play along for now. "Your apology is accepted, monsieur. You are satisfied with your findings, then?"

He nodded. "Indeed. It's fascinating, really. I've never seen anything enchanted in such a manner before. Though I could not begin to guess at what your armour can do, the sheer complexity of the enchantment is marvelous. Almost as if there are thousands of tiny enchantments on that armour forming a larger whole, or perhaps, thousands of individually enchanted components making up the armour."

His description was interesting, but I had no idea what he meant, so I couldn't explain it even if he asked me straight instead of trying lead me into giving an answer. I could only assume it had something to do with how Reinforcement was perceived by his Detect Magic spell.

But more importantly, it seemed as though everything was lining up with what little I knew about the this story.

My enhanced brain, further helped by borrowing some of Agate's processing power, reviewed the situation and raced through the possibilities.

Finally, I'd found a world I could exploit at a comfortable danger level, without being exposed to beings of ridiculous power that could crush me like a bug at any time.

As a short recap, it had all started while I was minding my own business and waking up in a forest after escaping from some assassins, as a perfectly normal successful businessman on modern Earth, when two fictional characters appeared from nowhere and engaged in an epic battle and me nearly becoming collateral damage. I barely escaped thanks to one of them taking pity on me, gaining Agate in the process, which allowed me to travel the planes.

One random travel later and I landed in Worm-a world of superpowered heroes and villains colloquially called "capes", a place where everyone suffered, where there were mass murderers and mass brainwashing threats around every corner, where cities got destroyed every few months by invincible monsters, with a godlike alien that would obliterate everything within a couple of years.

Did I mention I had been trapped by that alien god, unable to shift planes?

Still, though I was practically a bog-standard human with no special powers when I first showed up there, survived and even thrived. I had built a major power base-an organization, armies and fortresses-back there that might have tempted any other second rate hero or villain wannabe to stay forever, ensconced in their glass castle.

Then I escaped with some minor personal upgrades and equipment before my bad luck could catch up to me.

Why?

Because no matter how high you climb, there's always a bigger mountain, and somebody stronger to destroy your delusions of greatness.

I had already experienced once what it was like to have everything I had worked for crumble in an instant, when those assassins very nearly succeeded in killing me. I probably wouldn't have lasted for much longer if it weren't for Zelretch randomly appearing, and that meeting merely showed me how utterly insignificant I was in the face of greater beings.

I could not afford to stand still and wait for the truly big bads to pay attention to me, especially when preciously little of the power I'd amassed in Worm was personal in nature, and so much was dependent on the loyalty of my powerful subordinates.

I had my eyes set on greater things, even if it meant becoming a small fry in a big world yet again. And leaving before the next scheduled apocalyptic monster attack was the cherry on top.

The next world after had been another horrifying deathworld, and I left that one immediately, to arrive on a world that seemed unremarkable in the short time I explored it. Possibly good for dominating and to serve as a safe retreat, but I set off again looking for something more useful to my ambitions of true interplanar power.

Then I found myself here. A nice magical setting where I might be able to expand my almost non-existent spell repertoire, in a medieval level of civilization where law and order were weak.

A place where I was not hopelessly outmatched and threatened by beings of godlike power.

Or so I hoped.

There was no guarantee that it would be anything like the novel or show, and my knowledge of either canon was pretty spotty to begin with. I only knew the general outline of the plot for a couple of arcs, only a few events in later arcs, and not many details on any of it.

'But no matter what, this time at least we aren't trapped!' Agate thought to me.

And she was right, being able to just leave whenever was a powerful safety net, unless I got killed in the ten seconds it took to cast the travel spell.

Could any of these people here threaten me to that extent? Perhaps Colbert could, but he should be among the top tier mages in the whole country, and he didn't seem to have any good defense against my sheer speed and laser beam-unless he was so far above me he thought I was no threat at all and not worth preparing a defense, or he had read my intention not to actually harm him with that move.

The whispers started again.

"… what was that light?"

"… Louise summoned a noble…"

Louise's expression seemed to waver between delight and queasiness. Probably happy that she summoned a potentially powerful familiar, yet concerned that she had broken some law by summoning a noble.

Instead of continuing on the topic of my magic in response to Colbert's observations on my magic, I said "Good. Then please also forgive me for assuming the worst. Your magic is unfamiliar to me, and I have learned to be cautious in my travels, particularly when summoned against my will and surrounded by a large group of unknown mages."

"Ah… your caution is understandable. No harm done," he said, chuckling. "Please allow me to introduce myself, I am Jean Colbert, a professor at the Tristain Academy of Magic. And these would be my students." He gestured around to the teenagers standing around. "We are the most well-respected Crown-chartered and sponsored magic school for the children of nobles in this beautiful kingdom, so I assure you we hold no ill intentions."

"I am known by many names and titles," I said solemnly, before listing off a bunch of nonsense they couldn't possibly verify to make myself sound suitably impressive and of a sufficiently high social status to entreat with other nobles as equals.

"The Polychromic Knight, Hero of the CRUCIBLE, Saviour of Brockton Bay, the Chromatic Calamity, the Infinity Magician, the Conqueror of Terminus, the Void Traveler…"

At that, Colbert's eyes widened behind his glasses.

"… and many more, but I doubt these mean anything to you, given how far away this land appears to be, so you may call me Axion."

That wasn't my real name, of course. There was power in names and that could be used against me.

"H-hey, what's going on here? Where are we?" Saito said as he got up.

"Shut up, commoner! Don't interrupt a conversation between nobles," Louise said.

"Girl, if you've summoned him here, he has a right to know why, does he not?" I asked in a tone that promised retribution if I heard the wrong answer, as the beginnings of a plot revealed itself in my mind.

"Speaking of which, why have you summoned us? And who are you?"

The girl had an admirably cool and collected response.

"My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. And I have summoned you to be my familiar as part of the sacred rite, the Springtime Familiar Summoning."

[Agate]

Initializing Strategic Intelligence Services…

Retrieving Data…

WARNING: Current intelligence is largely unverified by direct observation evidence. The following profiles are based on fictional depictions from Earth. Reality may be radically different. Caution is strongly advised.

Gandalfr Runes: One of four possible sets of Void Familiar runes. Grants the ability to use any kind of non-magical weaponry, plus significant physical attribute boosts when holding a weapon. Might also have a mental compulsion/memory erasure effect of unknown strength to ensure loyalty or cause the Familiar to fall in love with the Master and vice-versa. Would originally have gone to Saito Hiraga, a previously unremarkable teenager from a modern Earth, and allowed him to perform such feats as fighting off an army of 80,000 alone. It is unknown whether physical boosts granted by the Gandalfr runes would stack with other spells and upgrades.

Void power: A power described in legend as wielded by the messianic figure Founder Brimir, who supposedly created the magic system the humans use. There can be up to four Void mages at a given time, each of whom can summon a Void Familiar branded with unique runes that grant incredible power, far beyond normal Familiar runes. The Void magic itself is associated with non-elemental spells and all Void mages boast incredible magic power, but their spells also have extremely long cast times, a weakness for which their Void Familiars are intended to protect them.

Louise Vallière: A vessel of the Void power, which causes her great difficulty casting magic of the traditional four elements, with all of her attempts at spellcasting resulting in explosions. This has earned her the moniker "the Zero" among her classmates, and is a source of much consternation. She is desperate to be a proper mage, a feeling compounded by the teachings and expectations of her family and station. Her father holds the title of Duke, while her mother is Karin the "Heavy Wind", a Square-class mage famous throughout the Kingdom of Tristain. Her bloodline is related to the royal family, which is why she could inherit the Void power. She is also a personal childhood friend and confidant to the crown princess.

A/N: Welcome to all new readers and returning readers from AMN. There is a version of this story with Quest mechanics on Sufficient Velocity, if you want to participate in it (not cross-posting as Quest on both forums so it's easier to keep track of votes in one place). The story content will be identical and both are published in tandem, but this one will clean up any quest mechanics to read like a normal story.

Last edited: Jun 16, 2020

2 - Answering the Summons

2 - Answering the Summons

[Interlude]

Louise glanced nervously at the hulking armour that towered over her. After so many failures, she had finally summoned a familiar-two of them!-and this one both looked and sounded powerful.

'A renowned hero and knight!' She thought. 'He must be truly powerful to be known by so many titles! If he could be my familiar… '

She eyed the strange weapon he wielded. It looked a bit like a smaller version of a rifle, but it fired what looked to be a spell instead. Was it his focus, she wondered. Some mages used unconventional foci such as wandswords and such, but she'd never heard of a gunwand. Although she wasn't sure if she was breaking any laws by summoning a noble, if she could get a familiar like this, nobody could call her a failure again.

Her throat was tight but she swallowed and composed herself before answering in as refined a voice as she could.

"My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. And I have summoned you to be my familiar as part of the sacred rite, the Springtime Familiar Summoning," she clearly enunciated.

"I see. And what would being a familiar entail?" The man who called himself Axion asked. It was a man's voice, a sound that was naturally soothing and harmonious.

"You don't know? Aren't you a noble?" She asked in confusion. It was among the most basic knowledge for any mage.

"I am aware of what it means in other lands. I do not wish to make assumptions regarding this land's magic and customs, especially when you say it is a sacred rite to your people. It is best if you explained so there are no misunderstandings."

That only confused her more. Was the man saying that the Springtime Familiar Summoning handed down by the Founder Brimir was not a sacred rite where he came from? That would be heretical!

Just then, professor Colbert interrupted. "Perhaps I can explain, Sir Axion. Here in Tristain, every aspiring young mage is expected to perform the Springtime Familiar Summoning at some point when they feel ready. In the Tristain Academy of Magic, our students are required to do this ritual in the beginning of their second year, because the familiar summoned determines the student's elemental specialty, and therefore enables the student to advance to the appropriate courses for that element. As for what being a familiar entails, a familiar's most important role is to protect its master. It also helps the master with tasks like retrieving items, and lets the master see and hear through its eyes and ears. Although, familiars that are summoned have always been magical beasts in the past, not humans, and it should certainly only be one, not two. This is a very unusual case."

"Is that so? If all students are required to complete the ritual, why do I see no other familiars around?" Axion asked in a suspicious tone.

"That would be because the rest of the students have already completed their rituals, and their familiars are resting in the Familiar Garden. Louise has had to make a few more attempts at the spell than others, and her spells often have some unfortunate, ah, side effects, so we thought it best not to have the new familiars present as they still remain much of their bestial instinct just after the bonding," said Colbert.

Louise's cheeks burned in shame when the sniggers from the other students started.

"I see. Well, miss Vallière, you have incredible potential to have summoned me. However, based on professor Colbert's description, I must respectfully decline the position. Unfortunately, I have other commitments that would interfere with any duties as your familiar."

The words were like a physical blow to Louise, whose face looked like the picture of despair. She barely heard the words from Sir Axion after that. Her eyes glanced back to Saito, who had been watching silently with a dumb expression as if he still didn't believe what was happening. She watched as the commoner pinched himself a few times to no avail and was muttering quietly to nobody.

Louise needed a familiar to retain her status as a student, but how could she accept having a commoner for a familiar? Even if she couldn't get a powerful and beautiful familiar like a dragon or Sir Axion, her familiar had to be strong enough to protect her at least, not some commoner boy whose head might be less than fully there.

"Mr. Colbert, please let me try summoning one more time!"

"I cannot allow that, Miss Vallière. It is strictly forbidden. It is not possible to change the familiar once you have summoned it. The Springtime Familiar Summoning rules, as a sacred rite, take precedence over every other rule. However, you seem to have summoned two familiars where you can only have one, so if Sir Axion has declined, then you may take Mr. Saito instead."

"M-me?" Saito pointed to himself. "Hold on, I still don't understand what's going on here. Are you guys shooting a movie or something? But where are the cameras?"

"You have got to be joking… a commoner for a familiar?" Louise drooped her shoulders in disappointment.

"Well then, you should continue with the ceremony," said Colbert.

Louise looked at Saito again. The boy suddenly tensed and looked ready to run. Then he glanced around at the crowd and seemed to realize he was surrounded. His expression looked like something close to panic.

"What are you talking about? What ceremony? I-I haven't agreed to anything!" Saito said with wide eyes.

"With him?" Louise complained. Even putting aside the commoner's ability to protect her, finishing the ceremony meant she had to kiss him!

'To think a proud scion of the Vallière family would have to give away her first kiss to a commoner… ' she thought glumly.

"Yes, with him. Hurry. The next class will begin any minute. How much more time is this summoning going to take? After mistake upon mistake, you have finally managed to summon him. Hurry and form a contract," Colbert urged. The students voiced their agreement and the jeers started.

Louise groaned and prepared to step towards Saito.

Then she froze when a hand came upon her shoulder with an iron grip. A current of something seem to spread through her body, making her shudder.

"Excuse me, aren't you going to unsummon me, now that I've declined?" Axion said.

"Un-unsummon?" Louise stammered. She felt immensely relieved when professor Colbert interrupted.

"Oh… that might be difficult, sir Axion." Colbert eyed the man's grip on his student warily and shifted his staff.

"What's the problem?" The man released his grip on Louise, but Colbert did not relax.

"The spell doesn't have a way to return familiars to where they came. Nor are there any other spells that can do this. There has never been a case of a human summoning in history, so there was never any need to return the familiar. I'm afraid the only way for you to return is regular travel," said Colbert.

The ground beneath the foreign mage cracked suddenly without warning, setting off all sorts of alarms in Colbert's head. As an elite Square-class combat mage, he recognized the little signs that indicated a powerful opponent. Few were the mages whose very presence and raw emotion was enough for their magic to affect the environment around them-why, he himself was one of them-and if this man was of that sort, then he would have to be very careful.

Louise stumbled back when Axion rounded on her.

"That's rather inconvenient, considering just how far you've transported me with your summoning. Where I come from, there is only one moon in the sky." Axion's voice was deep and tightly controlled, but everyone present understood that he was not pleased.

There was a long moment of silence as the words sank in. Louise's eyes widened as if in realization, then dread.

"I… I…" Her mouth moved but she could not form words as the heavily armoured knight loomed over her ominously.

A pitch black wand materialized from nowhere in Axion's hand. Most of the students present did not take particular note of this minor action, but a couple of discerning individuals did not miss its significance.

'What manner of magic was that!' Colbert thought with a mixture of wonder and fear. Earlier the man had shown Royal Knight level reflexes and agility when he had drawn and fired that strange weapon, but this was something else entirely-certainly not speed or sleight of hand.

Then Axion turned and levitated into the air as his armour started glowing with a menacing red tint, the tip of his black wand releasing a small trail of rainbow coloured light.

'He's prepared to do simultaneous casting during the Levitation spell for airborne combat? That's at least Triangle-class skill!' Colbert thought as his veteran instincts kicked in. 'I've got to get the students away from this.'

"And I'm to find my way back through regular travel? To what might well be another world altogether?"

"Oh dear," said Colbert. "Let's not be hasty. I'm sure we can find appropriate compensation for your inconvenience, Sir Axion. Let us discuss this calmly." He positioned his staff in front of himself protectively and flew quickly, circling around to Axion's front, positioning himself between his student and the enraged knight. "Students, please return to the school and go on to your next classes! Except Louise, you stay here so we can discuss things with Sir Axion."

The rest of the students levitated away immediately.

"Shit! Shit! What the fuck?" Saito stared at the sky and looked around at the levitating mages with horror. "I'm dreaming, I have to be dreaming!"

[Kaleidus]

I slowly dropped back down the ground after the short standoff, and had Agate phase back out.

What I needed was their respect as a powerful mage, not their enmity, so that I had leverage to negotiate a deal with them. Unfortunately my magic wasn't very impressive, so I had to resort to trickery.

After cracking a small bit of the ground beneath me with improper Reinforcement, using Agate's light tricks, and materializing Agate from nowhere, I hoped that Colbert would be suitably wary of my apparent magical power.

Flying was the one spell I was willing to directly reveal, as Levitation in this setting was something any random mage could do. I also had Agate phase in to keep my ability to cast without a focus hidden. In this setting, if I remembered correctly, only Firstborn magic could be cast without a focus, and using anything that seemed like Firstborn magic would freak people out and cause them to assume I was one of the 'evil' elves, their religious enemies.

Additionally, I did not want Louise to complete the ritual with Saito just yet. I wanted it to be done in a controlled and private setting, with some opportunity to experiment and analyze it.

That Structural Grasp spell I performed on her body when I touched her did not reveal anything particularly useful. So far all I'd determined about the locals' magic was that their internal Willpower mixed with the surrounding environmental mana to create spells, but the mixed energy for only noticeable for an instant upon casting. I couldn't yet perceive where the 'Willpower' was coming from before the spell activated.

Plus, while she had a hope of persuading me to be her familiar, I could use that to extract some resources and support from her in negotiating with the school-assuming the staff cared about their students' future, and they should, given Louise's family held a Dukedom.

The fact was, if Louise already had a familiar, I would just be an irrelevant outsider. I was not naïve enough to think that these people would take pity on my circumstances regardless of how much fault they believed they had, and my lack of a true noble title they could recognize in any nearby country meant that they had nothing to fear from ignoring me except my own retaliation. The idea of compensation was probably just lip service unless they had something to gain from helping me.

By the time Colbert had come down from the air, only Louise and Saito were left standing near us.

"It seems that it is my turn to apologize. I was out of line. I understand this is an unusual situation for you, and you were not aware of the true nature of this summoning ritual," I said.

"Why can't I wake up?!" Saito shouted. He slapped himself several times then fell to his knees, looking despondent. "I want to wake up from this dream. I'm going to wake up and go on the computer. Tonight's dinner is hamburger steak. My mom said so this morning."

"It must be very stressful, indeed, to be taken suddenly from wherever you were, from friends and family, from your home," said Colbert with a sigh, glancing at Saito.

Then I turned to Louise. "As you are not skilled enough to send me back yet, I will reconsider the matter of contracting with you."

"R-really?!" Louise shouted with joyous disbelief. "You'll be my familiar then?"

"I said I would reconsider the matter. There are some things I need to educate you on, seeing as your school doesn't understand the magic you wield and the significance of summoning a human familiar, let alone me. You must prove yourself worthy of my support."

"O-of course, what do I need to do?!"

"Sir Axion… if I understand you correctly, you are saying that you know why Louise summoned human familiars?" Colbert asked.

"That is exactly what I am saying."

He stared at me expectantly as if waiting for me to explain.

"I must be clear, professor, I will not simply hand out valuable secrets of magic for free. I will inform Louise because she is the one who summoned me. Whether or not she chooses to inform you is her own decision."

"But Sir Axion, Louise is a student here, and we are responsible for guiding her in magic. Moreover, if you don't tell us anything, how could we possibly assist in returning you to your home?"

"Professor Colbert, I have seen enough to understand that your school is simply not qualified to teach a mage such as Louise. Whatever your skill at teaching, it is evident that your school does not have the requisite knowledge to understand or bring out Louise's true potential, because it's different from whatever system of magic you normally teach. The fact that she has been ostracized as 'the Zero' for being a failure at magic despite her magical potential is proof of this," I said.

"My true potential…?" Louise whispered to herself.

"As for assistance in returning to where I was summoned from, we will need to discuss in detail what exactly you can offer."

"Very well. I do not have the authority to offer you anything, so we must bring this to the attention of Headmaster Osmond. Please follow me," said Colbert.

3 - Tristain Academy of Magic

3 - Tristain Academy of Magic

"Mr. Saito, we are going to the Headmaster's office now," said Colbert again, after seeing that Saito wasn't moving.

"Get up already!" Louise tried to drag him up.

Saito struggled and push her away. "I'm not going anywhere with you kidnappers!"

"What did you say?!"

Colbert waved his wand and Saito floated up in the air.

"Ah! Stop! Put me down!" Saito grasped with his hands as if trying to swim to no avail.

"Saito, you don't have much of a choice but to follow along for now," I said. "There is no way back to either of our homes at the moment. So if you want to return to see your mother, you need to survive until you can find a way. Or would you rather stay out here to starve?"

"No… why… why did this happen to me?" He stopped struggling, but his expression turned angry.

"Asking why is meaningless. Perhaps you were chosen by a mysterious power, or perhaps you were just unlucky. The important is to ask how you're going to get through this," I said.

He turned a glare to me and muttered under his breath. "Easy for you to say…"

"Fine! I'll go with you. Now let me down already," he said to Colbert.

Once Colbert ended the spell, Saito tried to slink to the back of our procession.

As we walked to the school, Agate went ahead to scout out the towers and general structure of the rooms while phased out in Agatespace, that layer of reality protecting the material world from Primordial Chaos. When she was phased out, she was intangible but could still use a variety of sensory magic to see and hear her surroundings.

Each of the connected towers had classes going on and student dormitories, except the one central tower. The towers at the vertices corresponded to one of the five elements, but the one corresponding to Void was empty, simply gathering dust, and it didn't have a walled passage to the central tower either.

Powerful enchantments protected the walls, though it was impossible to determine what they did. To our magical senses, it merely seemed to be layers of concentrated mana with an indiscernible structure and pattern.

The walls of the school were built like castle walls, and inside were more student dormitories and a hallway going through the entire length.

However, my interest for now wasn't in these towers, so Agate quickly sped around to the main tower. While I could have had her listen in on some lessons, the lessons themselves were of limited use to me. If a normal mage took a year or more to learn magical foundation, how much could I really learn in a few minutes or an hour of instructional time?

"Sir Axion, do you really think I have potential as a mage?!" Louise finally asked, unable to stand the long silence of our walk.

"Tell me, is it typical for your spells to result in explosions, regardless of which of the four standard elements you attempt to use?" I asked

"How did you know? No matter what I try, it's always a failure…"

"Then, what happens when you cast the Explosion spell?"

"Hah? Explosion spell? What kind of useless spell is that?"

Colbert was listening in curiously, and even Saito seemed to be interested.

"The type of spell you'd use to destroy things," I said.

"I've never heard of a spell like that…"

"And yet you can cast it by instinct. Can any of your peers create explosions? Could professor Colbert cast something of a similar nature?"

The professor hummed contemplatively. "Well, in all honesty, I couldn't. There are some fire spells that have an explosive effect, but they're not quite the same."

"So you can cast something even professor Colbert can't."

"But… why would I want a spell like that?!"

"There are plenty of reasons to want to destroy things. If you were fighting in a war, wouldn't it be quite useful to destroy enemy fortifications or valuable assets? If your explosions were strong enough, you could kill groups of enemy troops in a single strike. That is the purpose of the Explosion spell," I said.

"That's… horrible… ! A spell that can only destroy…" Louise mumbled.

"Professor Colbert, you look like someone who's had experience in combat. Don't you agree with my assessment? It is useful to have a spell that can destroy things."

"Ah… what gave me away? I was a soldier at one time, yes," the bald and kindly looking professor said.

Louise gasped. "You were a soldier, professor Colbert?!"

"You have excellent reflexes and composure. So, can you think of where an Explosion spell would be useful?" I asked.

"Well… airships can be quite difficult to destroy at range with fire magic because of the protection from windstones, yet powerful Earth magic wouldn't be able to reach them in the air. If a spell could directly make it explode… it would certainly be more effective."

"So, Louise, if the kingdom was invaded by many enemy warships… would you still consider your explosions useless and horrible? Would you refuse your king or queen's call to arms, even though nobody else can do what you can?"

"Of course not! I would do everything I could to help! But… could I really destroy airships like that? My explosions aren't that strong…"

"You've never tried the true Explosion spell. Of course it wouldn't be very powerful, you've been casting it accidentally while trying other spells you aren't suited for," I said.

"Then that means…"

"You are fully capable of casting magic. You simply need to learn the correct spells you are compatible with."

"Is that true, professor Colbert?!"

"Erm… it could be possible. But I've never heard of an explosion spell either," the professor rubbed his chin in contemplation.

"Just as you've never heard of summoning human familiars, isn't that right?"

"Indeed. It's certainly something to look into…"

"Yes! I'm not a failure! I can do magic! Once I learn the right spells, I'll show them all!" Louise cheered with a jump.

"Can anyone learn to use magic?" Saito asked suddenly.

"Huh? Of course not, you dumb commoner! Only nobles can use magic. That's why we're nobles, our bloodlines were blessed by Brimir with the gift of magic to protect and rule over the powerless commoners," said Louise.

"Right…"

It wasn't long before Agate found several areas of interest in the main tower. First was the central library, filled with rows and rows of bookshelves. The topics covered much more than just magic itself, which was no surprise as I'd noticed that the classes also covered topics other than just magic. This was an institution for the basic education of nobility as much as it was for magic-which made sense if you considered that in this society magic was effectively equivalent to nobility.

One section within the library seemed to be warded against entry. Although Agate could move in while phased out and then phase back in inside the area, it could still trigger the ward's alarms, or force her out.

It wasn't worth the risk yet.

Flying to a book entitled Elementary Concepts in Magic, Agate materialized under optic camouflage.

She would be invisible to regular sight, but not necessarily magical sight or advanced forms of technological scanning such as X-ray.

The reason for exposing herself to potential detection was because her next action required her to be materialized.

She made physical contact with the book and cast Structural Analysis on it. This spell was an advanced form of Structural Grasp, the version that I was capable of casting myself.

Grasp allowed me to send prana into an object or person in order to collect information about its structure. Analysis was a much more prana-intensive version that allowed Agate to scan the contents of a closed book, recording its text in her perfect memory.

Using this, I could scan the contents of each book in this library in just a few seconds without my body having to enter the library, then review the text at my leisure. Although it would take time for Agate and I to actually read and comprehend it, it was possible to scan through a huge amount of books within a few hours.

In this way, I could learn the theory of their magic in secret.

-Except, the book resisted the foreign prana.

'It should be possible to overpower this with enough prana, but that will probably destroy the book. Even if the enchantment doesn't have a failsafe, that much prana going in would have an effect similar to failed Reinforcement,' said Agate.

After trying many other books, and observing their mana densities, the conclusion was clear.

Every single book in the library was protected by some kind of enchantment.

But why would they have such protections on these books? I didn't think that methods of magical reading and infiltration such as what Agate did were common in this world. If the enchantment were meant to prevent commoners from reading them, it still seemed excessive. Even fiction was protected.

Was it really worth the effort to add such protective enchantments on every book?

'I'm not so sure about that. If we go by the Mystic Imposition Theory, then rather than the protection blocking Structural Analysis, I believe it's because the book has a form of Magic Resistance. The enchantment itself is magical, therefore it must impose its own Mystery to the exclusion of a competing Mystery. It doesn't need to be enchanted specifically for protection from viewing to resist other spells,' Agate thought.

'So that must be why the magi of your world think that Structural Grasp is a useless spell. It's not supposed to work on anything with Mystery,' I thought back.

'Agreed. These enchantments? They could just be preservation spells. Not like we have any way to distinguish right now.'

'I suppose it does make sense if we look at it that way. A magical library would of course preserve all its books.'

As we walked through the main gates, Agate found one other heavily warded area in the central tower. This area's wards even blocked her from seeing what was inside it, but from outside it was clearly locked by huge iron doors with a bolt and padlock-it must have been the treasury vault.

The ward was impressive magic to be sure, but what was it meant to block?

The significance of this ward could not be underestimated.

It was definitely not the same sort of phenomenon as that which blocked the Structural Analysis. Although we didn't understand the magic of the locals, this much could be discerned from the interaction of the different spells involved.

In the first place, Agate's true nature was that of a Mystic Code, an artificial tool of magic, such that her every ability could be considered a spell. Her very existence was a Mystery of the highest level, and that which allowed her to see and hear were Mysteries in their own right.

So why then, was it possible for her to read enchanted books such as text on their covers through her normal vision but not read anything through via Structural Analysis?

It was because Structural Analysis was a Mystery [applied to the target] in order to extract information, whereas her sight was a Mystery that [processed received information]. The former would conflict with any other Mystery already on the target, whereas the latter was not directly interacting with the target.

Just like human eyes took in photons and used its physical interaction with components of the eye to generate an image to be processed by the brain, so too did Agate obtain information from light.

This ward was an actual protection against unauthorized viewing, which surprised me as I thought scrying was the domain of the lost Void magic, so what need was there to defend against it, and how would they even do it with the standard four elements?

And it somehow even blocked Agate-

-Ah. The answer had been hiding in plain sight, literally. Every mage could have a familiar, who could be the mage's eyes and ears.

Just like Agate was doing for me.

It would be rather incredible if they didn't develop some ways to stop small familiars from spying on important places after several millennia.

Most familiars I could see in the Familiar Garden as we passed it were at least the size of cats and dogs, but some were quite small. I saw a frog and some fairly small birds. There was also a floating eyeball, but that one was the size of a basketball.

"… and that's the situation," Colbert said, concluding his explanation.

The white-haired Headmaster Osmond stroked his long beard thoughtfully.

"Thank you, Jean. I believe I understand. Sir Axion and Mr. Saito, you both have my sympathies. Regretfully, it is simply not possible to return you to wherever you came from. The Familiar Summoning Ritual just doesn't work that way," he said, sighing deeply. "Although I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I feel that I must be honest with you. Even if the Church permitted the blasphemy of experimenting on the ritual, the reality is that our efforts would only be in vain. When mages perform the ritual, we are not truly the ones casting the spell of summoning and binding. The Church would say that it is the immortal will of the Holy Founder which directs the spell. Whether you believe that or not, it is undeniable that the ritual is just a ceremony. The magic doesn't come from the ceremony itself or the mage performing it, but an ancient spell which activates when a noble descendant of Brimir invokes it."

"So we're-we're stuck here?!" Saito shouted.

"Indoor voice, please, Mr. Saito," said Miss Longueville, the headmaster's glasses-wearing young secretary.

"I'm afraid that is so," said Osmond.

"Mom… dad… I'll never see them again?" Saito said, legs wobbling.

"Headmaster Osmond, I am not so unreasonable as to ask you to do the impossible. But if it is as you say, then I am forced to live here in this strange land, cut off from all my domains, titles and properties. How will I be compensated for this grievous loss and live peacefully in this land?" I asked.

"I would like to assist you as much as I can, Sir Axion, but there is very little that the school itself can provide as compensation. There is no legal precedent or authority within the school's Charter that would allow me to compensate you directly in this matter. I could perhaps appeal to the Crown on your behalf, but the stance of Queen's counsel would likely be that Miss Vallière has sole responsibility should you claim any damages. But since you are neither citizen nor resident of the Kingdom, the courts are likely to take the view that you must follow procedures for international litigation. That is to say, you must first file suit with the courts in the Kingdom in which you hold citizenship, such that they may service the documents through the relevant embassies."

"But that doesn't make any sense! The whole problem is that Sir Axion can't go back to his own country," said Louise.

"Indeed. Which is exactly why the courts would make that ruling," said Osmond, shaking his head. "Few of the justices would be interested in sitting over a case brought forth by a foreigner with no influence against a family as powerful as the Vallières."

"That's… that's dishonorable!"

"It shames me to admit it, but that is the way it is. If you feel it is unjust, Miss Vallière, you are free to offer compensation to Sir Axion of your own accord."

"Of course I will! How could I live up to the name of Vallière if I didn't take responsibility for inconveniencing Sir Axion?"

"Hey, what about me? Aren't you going to compensate me too?" Saito asked.

"Eh? If you're going to be my familiar, what's the point of compensating you? Everything I give you would belong to me anyway."

"What? I never agreed to be your familiar!"

Louise grabbed Saito's collar with an angry expression.

"Why, you stupid commoner… ! You should be grateful to have this opportunity! If I had a choice, why would I ever choose you to be my familiar?"

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Saito grabbed Louise's shirt in retaliation.

"H-hey! What are you doing, you perverted dog!" Louise's face turned red as Saito's grip ripped off the top button and exposed her skin.

"Oh shit! I didn't mean-"

Saito's apology was cut off by a hard slap that sent him crashing into the secretary's desk. His head slammed into the hard wooden edge, and his eyes rolled back.

"Urk!"

His body slid down, smearing the wood with blood from his head.

4 - Negotiations

4 - Negotiations

After Louise was escorted away by Miss Longueville to get a change of clothes, it was Osmond and myself left in the room.

"I understand if the school cannot compensate me directly from a legal perspective, but surely there is something you can do to help? You are the headmaster of the most prestigious school in Tristain, after all, and you seem like an honourable sort. Whatever the courts may say, the reality is that I was summoned under the supervision of this school. No one benefits when a man is forced to resort to desperate measures."

"Desperate measure, hmm? I suppose you're right. But what is that you would like help with? As I said, returning you to your world is not within my power, and if you need money, Louise seemed fairly willing."

Although I didn't care about reversing the summoning, negotiations were often about perception and bias than about quantitative or rational exchange. By setting a high or impossible opening demand, the other party is faced with a psychological threshold to negotiate down from. A terrible and insulting tactic when market prices are well known, but effective when dealing with things difficult to value or when there is a significant information advantage.

"Your people's magic may not be capable of returning me, but it may become possible by combining it with my own magic. I don't expect you to spend the resources to research this for years, but it's something I would want to pursue for myself. I imagine the school must have a library worthy of its prestige, and access to the library would be very helpful in this research."

"If you were Miss Vallière's familiar, there would be no problem. However, the library at the Academy is not open to the public, I'm afraid. You'd have to be a student, part of the staff, or given Crown permission. Still, if your magic is truly different… I imagine that might be of interest to the Crown, or to various mages on a personal level. A scholarly exchange wouldn't be out of the question."

I expected as much, but this wasn't something I needed to pursue aggressively right now. I could just as easily access the library by convincing a student to borrow some books on my behalf, and I could easily ask Louise to read her course textbooks. The problem with the other options Osmond mentioned was that there would be long-term obligations, and I didn't want to commit to anything yet.

"What about food and shelter in the short-term?"

I didn't actually need food or shelter to survive. I was fully capable of subsisting on a combination of sunlight, grass, leaves, animals, and soil, thanks to the power of my Bionanite Swarm enhanced digestive capabilities. My living armor could similarly feed on a huge variety of organic materials, and sleeping in the wilderness was easy with the comfort provided by my armor. Still, I had to act like a normal person, and get an excuse to hang around the school.

"Ah, that's an easier one. We have plenty of unused rooms you can stay in, and you can partake in the communal meals in the dining hall with the staff and students. I will make the arrangements for you, and you can stay for a month without any trouble. Any longer than that, and I'd have to file a request with the Crown, but I don't think they'd have any problem with you being a guest for a full term if necessary. I imagine four months would be sufficient to get your bearings."

"Thank you. That would be most helpful. Earlier, you mentioned the idea of citizenship, in regards to any lawsuits I might file. Nevermind the lawsuit, I don't plan on filing any-but how might one go about acquiring citizenship in Tristain? What restrictions on travel or work are there for foreigners?"

"Actually, there are really no restrictions on travel, other than paying the tolls, or if you're recognized as a known criminal. As far as I know, you don't need any sort of identification for travel purposes in Tristain or the nearby kingdoms, except in specific restricted areas. In regards to citizenship, there are many kinds of legal statuses in the kingdom. A noble is recognized by the Crown through letters patent, and this is not a simple matter. These days, almost all nobles derive nobility from birth. The vast majority of nobles do not have actual titles of peerage, but are noble simply by having a lineage traced to someone that did. However, for someone who was not born into Tristainian nobility to acquire the status is actually quite difficult and rare. It can only be acquired through marriage into a noble family, or by receiving a title of peerage from a higher ranked lord with the approval of the Crown. Simply having magic is not enough, though many jobs don't need or care about your actual noble status, or if they do, they don't bother checking. The main limitation is when you want to work for the Crown or the Church."

"So you're saying I don't really need to have any sort of legal status to live here. But there must be significant disadvantages?"

"Yes. As I said earlier, the courts will treat you differently. Simply put, if you are not a legal noble, and get into a conflict with an actual noble, it will not go well for you. The courts may not require any evidence except your accuser's word to convict you of a crime. Additionally, you would not enjoy the other privileges of nobility, such as exemptions from taxation, or the right to own most kinds of land. If you want to learn more about the specifics, I can pick out some books to loan to you on related topics."

"Please do. I would also be interested in anything you have that can help me understand what life is like in Tristain, the society, culture, economy, politics and international relations."

Osmond nodded and stood up, walking to a nearby bookshelf. "I have some useful books here with me…"

When Louise returned to the headmaster's office, Osmond suggested that she finish the rest of her classes for the day before returning to see him about the matter of her familiar, and he asked me to wait until her classes were over before discussing the matter of compensation with her.

After the meeting, a servant showed me the way to my guest room at the school. I spent some time reviewing the information Osmond provided me, and deliberating over my next course of action.

Over the long-term, gaining a proper noble title in Tristain would only be marginally useful to my plans. It simply didn't have many unique privileges relevant for a wanderer like me.

Most privileges weren't codified into a single law. The Crown could grant or revoke various privileges on an individual basis, and nobles who ruled over counties and duchies had significant power over their own domains.

Towns and cities had their own municipal laws and citizenships unrelated to nobility, for commoners.

There were some hallmarks of the early modern era, such as a standing army and fractional reserve banking, but many other things were very much feudal.

Most of the land in the country could not be purchased, as they were fiefs held by members of the peerage. The only land that could be purchased was land in communal areas such as villages, towns, and cities, which had their own rules.

Joint stock companies did not exist. A corporation was effectively a license, charter, or royal patent that granted some kind of monopoly over a business or area. If it wasn't operated directly by the Crown, it was usually a right given to specific nobles.

In the short-term, I would be fine without any title. Political power would only become relevant if I needed it to achieve some specific purpose, or if I wanted to spend the months and years it would take to build a permanent base of operations on this world.

And if I wanted to do that, there were better, faster ways than to work within the system.

[Interlude]

"Why do you wear full armour even in your own room?" Louise asked with curiosity in her eyes. "Isn't that uncomfortable?"

She sat facing Sir Axion who was still covered from head to toe in that strange armour of his.

"No. Is armour in Tristain normally uncomfortable?"

"I don't know… I just thought, it's a lot of metal, right? It'd be heavy and cumbersome." She had seen armour worn by the Griffon Knights and Manticore, and especially the armour her mother put on when punishing her. There were smaller pieces of chest armour that exposed the arms and legs which weren't too bad and she knew a lot of knights wore indoors, but the full plate armours didn't look comfortable to be in, with the clanking and awkward joint movements. Though Sir Axion's seemed much more flexible and smooth.

"My armour is unique. It doesn't suffer from such drawbacks. But never mind that, you're here to ask me about being your familiar, aren't you?"

"Yes. What will it take for you to be my familiar?"

"Why do you want a familiar? Isn't it possible to be a mage without having one?"

"But it's a requirement for the Academy! I have to have a familiar to stay enrolled in the school."

"Is that all, then? If it's just having a familiar, why don't you simply form the contract with Saito?"

"He doesn't want to either…" She said dejectedly.

"You've spoken to him already, after the incident earlier today?"

"No, but it's pretty obvious all he cares about is going home."

"You didn't seem concerned about his opinion before. Weren't you going to finish the ritual without asking him, back during the class?"

"Mr. Colbert was telling me to hurry up and finish it, and everyone was watching! I had to do it to prove I'm a mage!"

"So you wouldn't have forced him otherwise?"

"Familiars are supposed to be willing! That's the point of the ritual… it summons the perfect familiar. Nobody else has this problem. Obviously I want a familiar that wants to be my familiar, just like everyone else!"

"But nobody else has a human familiar either. If I were to become your familiar, would you expect to treat me like any other beast?"

Her face turned into a horrified expression. Is that what Sir Axion had been afraid of? She could never do something like that to another noble!

"N-no, of course not! You're a noble!"

"But as your familiar, wouldn't I have to take orders from you? Should I live my whole life according to your whims? Master and servant… it doesn't seem too different from slavery."

"No way! It wouldn't be like that! I wouldn't make you do anything you don't want to."

"But what if I have things I want to do that have nothing to do with you?"

"Then I guess I'd have to go with you." It wouldn't be fair if they only did things she wanted, right? If he was her familiar, she'd have to help him too.

"So in exchange for helping you, you'd help me? Does that sound about right?"

"Yes! We'd be partners, not master and servant! Partners!"

"Unfortunately, even as partners, you are not ready to form that kind of partnership with me."

Her shoulders slouched in defeat as she looked down. "Right. Who'd want to be the familiar of Louise the Zero? I'm useless…"

Suddenly Sir Axion grabbed her chin and lifted her face.

"I didn't say that. I said you're not ready for that kind of partnership. You will grow into a powerful mage in the future, one that might be worthy of being my partner, but right now you're just getting started. I don't think your magic is even strong enough to form the contract with me, and even if you were successful, the ongoing upkeep cost to your willpower reserves might overwhelm you."

"Upkeep? I've never heard of anything like that."

He must have been trying to comfort her with a white lie, she thought. But Sir Axion continued to explain with all seriousness.

"It's a magical bond… there is obviously a cost to maintaining it. On normal familiar beasts, the bond grants the familiar intelligence and additional power, while sharing their senses with the master. All spells have a cost, so why wouldn't the familiar bond have one?"

"Huh… that makes sense. But they never taught us anything about that."

"Because the familiar can also share its strength with the master, and when they are summoned, it's usually a familiar appropriate for the master's capabilities and potential. So normal mages don't feel the burden-the ritual chooses a familiar they are capable of supporting. If you look at the familiars your classmates summoned, aren't they generally quite young? They are intended to grow with the master."

Her eyes brightened. "Now that you mention it, it's true! Nobody summoned anything old!"

"However, you are a special case. You have far more potential than a normal mage and there are not many things capable of matching your potential, so you summoned something exceptionally powerful-me. That doesn't mean your current willpower and skill is sufficient to actual form the bond with me though. Your potential far exceeds your current ability."

"Really?" Did Sir Axion truly believe in her potential? Even though everything he said makes sense, she found it hard to believe anyone would really think so highly of her.

"Yes. You have the potential to be one of the strongest mages on the continent."

"How do you know?"

"Because the familiar reflects the summoner's potential, just as it shows the summoner's elemental affinity. In this world, what is the strongest creature?"

"I don't know." She thought back to all the familiars summoned, and the beasts she knew about. What was majesty and mighty, and what did she originally hope for? "Dragons?"

"No. Aren't dragons tamed by the Dragon Knights? Would you consider the dragon stronger or the knight that rides it stronger? Who rules this land?"

"You mean… mages?"

"Yes, you catch on quick. Humans are the strongest. Mages are stronger than commoners, but even commoners are stronger than the vast majority of wild animals by virtue of their intelligence. Commoners are much more useful for things other than simple fighting, wouldn't you agree? They can farm, craft, smith, trade, and so much more. With the right weapons in hand, such as guns and bombs, they can also fight off most animals or even weaker mages."

It sounded strange to think like that, but she saw the logic. Mages were obviously the strongest, aside from maybe the elves and some other firstborn races. Commoners were weak, but they were useful enough that the nobles ruled over commoners instead of just kingdoms of animals. It was hard to see them as better than dragons, but it was true that the Musketeer corps could be a threat even to mages.

"If you put it that way… I guess humans are pretty strong. And I'm the only one who summoned humans, so that means… I have the most potential! I get it!" She smiled widely and nodded to herself. "You know a lot more about magic than the teachers at the school, Sir Axion! You even knew why my spells keep exploding!"

"I wouldn't say I know more about magic than your teachers. I simply know different things, things that are relevant to your own magic. There is much about your land's magic I am unfamiliar with, and I look forward to learning it."

"Do you know what my element is too?!" She asked excitedly.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

5 - Student

5 - Student

[Interlude]

Sir Axion stayed silent for a moment. "Do you truly wish to know? Even if it may bring disaster and ill fortune to you and yours?"

"Huh? What do you mean?

"Some things are better left unknown. The truth can set you free, but it can be a terrible burden, one too heavy to bear for those of weak will. Once you discover your element, it will set you down a path of no return."

Then his voice seemed to change ominously, growing deeper and echoing with every word.

"You shall wield a power unlike any other, yet condemned to live a life of solitude. You shall be both hated and revered in turn, but none shall truly understand you, for you will cease to be a normal human. Your awakening shall mark the beginning of the end of an era, bringing misery and terror upon the reckoning. Great destruction and chaos shall follow before the dawn."

"What… what was that?" Goosebumps rose on her skin as she heard the prophetic pronouncement.

But there was no such thing as real prophecy. Not even magic could see the future. Many had claimed to be oracles throughout history, but they were of no consequence. Prophecy belonged firmly in the realm of stories and madmen. But there was something about the way Sir Axion spoke that was deeply unsettling. She couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it.

"It is the destiny that awaits you. There are greater forces at work than you know. I have thus warned you of the consequences. Do you truly wish to know, even so?"

"I don't understand… but a life of solitude? Misery and terror? Why? It sounds horrible. What could be so bad about my element?"

"Nothing in the future is ever certain, child. You may avert the worst if you are strong of will and heart, but it is in the nature of your element to leave a mark on the world, whether for great good or great evil. By summoning humans, you have already set yourself apart and made history. Therefore I ask you a third and final time. Do you truly wish to know your element and embrace your destiny that awaits?"

Where once she had been excited, doubt and apprehension crept into her every pore.

But was there any other choice? She needed to be a mage, and she needed to find out her element. That was the purpose of the school requiring the familiar summoning ritual. It was needed to determine her course selections appropriate for her element. If she didn't know her element, even if she completed the familiar contract and was allowed to stay at the school, she would still be unable to advance into many higher courses.

She knew what she had to do. Whatever the consequences, she would face them honorably and resolutely. Anything less would bring shame to the name of Vallière.

"I still don't really understand it, but… I won't hide from the truth out of fear of what might be! I need to know my element to be a mage. You said I just need a strong will and heart, right? I'll just have to make sure that nothing bad happens!"

"I see. Very well then. Your element is…"

The foreign knight leaned in close and whispered to her ears.

"… Void."

She must have heard wrong. Void? After all that build up, how could Sir Axion say something so blasphemous? It had to have been a joke.

"Wh-what?! Vo-!" Her shout was cut off.

A hand clamped over her mouth immediately.

"Do not speak it so loudly!" He hissed angrily. "There is no telling what might be listening from the shadows, or in the halls behind the door! Do you want to be branded a heretic and burned at the stake?"

Her eyes were wide open with fear. Of course she didn't want to be part of such heresy! But if Sir Axion knew that it was heretical, then why did he say it? He clearly wasn't an ignorant and uncultured heathen if he understood that much. He couldn't really believe it was true, could he?

Her, having the legendary Void?

"I am going to remove my hands. You will keep your voice down and we can continue this discussion discreetly. Blink twice if you understand."

She did as told.

After gathering her wits, she whispered back. "But that's impossible! I can't have the holy Void. That's the Founder's element."

"Good. It seems you understand. If the wrong people hear of this, disaster awaits. Until you are powerful enough, it is best to act exactly as you just did, as if you know nothing and the idea is simply impossible."

"Wait, that's not what I meant! I mean really, it's impossible! The Void has been lost for thousands of years."

"It was lost because nobody had the affinity, or perhaps any foolish enough to reveal their affinity was quietly killed by the inquisition. Of course, you don't need to believe me. What you do with that knowledge is your own business. You can reject the reality and live in ignorance at your own peril, if you prefer being Louise the Zero."

"I don't prefer to be Louise the Zero! Don't say it like I chose to be a failure!"

"You didn't have a choice before, but now you do. I thought you said you wouldn't hide from the truth out of fear of what might be?"

"That was… ! I wouldn't… but it can't be true!"

"How disappointing." Sir Axion shook his head. "If this is the extent of your resolve, then you are sure to meet with misery and terror in your future. Perhaps it would have been better for you to have given up being a mage. Getting disowned for being worthless would be better than suffering through what lies ahead."

"D-disowned? No… no… I won't!" She could see it happening. Her mother always had high expectations for her, but she had failed them all. Without magic, she wasn't even a proper noble. That was why she was so desperate to get a familiar, to prove that she had magic. If she couldn't bind a familiar and got expelled from the school, her family might actually disown her! Even if she did get a familiar… if she never learned another spell, she might still be disowned eventually!

"Believe whatever you want. I have nothing to gain from lying to you."

She was Louise the Zero, even though she didn't want to admit it. She had never been able to cast a spell. If she really did have the Void, maybe everything would make sense, but it was just too good to be true. Only one who had the blessing of the Founder could possibly have the Void. To think otherwise would be heresy of the highest order.

How could she possibly believe that she was worthy of having such a holy blessing?

"I… I don't believe you, you have to be lying… this is a trick, isn't it? I was a failure for so long, and now suddenly there's an answer to all my problems, and I even have a legendary power? How could I fall for such a… a scam? What do you want exactly? Money? I already said I'd compensate you. You didn't have to do this. Or maybe you just want to go home? You want me to help you find a way back, so you want me to look into lost magic?"

Suddenly Sir Axion began to chuckle, which shortly turned into full blown laughter. There was a sinking feeling in her gut. Had it been a prank all along? How could he be so cruel?

Then, as abruptly as it began, his laughter stopped.

"Fool. I don't need your money or your help to leave this world. Why do you think I so quickly recognized the difference in the two moons? Do you think a normal mage, instead of being in confusion and shock at being summoned, would look at the sky to scour for differences in something as constant as the moons in the sky, especially in daylight when they're barely visible?"

"… !" Her face turned to shock. Why didn't she notice that before? He was right! Why would someone suddenly in a strange place immediately look at the moons? A normal person would never even think about it! The celestial bodies in the sky were fixtures that hadn't changed for thousands of years.

"No… you… you've been summoned before?!" That was the only conclusion she could come to. He must have been in a similar situation, and knew what to look for.

"Not summoned. I can travel the void between worlds through my own power, I hardly need the assistance of a summoner," he scoffed.

"That's… Void Traveler…" Her eyes widened as she remembered the title he claimed. She hadn't thought anything of it before, but now she was starting to understood. "But then, why did you act that way before? As if you were stuck here and wanted compensation because you couldn't leave?"

"Did you already forget what I taught you mere minutes ago? All spells have a cost. The greater the spell, the greater the cost. The cost for traveling the Void is immense, do you understand? The only reason a whelp like you could summon me is because you didn't need to power the full spell, merely activate Brimir's spell through a ritual as Osmond kindly explained. Of course I require compensation, if I am to use my own power to leave! But such knowledge of such powers is not meant for unworthy ears!"

"O-oh…"

"As for money, I assure you no amount of money is enough to pay the cost, and from what I've already learned about you, there is nothing you can give me that one of my power cannot easily acquire elsewhere or take by force. I gifted you the knowledge of your element on a whim, because I thought you had potential and the resolve to achieve greatness. But if you would rather live in denial until your uncontrolled explosions destroy you one day, then begone! I have better things to do than to entertain a foolish child, such as finding something of worth on this world so that my presence here will not be a complete waste of time and energy."

Sir Axion made a shooing motion and gestured to the door.

Louise sat in stunned silence. She could hear the disdain as he said those last words to her, and felt humiliated. He was obviously implying that she was worthless, and she couldn't help but agree. Hadn't Sir Axion helped her already without actually asking anything in return?

And here she was, doubting and insulting the one person who knew anything about her problems with magic, completely misunderstanding his intentions.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I was stupid, please forgive me for accusing you of lying!"

The silence from Sir Axion from suffocating. Had she irrevocably lost her chance already? How could she have been so stupid? Even if she didn't believe him at first, she didn't have to insult him by calling it a scam and saying all those stupid things.

"Is that so? Why do you care if I forgive you or not? Once I leave, we will have nothing more to do with each other."

"Wait, wait, please! I don't know what to do! You're the only one knows anything about Void magic. If you leave, I'll never be able to learn any magic! Everyone here thinks I'm just a failure. I need your help, please! That's why, please forgive me!"

"You sounded quite sure of yourself when you assured me of your resolve not to hide from the truth. Yet your words meant little once you heard the truth. Were you merely pretending in order to satisfy me, and are you again pretending to be apologetic because you've realized that you need more help from me?"

"No! Please… it was just too much of a shock! I didn't mean to insult you like that. How can I prove that I'm being sincere? I really am sorry!"

"Hm. I can tell when someone is lying or not. It seems that you speak the truth. You are forgiven, though you have disappointed me with your foolishness."

She let out a breath she didn't even know she had been holding. But she couldn't shake the feeling of shame and regret. Sir Axion had been the only person who ever acknowledged her potential, and she had disappointed him. She had to watch herself and do better. Think before saying anything stupid.

"So, at least you can learn from your mistakes. But what do you think I can do to help you?"

There was a brief pause as she collected her thoughts and calmed down.

"Sir Axion, you're a Void mage, aren't you? That's how you know so much about it, and recognized my affinity so easily, right? Can you teach me?"

She waited with trepidation as the silence stretched on, wondering if she had somehow insulted him again. To her relief, when he eventually answered it was without hostility.

"Close, but not quite. I do not have the Void for an affinity like you and Brimir, nor can I use it the same way you do on the material planes. I have a different kind of relationship with the Void, one that is less about using its influence to perform magic, and more about higher order interactions. Teaching you is certainly within the realm of my abilities, but you should know that you cannot learn new Void spells directly from me. While on the surface we may bear some similarities to each other, being able to do some of the same things, the reality is that there are different underlying mechanisms at work, ones that are not mutually compatible."

"I don't really understand what you mean, but, but! Void is a lost magic and there's nobody else I can learn it from. Even if you're not a Void mage, you can still do more with it than anybody else! Even if it's only a little, if you can teach me anything at all, I'd be grateful! Please, I don't need a legendary power… all I want is just to be a mage!"

"Hm… I suppose I could spare the time to give you some pointers before I go."

"Yes!" She cheered, then caught herself and looked abashed. "I mean, thank you! Thank you so much!"

"Don't thank me yet. I won't be doing this for free. I will require payment."

"Of course! Ah… but I also have to compensate you for the summoning, right? All I've got is a thousand écu right now… I won't get any more money from home until next term."

"What is the value of an écu?"

"Well, the écu is a gold coin, and it's worth about twenty silver sous. A sou is worth twelve copper denier."

"I mean what can one écu buy on the actual market, then? I need a frame of reference. For example, what's your tuition at the school?"

"Um… my tuition at the Academy is ten thousand écu per term. A decent meal at a proper establishment would cost at least two écu per head, and about six écu for one night's stay. I'm not sure what one écu can buy… oh! Some of the commoner servants at home are paid ten sous a day."

"And all you've got is 1000 écu for the whole term? That's enough to cover all your discretionary expenses?"

"I know the other kids have a lot more, but mother is really strict. I could probably get by on two hundred until my next allowance if I'm careful not to cause more damage from spell failures…"

Last year she had to pay over six thousand écu in damages and medical costs, and her mother was furious with her. The thought of having to ask home for more money again because of her failures terrified her.

"I see. Consider yourself lucky that I have no real need for money, nor do I want to leave you destitute. Just give me 500 and I'll teach you for a week. As for the summoning, you can owe me three favours instead. I will tell you what they are when I think of them."

"Thank you, Sir Axion, you are truly generous!"

"Now then, let's not waste time. First, you will give me your textbooks so I can review your curriculum and what you've learned previously."

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6 - Contract with Saito

6 - Contract with Saito

I found Saito lying down in a bed in a patient room in the infirmary. After inquiring about his condition, I found that he'd already been healed and was merely sleeping. The school had covered his medical expenses

Nobody seemed to watch or care what I was doing here with him, so I shut the door and moved beside Saito.

The next moment, he was jolted awake when I switched my laser gun to taser mode and shocked him.

"Ah!" He cried out and twitched, eyes searching frantically while I put my gun away.

"Calm down. I just needed to wake you up," I said.

"What-what the hell! You didn't have to do that! What even was that? A taser gun?" He said in outrage, sitting up.

"Oh, you're pretty quick on the uptake. Yes it was."

He frowned as he looked around the room. "So what happened after that bitch hit me?"

"Nothing. Colbert took you away and the school's mages healed you. You've been in the infirmary ever since. How's your head feeling?"

He glared at me. "I feel fine… no thanks to you!"

"Don't act so fragile. A little shock won't hurt you. More importantly, you're mistaken. You wouldn't have been treated so well if I wasn't here. You think that girl's attitude is anything strange in this world? They see you as a commoner, and in this society magic-less commoners are treated like dirt. If they weren't trying to look respectable in front of polite company like me, you might not have been treated at all. They certainly wouldn't have stopped the ritual earlier without my interference, or were you hit so hard you don't remember that?"

He looked taken aback, then his frown deepened. "Damn, you're right. I guess I owe you my thanks for earlier. But aren't you a mage like them too?"

"I'm not from this world either, just like you. Even if I have magic, I don't share their customs and views on people without magic. Even if magicless people are generally inferior, it doesn't mean that there aren't exceptional individuals who are better in areas other than magic. Maybe you're smarter, physically stronger, more charismatic or disciplined… I judge people based on their individual merits, not simplistic generalizations based one trait they were born with. In the end, what you can achieve matters more than how you do it. Where I come from, magic is pretty rare. Science and technology has achieved a great deal that magic couldn't. This world is quite backwards in comparison."

"That's good. At least we have that in common. My world was full of technology and science too," he said with a breath of relief. "I still can't believe magic is even real."

"Did your world have no magic?"

"Not at all. Magic was just fantasy and superstition."

"Well, it's real here. You were healed with magic. And that magic gives the system of nobility here far more power than the masses. They have something to prove that they are different from the rest… and a way to enforce that superior social position."

"Yeah… but that's not a problem for you, is it?" He said glumly.

"On the contrary. These people are quite religious about their magic. My magic, being different from theirs, is at best a curiosity, and at worst, a subject of unwanted interest from dangerous parties. But I will admit, your own situation is much worse than mine."

He swore and clenched the fabric of the hospital blanket. "This is insane. They're saying we can't ever go home. Aren't you angry about it?"

"I'm not particularly pleased about being summoned, but there's no point in getting angry. The reality is what it is. They obviously didn't intend for this result either, and they can't fix it. Blaming them won't achieve anything. You'd be better off thinking about how to survive here."

"But what the hell am I supposed to do? I don't have any magic or money. Where would I go after escaping, even if I could somehow make it out of here?"

"Is that what you're planning to do? Escape?"

The boy threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know! These people freak me out and I don't like the sound of what they want to do to me. I just want to go home, but I can't."

"I wouldn't advise trying to escape. Like you said, you have no magic or money. Life is tough for commoners here, and even more so for someone foreign who isn't used to living in this kind of society."

Saito stayed quiet for a moment as if thinking, then closely scrutinized me.

"So why did you come and wake me up?"

"I came here because I thought you might be hungry soon. You're a commoner so these people haven't made any arrangements for you. That's why I got some food for you myself. Now it would look strange if I, a noble, brought you food, so you need to follow me to the guest room I'm staying at. But nobody would be suspicious if a commoner was following a noble around like a servant, and that way they will think you're working for me, and therefore under my protection."

"Oh… thanks! I do pretty feel pretty hungry."

"Now let's go. We can talk more there. Try not to draw any attention to yourself by looking too fiercely at anyone. Act like a normal commoner the best you can."

"Seriously? Damn, I don't know if I can act like that. I just have to look down, right?"

On the way back, there were many whispers and people pointing at us when they thought we weren't looking. But they all kept their distance.

While Saito ate, we continued to chat.

"So, what are you planning to do here? I assume you're not going to try and escape, not that you need to, with how they treat you here," he said enviously, looking at room full of what appeared to be antique furniture, and the luxuriously grand meal he was consuming. There was roast duck breast, mussels, veal ragout, onion soup, salad, soufflé, wine. It looked more like a feast for two or three people than one, even though this was apparently the standard dinner portions for a single noble.

"And I'm grateful, but why exactly are you helping me?"

"I'm interested in studying the magic of this world, and exploring it. As for why I'm helping you, well, I think we can help each other. We're both outsiders here… it makes sense to try to work together, right?"

"Help each other? But how?"

"In the short-term, you need food and shelter to survive and a way to protect yourself from the nobles. I can help you with that. In the long-term, you need to find a way back home. I happen to know how you might be able to do that."

"Wait, seriously?! You know how we can go home?" He nearly choked on his food and swallowed hard, rubbing his throat.

"Yes, but like I said, it's a long-term goal. It won't be easy. I know of a spell that can open a portal that goes in the opposite direction as the summoning, but I don't know how to cast it myself. It might take a lot of research, but it's definitely possible."

"Are, are you sure?" A glimmer of cautious hope flashed in his eyes.

"I am 100% sure. I already have a plan. You see, the girl who summoned us has a special magic that I recognize. That's why she summoned humans instead of animals like everyone else, as you've heard us talk about earlier today. If she learns the right spell, she can create the return portal. The problem though, is that the magic required is considered both lost and of religious significance similar to the so-called sacred rite of the familiar summoning that Osmond said would be heretical to mess around with. The church has a lot of power here, so nobody else will help us. Fortunately for us, that girl can only do magic that would be considered heretical, and nobody else can or will help her, which is why people think she's a failure around here. So if we play our cards right, we can get her on our side and have her learn the spell eventually."

"Oh man, that's the best news I've heard all day. At least there's hope," he said, having forgotten all about his food.

"Don't get too excited yet. This is going to be a long and difficult undertaking. I hope you realize that everyone else might become an enemy at any time. If anyone finds out what we're doing, and the church decrees that we need to be burned at the stake…"

"I got it. We just gotta keep it a secret, right? I can do that. So what's the plan?"

If I really cared that much about 'the plan' and keeping it a secret, I'd be more cautious about dealing with an overly excited kid who didn't seem to be taking this very seriously, but his enthusiasm merely worked to my favour.

"First, you need to let the girl finish the familiar ritual on you. Despite what it sounds like, you actually benefit much more from it than her."

"Wait what? I don't want to be her familiar. Isn't it just being a servant?"

"Look, how else are you going to survive? If you're her familiar, she'll have to keep you alive, at least. And if she treats you badly, I can help smooth things over. Right now, she desperately needs my help to learn how to use her special magic, and she knows it. She'll listen to me if I tell her to be nice to you."

He still looked hesitant. "So basically, you're saying I have no choice."

He should have been grateful that I even talked to him about it first. I could have simply told Louise to finish the ritual while he was unconscious. But I didn't say that out loud, as I wanted him to think I was on his side.

Still, he needed to understand his position. People naturally start taking things for granted if you help without a price, and many people often even get the idea that you somehow owe them even more after a while. Like dear Amelia in Worm, the moment she stopped healing people for free, there was quite a controversy over why she wasn't serving the public anymore, and a vocal minority that even blamed her for failing to save their loved ones, at least until her accomplishments as part our hero team outshone her prior reputation as the miracle healer. It was an unfortunately irrational aspect of human nature.

"Do you think you can survive on your own? Becoming her familiar, she'll be more obliged to help you. I also need to observe and research the magic involved with the familiar bond and summoning. And to be frank, I'm much more interested in the dimensional magic itself than using it to go anywhere. From my perspective, there's an adventure to be had out there exploring this new world. So if you aren't going to contribute anything, understand that I'm not going to keep helping a freeloader, nor am I going to be in any rush to discover that particular spell."

"Damn," he said and swore again. "I get it… I'll contribute. But becoming someone's servant, especially somebody like her… ugh… this sucks."

"It's not that bad. Like I said, I'll smooth things over if she treats you badly. Just think of it like a job. You're still young so maybe you won't understand, but if your world is anything like mine, I doubt it'll that much worse than the backbreaking corporate grind of most average workers."

"Yeah but I was just a second year high school student. I had years of messing around before working."

Time to switch my angle. The carrot after the stick.

"Then, at least you get to work for a cute girl your own age, right?"

"She's not… okay maybe she is. Her face is so hot. If only she had bigger boobs, she would be a perfect ten," he said, eyes glazing over as he stared into an image only he could see in his head. That was an abrupt change.

"And as her familiar, you'd be just almost like a lover. You'd be with her all the time, protecting her. Wouldn't it be easy for feelings to develop? She'll probably have you stay in the same room as her at night too."

"Oh, yeah… like a lover…" he said as drool collected on his lips.

"Also, I believe you will receive a special power once you become her familiar. It's the best and easiest way to gain the strength to protect yourself, and you'll look cool while protecting her."

That caught his attention again as he blinked. "A special power?" He asked curiously.

"Most familiars, which are animals, like the ones the other mages have, gain sentience and become stronger once they become familiars. But when a mage with the special magic that the girl has forms a bond with a human familiar, the familiar gets one of several great powers instead. I believe that her familiar would gain mastery of all weapons and a tremendous boost to physical strength and speed. In other words, you would become a superhuman warrior."

"Ooohhh…" His eyes lit up. "That actually sounds pretty cool."

"That's why I said you actually benefit more than her. You get a nice power, and she pays the magical cost, but she can't really force you to do anything."

"She can't? But how do mages keep their familiars loyal?"

"Normally, with an animal, they just naturally become loyal. With a human, I'm not sure. I suppose there might be a mental compulsion of sorts."

"Wait hold on, you mean like mind control?" He asked with shock.

"If you're worried about it, I have a way to deal with it. In fact, I was going to suggest this anyways, to make sure we can trust each other not to betray our secret to the church. We can form a magically binding contract for our little conspiracy, the terms of which would be as follows. Both of us will not deliberately betray any secrets about our true goals and activities to others without mutual agreement, and neither will try to deliberately harm the other directly or indirectly. Our goals are to research the lost magic known as the Void, and to have the girl named Louise Vallière learn and cast the Void spell to bring you back to your world. As part of the process, I will help you survive and mediate between you and the girl, while you need to help me with the magic research. I can further include a clause which says that if I suspect you are under the influence of the girl's mind control, you will obey my commands instead until I can break you free of her influence. It's not perfect, but it should act as a counterbalancing influence."

"A magical contract, huh? Is that really going to work?"

"It's not perfect, but it can definitely impose a penalty if you fail to comply. So if her spell is too strong and you cannot obey my commands because you're under her control, you could be paralyzed as a penalty and she won't be able to control you either. Then I can negotiate for your release."

"But what if it does work, and you abuse your control over me?"

"The contract also says that we can't harm each other, remember? So I won't be able to do that."

Of course, harm was up to interpretation.

"Un, alright. I guess I can accept that."

"I'm going to need some of your blood to cast the spell," I said, taking out a knife. My armour at my hand retracted and I made a small cut on myself first.

He followed my instructions, then I fully recited the terms of the contract again, and cast a Geas curse, which I had carefully refined after experimenting on numerous human subjects back on Worm. In the source material that inspired this spell, the caster had been able to do it with a quick incantation and not even formally reciting the exact terms of the contract. After independently re-inventing a similar spell, I discovered with Agate was that the spell required not only the true consent of the of target, but also that it was more powerful if I got the target to participate in ritual actions that strengthened the conceptual weight of their commitment, and even stronger when they gave me a piece of their body to use as the curse anchor, such as blood, or performed a sacrifice for the ritual.

Agate materialized in my hand and captured the blood from both of us-my own blood was superfluous. It was just there to make him think it was a mutual contract.

There was a lot I wasn't telling him, like the fact that my Geas curse only affected the target of the curse, not myself, even if it was worded to have mutual obligations. The only mutual part of it was that if the target believed that I failed to hold up my end of the bargain, the target's obligations would be cancelled. In other words, the only person that could enforce the contract was me, and I could go against the contract with no consequences simply by making sure the target never realized I was breaking it.

It also wasn't true that it couldn't force people to do things. It was entirely possible to force very limited actions under certain circumstances with the powered up blood ritual version I just used, but it couldn't be used to control people like a puppet for extended periods or complex tasks.

Finally, there was the fact that I was quite certain the familiar bond did have a mind control component, and that it wasn't something Louise had active control over. In other words, I would always be suspecting Saito of being under the influence, therefore I could command him to obey me at any time.

"Argh!" He clutched at his chest painfully. "Could've warned me…"

"Sorry, too late for that. But I can warn you that the ritual for the girl's familiar bond is much more painful."

"Ugh… shit!"

The two of us went to Louise shortly after and informed her that Saito had agreed to the familiar bonding.

She quickly got over her shock and performed the ritual.

I observed as much of it as I could with Agate, and in the end, Gandálfr was spelled out in old Norse runes on the back of Saito's left hand. I wondered if Brimir actually came from an ancient Norse civilization from another Earth.

I left them on their own to do some master-familiar bonding, and told them that we would meet after Louise's classes the next day to begin training and testing their abilities.

Neither of them could hide their excitement. I doubted their good moods would last much longer after they spent some time together. I could do something about Louise's attitude towards Saito upfront, but it would be better to let him experience it first. If he didn't complain about it, I wouldn't mind if he got used to being a servant. Who knows, he might even enjoy some parts of it.

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7 - The Floating Island

A/N: Shoutout to my new beta-readers Nidhogg, Trek, and inphernalmenace. Thanks for the help!

7 - The Floating Island

As I slept, Agate went out to track down my Amphibious All-Purpose Vehicle.

There was an emergency locator radio beacon that the AAPV was broadcasting, whose location could be triangulated by receiving the signal at different locations.

Agate had eventually found it hiding in a forest near the east coast of Albion-if you could call the edge of a floating island a coast.

Albion was an island country only 300 km away from the coast of Tristain, though the distance varied throughout the year as the island moved around sometimes, even overlapping Tristain occasionally.

As for how the AAPV could be 'hiding'?

That was because it had an AI controlling it. It was another instance of the same AI I had on the portable computation core in my armor, which also ran my visor systems including the lie-detector software I used on Louise, though the two instances were too far to communicate effectively on high bandwidth wireless channels.

Its name was Offensive Bias, obtained in the Worm plane by making a copy of the AI superhero Dragon, and named after an AI from another story. It was also one of the key pillars behind the meteoric expansion of my power base during the final phase of my month-long stay in Worm, capable of unlimited parallel processing and exponentially growing productive capacity with Tinkertech and modern technology.

When Agate phased into the interior of the AAPV, Offensive Bias delivered a report on its activities.

The AAPV had the misfortune to appear in the middle of an ongoing pitched battle, while I had disappeared without a trace or any discernible cause. As per our entry risk scenarios, Offensive Bias considered my disappearance to be either a planar travel accident or enemy interference.

The protocol for this was to avoid attention as much as possible, while broadcasting the emergency locator beacon so I could try to find it, and gather information in the meanwhile. If I didn't find it within a few days, it would take other steps to locate me instead.

Because it appeared in the middle of a battle, it had caught the attention of both sides. A bulky tank-like vehicle appearing on an early modern battlefield packed with melee combatants looked grossly out of place. Stealth capabilities onboard weren't advanced enough to achieve visual cloaking at such close ranges, even if the Tinkertech worked-and it didn't.

One side actually tried to attack it almost immediately, while the other seemed to think the AAPV was on their side.

But Offensive Bias saw no need to participate in the battle, and flew away after extending the wings and engaging the magnetoplasmadynamic thruster system.

Modern MPD thrusters were still in the experimental and prototype stages, and none of them were suitable for low atmosphere flight due to the extremely low thrust generated. Like other ion engines, this technology was developed mainly for interplanetary travel because their mass ratio and specific impulse efficiency and were many orders of magnitude better than chemically propelled rockets. But even though these were the most efficient ion engines, they still suffered from the low thrust.

In space, acceleration was basically irrelevant when you could continuously thrust up to higher velocities by Newton's first law, but in atmosphere, drag forces and gravity made acceleration far more important.

As its name implied, the AAPV was a vehicle that I wanted to work in all sorts of environments-land, atmosphere, water, and space. That meant forms of propulsion that required a medium such as jet engines which inhaled air were unsuitable, and something like MPD thrusters was ideal.

The limitation of modern MPD was the extreme power requirements needed to generate higher thrust, and the extreme weight that such power generation would add to the whole setup.

That just happened to be a problem we had solutions to. Of all the Tinkertech we had access to, most broke down without the Wormvoid physics, but often there were principles and components that we could learn from and use. The more examples of Tinker designs in a single section of the tech tree that we had, the more we could advance our non-Tinker tech beyond that of modern technology.

So while we were mostly limited to Worm's 2011 tech, some of our tech was actually decades ahead.

The most advanced area by far was in power sources, specifically nuclear power, because energy was the foundation for every Tinker regardless of specialization-you couldn't do anything without it. And the energy requirements for most Tinkertech were off the charts even though almost everybody built only small-scale tech meant for a single person's use, so everybody had really powerful reactors, the majority of which were based on nuclear principles.

The AAPV was thus equipped with compact nuclear fission reactors that could handle the necessary electricity required for the MPD thrusters, enough to break the sound barrier even with the terrible drag it suffered from its volume-maximizing form.

Still, relatively speaking, the reactor and thruster systems did take up a lot of space and weight just because the vehicle was so small, while also adding some risk of catastrophic failure, but when I had left Worm I wanted to make sure I had the ability to run away from any overwhelming foes.

It didn't need to go anywhere near the speed of sound to escape this battlefield, though, as the Dragon Knights were moving at less than 100 km/h.

They could only watch dumbly as the streak of light disappeared into the distance.

Eventually, Offensive Bias found its current hiding position and sent out smaller stealth drones for reconnaissance on the locals.

The report had me thinking about whether it was really a good idea to plane shift with the AAPV. Though it had stealth and camouflage capabilities, it wasn't to the level where they wouldn't attract attention if I landed in a populated area.

Before this world, I'd been lucky enough to enter without witnesses, but in the future… I wondered if I might be better off keeping a lower profile, and only going back to Worm to get it if I actually needed it at the cost of two extra interplaner trips' worth of planar energy.

After Agate found the AAPV, she went to investigate what felt like unusual mana clusters she noticed underneath the floating island.

That led to the discovery of the massive windstone deposits buried inside the earth, and Agate dug her way in until she could experiment with their mana.

I vaguely remembered from the little I knew of the story something about windstones powering airships and being the reason that Albion floated, but didn't know much more about it.

Nevertheless, Agate experimented and found that she could use them.

'It's a bit like jewelcraft. Although we don't have the mystery for imbuing or manipulating jewels with spells or prana, if it's a naturally forming source without an enchantment, extracting the pure mana should be easy. It's not that much different from drawing the greater source of the environment into our magic circuits, except we focus on the mana deposit in the windstones,' she informed me.

Although Agate didn't have a true soul, she had high quality magic circuits formed from pseudo-spiritrons, which is why she could do this experiment independently from me. In fact she had much more prana to spare compared to me and my one trash tier artificial circuit, even accounting for all the prana that went into maintaining her core functions.

'Theoretically, because the stones have wind element mana, we could use them to cast wind spells without having the affinity ourselves, at least for spells based on our own thaumaturgical system, not the ones the Halkegenians use. We'd have to create the mystery ourselves, but I thought it wouldn't be very hard. The stones already have an effect without being part of a spell-we can build off of that, without having to manipulate the mana from scratch,' she said.

'Any luck so far?' I asked.

She was still there, flying around with several wind stones attached.

'Only a little. I've only managed to figure out how to use the stones to float if I have one attached to me, but it's not very efficient yet. I have to levitate the stone to keep it attached to me, which costs almost as much as levitating myself directly. The net gain is too small, and I can't use it to generate propulsion yet, so if I actually fly with it, the gain turns into a small loss instead when I have to propel both myself and the stone.'

Agate wasn't the only one busy while I was asleep, however. The Offensive Bias instance I kept with me wirelessly controlled a small humanoid robot to finish optically scanning the books Louise lent me into electronic storage.

After I was up to speed with Agate and Offensive Bias' activities, I retrieved the robot, storing it within one of my armour's many flexible compartments, and headed towards the dining hall.

Last night, I spent some time making adjustments to my Armoriont armour, completely revamping the shape and texture.

When I first arrived, there hadn't been enough time to do more than minor adjustments like the coloration, leaving it as a contiguous and smooth pearlescent crystalline full-body armour. Cellulose nanocrystals were the primary material the Armoriont was composed of, so that was its default appearance. However, it was possible with some time and effort to substantially change the appearance to mimic other substances, or even change the actual composition by absorbing and reprocessing biomass or metals.

While it couldn't easily mimic metal, I could still transform it into something a bit closer to local styles and still provide adequate protection. Something that without close observation or specialized expertise, might be seen as merely the eccentric attire of a high ranking noble rather than something clearly unnatural or foreign to all of Halkegenia.

Portraits and pictures of local knights showed that they typically wore light armor in the form of cuirasses with minimal limb plating, steel greaves and leather or fabric for the rest.

It took several hours to make all the new adjustments, but most of it was done automatically by my Armoriont as I slept after I developed the design for the outer layers.

The result was something inspired by fantasy dragon scale mail, using gleaming golden scales similar to but more resplendent than the texture of the blue dragon familiar I'd observed on campus. An opening on my helmet would allow me to eat with the locals, but my eyes were still covered by my visor which now functioned as a one-way mirror.

A crystal shield plate was affixed to the front of my utility belt, depicting a kaleidoscopic spiral sure to give anyone headaches with its intense iridescence and optical illusion of moving, with a physical golden crown on top and two dragon supporters on the sides to form a heraldic coat of arms.

I left two high shoulder guards in the silver crystalline form, underneath which I had grown a two-piece red cloak, because all nobles wore cloaks around here.

The cloak pieces' outer layer was red silk, but the underside was more of the silver crystalline cellulose with more of a membranous texture, and the cloak itself was very thick.

That was because they had the secondary purpose of serving as wings. The base of the wings protruded from my back, but the cloak and shoulder guards hid most of the wings from view, disguising the visible area as part of the cloak, so that it would appear as though the cloak was a magical artifact instead of a biological appendage.

I strode into the dining hall and found it already packed with students, most of whom turned and stared as soon as they noticed me. My enhanced hearing allowed me to hear them whisper and speculate about whether I was a new teacher.

"… no way, he looks too powerful to be just a teacher…"

"… that coat of arms looks foreign… and they make my eyes hurt…"

"… must be worth more than a castle…"

"… could it be that noble who was summoned by the Zero's failed familiar ritual yesterday?"

A brisk walk led me to the staff table, where I was met with some confusion and wariness until I greeted the Headmaster Osmond and professor Colbert with a friendly wave.

"Good morning, headmaster Osmond, professor Colbert. I must admit I am impressed with the accommodations I've had the pleasure of taking advantage of so far. It does the Academy great credit to treat its guests with such dignity."

"Ah… is that you, Lord Axion? Good morning to you as well. Forgive this old man for not recognizing you right away. You look very dashing in that splendid armour. Even a king would be envious to own a piece so stunningly majestic. A work of art, that is," said Osmond.

"Oh my, that can't be native to Halkegenia. It looks a bit like dragon scale but I've never seen any so reflective. Where were you keeping all of that yesterday? Do you have a method of storing items in very small spaces? Or perhaps a spell of shrinking? That would be truly marvelous. And how can you see out of that?" Colbert asked in quick succession as he stood up to examine my armour.

"Jean, exciting as it may be, you are being impolite to our guest. Please have a seat and join us, Lord Axion," said Osmond.

Colbert hastily apologized and I took a seat beside him with a disarming smile.

Colbert proceeded to introduce me to his colleagues as people continued to stream into the dining hall.

When the food was served, I joined them in the local custom of pre-meal rites to the Founder.

As far as I could remember, none of these people were important to the plot, but it wouldn't hurt to socialize a little bit, which was mostly me answering their curious questions.

In a civilization without advanced entertainment technologies, people took great joy in hearing the tales of faraway travelers. It was true historically on my Earth, and it seems that was the case here too.

I indulged them with vague descriptions of some common household technologies like cars and microwaves, stories of heroes battling against evil mages and monsters, and accounts of my personal heroics.

It wasn't long before breakfast was over and everyone began leaving the dining hall to start their classes.

Louise was just about to leave with a sulking Saito who hadn't partaken in the nobles' meal when I intercepted and waved them over with a call of their names.

They looked confused for a moment, until I clarified who I was. I told Louise that I was done with her textbooks and the two followed me to my room to pick them up.

As they departed for class, Saito was given the role of book mule.

Saito stayed back and complained. "Do I really need to follow her around the whole day?"

"That's your job as my familiar!" Louise cut in when she noticed he wasn't moving.

"But I'm so tired… I barely got any sleep yesterday. I don't know how I'm gonna survive sleeping on a pile of straws every day."

I gave Louise a disapproving frown. "Did you really make him sleep on hay like an animal?"

She looked down with embarrassment. "I wasn't expecting to have a human familiar, so I didn't have a bed prepared for him."

"Well, you'd better find a solution soon. If your familiar is too tired because you aren't taking care of him properly, he won't be able to perform his job, and you'll have nobody to blame but yourself for it."

"Yes, I understand, sir Axion. I'll talk to the headmaster about getting an extra bed," said Louise with a sigh.

I nodded then turned to Saito.

"If you're feeling tired, just sleep in the classrooms. You're not a student so the teachers can't tell you off."

"Oh, that's true! Hehe… I can be a delinquent and not get into trouble!"

Last edited: Feb 10, 2020

8 - Ancient Sword

8 - Ancient Sword

Compared to Agate which could fly by herself at about 800 km/h omnidirectionally, I flew much slower at about 100 km/h relative to the ground, with potential to perform maneuvers mid-air up to 250km/h on diving. All in all, it was similar to the dragons of Halkegenia, though still faster than Agate dragging me along with her flight spell.

I reached the capital city Tristania in less than ten minutes flying leisurely from the Academy.

As Osmond told me, travel controls were lax. The guard at the gate didn't do anything except stare at my landing and quickly bow his head as I walked past.

It was early in the morning and few people were on the streets, but I still got quite a few stares from the commoners who quickly lowered their eyes when I turned to them.

I walked around quickly following signs to the market district, going into various weapon shops.

After two hours of fruitless searching, I found another shop with a sword icon on its sign in a narrow street with a revolting stench from piles of trash. Could this really be the one Louise had gone to in canon? It seemed far too sketchy for her but none of the ones in more reputable areas seemed to have the item I was looking for.

But with no other choice, I pressed on.

People hanging about in the area fled on sight of me.

The shopkeeper who was smoking a pipe took one glance at me, grew fearful eyes and bowed immediately.

"My lord! All of my wares are real and reasonably priced! There's nothing criminal here!"

"I'm not here for an inspection," I said, looking around the darkly lit shop carefully.

I searched carefully with my prana sense, walking around to the shelves and piles of disorganized weapons.

"I'm looking for a sword," I said.

"Oh… a noble buying a sword, that's strange… oh! Forgive me, I mean no offense, sir," he said.

"Hm…" I ignored his comment and continued to walk around, examining each sword. They generally looked to be decent quality despite the shop's location, but I wasn't looking for just any sword. There was a specific one I wanted, but unfortunately I didn't know what physical features to look for. None had the telltale signs of being enchanted.

Was it because it wasn't here, my prana sense wasn't good enough, or it had to be active for me to sense it?

Even though I was a beginner at it, it had seemed so simple to sense magical enchantments at the school.

It hadn't revealed itself by talking in any of the other stores either.

This was the last shop in the city. If I couldn't find it, I might have to resort to using Structural Grasp on every sword in every shop.

"My lord, would you like my assistance in picking the right sword?"

"It is not the wielder that chooses the sword. It is the sword that chooses the wielder," I said solemnly.

"Well said, my friend. Come closer and let me see you…" A disembodied voice called out.

My head turned with the full force of my excitement.

"I'm right here," it spoke again. I traced the voice to one particular rusty longsword.

Taking the handle and holding it in front of me, I examined it in closer detail. It was thin, had frayed edges, and didn't feel well balanced.

"I am the great Derflinger. Remember that name."

"You look like you've seen better days, Derflinger," I said.

"You try staying alive for six thousand years. I'm sure you'd look a lot worse than me."

"Perhaps. But there's no need to stay that way. I'll restore you to a better condition."

"Talking as if I've already accepted you? If you want to wield me, you'll have to prove you're worthy!"

I took a stance in the open space at the middle of the shop, and rapidly unleashed a series of strikes, using the sword mastery I obtained through Cranial's skill-transfer tech in Worm.

"How's that?" I asked once I finished.

"Not bad… but I've seen better."

Was it testing me because I didn't have the Gandalfr runes? I didn't remember anything about a test when Saito bought it in canon.

"Well then, how about this?" I channeled prana into the sword and Reinforced it.

"Eh? What's this?"

Over the course of half a minute, prana went into the sword and filled the gaps in its imperfection. Without Agate, my Reinforcement was horrendously slow, but I should be grateful that it worked at all. Apparently whatever Derflinger was, it didn't count as being enchanted enough to have Magic Resistance, or maybe it was because it was intelligent and gave me consent.

"Ooh… I feel great! Nobody's ever done that before! Buy me now!"

I turned to the dumbfounded shopkeeper and asked, "How much for this sword?"

"… It's a rare talking sword so 500 écu," he said, quickly schooling his expression.

After checking out all the other weapon shops, I knew his price was way above the 150 écu market price for a decent longsword.

"Preposterous. You had this lying in a pile of junk. If it was attractive to any other customer, you'd be hanging it on a display. You obviously didn't think it was worth much before I came along, and now that Derflinger has chosen me, it won't let you sell it to any other buyer anyway."

His face contorted unpleasantly.

"Hah! He's got you there, you old bastard! That's what you get for always complaining about me! If you don't sell me to him, I'll really start scaring away your other customers!"

"Considering the rust and damage, I'll pay 50 écu to take this sword off your hands."

The shopkeeper moaned painfully. "Please, sir, have mercy. I need to get back what I paid for it at least. 100 écu?"

I decided not to make his life difficult and agreed. I had no pressing need for money and even if I did I wouldn't miss the 50 extra écu-getting this sword as fast as possible was the main reason I asked Louise to pay me tuition in gold in the first place.

On the way back to the Academy, I took the opportunity to talk to my new sentient sword that was now attached to my hip via a newly grown dedicated holding section on my utility belt, and a tendril extended to pull the sword out of its scabbard slightly so that Derf could talk.

"What is this?" It asked. "Are you some kind of shapeshifter?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. So Derflinger, six thousand years is a very long time to be alive, you must have learned and seen many things."

"Sure have. Over the years, I've been fighting in wars half the time and collecting dust during the other half. I've had more wielders than I care to remember, but you're pretty different from any other one I've met! Oh! And I don't even know your name yet, partner!"

"I'm going by Axion right now, but my friends call me Kaleidus."

"No last name?"

"I had one once, and a name given to me by others, but it doesn't matter anymore. I've chosen a name for myself to hold my destiny in my own hands. Also, names have power, and I'm wary of anyone that might be able to use my original name to attack me magically. I suppose you could call me Kaleidus Axion."

"I'd say you're being paranoid, but I've never seen magic like yours so maybe you're right."

"Is Derflinger really your name? Who named you?"

"I don't know. Can't remember anymore, it's been too long. You can just call me Derf, it's easier."

"Alright Derf. Do you care what your wielder does? If we're going to be partners, I'd like to know if you'll object to anything I do."

"If you put me in a dark corner and forget about me, I'm not going to stay there to collect dust."

"What if I suddenly started massacring innocent people?"

"Hah! I've had more than one wielder that did that, partner. You planning on starting a massacre?"

"I don't have a reason to do that anytime soon. Just wanted to know if you care about things like good and evil."

"It doesn't matter to me. Just don't get yourself killed."

"So you don't have a true purpose or anything like that?"

"If I knew the meaning of life, you'd have found me being worshipped in a temple to Saint Derflinger the Wise."

"Right… what about your powers? Can you do anything special besides talking? Something that can help in a fight?"

"Yes, I can scream their ears off if my taunts just aren't cutting it."

"… I can see it already, Derf. Our war cries will strike fear into the hearts of all our enemies. But seriously, you're a magic sword. Don't you have any magical abilities, special attacks, that sort of thing?"

"Eh… let me think. Huh… oh! I can absorb magic! Use me to block a spell and I'll take all that magic in and… uh… I'm sure I can do something with it."

"That's amazing! What about golems or other constructs of magic? Or enchantments? Can you cut through and absorb them too?"

"Sure can. It's harder to absorb magic from something that's solid or harder than me though. Much easier to absorb fire or wind spells."

"Still pretty amazing. Make sure to tell me if you remember any more powers. Losing because we didn't know we had an option would be terrible."

"Don't worry, if you're about to die, I'll suddenly remember a secret power and turn the tables. That's how these things work. Dramatic tension and all that."

"I think that only happens in stories, Derf."

"Like the ones the bards sing about the Great Derflinger, yeah. It's alright, you're still young and inexperienced but stick around me and you'll learn the tricks of the trade. If you work hard, I'll let you star in my next legend."

"…"

"I know, it's hard to believe the Great Derflinger would give a newbie like you that kind of opportunity. But in my old age, I've come to appreciate the joy of nurturing the young'uns."

"… okay, it was a little funny before but now you just sound creepy, Derf."

"Aww… aren't you just a precocious wittle thing? They grow up so fast…"

My Armoriont tendril pushed the sword back into its sheath and waited for a few seconds before pulling it back up.

"Sheesh! I'm just having a little fun after being stuck in a pile of rust for ages."

"I can take a joke, Derf, but do you really need to crack one every other sentence? I still have important questions."

"Fine. I'll stop. What do you wanna know?"

"Since you've been alive so long, do you know anything about the lost Void magic?"

"Void magic… that sounds familiar."

"Does Gandalfr ring a bell?"

"Yes, it does, actually. I've been calling them users for centuries, and you just reminded me of what they're actually called. Why do you ask? You're not a Gandalfr. Have you met one?"

"I have. I've taken on a new Gandalfr and his Void mage as students, but I don't know all that much about them. I was hoping you would have the answers to some things I'm curious about."

"Well, the Gandalfr can fight with any kind of weapon, and they're physically stronger and faster when they're using their power. That's pretty much all there is to it."

"Do you know how their magic works? Is there a way to grant the powers of Gandalfr to somebody else that's not a Void familiar?"

"No idea."

"What about what happens to their powers when their master dies?"

"Nothing. They don't lose their powers if that's what you're asking. If a new Void mage is born after that, and they summon a Gandalfr, it'll be the same familiar unless it dies first."

"And if the Gandalfr dies while under contract, the master can just summon a new one, right?"

"Yup."

"Can one person have more than one set of Void familiar runes? Like being Gandalfr and one of the other three that I can't remember the name of."

"They can. They can be all four. I'm starting to remember something… right! The first Void familiar had all four powers."

"Who was it?"

"Don't remember."

"What happens if you break? Do you need some special way to be reforged or repaired, or can you be repaired like a normal sword?"

"If I break, you can repair or reforge the sword. Or I can move to another sword. Takes a few days but I'll be fine."

"Can you move even if you don't break? I think such a powerful sword spirit should have a better vessel than this. And can you move into things other than swords?"

"Sure. Spears, axes, daggers, whatever, as long as it's a weapon. If it's not alive and has no mind, I can move into it. But I like being a sword and take my advice, I'm better as a sword than anything else."

"What about my armour? It can be used as a weapon."

"Huh? What armour?"

I showed Derf the fake glove on my hand and had the Armoriont shift until a layer of skin was visible, then move back and grow hard protrusions on my knuckles. Technically the skin was still part of my Armoriont-or rather, when fully integrated, my Armoriont, bionanite swarm, and I all functioned as one being. My skin and muscles could be converted into other Armoriont parts and vice versa as I needed.

"Meet my Armoriont. This is how I can shapeshift. It's a special armour that works like a second skin for me. It's connected to my mind, but I could detach an outer shell and let you occupy it."

"Woah! Never seen that before. So this is your secret. You were thinking of letting me be your armour to absorb all incoming spells, right? Not a bad idea. But, it's alive so I can't move into it. I'd love to be able to change shape like that."

"That's unfortunate… you'd be a lot less useful as a sword. If you're only as strong as steel, you'd break long before my armour gets a scratch, so I'd fare better in a melee just using my Armoriont to punch or kick instead. You're much more useful as a defense against magical attacks than a weapon."

"Just how strong is that thing?"

"I'd guess at least ten times stronger and tougher than the average unenchanted steel, maybe more. Resistant to cutting, piercing, blunt damage, muskets, heat, and a lot more. It also regenerates from damage and makes me a lot stronger and faster."

"Well damn. I'm feeling jealous. But you just reminded me. I can make you stronger and faster too. The more magic I absorb, the more power I have to make you stronger, or make myself sharper and tougher. I can even release the magic as a ranged attack! This effect works best when I'm a sword, and with enough magic power I could probably even cut your armour."

"Oh? That's useful. Is there a limit to how much magic you can absorb?"

"There is, but I've never reached it."

"Any way to increase the limit?"

"I'm sure there is, but I don't remember. You won't need it anyway, unless you're fighting an army of mages."

"Doesn't hurt to be prepared. What about the speed you absorb magic at?"

"It'll take longer for bigger and more powerful spells. Don't try swinging me at a Square-class spell unless you're prepared to get hit anyways."

"Any way to speed it up?"

"Same way as increasing the limit. The bigger my limit, the faster I can absorb magic. Still don't remember how."

As I got close to the Academy, I noticed a commotion in the courtyard, and quickly spotted Saito getting beaten up by a bronze female golem.

His face was bleeding and he was struggling back to his feet. The golem punched him again and he fell once more, only to get up and get kicked tumbling. The cycle of rising, getting hit, and falling again repeated several times, until he couldn't get up anymore and Louise was kneeling over him crying.

Now then… should I interfere?

9 – A Lesson in Nobility

"Derf, our first legend is about to begin. I will do my best to make it a performance worthy of the Great Derflinger. As your junior, please take care of me."

"Give me some more of that magic like you did before, and I'll consider it. Can't work on an empty stomach."

9 - A Lesson in Nobility

[Interlude]

The golden armoured mage swooped in to a cacophony of cries as the crowd of students backed away.

He landed with a heavy thud, cracking the ground.

Guiche watched cautiously as the man positioned himself directly between his bronze Valkyrie and the commoner boy.

A wind mage too? That landing was way too fast and hard to be levitation, the blonde son of General Gramont thought.

Many students had seen the foreign mage sitting at the staff table, and asked their teachers about him during class.

Ms. Chevreuse had told them Lord Axion was staying as a guest at the school. She'd also told them quite enthusiastically that the man was a renowned hero in his homeland.

That the golden armour he wore was made from the nigh invincible scales and bones of an enormous evil dragon he'd defeated. A dragon that whole armies of elite mages had no luck against, who for decades had laid waste to entire cities and whose fire breath was hot enough to melt steel in an instant.

She had proudly said that an ingenious application of Earth magic had been key to his victory. A highly complicated transmutation of tiny destructive grains of dust that attacked the dragon from the inside out, getting around the invincible scales when the dragon tried to breathe fire and the dust went in through its nostrils.

It was like a story out of a fairytale. The hero kills the monster, saving the people and taking his rightful spoils. It was the kind of story every boy dreamed of imitating.

What would such a mighty hero think about the duel they were having?

Technically Guiche hadn't broken any rules, but if a teacher came by he'd probably still get in trouble.

"What's going on here?" Lord Axion asked. "What is your name, and why have you attacked my student's familiar?"

A mass of whispers broke out among the crowd of students.

His student? How could he take Louise the Zero as a student? It was too unfair! Anybody would have been more worthy than that failure. Guiche himself, for example. Still, he kept a lid on his indignation to answer the question.

"Sir, my name is Guiche de Gramont. That commoner insulted me and I offered him a duel to teach him a lesson about respect, a duel he accepted," Guiche said.

Lord Axion turned to the little Vallière. "Is that true, Louise? Saito insulted this boy? And agreed to a duel?"

"Y-yes, Sir Axion," she answered in a shaky voice. "I-I t-tried to stop him, but he w-wouldn't listen! I told him that it was impossible for a commoner to fight a noble, and now he's… he's…"

She sniffed while her tears returned to her puffy eyes.

"… don't write me off yet, I'm just catching my breath." The commoner struggled to rise yet again. An admirable perseverance, but it was meaningless. I shouldn't drag it out any longer, Guiche thought.

Louise looked relieved that he was still moving, but then shouted, "Stop! Can't you see you can't win? You're my familiar, understand? I won't forgive you for any more stupid acts."

"If he wants to continue, I shall oblige," Guiche said with a smile. "That is, if Sir Axion would step aside and allow us to finish this honorable duel? Otherwise, if the commoner is willing to apologize, I am willing to forgive him, and we can be done with it."

"Honorable duel? Pathetic worm. What honor is won by striking down a powerless and unarmed commoner who cannot fight back?" The hero's voice thundered over the Vestri court, getting a flinch from Guiche. "This is nothing more than bullying the weak. Let us see how you do in a fair fight."

Guiche watched with a sinking feeling as the man drew his sword slowly. Did the man mean to fight Guiche himself?

"This is a sword that has been my partner through many years. Unfortunately, it has been a very long time since I've had an opponent worthy of facing its power… during that time, it has grown hungry for battle."

Then he threw it into the ground beside the commoner, which caused Louise to jump back in fright with a yelp, and Guiche to let out a breath in relief.

"Hiraga Saito! You were a fool to fight an opponent you knew nothing of. However, I will allow you a chance to redeem yourself. That sword has the power to destroy magic. Now get up and prove your worth as my student's familiar!"

The sword didn't look impressive-a bit beaten and weathered, if Guiche's eyes didn't deceive him. But if Lord Axion's words were true, then it couldn't be underestimated.

Then sweat gathered on his face and hands as what he was up against sank in. My magic will be useless? How can I even fight against something like that?!

Saito grabbed the handle with his unbroken left hand, and the runes on the back of his hand began to glow.

"Hah… ! What's this? It's like the pain just disappeared! I feel so powerful! Just what kind of crazy sword is this?" He straightened up with a mad grin, to Guiche's shock.

"It's Lord Derflinger to you, boy!"

Saito looked at the sword in his hand flabbergasted. "Did the sword just talk?"

"What, never seen a talking sword before? If you want my help, then you'd better show some respect. I am the sword that killed a god! I am the legendary Derflinger, destroyer of armies, herald of the end! Now ask for my help properly."

"A-Amazing! Please help me win this fight, Derflinger-sama!"

"Humph! Not like that! Hold me toward the sky and repeat after me. O' Lord Derflinger the Great, spirit of the sword, please grant me victory!"

"Un! O' Lord Derflinger the Great, spirit of the sword, please grant me victory!" Saito yelled with the sword held high.

"Heh, you're a user, so I guess I can help you out. Release: One Percent Power! HAAA!" The sword glowed slightly, then Saito's whole body glowed with it and he felt even more powerful than before.

It even talks… of course it talks… erases pain and destroys magic… the legendary sword of a famous dragon slaying hero… I'm doomed! Guiche watched the scene in horror.

He stepped back shakily as oohs and awes broke out among the crowd. "W-wait a minute. How is it fair if you give him a legendary sword to fight with?!"

"Oh, so when you had the unfair advantage of magic over your powerless opponent, it was an honorable duel, but now that your opponent has an advantage you don't, it's unfair? Coward. The commoner boy you looked down on at least had the courage to fight against the odds," said the hero.

The words cut deep. For a commoner to be considered better than him, it was unthinkable.

Yet in that moment, he couldn't deny it.

I… am a coward.

"All you have to do is make sure the sword doesn't touch your spells. Do you have so little confidence in your skills?" Lord Axion stepped aside from the field of battle and crossed his arms scornfully.

He made it sound easy, but the weight of the challenge pressed down on Guiche like a mountain. For the sword to not touch any of his spells, his golems would have to dodge every single strike.

It was impossible.

Even if Guiche himself fought, it was impossible. No-that was wrong.

It wasn't like he was stronger than his Valkyries. He had always used the bronze golems because he didn't want to risk his own body to fight. That was the whole purpose of the Gramont way of fighting. The way of an officer, a general.

To command armies of golems and overwhelm the enemy.

And now… a single sword would render all his training meaningless.

Saito moved the sword down until it was pointing at Guiche. "I don't mind being a familiar… I don't mind sleeping on the floor… I don't care if the food sucks… washing underwear, I'll do that too. I don't really have a choice, being stuck in this world. But I won't let two-timing scum like you look down on me! I may not have any fancy titles or magic, but all you ego-inflated brats sure as hell aren't any better than me! My name is Hiraga Saito, and I won't bow to anyone against my will!"

With a grand yell, the angry commoner shot forward.

The bronze Valkyrie barely had time to react before it was slashed into two halves. His beautiful golem, the fruits of painstaking hours of work, destroyed in an instant. Guiche moaned in torment as if he physically felt the cut.

"Aw, yeah!" Saito annihilated the still standing bottom half of the Valkyrie in his excitement and started laughing. The broken golem transformed back into torn pieces of a rose petal.

Then he charged at Guiche himself, who hastily waved his rose wand.

Six new golems appeared and sprang at Saito.

However, it was useless. Five of the golems were cut down so fast that the other students barely saw the action.

The last golem tried to run back to protect Guiche, but it too fell into pieces and a kick to Guiche's face sent him sprawling.

Derflinger struck into the ground beside Guiche's cowering head.

"You want to continue?" Saito asked.

Guiche shook his head furiously. "I yield!"

The gathered students all had stunned faces at the sudden turn of events.

Saito pulled the sword out with a look of awe. "Only one percent power did this much…"

"That's all your body can handle, kid."

"Thanks, Derflinger."

"That's Lord Derflinger to you!"

Saito walked over to Lord Axion with a lopsided smile, holding up the sword for him to take. "Thanks, sir Axion."

"Careful, kid, even if it doesn't feel like it, you're still injured and it's going to hit you hard once you let go of me," said Derflinger.

"You did well, Saito," said Axion with a nod and he sheathed the sword.

Saito began swaying on his legs.

"Saito!" Louise shouted and ran to try and support him, but Saito toppled over first.

"Don't worry, he's fine, just tired," Axion said while Louise shook him.

"Why did you make him fight?!" She glared at her teacher angrily.

"He would have done it anyway. I merely gave him the means to win."

"But, you could have stopped him!"

"If I stopped him, I might have saved him some bodily pain, but I would have killed his spirit. It may be difficult for you to understand Louise, but Saito's not like the commoners of this world. Where he came from, there are no nobles. That's why he had to see this fight to the end."

"He said that before… but I don't get it! How can there be no nobles? And why does that have anything to do with him fighting Guiche?"

"You still don't understand? There are no nobles on his world because they were corrupt and abused their power, so the commoners rose up in revolution and killed them all for their hubris and tyranny! Something similar happened on my world long ago too, even though it didn't end in quite the same way."

"Killed…?" Louise whispered with horrified eyes. Gasps of shock resounded among the still watching crowd.

"For someone like Saito, he would prefer to die on his feet than to live on his knees! That's why he had to fight that battle, even if it meant risking his life. To him, it was not just a duel over a petty insult… he fought because he had something to prove! That even in another world, even if he's your familiar now, no matter how much he's lost, he still retains his pride and dignity as a free man!"

"Pride and dignity… for something like that… Saito, you idiot… how can it be worth dying for?" Louise asked with a hollow tone.

Lord Axion walked over to Guiche next. The foreign lord gazed down at the boy sitting in a daze with his legs sprawled.

"As for you, Guiche, even if you had won this duel, do you think you would have won any honor? Would those maidens you wronged forgive you just because you showed yourself willing to step on the powerless?"

"No…" He admitted with his head lowered in shame. He had simply wanted to take out some frustration. There was no way Montmorency or Katie would ever forgive him.

"Then let this be a lesson to you, Guiche of house Gramont! Nobility does not come from magic alone, nor is it simply a status given by birth! Nobility is an honour-earned from the valorous deeds of your ancestors! Nobility is an ideal-to uphold justice, act with virtue, and hold yourself to a higher standard! Nobility is a pledge-of service to a just Crown and to the subjects under the Crown's protection! To be a noble means to be an icon for your people, that they may look upon with admiration and say 'This is a person worth following, this is a person worthy of my loyalty!'"

As the hero's words echoed out, something stirred within all those watching.

It was a message that resonated deep in their hearts.

Memories of a glorious past, written in the history books.

Stories passed down from their families since the ancient times of the Founder.

Ideas which were taught to them since they were but children, at home and in school, yet never witnessed in person, never understood in full.

To many of them, the man in radiant golden armour-with a legendary sword at his side, speaking with such strength and conviction about the meaning of nobility-truly seemed like a hero out of the old legends.

One who embodied the concept of nobility with every fibre of his being, in his words, actions, and even sheer presence.

Unconsciously, many of them stood straighter and their postures stiffened as if afraid to appear inadequate before him.

"If you stain that honour by bullying the weak, if you abandon that ideal by indulging in vice, if you betray that pledge by abusing your status for despicable ends, then you are not a noble, but a corrupt tyrant, and a disgrace to your ancestors who accepted the oathbound duties of peerage!"

To Guiche, these words struck a greater blow than any physical blade.

Nobility. The source of their pride and glory. That beautiful ideal upon which the Kingdom was founded. How could he not know of it?

He was the son of General Gramont. The latest in a long line of proud nobles that served the Crown loyally and defended Tristain from any invaders.

Every son in the family aspired to join the military and achieve greatness, and just like his brothers, he was no exception to that tradition.

And today he had been found wanting.

"That's… right. I'm a… disgrace… to the name Gramont," he said quietly as tears gathered in his eyes. "By my… dishonorable deeds today… I've lost any right to call myself a noble."

"If you want any chance of regaining the honour you lost here, then remember this day. Remember my words. And above all, remember the humility you just showed by admitting to your failures."

With those final words, the hero turned and left with Louise, who had been joined by several other students helping to levitate Saito.

Guiche saw that Montmorency and Katie were among them, and felt the urge to act.

"Montmorency! Katie!" He shouted. "I am sorry! What I did was despicable! I shouldn't have toyed with your hearts like that!"

The two of them looked at each other, then turned to Guiche.

"I won't forgive you so easily!" Montmorency shouted back.

"Me neither!" Katie shouted.

"I know! I don't deserve forgiveness, but you deserve my apology!" He said sincerely.

The two girls grumbled and turned back around.

"Louise Vallière, when your familiar wakes up, please tell him, I'm sorry!"

"You can tell him yourself!" Louise shouted back without even looking at him in a still angry tone.

As the group got further away, the rest of the students began to scatter as well.

Guiche slowly stood up. His eyes were still locked on the retreating back of the foreign lord.

As he stared at the red cape billowing in the wind and the golden armour shining with the reflected light of the sun, Guiche came to a realization.

A person worth following… so that's what a true noble looks like… such radiance… truly, a rose-nay, a star that shines its light upon all, sharing the glory of its majesty!

He shouted once again with all the power of his lungs. "Lord Axion!"

The hero stopped and turned his head back.

Guiche kneeled on one knee, and put his wand over his heart.

"Thank you! Your words! I will take them to heart, and never forget! From this day forward, I, Guiche de Gramont, shall commit to the true path of nobility!"

There was only a small nod of acknowledgement, but for Guiche, it was enough confirmation that he had taken the first step on the right path.

10 – Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt

10 - Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt

[Interlude]

While the duel in the Vestri court took place, a number of people were observing from hidden positions.

The young secretary, Miss Longueville, looked down from a hallway window close to the academy vault.

A troubled expression crossed her face as she witnessed the commoner overwhelm the young earth mage with the sword of the foreign lord.

Using a minor wind spell, she had heard clearly what words were exchanged. An anti-magic sword that crushed a dot earth mage with only one percent of its power. Its master who seemed to be one of those insufferable idealists with the power to back up their foolishness.

Why did someone like that have to appear…?

The boy was nothing impressive, even if he was a dot mage, though he should have been more than a match for any commoner. There were differences in skill between mages, even aside from the simple polygonal rating. She herself was 'only' a triangle class Earth mage, but compared to that sycophant Chevreuse who took pride in showing off the parlor trick of transmuting lead into brass, Longueville was in a completely different league.

There was a reason she was the most feared Earth mage in all of Tristain, and why she had the epithet of 'Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt'. The fact that she couldn't stack the final fourth element layer didn't mean that she couldn't combine other elements to achieve feats of Earth far beyond what a simple Earth-Earth-Earth mage could accomplish. Her ingenuity and experience was the reason she had been daring enough to attempt this job on the most heavily fortified treasure vault in the entire kingdom.

She glanced at the heavy vault lock. All but impregnable, reinforced with all manner of spells, to the point that even she couldn't easily breach it with her trademark 'spell' of 'crumbling' which was actually several different spells used in succession.

Still, she had found a weakness by seducing it out of the fool Colbert, and was almost ready to make the attempt soon.

The school's security was weak, and the staff even more cowardly. None of them would likely be willing to meet her in battle, even the Square class mages Osmond and Colbert. The fact that none of the staff had been courageous enough to even get near the duel was proof of it. Already, as Osmond's secretary she'd noticed that a mage staff member was theoretically assigned to guard duty every night, but nobody actually stayed up to perform that duty.

But this Lord Axion…

If she stole the Staff of Destruction as she desired, would he mind his own business or come after her because of his ideals? If he did try to play the hero, then she didn't like her chances.

Never had she heard of an anti-magic sword, but an artifact like that had to be just as valuable and powerful as the Staff of Destruction itself. The tactical implications weren't lost on her. How much easier would it have been to complete her other thefts if she could just cut her way through enchantments?

And with her own eyes, she had witnessed the transformation that came over the boy with a mere 'one percent power'. What manner of monster would be unleashed at the full one hundred percent power?

If it were any other job, I would just give up now but this one… if I fail, then they'll kill Tiffania…

By the time the Vestri court had emptied of students, she still stood there silently, her face as stony as the walls beside her.

In the headmaster's office, two old men were contemplating the results of the duel as well.

"What amazing speed! Was that really just the power of Lord Axion's sword, or was it Gandalfr? I'm sure I saw the boy's runes glowing," said Colbert.

"Why not both? Would the sword have worked as well for just anyone? It is said that the Gandalfr is a master of all weapons," Osmond said, stroking his beard.

Colbert turned away from the Mirror of Far-Seeing towards the seated headmaster. "Well, it's certainly exciting! I thought the legendary familiar was a big enough surprise, but Lord Axion has proven to be even more mysterious! Ah… I wonder if Lord Axion would let me study that sword…"

"Indeed, Lord Axion is proving to be most interesting. If only he could be persuaded to serve the Crown… it is all too rare to find a noble that pays more than lip service to their feudal obligations these days, despite what we try to teach," said Osmond sighing.

"We should report this to the palace immediately and ask for instructions!" Colbert exclaimed.

"There will be no need for that." Osmond shook his head sternly.

"But Sir Osmond! This could be the discovery of the century! A Gandalfr reborn in the modern world! Not to mention Lord Axion. The palace would definitely be willing to recognize a mage of such power with a title!"

"There is no need for us to hand over young Gandalfr and its master to those fools at the palace. Give them a toy like this and it'll just cause another unnecessary war. Court advisors have far too much free time on their hands and enjoy fighting to a senseless degree."

"Ooh… I see. I apologize for overlooking such matters. Then, what of Lord Axion?"

"That is a delicate matter. There have been unpleasant rumors at court lately… if Lord Axion is truly as powerful as he appears to be, his entry into Tristainian nobility could have dangerous results if handled incorrectly, to say nothing of those who would covet the artifact in his possession. Rather than reporting to the palace, I will take this news directly to the crown princess."

"The princess? Isn't she still a child? I thought the Regent was handling affairs of state."

"Colbert you fool, you should get your head out of your lab sometimes. The princess has been trying to take matters into her own hands for months. It is precisely the Regent I am worried about. The rumors say that he has no intention of returning power to the Crown. Though he never struck me as the ambitious type, it is difficult to discern the true nature of a man who turned down the position of Pope for a mere temporary position as regent in a small kingdom like Tristain."

"That would be treason!" Colbert said with a shocked face.

"Do not speak of this to anyone. I do not know whose support he may have bought already, if the rumors are true."

"Y-yes, I understand!"

A short while later, in the infirmary, Louise sat bemoaning that she didn't have the funds to pay for Saito's full treatment. She would have to change his bandages and apply medicine personally to save on costs.

"Isn't that romantic? Your man is injured and you'll be taking care of him," said Kirche, the red headed fire mage that would always push her buttons.

"He's not my man, Zerbst! And there's nothing romantic about it when he wasn't even fighting for me!"

"Oh, so you wouldn't mind if that servant girl steals him away?" Kirche said with a wide grin.

"Wh-what?! What servant girl?" Louise felt a jolt of something she couldn't identify.

"You know, the one that he was with earlier today when the whole thing with Guiche happened. She ran off before the duel, but anybody could see they were quite friendly with each other."

Louise's face turned angry. "How dare he flirt with a girl without my permission! When he wakes up, I'll punish him!"

Kirche laughed as she walked away, her blue haired friend Tabitha trailing silently in her wake.

[Kaleidus]

"Explosion!" The distant tree Louise had targeted instantly blew apart, sending bark shrapnel in every direction.

Louise herself was left gasping for breath, her willpower reserves running low after a series of tests I had her perform.

Around us was a swath of destruction and fallen trees.

"One more time, with Fireball," I ordered.

She nodded and held up her hand again, targeting another tree. "Fireball!"

The ensuing explosion blasted a hole straight through the tree, rending it into two halves, as if a bomb went off in front of it.

"It's just as I thought," I announced while viewing the results with infrared vision. "You can alter the effects of your explosions."

"Huh?"

"I've thoroughly analyzed your spells. So far, whenever you've cast an explosion without spellwork, it just causes an undirected explosion at the first thing in your wand's way. But you were able to create a shaped blast with heat when using the casting spellwork of Fireball. With Earth transmutation, the targeted material exploded into dust with the explosion. With wind, you generated an outburst of air pressure and shockwaves at the tip of your wand. We replicated the effects for each and they were not entirely random. What does this tell you?"

"… that my spells failed in different ways?" She said, eyebrows scrunched in thought.

"That's one way to put it. The spellwork you do as part of the spell, even if it doesn't succeed in the actual spell, changes the nature of the explosion. That means you are able to cast spells. It's your affinity to Void that's changing your spells into something else, and you should be able to refine these effects systematically, by changing the incantation and spell structure. Therefore, we will work on this until you have enough control over your explosions that none can deny your power as a mage."

Her frustration from earlier in the day completely evaporated as her face glowed with anticipation.

"Yes, sir!"

It was too bad Saito wasn't here to see this side of Louise as he was still recovering.

Eventually Agate came back with some wind stones in tow, and I introduced her to Derf.

"Welcome to the party! I'm Kaleidostick Agate!" She said cheerfully.

"Did your wand just talk?" Derf asked.

"What, never seen a talking wand before?" Agate replied cheekily, using the same words Derf said to Saito.

"… touché. Why, partner, I thought we had something special together! To think you already had someone!" Derf cried mournfully to me.

"Heh, you haven't met Offensive Bias yet, have you? You're actually the third inorganic member of our party," the Kaleidostick said while poking and prodding at the sword.

"As an ancient antique specimen, you are just what I needed to round out my collection," I said, taking out Offensive Bias' robot drone.

"Greetings, Derflinger. I am the ancilla Offensive Bias. Welcome to the Metarchy. I look forward to an efficient integration of our programs."

"Gasp! The legendary Derflinger has been reduced to a mere collectible item!"

"Well, Derf, now that you've met, I'll explain what everyone does in this team."

[Interlude]

In the dead of night, a hooded figure ran through the forest with nimble feet, carrying a large metallic object shaped like a tube.

It was Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt, who had just stolen the clearly labeled 'Staff of Destruction' from the Academy vault, after breaking in from the outer wall with brute force using one of her strongest golems.

She had sacrificed some rare reagents to reach the level of strength necessary to break past the Square-class hardening spells on the wall, but in the end, she had succeeded.

Unlike her characteristic behavior of leaving behind a note proudly proclaiming that Fouquet had taken the goods, this time she was in a rush to get away.

When she reached the cabin, her temporary hideout, she breathed a sigh of relief. They wouldn't be able to track her through the forest easily.

She could leave now and go to her client, but she wanted to learn the secret of the Staff of Destruction first.

What mage wouldn't be interested in such a powerful artifact? A weapon rumored to be capable of mass destruction that had to be locked away for fear of its might, where even a dot mage could kill a full grown dragon in a single shot with it.

If a mere dot mage could do that much, then in the hands of a Triangle of her calibre, how powerful would it be?

If she could use the power for herself, she might be able to protect Tiffania from her 'client', instead of meekly handing the artifact over.

She cast a cantrip of light and stared at the metal tube. For a staff, it was strangely designed with many parts, and exceptionally smooth. It reminded her a little of a rifle, but she couldn't identify the firing mechanism or trigger.

There had been no instructions for how to use it, so was it to be used like a regular staff? She tried to wave it around and incant some spells, but nothing happened.

After ten minutes of examination and nothing to show for it, she growled in frustration.

"That's a dangerous weapon you've got there," a voice said suddenly from behind her.

Her head whipped around and she brandished the staff towards the source of the voice.

What she saw there was a smirking Axion leaning against a tree with crossed arms.

"Someone could get hurt if you wave it around like that," he said, looking for all the world as if he was perfectly relaxed and she wasn't pointing a weapon of mass destruction at him, even though he clearly knew what she was holding.

"Stay back, or you will get hurt!" She shouted.

"Really? But you're pointing it in the wrong direction. You've got the firing end facing yourself right now," he said, lips widening further.

Her face reddened when her bluff failed.

A quick flick later and her own wand was back in her hand, the Staff now held parallel to her chest in a protective stance.

"Relax, Miss Longueville. I'm not here to arrest you," he said casually, much to her shock. He had seen right through her identity. "Your theft is the Academy's problem, not mine."

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "No? So what, you want the Staff for yourself? Otherwise you'll blow my cover? I'm sorry to say that I won't be working at the Academy anymore."

The tense silence that followed had her sweating. Would he attack her for it instead?

Then against all expectations, he laughed mirthfully. "I don't want that thing you call a Staff of Destruction. Something of that level would barely dent my armor… why would I need such a weak weapon?"

The outrageous declaration only increased her anxiety. What could the man possibly want with her, if even the Staff of Destruction was worthless in his eyes?

"Then… what do you want?"

A/N: Before anyone says the MC's armor is overpowered, he's bluffing. An anti-tank armor-piercing shaped blast will actually deal serious damage to his armor, even though it wouldn't kill him in one hit.

11 – The Staff of Destruction

11 - The Staff of Destruction

"I'd like to offer you a trade. I can tell you how to use the so-called Staff of Destruction. In exchange, I'd like some information in return. You are Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt, the most feared thief in all of Tristain, are you not? You must be an expert on rare and powerful artifacts, like the one you're holding," I said, still smirking. "If your information is good, I might have more lucrative trades to offer. I might even hire you. So, are you interested?"

My suggestion seemed to stun her.

"… information on powerful artifacts? Well, you're talking to the right person. Are you looking for anything in particular?" She asked, still in a half-disbelieving tone.

I shrugged. "Why don't you tell me what other items you know of that might be of similar value to the Staff of Destruction? Tell me at least three and I'll tell you the secret to using the Staff of Destruction. If any of them interest me, then tell me where to find it, and I will tell you the Staff of Destruction's weakness."

She considered the offer before nodding. "Three items, right? First, a dagger rumored to be able to talk just like your sword, which can allow its wielder to use all the standard elements regardless of their affinity and cast higher rank spells than they normally could."

If it could let me cast magic, that could be very useful. The problem with talking artifacts though, was that they had a will of their own. Derflinger was easily persuaded to work with me, but the dagger might not be so easy. It'd be on my list of things to check out, but I wouldn't prioritize something that could be useless in the end.

"Second, the Element rings. It is said that the Founder passed down an Element ring to each of the inheritors of his will, who established the three royal families and the line of St. Forsythe. Nobody knows what the rings do, but as something left behind by the Founder, they are definitely valuable. Well, there are four rings, so that's already five items."

"I already knew about the rings." From metaknowledge. I didn't know what they did either, but I remembered it was important for the Void users. "Still, I didn't say that you had to tell me about an item I didn't know, so I'll count it, but only as one item. You'll have to tell me one more."

Fouquet's lips pursed, whether in annoyance or pressure I couldn't tell.

"There is the Founder's Holy Chalice. It is said that water poured in its cup is blessed with the power to break any curse or enchantment."

"A holy chalice? What an interesting coincidence," I said, thinking of the Holy Chalice of another messianic figure.

"Well then, a deal's a deal."

I proceeded to describe how to prepare the staff for firing as she followed the instructions to open the rear cover and pull out the extended inner tube and the telescope sight.

"Careful, there will be a back blast. Very loud too. You need to place it on your shoulders so it doesn't hit you," I warned. "Though if I were you, I wouldn't use it here…"

She followed the instructions and took aim at a nearby tree. "I've got to know if you told me the truth, don't I? I don't care if it attracts attention, I'll be gone soon. Let's see if this works." And she fired, just as I expected. I resisted the temptation to laugh.

A loud thunder came from the staff and a projectile flew out. A terrific explosion ensued as the projectile hit the tree, obliterating it.

When the smoke cleared, the tree had fallen, its bottom half gone, and there was a small crater in the dirt at the base where the broken roots remained.

Smiling in satisfaction, she said, "The Staff of Destruction is indeed powerful."

"Too bad it has a glaring weakness," I said. "If you want to know what it is, tell me where the Holy Chalice is."

With hardly a pause, she answered. It seemed that she was quite eager to learn all about this 'Staff of Destruction'.

"Like many other religious artifacts, it's in Romalia in the possession of the Church. The Holy Chalice, in particular, should be held within the Pope's Palace," she said.

"Hm… thank you, though I really could have found that out quite easily myself, huh? I suppose I'll have to tell you that the Staff of Destruction isn't a magical staff. It has only a single shot, which you just fired. To fire it again, you have to reload and do some maintenance work on it, but I doubt you can find the ammunition it uses anywhere. That weapon wasn't made in Halkegenia, after all. Now it's just a useless piece of junk."

"A single shot…?" Her face went slack. "That… can't be!" She cried desperately with a searching look at me.

"I warned you, if I were you, I wouldn't use it here. You wasted the shot," I said, shrugging.

"No!" She made another strangled cry. She tried to aim it again and pull the trigger, but nothing happened.

She fell to her knees as the Staff clattered to the ground. "No… no…"

At this behavior, I raised an eyebrow that she couldn't see under my visor.

"For the most famous thief in Tristain, you're sure taking this harder than I thought. It's just an item, Fouquet. If you could steal this, you could steal other things just as easily. What's the big deal?"

"You… don't understand! I need the Staff of Destruction! This time was different! It wasn't about the money!"

My curiosity was piqued. I didn't remember there being any greater reason behind the theft than money.

"What do you need it for so badly, then? If it's just a weapon capable of similar destruction, I have plenty. Even more powerful than this M72-LAW. For the right price, I could be convinced to part with them."

Her eyes widened in hope and shock. "You do?"

"Yes. I have portable weapons that can destroy a castle in a single shot, let alone puny explosions of this level," I said, gesturing disdainfully at the crater. "But, obviously, I'll need something of equal value in exchange. So if you were holding anything back earlier, now is the time to come out with it and make me an offer."

There was a long silence as Fouquet didn't move, seemingly considering my words. Slowly, she stood up.

"A magical ring with the power to heal almost any injury, even fatal ones, and revive the very recently dead if you can get to them quick enough," she said. "That's all I have to offer. Is it good enough?"

Now this… this was interesting. My regenerative powers were pretty amazing, but there was nothing wrong with getting more healing powers, especially magical ones. Regeneration did take time and energy, after all, and unlike some Brute powers I couldn't just take biomass from another dimension. If I took severe internal organ damage, I would be out-of-action for hours at the least. Plus, I couldn't heal other people very well with my own powers.

"Can it heal injuries of the brain?"

"Yes, but it wouldn't be perfect. There could be memory loss, and it can't regenerate a brain from nothing."

"I see. Yes, I would be interested in that. Does it have a limited charge?"

"It should have enough left to heal fatal injuries at least twice. It can be recharged, but only a user of spirit magic like the elves can recharge it."

"Oh? Spirit magic? How fascinating," I said. That was the magic of the elves, which was a different system than the human mages of Halkegenia. A little problematic for practical usage considering that humans and elves were religious enemies, but interesting from a research perspective. "Very well. For this ring, I can trade you a weapon comparable to the staff of destruction. Better, really, and I'll even throw in three rounds of ammunition."

It was an easy trade for me. A mere anti-tank weapon was nothing to me. Not only did I have plenty aboard the AAPV, I could also mass manufacture them back on Worm.

"Wait. Can I trade for something else instead?"

I shrugged. "Sure. Weapons, equipment, exotic substances, deadly poisons… there's plenty of possibilities. Shall I list some for you, or do you have anything specific in mind?"

"No, I'm sure you have many things that would be tempting, but what I want is protection," she said.

"Ah. I suppose you want protection from whoever's forcing you to steal the Staff of Destruction?" I had deduced as much from her behavior earlier. If not for money, this theft job must have had something else at stake. A threat of some kind would make sense.

"No, not me, I want you to protect a friend of mine. She's the one that has the ring."

"Hm… protection from who, exactly?" I asked, rubbing my chin for appearances' sake.

"Do you know about the civil war in Albion? About Reconquista?"

Reconquista was a rebel faction of religious fanatics that was the Halkegenian version of the republican faction of the English Civil War. This whole world was like a highly distorted Europe in the Renaissance/Premodern era.

"Yes. Their side is about to win, it seems. So that's your blackmailer?"

But this was quite strange. Her association with Reconquista shouldn't have started until after Wardes broke her out of prison.

"They threatened to kill her if I didn't do their dirty work."

"Aren't you afraid that I could do the same to you, and take the ring by force?"

She took off her hood and tried to look sincere. "You could. But if you were going to do that, there wouldn't be any point trading for anything else either. You could take the ring by force anyway, or renege on the deal, taking back whatever you gave me, and my friend's life is forfeit to Reconquista. At least this way, there's a chance you'll follow through, and I'm sure you'd have a better chance protecting her from them than me, no matter what item I get from you."

I was pretty confident that I was capable of providing the necessary protection, and it wouldn't be too much trouble. A little more involved than just trading away an item, maybe, but I'd buy more goodwill this way.

'I see… well, who is this person that needs protection? Anything special about them that I should know? What is their name?"

"My friend's identity doesn't matter. You don't need to know any more about her. All you have to do is protect her."

"Hm. Helping you isn't out of the question, but I can't be her bodyguard for years on end or however long Reconquista is around, you know? I have things to do, places to be."

"I'll consider it enough if you help me bring her safely out of Albion to Tristain."

I had some plans in mind that would set me against Reconquista anyways, so it wasn't like I'd be making new enemies. Fouquet probably didn't know about it, but the leader of Reconquista, Cromwell, had an artifact of incredible power that also happened to be a ring, perhaps more useful to me than anything else I could get in this world. Cromwell's Ring of Andvari, unlike the healing ring of Fouquet, could raise the dead long past their biological death as undead creatures indistinguishable from their living form under the control of the wielder with all memories intact. It could also take control of living people to an extent.

While it seemed that canon was not entirely reliable given the change to Fouquet's backstory, the Ring of Andvari was a key item that allowed Cromwell to rise to power, I was quite sure he would still have it or something comparable.

Even without that artifact, a country racked by civil war and revolutionary ideas was the perfect place to seize political power, much better than Tristain.

In the end, it came down to a question of whether this excursion was worth the cost of potentially revealing some of my capabilities early, depending on just how much importance Reconquista attached to Fouquet's friend. The real danger was a Myozunitonirun, the Void familiar that was a master of magical artifacts, who was likely to be the one manipulating the civil war behind the scenes.

A prepared Myoz could be much more dangerous than one caught off guard by a blitz straight to her puppet Cromwell.

[Agate]

Initializing Strategic Intelligence Services…

Retrieving Data…

WARNING: Fouquet's backstory contradicts prior metaknowledge.

NOTICE: Offensive Bias has acquired limited intelligence on Albion. Unverified metaknowledge is now underlined.

Reconquista: A faction within the Albion nobility that rebelled against the royal family for a number of grievances, most prominently the demand to reclaim the Holy Land in Elven territory. The group is led by Oliver Cromwell, a former bishop who was a simple man before Myozonitonirun offered to make him an emperor, as a greater plot by Myozonitonirun's true master.

Albion Family: There are only two known survivors, the King and Prince Wales, who is the lover of the Crown princess Henrietta de Tristain. The King is holed up in Newcastle, their last remaining fortress, surrounded by Reconquista forces led by the Lexington super dreadnought airship under the command of Cromwell. The prince disappeared a week ago, and is probably pretending to be a pirate intercepting Reconquista supply imports.

Fouquet: A famous thief feared in Tristain for being very talented in both stealing items and fighting off pursuers with massive golems. She was supposed to be captured by Louise and Saito, then rescued by a traitor in Tristain and subsequently initiated into Reconquista. Her true background is unknown.

Ring of Andvari: An artifact that represents the "Strength of Water", formerly owned by the Water Spirit of Ragdorian Lake, who is attempting to sink the entire continent to reclaim the ring. It was stolen at some point, probably by Myozonitonirun, and given to Cromwell. It can raise the dead in a 'false life' completely under the control of the wielder, with all memories intact and physically indistinguishable from their living form, in addition to forcing the living to do the wielder's bidding. It might even be capable of summoning the original soul back, because in the original story, when Prince Wales was revived with the ring and then the spell got Dispelled, his original soul seemed to be back in the body for the short moment before the body returned to death.

Myozonitonirun: The Void Familiar known as the "Mind of God", with mastery over magical artifacts. Capable of both utilizing magical artifacts and enchanting new ones, Myozonitonirun is extremely versatile and powerful, and unlike Gandalfr whose power relies on having access to strong weapons, Myozonitonirun can make their own. Their master's identity is currently unknown, but has an interest in propping up Cromwell as the leader of Reconquista, so she is acting as Cromwell's assistant for now.

Elves and Spirit Magic: In the Brimiric nations of Halkegenia, the elves are widely feared and hated as religious enemies. They are believed to possess incredible magic casting abilities, making one elf the equal of ten or even a hundred mages, according to rumor and historical battle records. There have been many failed crusades to the territory of the elves, which is considered to be the Founder's Holy Land for reasons unclear other than the Founder seemingly bent on claiming it during the later stages of his life. The elves are a long-lived species, and mostly keep to themselves despite their military superiority, but they do hate humans as much as humans hate them. Their spirit magic is entirely different from Halkegenian mages, and not much is known about it, except that it seems to be related to the nature spirits.

Quest Information

Analyzing…

Traveling to and from Albion is quite easy for us compared to the locals, as we don't need airships. The distance coast to coast varies between 100-300km, and the capital Londinium is a further 300km inland from the south coast. That means it should only take a few hours by Armoriont flight, and less than an hour for me alone or by AAPV.

This sidequest would probably take no more than a day, so it's not too much trouble, but if Reconquista gets in the way, or Myozunitonirun is there, it could be dangerous. The Armoriont is by no means actually invincible, and a Square-class spell may well be capable of damaging it, let alone Myozunitonirun. Then again, the AAPV isn't invincible either.

In fact, we may want to just speed up our plans to do just that. Based on Offensive Bias' intel, the royals have only a single castle left, and the siege will be over soon. In the story, Reconquista finished them off in another week, and Louise would have been just in time to retrieve Wales' love letter and Wind Ruby before the end. There's nothing stopping us from invading Albion and returning in the afternoon for Louise's lessons, or just delaying them if we can't come back quickly enough.

We should ask for a higher price to solve the problem of Reconquista permanently, because we're going to do that anyway. That's a negotiation she may not agree to, so the important part is to decide how we handle the deal being offered

Generating Recommendation…

[] Agree to the deal and undertake the extraction operation primarily in person, getting supplies/equipment/support from the AAPV as needed. No need to spook anyone by rolling in with an armored vehicle, or risk Myozunitonirun preparing counters to our ace. Besides, we were looking for some personal combat experience fighting magic anyways.

[] Agree to the deal and have Offensive Bias carry out the extraction operation independently while we sit back and watch. No need to risk yourself when the AAPV has so much more firepower and armor.

[] Agree to the deal with the intent of betraying it. Just take the item and silence all witnesses. How about blackmail, you say? Hah! We're much more sophisticated than Reconquista. If there's anyone useful, we'll give them persuasive substances until they develop Stockholm syndrome and willingly work for us for life.

[] The chaos in Albion has become unbearable for the people. It's time to relieve the locals of their burden and gift them a new era of enlightened rule. Invade Albion with our full power and claim the Ring of Andvari in a surprise attack! It will be simple to fulfill our end of the deal with Fouquet if we destroy the Reconquista leadership first.

[] write-in

QUEST Notes: Agate has already recommended asking a higher price for solving the Reconquista problem permanently regardless of which choice is chosen. The write-in is for alternative strategies and deals.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

A/N: I have received a general complaint that some prior chapters were difficult to get through for people unfamiliar with FoZ. But I really can't find anything that wasn't explained immediately, except for things the MC isn't sure about either. So if there's anything you are confused about, please let me know explicitly what it is.

In the meantime, I have done another "Intelligence" report by Agate, to expand on new things introduced this chapter.

Additionally, I have decided to start including the Quest part of story in spoilers, including some extra information and the decisions at hand. Only select chapters have a decision.

EDIT: Votes aren't counted on SB. If you want to participate in the Quest, you have to vote on SV. You can, however, give reasoning and/or write-ins which I will read and consider, regardless of the voting results, because of the way the voting rules work (ie, I don't always take the 'winning' vote).

Last edited: Mar 16, 2020

12 – Chaos Wand

12 - Chaos Wand

[Kaleidus]

"That's true. Well, helping you isn't out of the question, but I can't be her bodyguard for years or however long Reconquista is around, you know? I have things to do, places to be."

I kicked myself away from the tree and walked closer to her, speaking seriously.

"This protection needs to be better defined. What I can do is extract her from Albion to Tristain outside of Reconquista's domain, and you can take over from here. If you want me to remove Reconquista as a threat permanently, that will cost you more than just the ring…"

She shook her head quickly. "That won't be necessary. If you can help me get her to Tristain alive and unharmed, that would be enough. But I need your word that you won't turn against us once you learn who she is, or after we arrive in Tristain. You must leave us in peace once our deal is over."

"I can't give you blanket immunity forever, but I can agree not to betray you on the mission, or target you two specifically after. If you get in my way on your own, if you side with my future enemies, then all bets are off," I said.

For a moment, she hesitated, staring at me. Then she nodded. "Fine."

I chose not to seal the deal with a Geas, and simply shook her hand. In this case, I had little to gain from enforcing a Geas, and it would be difficult to make one that worked effectively. The central component of Geas was consent-specifically to the conditions and the penalty that gave me power over them. In my early experiments with the curse, I had learned that spoken agreement and coerced consent didn't count. Essentially, for a Geas to work, they had to be willing to follow through on the penalty anyways even without a curse enforcing it, and that generally didn't work for business deals.

It was a bit of a catch-22, but where it worked wonders was making sure people couldn't change their minds later, or if they didn't realize the full implications of what they were agreeing to, such as in the case of Saito.

The next day, there was a path through the forest where it looked like a great battle had taken place.

Many trees were bent and uprooted as if hit by a golem, and others were cut apart cleanly as if a sword had sliced through.

Fouquet had lost the cloak, while her clothes were dishevelled and dirty.

I carried the form of 'Miss Longueville' back to the Academy along with the 'Staff of Destruction'.

When we arrived, there was a crowd of staff members gathered at the Vestri court, looking up at the destroyed wall to the vault.

They cried out in shock as I landed.

Colbert ran over to support and fuss over Miss Longueville as I set her on the ground.

I proceeded to weave a grand tale, starting with Miss Longueville going out for a stroll in the garden last night and noticing the theft. A story of how she came to me for help, believing that only a great hero like me could stop someone as dangerous as Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt, who had boasted gleefully to her about stealing the Staff of Destruction before taking off.

The staff were enthralled by the epic chase and battle that ensued.

"Regretfully, I allowed Fouquet to escape in the end, after taking the Staff of Destruction from him, as I believed it too risky to continue fighting Fouquet when Miss Longueville's safety was also at stake, and sealing away this weapon of mass destruction was the highest priority," I said. "It was very wise of Miss Longueville to come to me, for the Staff of Destruction's power is great, and I shudder to think what may have become of anyone who dared to fight Fouquet without my experience and skills."

"I believe you made the right decision, Sir Axion. I witnessed the power of the Staff of Destruction firsthand many years ago, as I saw it kill a full grown dragon with but a single spell," said Osmond.

Once again, the group looked at me with awe.

I handed the rocket launcher to Osmond, then spoke again. "It seems that the Staff has a limited number of uses. Fouquet was only able to use it once. I could not be sure, so I did not take the risk that I was wrong."

"Why, that is definitely possible. I don't know very much about the Staff myself," Osmond said looking over the M72 LAW curiously.

Then he smiled at the gathered teachers. "Nevertheless, this is wonderful news! Isn't it, everyone? No need to blame anyone anymore, for Sir Axion has taken care of the problem for us!"

Things went back to normal afterward.

The deadline for Fouquet to bring back the Staff of Destruction was still a couple of weeks away. And because our plan now was to extract the target to safety in Tristain, Fouquet had to maintain her job at the school. Additionally, she couldn't let me go to the target by myself, so we decided to schedule the operation for the next Void Day, in less than a week's time.

The days passed quickly as I researched the local magic and trained Louise. I never taught her anything except to give her pointers on how to refine her own existing capabilities, but she was more than satisfied with our lessons, as she'd never gotten that kind of attention from any other teacher.

As her control improved, I introduced the concept of creating new incantations.

"Incantations are not an inherent part of most spells. Unless it's to invoke a specific system, they are just ways for you to help focus your will, a sort of hypnotic device."

"Really? But the school teaches us that they're necessary. Only the strongest mages can cast without them, and even then, they think the incantation in their minds." Although she protested, her eyes were attentive and showed a willingness to accept my teachings.

"Well, to say that they're purely a hypnotic device isn't entirely accurate either. The theory behind this is very complex so I won't go into detail, but over the course of millennia, the incantations that have been passed down have gained [Conceptual Weight] in the magic system through accumulated belief and repeated use. Therefore, by performing the same actions, you are also invoking the [Ritual of Casting the Spell], which makes it far easier to cast. In your case, however, we are essentially inventing new spells personalized to you, therefore using the ancient incantations will only hinder you in the long-run."

I said all this with the utmost seriousness despite not being sure of the theory myself. They were theories from Nasuverse magecraft that may or may not be applicable elsewhere, and controversial among magi even in Nasuverse.

"Then what should I do?"

"Make your own."

"Hah? But… how?" She looked at me dumbly.

"Just think of any words you like, whether in a real language or a made up one, then use it as the incantation. Try to match the length of the incantation to how long it takes for you to mentally focus the spell structure, and give the spells new names."

In the end, she did what I told her to. Even if it was a placebo though, with more practice she got better.

"Partner, this body is perfect! Perfect!" Derf exclaimed from inside the sword I grew with my Armoriont. It was made of the same cellulose nanocrystal of my armour, but without a nervous system or organized living cell network.

At first, I was a bit hesitant to discard the old sword because of its potential to have high Mystery as an ancient weapon. Mystery was an extremely useful thing that accumulated with age, causing the trope "older is better" to have a basis in reality, at least with magical phenomena. It was a sort of natural magic resistance, and even resistance to physical laws, warping the world.

Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed as Derf informed me that he had switched swords every few decades. There was absolutely nothing special about the rusty sword he was in when I found him at the shop.

This new sword was superior to the old one in every way, except one. It didn't have a good cutting edge, nor could it be sharpened effectively. My Armoriont was simply not capable of growing so sharp an edge, and the other powerful properties of the nanocrystal relied on a molecular structure that could not be sharpened with grindstones like steel could.

"I can even feel that my capacity for absorbing magic is a hell of a lot higher! It's coming back to me now… my limit goes up when decorated with jewels. I guess the stuff this blade's made of counts as a huge jewel," Derf continued with an excited tone.

If that was true, then perhaps I spoke too soon. The sword could be sharpened by Derf with magic, so the extra magic would more than make up the difference.

Were Saito the one using the sword as he was meant to, he couldn't easily charge it up, nor could Louise charge Derf without risking the sword simply exploding. I and Agate, on the other hand, could channel magical energy directly into Derf after processing od or mana through our circuits.

"Let's get started then!" Agate flew over to touch Derf's new form and immediately started processing magical energy.

"Oohh! Ahhh! Yes! Keep going! More! More! The last time I've had so much magic running through me on a regular basis was with Sasha thousands of years ago! Hahahah… the true legendary Derflinger is back, just like old times baby!"

"Hm? Who's Sasha?"

"Eh? I don't remember. Someone strong, I think."

When Derf was powered up enough to do some tests, I was very satisfied with the results, and that was putting it mildly. If we kept this up and charged him every day until he reached his limit…

Once Saito was healthy again, he joined in on Louise's lessons. I gave him Derf's old sword after I polished the rust and bad edges away.

"What's going on? I thought Lord Derflinger wasn't in here anymore," he said. "Why do I still feel so powerful when holding this sword?"

"Derf gave you a small boost, but the power was within you all along. You are Gandalfr. That superhuman power will activate whenever you are holding any weapon."

"So it was really my own power that duel…?"

"That's right. As I told you, Derf has the power to destroy magic. That was my main reason for lending him to you for the duel. No matter how physically superior or skilled you are, what do you think would happen if you try to fight a magic golem with a common weapon, especially when your opponent is an Earth mage?"

Saito's mouth formed an O in understanding. "The weapon would break! Right, they mentioned in class that Earth mages could transmute materials and make them harder or softer."

"Exactly. Guiche was weak, but against more powerful mages, physical ability alone won't be enough. Know your enemy and know yourself, otherwise you will be imperiled in every battle. As Gandalfr, you will gain great power when holding a weapon, but that's also your weakness. If you lose your weapon, or if it breaks, you return to normal."

"Got it. I should probably carry backup weapons then," Saito said nodding.

"Now let's begin. We'll start with a simple spar. Come at me with the intent to kill," I said.

"You sure?" He asked, face looking dubious. "What if I hurt you?"

"If you don't use your full power, you won't stand a chance."

"Well… alright," he said, getting into a ready stance. When he noticed that I wasn't getting into a similar stance, he asked, "Um… aren't you going to draw your sword?"

"If you can make me draw it, I will," I said with a smirk, and made a come hither motion "Now come at me whenever you're ready!"

"You'll regret saying that!" He yelled as he shot forward.

He moved impressively fast, though I had already expected it from watching his duel.

I dodged a few of his slashes, though they were close.

Then I parried his sword with my gauntlet, and stepped in. A simple push to his chest sent him stumbling backwards, though I didn't seize the advantage.

"Shit!" He took up another stance warily once he caught his footing again. "You actually know how to fight."

"Did you think all mages were like Guiche, relying solely on their spellcasting?"

"I kinda did think that, but I also expect you to be different. You look like someone who can get up close and personal," he circled around me with hawkish eyes. "But I'm not done yet."

Another charge that came even faster than before, and I was hard pressed to continue dodging the flurry of strikes that followed, instead having to parry the blows.

A short distance away, Louise had stopped practicing her spells to gawk at our sparring, which must have looked like a whirlwind of action.

The agility of Saito's limbs was higher than even my basic Armoriont boosted speed without magical reinforcement. His strength, however, was not even close to me despite being enhanced, nor was his body's durability, which wasn't much better than a baseline human.

I tossed a few test punches at him, and determined that his reflexes were excellent, though his overall skill level was amateurish at best. It seemed that the runes gave him the knowledge to use the weapon, but did not grant actual mastery of it.

Finally, I ended the bout by simply grabbing the sword, which couldn't hope to scratch my armour.

"What the-?" He struggled with both hands on the hilt, his wide eyes locked on my single hand that held the blade edge in an iron grip.

He was distracted enough that he didn't dodge my palm strike, which this time had some serious force behind it.

The force of the push took his feet off the ground as he lost his grip on the sword and landed sprawling on the ground.

Saito groaned and cursed while lying there. "I can't believe it… how are you that strong? That's not human!"

"Magic, obviously."

Louise's face turned indignant as she reprimanded Saito. "Of course Lord Axion is strong! He's an elite knight, nothing like that idiot Guiche! Lord Axion must be at least Square-class!"

"I don't use that ranking system, so I don't know how powerful I am compared to a Square-class mage. Still, Louise is right. Your own new power is a result of magic, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise that I can enhance myself too. Well, I doubt any mages here can reach my level of physical ability, but the point remains."

"Ugh… I'll keep that in mind," said Saito, sitting up.

"We'll take a break, and I'll tell you what you should work on. I've a good idea of what your runes can do now."

The power of the Gandalfr runes was somewhat disappointing to me.

With just this much, how could he possibly battle an army of 70,000? Was it really just Derflinger that allowed him to perform that feat, or was I missing something…? I cursed that I did not know either the novel or anime stories very well.

Louise, on the other hand, was very dangerous. I tested her explosions against a piece of armour I grew and detached, and she had no trouble destroying it. If the armour was Reinforced, then she couldn't target and blow it up directly with the newly named 'Detonate' due to magic resistance, but she could still destroy it with the 'Blast' created from her failed Fireballs.

Luckily a heavily magic charged Derf could withstand a Blast, and even absorb some of its power.

As for myself and Agate, we never managed to cast any local magic, even with using the local wands and staves. We did, however, learn to use the wind stones to fly and make a strong breeze.

Moreover, we learned something peculiar about the wands and staves we investigated. By channeling processed magical energy from my circuit into the foci before using it to actualize a mystery, the mystery gained varying amounts of strength.

It didn't do anything for Agate, but after a series of experiments, we concluded that the wands were acting as external artificial magic circuits that possessed only one of the features of internal soul circuits. They were not connected to the soul or the Root to generate od, nor could they actively draw in ambient mana for a spell, but they could amplify the mystic potential of magical energy.

In other words, if a magus had very low quality circuits, they could use such wands to enhance their spellcasting a little bit after first using their own circuits to generate magical energy from od and mana.

Although Agate's circuits could serve the same function for me, these wands could be a useful backup, and I investigated the theory and method of their construction.

Physically, it was just carefully crafted wood. What made them magical was the inclusion of mage's blood through a ritual. My own blood apparently didn't qualify-I tried and it didn't work. But the quality of the wand supposedly corresponded directly with the potential of whichever mage the blood came from, so I took some from Louise.

The ritual itself was supposed to need willpower to cast, but we somehow got it to work after extensive experimentation.

How? Well, it all started when Agate had the bright idea of seeing if Derf could absorb Chaos energy. While we didn't risk phasing Derf directly into Agatespace, Agate phased some other objects into Agatespace to collect Chaos energy so that Derf could absorb it from the object once she phased it back.

As it turns out, he could absorb a small amount of it, though in his own words, "I feel like I'm having indigestion…"

He could use the Chaos energy for a quick boost, but wouldn't be able to use any powers for over half an hour afterward.

So Agate suggested that we try using Chaos energy to substitute for the ritual and see what happens. We did, and it failed spectacularly when the wand exploded in a bloody mess shortly after being brought back from Agatespace.

However, inanimate objects didn't normally explode like that when saturated with Chaos energy-only brains did.

The reaction showed that something was going on, and so we experimented with it until we figured out that Reinforcing the wand would stabilize the destructive effects of the Chaos energy to an extent, until it could dissipate. By finding the right balance and timing of exposure to Agatespace, it somehow worked in the end.

Once my new wand was completed, further testing showed that its quality in mystic amplification was roughly on par with Agate's own A+ Rank magic circuits.

The only 'problem' was that the wand had the side effect of causing spells to explode violently, just like Louise's own spells. It was extremely effective when casting Reinforcement Break. It turned the windstone breeze spell into an air blast while the wind flight spell turned into a shockwave of air pressure that exploded outwards from me in every direction.

Now wands and staves were actually fairly expensive at 500 écu each for the cheapest low quality ones, so I couldn't actually buy anything useful. But they weren't a pressing concern either, considering how few spells I could cast, so I could just wait to make a new one if the opportunity to get a high level mage's blood arose.

Quest Information - Winning Vote

Note that due to the ways the voting rules work, parts of the decision are subject to change any time until the operation actually takes place, which will be a short while later. It may change even despite vote results as more information is acquired and/or other plot developments alter any of the involved characters' mindsets.

[X] Agree to the deal and undertake the extraction operation primarily in person, getting supplies/equipment/support from the AAPV as needed. No need to spook anyone by rolling in with an armored vehicle, or risk Myozunitonirun preparing counters to our ace. Besides, we were looking for some personal combat experience fighting magic anyways.

13 - Princess of Tristain

13 - Princess of Tristain

On the sixth day after the duel, just a day before Void Day, Osmond informed me that the Crown princess would be coming to the school for an inspection of the school and the vault, and that he had arranged for her to meet me to see if there was anything the Crown could do to help my situation.

The princess' entourage was small, but the procession of knights, Griffons, and musketeers still awed the students.

Saito, in particular, seemed entranced by the princess' beauty, to Louise' consternation, but after I'd interfered a couple of times to tone down her 'punishments', she let Saito off the hook this time.

Once classes resumed while the real inspection work was being done by the Crown's agents, I met Princess Henrietta, who was only a seventeen year old girl, in her guest room, which was much larger and more opulent than mine.

Her musketeers stood guard outside while Osmond and I were called to enter. The princess Henrietta de Tristain sat holding her crystal staff with unknown anxieties on her face that she quickly calmed as we came in. A handmaiden set the tea for us before exiting.

"Your highness," Osmond said with a deep bow.

"A pleasure to meet you, princess," I said with a simple nod.

A kind smile was returned to me. "The pleasure is mine, Sir Axion. I have heard great things about you. They say you are a renowned hero in your homeland, who has achieved feats of a sort similar to those I only read about in stories, growing up. And you have been a tremendous inspiration to the students here, who are the precious future of this Kingdom. Even battling Fouquet and returning the Staff of Destruction, you have proven that you live up to your reputation."

"Your words are too kind, princess. I merely did what was necessary. When there is evil afoot, someone must step up to stop it. I simply happened to be the one with the right skills to accomplish the deed. I imagine there are many such courageous men and women in Tristain as well."

"I wish it were so, Sir Axion… in my grandfather's day such chivalry was common, but in these dark times…" she said sadly, then sighed. "I ought not burden you with these matters. Please, tell me of your troubles so that I may assist. I am told you are from another world entirely?" She asked with a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes.

"That is true, princess. I was summoned by Louise Vallière together with a boy who came from yet another world still," I said.

She blinked with astonishment. "Louise Vallière, truly? Sir Osmond, you did not mention it was my dear friend who had done the summoning!"

"Your highness, I had no idea she was your friend," said Osmond.

"You're right of course, you could not have known. Yes, we were close friends when we were younger. What a coincidence… or perhaps, a sign from the Founder… but what does it mean?" She murmured to herself, before shaking her head. "No, I shouldn't get distracted. We were speaking of you, Sir Axion, and how I can help."

Her tone and expression were fraught with genuine sympathy. "If you are from another world and stranded in Tristain, I can only imagine how it must feel to have lost your home. Although we have no way to send you back, if there is anything else I can do to help you, please ask."

I nodded appreciatively. "Thank you for your concern, princess Henrietta. I have some ideas on how I might return on my own, so it is not hopeless. In the meantime, the opportunity to explore a new land is a joy of its own."

"Please, just Ann is fine when we are in private. I would not ask a great hero such as yourself to address me so formally, especially as you are not my subject. Though perhaps, that can change if you find Tristain to your liking…?"

Young as she was, she was very good at projecting warmth and kindness, though that may have just been her nature.

"Very well, Ann, but only if you call me Kaleidus. And none of that sir business, either, if we're doing away with titles."

She nodded pleasantly. "Kaleidus, that is a strange name but somehow I feel it suits you. Then, have you thought about what you would like to do? For your role in preventing the theft of the Staff of Destruction, you would be more than qualified to receive a title of peerage."

I smiled back but shook my head. "That is a kind offer, and perhaps I might take it up in the future, Ann, but for now I must decline. Though I'm still unfamiliar with the customs of this land, I am not unfamiliar with the burden of ruling. I'm sure you understand what I mean, taking on such a heavy responsibility at such a young age for yourself."

She looked at me with a mix of seriousness and surprise.

My expression turned melancholic. "The people may admire us, but unless we are tyrants the position of a ruler is not wholly enviable. It is a duty that never ends. I have seen how the people look at you, Henrietta, and heard their praise of you on the streets of Tristania. For them to love you so, you must have sacrificed much, and for that, I have only respect for you. So please believe me when I say that I have nothing against being your subject. But over the past few days I have come to realize more and more that the summoning has not trapped me on this world. Rather, it has given me a new kind of freedom, and I would not be so quick to shackle myself in duty again."

There was a pregnant pause as the purple haired girl digested my words, and Osmond looked at me in a new light.

"Freedom…?" She cautiously drew the word out with an intense gaze at me.

"Before I was summoned, I had already established a robust system and trained successors to rule in my place in the event that something happened to me. I have the utmost confidence that my people will be fine without me. I won't deny that I'd like to go back at some point, but here, I am free. There are no grand quests to undertake, no world-ending threats to face, no mountain of paperwork… there is nothing. There is just me, my wand and sword, and whatever adventures I find in this fascinating new world," I gestured grandly to the window that showed the endless plains outside.

In that moment, the princess's refined expression broke and what replaced it was a picture of longing and awe.

"When you put it that way… it really does sound wonderful. To go wherever you want, seeking excitement and adventure… I…"

Her youth and royal upbringing was now showing itself. Someone who had lived in a palace all her life, surrounded by guards and nobles whenever she traveled, the idea of simple freedom and adventure had a glamour to it that was grossly distorted by imagination and bard's tales.

Osmond seemed to notice the princess's stupor too, and quickly said, "Ah, your highness, I'm sure you'll be able to go on an adventure when the kingdom is safe. When the crisis in Albion is over and the line of succession is secure."

A shadow of disappointment flitted across Henrietta's face. "Yes, you're right. I must put the needs of the kingdom first. Alas, Kaleidus, I wish that I could help you some other way, if you'll not consider peerage."

I had already read between the lines and understood the real purpose of this meeting. Henrietta herself might have genuinely wanted to help me, but tying myself down with some kind of real position would only be an inconvenience in the long-run when I needed to disappear for unknown periods of time offworld. The general status of being a noble wasn't such a big deal when people assumed I was noble just by the way I dressed anyway.

"Well, there is one thing," I said. "Not for myself though… Ann, is it really true that you are Louise's friend?"

"Louise de la Vallière? Yes, of course. She was my playmate but a few years ago, and my dearest friend still. Though it has been some time so I'm not sure that she still thinks the same way of me…" She said hesitantly.

"I assure you, Ann, she has never forgotten and loves you just as much, even if she is too shy to show it because of your station. I have taken her as a student this past week, and would therefore ask you a great favor on her behalf. However, this is a very private matter…" I said, turning to Osmond.

Henrietta and Osmond both understood my intent and Osmond offered to withdraw on his own. "That is a very honorable thing to do, Sir Axion, to think of your student even now. I will of course allow you to converse in privacy."

He bowed to Henrietta again. "Your highness, I shall be in my office if you need my presence."

When he left, Henrietta stood up and gave me a short bow of her own.

"What's this? Why are you bowing to me, princess?"

"I must thank you for teaching my friend. I have heard of her difficulties in magic, and to know that such a great mage as yourself is so earnestly helping her sets my heart at ease," she said before returning elegantly to her seat.

"No need to thank me, Ann. I only recognized the potential where others did not, and knew how to bring it out. In fact, that is precisely what I need your help with."

"Whatever I can do, please ask."

"In truth, I am reaching the limit of what I can teach her personally, and I must also leave the school for a time. She has a very special kind of magic, you see, and there is nobody else that can teach her. I do not wish to leave her to return to failing pointlessly at her regular studies, which are not suitable to her."

The young princess listened patiently to my explanation.

"Simply put, Louise is a Void mage, like the Founder Brimir was recorded to be in history," I declared with complete confidence.

"A V-Void mage?! Truly?" Her hand flew to her chest as her face turned to shock.

"This is the real reason she cannot cast regular magic, her affinity to Void is overpowering and she cannot use any other element until she gains a degree of control over it."

"That is most remarkable! But, how do you know this? For her to have the legendary element…"

"It is unbelievable, yes. I could easily recognize it because I too have a special relationship to the Void, though that is surely just as difficult to believe, so I point to another piece of evidence. Louise completed the familiar binding ritual with the other boy that was summoned with me. The runes that formed on him are those of the legendary Gandalfr, and he has in fact acquired the power of Gandalfr to wield any weapon with such strength and speed as to be impossible for any normal man. You can easily verify this yourself."

"I see. No need for that, I believe you, Kaleidus. I understand now why you wished to speak of this to me in private, and I thank you for your discretion. For Louise's own safety, it is best that nobody learns of this. But, what is it that you need my help with?"

"Now this next part is only a speculation, but I believe there may be something in your possession that could be of use to her. It is said that the Founder was a user of Void, and he left behind certain artifacts. I believe the Tristainian family has a particularly interesting Founder's Prayer Book? One that is famed to be blank, where all the other supposed originals have varying versions of scripture?"

Henrietta's eyes shimmered in understanding. "Yes, that's right. Without a doubt, the one that belongs to our family is genuine. Though we don't know why it's blank either. But if Louise is a Void mage, then maybe she could discover its secrets."

"So, would you lend it to her?"

She nodded. "I will make the arrangements. In fact, it is right here at the academy vault, and it is one reason I came so quickly for an inspection."

I smiled. "Thank you, Ann, for listening to my request. Please accept this small token of my appreciation."

I retrieved a small metallic object from my utility belt.

"Oh, there's no need for a gift, Kaleidus. I've not even had a chance to reward you your assistance with the Staff of Destruction yet, and it is hardly fair that your only request I can fulfill is one that I would have done for Louise anyway. If anything, I ought to be the one preparing a gift for you." She gestured for me to stop.

"Please don't misunderstand. This is a different sort of gift. If you'd like, you may consider listening to my performance my reward. After all, it is not everyday that one can play a melody for a princess."

"A melody?" She looked at the instrument in my hands curiously.

I did not explain further and simply put the harmonica to my lips.

What followed was a simple, slow, and relaxing tune. Her eyes widened as I played, but soon she relaxed alongside the music.

At the end of it, she clapped lightly with a gentle smile. "Thank you! That was wonderful. That instrument, I've never seen such a thing before, but you are very skilled with it."

"You flatter me, Ann. I am but an amateur."

"No, no! You really are skilled. I daresay you are better than some of the musicians who've performed at the royal court."

"If the princess says so, then I can only accept her praise humbly."

After that, I let her examine the harmonica in detail and spoke briefly of its history on Earth, before attempting to bid her farewell.

"I shall not bother you any longer. You must have much official business to take care of."

"No, not at all! I am quite tired of listening to the Cardinal speak of official matters all the time. Why, he couldn't stop talking about such things even on the carriage when I only wanted some rest!" She said with a sigh. "You were no bother at all, Kaleidus. Your music was quite refreshing. If only all my petitioners were so cultured…"

"Is that so? Perhaps an encore is in order?"

Her face lit up. "I would like that very much, if it isn't too much trouble."

So I played the tune again.

And another one.

Then I just stayed and continued chatting with her until our tea ran out.

It seemed that she was quite eager to have an excuse to keep herself away from the man-shaped knot of stress otherwise known as her Regent.

In the end, she even asked me for advice on love and politics, which I was happy to share. I had no vested interest in influencing the future Queen of Tristain, but I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to nudge her along a more interesting path.

When the week of teaching with Louise was up, I informed her and Saito that I would be leaving for a while and returning to check their progress later.

To maintain a line of communications, I brought over a comms node from the AAPV. These 3kg nodes were solar powered super lightweight foldable communications drones that had several functions. They could communicate directly to each other at 8-16 kilobit per second bandwidths over ranges of 1000-3000 km, using Low Angle Skywaves, depending on their positioning. They could also act as hubs for short range radio comms-connecting to mobile devices like phones within a hundred kilometers. Finally, if I had a geostationary satellite in orbit, they'd be capable of much higher bandwidth transmissions. The AAPV had such a satellite on board and it could deploy it by going up to space, but I didn't see a need for it at the moment.

I simply set up a node floating over the school and another on the underside of Albion, with the AAPV itself acting as a node as well, and gave Louise and Saito each a solar powered smartphone. Being from a modern Earth, Saito easily understood how to use it despite the custom operating system. Moreover, he actually still had his laptop computer in his bag when he was summoned, so after installing some new software and giving him a solar panel and adapter to top up his battery, he could use that too.

For her continued studies, Louise received the Prayer Book as I requested and tearfully thanked me after Henrietta told her I "gave up" my own reward for defeating Fouquet to ask this favor for her instead.

I was unsure if she could actually do anything with the blank book, but unlocking the secrets of the Void magic was the only thing I actually cared for her to do.

I left Saito with videos and digital manuals, along with a loan of modern equipment including guns and explosives that he could use as Gandalfr. Nothing that could hurt me, of course, but certainly adequate to take out some unsuspecting mages. Without Derflinger, the boy was less than useless if he didn't have modern weaponry to help him. I wasn't counting on his help anytime soon, but it wouldn't do if Louise got herself killed before I extracted the secrets of Void from her, and he was the best, and only, line of defense at the moment. I made sure he understood how valuable this equipment was, being irreplaceable as long as we were 'trapped' in Halkegenia, and that he'd owe me for it.

Before the dawn on the eighth day of my arrival to Halkegenia, I flew off to Albion carrying Longueville toward the city of Saxe-Gotha.

14 – The Price of Betrayal

14 - The Price of Betrayal

In a few hours' time, we crossed the straits between Tristain and Albion. Because Agate and Offensive Bias had already mapped out the local area, I was able to avoid the patrolling ships near the key port cities of Albion.

It was unclear how the Albionese navy would treat a mage that could fly this far on his own power. The typical way for locals to get to and from Albion was by flying ships using wind stones as fuel, or sometimes with tamed dragons and familiars. Few other creatures were able to make a trip of several hundred kilometres while carrying passengers.

While we were flying, Offensive Bias moved the AAPV to provide support in case it was necessary, according to the plan we set out before leaving the academy.

"Have you been to Albion already? You seem to know the route quite well. It's not easy to navigate here even with a map," Fouquet said.

At the edge of Albion floated a dense coverage of rolling white fog, some so thick one might consider them clouds instead. In the distance the lighthouse of Rosais port could be seen signaling to incoming ships, but we were flying through unmarked shore on a path to Saxe-Gotha in the south east of Albion.

"I flew over to scout and familiarize myself with the terrain a couple of days ago. It's a beautiful island," I said.

"That it is. It's a real shame the politics have turned so ugly. I don't understand what possessed the nobles to revolt against the Tudors. They might not have been the most perfect rulers, but they were not so bad either. This talk of another crusade to the Holy Land is just madness," she said.

A gruff voice interrupted. "What's there to understand? Wars, rebellions, fighting… it's just a part of the way the world works. People are never happy with their lot in life, and once an ambitious sort appears and makes some nice sounding promises, they'll rally behind them to get what they think they deserve."

"I suppose this situation is nothing new to you, Lord Derflinger?" Fouquet asked in a polite tone to the self-proclaimed legendary sword.

"It's the same old, same old business everywhere you go. I've been alive for six thousand years, and in that time I've been swung by people from all walks of life. From the lowliest peasant to the highest king and even the elves for a time when I was lost on crusade. Human or elf, in the end, people are not that different."

The renowned thief perked her head up. "Were there elves in your world too?"

"No, there were none in my world. Derf's actually native to Halkegenia," I said.

"Eh? But I thought-" A particularly dense bit of condensate broke in front of her face and droplets of water spilled on her face and hair.

"That he was a legendary artifact from my world who had been in many epic battles with me? Hahaha, we got her good, didn't we, Derf?"

The sword joined me in laughing.

"The truth is I found him in a rundown shop in Tristania rusting away in a pile of rubbish. The legendary feats he performed have long been lost to the ravages of time. He's certainly powerful, but nobody around here understood what he was or how to bring out his power. But I've a better eye than most, and we decided to team up and have some fun."

"It wasn't just me, you fooled the whole academy, even the Headmaster, with that stunt…" she grumbled.

Soon, the city of Saxe-Gotha came into sight. This was an ancient city said to be the first ever built by Brimir's people on the Albion continent.

Located on a mountain, it was like a fortress with huge and thick walls in a circle around it, and inside were five main streets crossing the center that made the whole city look like a pentagram from a bird's eye view.

The tip of the mountain itself had been carved out and refashioned into an aerial port for ships.

"That way, in the forest." Fouquet pointed at a large forest which a paved road from Saxe-Gotha led to.

It wasn't long before we touched down at a tiny village smack in the middle of the forest, consisting of several huts and a cottage.

Some children were hiding behind cover and looking with both awe and suspicion as we landed. But when Fouquet took off her hood, their suspicion was replaced with excited cheers.

"Big sister Matilda!" They cried and ran over.

I waited for Matilda to greet the kids, and one of them ran to the cottage. She gestured for me to wait outside while Matilda followed the little girl to the cottage and went in.

The rest of the kids clamored around me while Agate went in to spy on the cottage.

This whole place was bringing up some vague memories I had, and soon I made the connection. There was a person whom Saito had met after dying and losing his Gandalfr runes after the battle against the army of 70,000. They revived him, presumably with the ring that Matilda told me about. It was a half-elf with ties to the royal family who'd been hiding here and running the village which was actually an orphanage.

What relationship did Matilda have with her?

Inside the cottage, Agate found a pointy-eared girl dressed in simple peasant clothes. She sat still on her wooden stool, almost unnaturally so, staring at the closed door without blinking.

'Um… she seems a bit weird. Isn't she a little too still?' Agate thought to me. 'I think this is what you would call giving off bad vibes. I hope all elves aren't like this.'

Meanwhile, I drew out Derflinger to show him to the kids who were awed by his new crystalline form.

Then Matilda opened the door and the half-elf girl was suddenly quite animated. "Lady Matilda, you're back! It's been a while since you last visited!" She quickly moved over and gave her a hug.

Matilda smiled pleasantly and returned the hug. "I'm sorry I couldn't visit sooner, Tiffania. Reconquista has made things difficult for me. But it's okay, we don't have to worry about them for much longer, I found someone that can help us!"

"Huh?"

"He's a very powerful mage, and he agreed to help us escape from Albion."

"Escape? But… I can't leave here. What will all the kids do?" Tiffania's face grew sad.

"We can send the kids to the orphanage in Saxe-Gotha, it'll be tough for them but they'll survive. Please, Tiffa, there's no other choice. I… failed the mission they gave me. If we don't leave, they'll come for you!"

Tiffania looked hesitant still. "Can this mage really help us escape? I heard that all the ports are under Reconquista's control already."

"I believe he can. He flew the two of us over on his own power, without a ship or a familiar. I didn't even see him use any wind stones. He's definitely a Square-class mage, and he's got a weapon that can destroy magic. Even if we had to fight our way out, he's our best shot. The only thing is… I had to promise him your ring. Sorry Tiffa, I know how much it means to you, but if it's your life or a keepsake… I hope you understand."

"I understand," the girl said and nodded.

"Eh? You do?" Matilda sounded surprised, as if expecting to have to do a lot more persuasion.

"Of course, I am the last living member of the house of Tudor, aren't I? I have to live at all costs."

"What… this isn't like you-" Matilda barely had time to process the strange words coming out of her friend's mouth before she gasped in pain and found a blade piercing her gut.

"That's why you have to die, Lady Matilda de Saxe-Gotha. You have been a friend to my family for a long time, but now that Reconquista has won, I'm afraid I have to cut ties with you to prove my loyalty to the new Emperor's rule."

I watched in shock, and a bit of admiration, as the girl viciously sliced up and drew the dagger out.

Matilda staggered, slumping against the wall and sliding down until she was laying sideways on the ground. "N-no… ! You're not Tiffa!"

If the girl had truly turned on her old friend to save herself, it was a show of willpower worthy of respect, however despicable and foolish it was. It was someone that could be used… to a degree, until she turned on her new masters. That was the problem with defectors, even the ones that do so out of a good cause. One always had to be cautious about their true loyalties.

Matilda's blood was hemorrhaging out, staining her clothes red even as her face grew increasingly white. The wound was severe, penetrating the whole way through her abdomen and running up to her ribs.

It was doubtful I could save her even if I tried to provide modern medical support. Only healing magic would be able to do anything for her, and I didn't have that-which was the whole point of getting the healing ring. Amelia back on Worm never had time to invent any kind of Tinkertech-like super substance/symbiont for rapidly healing other people. My priority had been to enhance my self-healing capabilities so that was where her efforts had focused on.

"Hm, so you've finally realized. Did you really think we wouldn't know that you'd betrayed us, Fouquet?"

The fake Tiffania finally revealed her true colors. Apparently it was an imposter after all.

"Our agents in Tristain informed us of your failure to retrieve the Staff of Destruction several days ago, and even returned it to the school with that interloper. To think you had the audacity to come back here… well, at least you'll be of more use to us in death than in life."

It seems that we waited too long. Originally, Fouquet wanted to keep her job at the Academy so that they'd have somewhere to settle after escaping Albion. And I wanted to upgrade Derf and finish the lessons with Louise first. Had we come straight away, they couldn't have gotten here before us.

Actually, come to think of it, the real problem was that I made the mistake of returning the Staff of Destruction for the reputation boost with Tristain, not realizing that they already knew Fouquet's cover identity. If I never returned it with 'Miss Longueville' in tow, then Reconquista wouldn't have known that Fouquet had necessarily betrayed them.

The imposter smirked darkly and pulled out a white doll from under her skirt, kneeling down to let it drink Matilda's blood.

"W-wha… di… yo… Tiffa… !" Matilda struggled to form the words, and coughed up yet more blood.

"She has paid the price for your treachery, dear, and soon you will go to join her. Just lie there quietly and savor your final moments."

A short moment later, the doll grew in size and formed a replica of Matilda, to the silent horror of the original.

Outwardly, I showed no sign of having noticed anything wrong while playing with the children.

The doll was a dead giveaway for the work of Myozunitonirun. Such gargoyles were known as alviss, and you could find them on the Academy grounds too, but Myoz took their use to a whole new level. It was a type of magic that differed from golems in that they didn't necessarily need to be directly managed by the caster's will, and could act on their own. But they were also far more expensive in willpower for that reason.

Using it to infiltrate and make clones of other people though? That was not in the normal Halkegenian mage's repertoire, as far as I knew.

If Tiffania was an imposter, then what about the children? I eyed the kids around me carefully, and Agate drew my attention to the one girl which had led Matilda inside the cottage. There she stood silently in the corner, seemingly unphased by what had transpired.

'If the real Tiffania is dead, they probably took the ring from her already,' Agate thought. 'This was a waste of time. They beat us to the punch.'

There were four Void mages who should have awakened in this era, one for each of the Brimiric nations of old whose ruling lineages descended from Brimir himself. Albion, Tristain, Gallia, and Romalia.

There was some significance to the presence of the four Void mages, who each would have one of the four legendary Void familiars. How that would be affected if one of them died was unclear to me, but this incident made me more than a little frustrated.

Not only did we lose out on the ring, which Myoz the master of magical artifacts would definitely recognize, it felt like Reconquista stole a Void mage from under my nose whom I could no longer study.

As the fake Matilda exited from the cottage and came towards me, it was clear that Myoz had plans for me too.

If I quickly defeated Myoz's alviss, it might be possible to stabilize Matilda's wound with the medical supplies onboard the AAPV, until I could get her to a Water mage for healing. As a temporary ally, I could at least do that much. On the other hand, Matilda herself wasn't particularly valuable to me, so why take the risk?

A confrontation in what was clearly a prepared ambush was disadvantageous, to say the least. While I was eager to test Derflinger's might against worthy opponents, Myoz was not a foe to be underestimated. Even worse, I had hoped to be able to avoid Myoz until I could launch a surprise attack on Cromwell for the Ring of Andvari. Myozunitonirun was like a Tinker-the more they could analyze their opponents and prepare appropriate counters, the more dangerous they would be.

There was also the possibility that Myoz had something other than a fight in mind. In the best case, an alliance with Myoz could be very rewarding. Out of all the Void familiars, the Mind of God was certainly the most useful and versatile, especially when considering that my main goal at the moment was to collect powerful magical artifacts I might be able to make use of on other worlds, as learning the native magic appeared to be a lost cause.

[Agate]

Analyzing…

We know very little about Myoz's capabilities, and not knowing means it's inherently risky to face them in battle. But caution carries its own risks. Had we attacked Cromwell right off the bat instead of trying to get the smaller prize of the healing ring first, we would have retained the advantage of surprise. Now Myoz is aware that we are willing to work against Reconquista, maybe not as a full enemy yet, but the fact that we got involved in Albion at all is something they would be wary of if they were prudent.

Because we also know very little about Myoz and its Void master's motivations, a negotiation would be similarly difficult, though there's no question of the rewards being the largest and most immediate. The Ring of Andvari is impressive, but one must ask how did they get a hold of it? And if they were willing to give such a powerful artifact to a puppet, what does that mean for what else they might have access to, or would share with an ally? Even these alviss are very useful.

The death of Fouquet would be a shame, and we'd have to bring the bad news to the Academy at some point, as our story was that we were escorting 'Miss Longueville' to Albion to take care of some personal business, navigating through the dangerous war torn land. It wouldn't be impossible to save her, but it would also be difficult. We won't find help in Albion, which means we'd have to transport her back to the Academy water mages for healing. Whether she can even survive the trip is an open question. But if she is saved, she may be more amenable to working for us, now that she has lost Tiffania as a motivation, and perhaps she'd want revenge on Reconquista.

Quest Choices

Generating Recommendation…

[] Save Matilda so we can use her later.

[] Escape now and prepare to attack Cromwell for the Ring of Andvari.

[] Talk to the alviss in hopes of securing an alliance, or barring that, some kind of deal or just information.

[] write-in

Last edited: Jun 15, 2020

15 - The Mind of God

Vote Result

[X] Save Matilda so we can use her later.

Some votes were not counted due to the 1-hour moratorium. Not that it would have made any difference, though.

15 - The Mind of God

The choices before me and the path that would follow them flashed in my mind, quickly organized by Agate, then all was clear.

Though I considered that saving Matilda was a lost cause-she wouldn't likely survive regardless of what I did-I nevertheless resolved to act according to my current persona, because as Agate reminded me…

'You're still in your Axion armour! We don't know if Myoz's dolls can be used for remote communications, or if anybody else might be watching.'

It wouldn't do for the hero Axion to so easily abandon a comrade, even one of little value. If I were to discard this persona, I would do so on my own terms, and retain the element of surprise when my enemies would have miscalculated my willingness to use despicable means at a critical moment.

Now was not that moment.

The fake Matilda had not taken two steps from the house when I threw a smoke bomb and flash bang.

There was the barest hint of surprise on her face before smoke covered us, and I activated my infrared vision mode.

These dolls were surprisingly accurate mimics of the real human body while they were active. Earlier, even Agate hadn't noticed anything physically off about the fake Tiffania. It was only her unnatural stillness and lack of activity that gave us a clue as to her true nature. A real person would be doing things in their own house even when nobody else was watching, but the fake Tiffania just sat there staring at the door as if waiting for the moment to fulfill its purpose, and it wasn't any sort of meditation.

I jumped high, boosted with my Armoriont wings, and reached fake Matilda in a single motion and slashed right through her.

"Woah! What are you doing?" Derflinger cried out. Because Agate and I were communicating telepathically, Derflinger didn't know why we were attacking all of a sudden, but after absorbing the magic in the alviss, he quickly caught on.

"Huh? It's a gargoyle! How did you know, partner? Nice going!"

Without knowing the full capabilities of these gargoyles, the best thing to do was to use Derflinger's magic absorption to quickly put them out of commission.

Behind me, the children's body shapes morphed just as I suspected and grew much bigger.

"Hang on Miss Longueville! I shall save you from these evil beings!" I shouted.

I rushed through the door and slashed at the space in front of me in anticipation of something moving there.

A man in mercenary attire appeared under my sword and was cut in half with an uncomprehending face.

Agate had watched while the little girl had morphed into the mercenary and went towards the door, which is how I knew where to strike as if I had precognition.

Unfortunately, by the time I got through the door, the fake Tiffania was already holding Matilda with a dagger to her throat.

The fake Tiffania had reacted quite fast after the fake Matilda was killed, as if the dolls could communicate with each other without speaking.

"You cretin! Have you no honor! Unhand Miss Longueville at once!"

I stood in the doorway facing her down while she held the real Matilda, who was too weak to even struggle now.

"Hahaha… ! Honor? What use is there for honor in war? And to demand honor for an elven sympathizer of all things? Those who consort with the elves are no better than the elves themselves! Blasphemers and apostates who have turned away from Brimir's light! They deserve no mercy!" Her face turned into an angry snarl.

I scoffed. "Enough with the pretensions, Myozunitonirun. I'm well aware that you care nothing for the crusade or Brimir."

As we spoke, I racked my mind for a solution to this hostage problem. There was no way I was fast enough to take out the fake Tiffania before she could slit Matilda's throat.

I had a laser gun that might be able to take her out if I was accurate enough, but the time it took to draw it out was already enough to end Matilda's life. Even if I had the gun out already, it was only in trashy movies that you could see people shooting the hostage holder. The risk of a fatal mishap was far too high.

Then there was the strategy of pretending not to care, but that wouldn't work here because Matilda wasn't only a hostage-Myoz probably actually wanted Matilda dead, she was only keeping her alive for the express purpose of keeping me back… and if that I couldn't be held back that way, why not complete at least one objective?

"What are you talking about? Myozunitonirun? You must be delusional, mistaking me for that legendary familiar," the fake Tiffania said.

"Cut the crap and get to the point. You're just an expendable alviss. There's no reason for you to hold Miss Longueville hostage to protect an expendable tool. If you wanted Miss Longueville dead, you could easily finish her off right now and lose nothing by it. Since you haven't done that, you must want to talk to me. What do you want?"

For the moment, I could only entertain her.

The fake Tiffania raised an eyebrow, and quirked her lips in a smile. "You seem so sure of that. I could just be buying time to surround and kill you."

"If that's your plan, then you should find better spies. I won't be defeated by anything less than an army of mages. I could kill a hundred thousand of your alviss without breaking a sweat," I boasted groundlessly.

"Hah! We haven't even shown one percent of our power yet, missy! Didn't your spies tell you about that?" Derflinger added.

The fake Tiffania showed no sign of being surprised at Derflinger being able to talk, not even giving the sword a second glance. Perhaps because she'd already known from the spy reports, or because Myoz' power to understand and use magical artifacts was working even through the doll. Or, the doll was too stupid to understand the significance of it so ignored it… though I wouldn't put any money on that last theory.

"It seems that reports of your arrogance were not exaggerated, oh mighty hero from another world. You would do well not to underestimate this land, Lord Axion. There are those less cultured than me who would see your words as an insult and seek to show you your place."

I shrugged. There were people like that everywhere. Some would even try to show me my place without any insult whatsoever. Like that Planeswalker who started my journey by trying to kill me just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't need her advice to know that I had to be careful, but an arrogant persona was also a tool that would cause some people to underestimate me, and others to overestimate me for the wrong reasons.

"Then let them. I'm an adventurer now. It's easier if they come to me and hand over their loot and XP instead of making me do a long quest."

"Expy? What is that?"

"Nevermind… I wonder what world you got summoned from." Was she even from another world at all, or was it possible for Void familiars to be summoned from somewhere in Halkegenia?

"My past is no concern of yours. Let us get to business then. You are right that I wanted to speak with you. Why have you allied yourself with this deserter?" She gestured to the unconscious Matilda in her arms. "What sob story did she use to trick you into helping her?"

"That's it? And here I thought you had something meaningful to say. If you want to make small talk, let Miss Longueville go first. I'd be happy to have a coffee chat with you after Miss Longueville gets treated."

I thought hard, but ultimately determined that, other than talking our way out of it, the only way to resolve this situation was for Agate to launch an independent surprise attack.

It was a card that I never wanted to reveal back on Worm, as I wanted to keep it in reserve as my ace against a few specific precognitive opponents who would be unable to perceive Agate in agatespace, but who might be able to start modeling her after being exposed to that sort of thing a few times.

Now in this plane, such immensely powerful precognition shouldn't exist, so perhaps there was no need to hold back.

'Yes! Let me fight!' Agate cheered. She maneuvered to build up momentum.

The fake Tiffania sighed and shook her head. "You're on the wrong side, Lord Axion. This traitor isn't worth your effort, but I see that there's no-"

'Do it!' I ordered mentally.

In the next instant, Agate materialized just before smashing into the fake Tiffania's wrist in an explosion of colorful lights, the impact knocking her hand away from Matilda's throat. I seized upon the opportunity and crossed the short gap between us in less than a second, Derflinger stabbing forward.

The blade struck true and tore through the alviss' chest, eliciting an expression of shock before it melted away into the blank visage of the doll and shrunk.

Agate dematerialized and went outside to see that the children had all transformed into men in mercenary gear. So these alviss could take on more than a single form.

The twenty or so men surrounded the doorway of the little hut.

With my free hand, I brought out the new wand I'd created from Louise's blood, and eagerly brandished it forward while absorbing the wind mana in one of the many stones I now kept within my Armoriont.

With a quick incantation and channeling the elemental energy into the wand, a large blast of wind blew out the door-actually blowing the door itself and part of the hut's weak wall away with it, and pushed the men back. Unfortunately it wasn't strong enough to knock them completely off their feet, thus showing that this wind breeze spell still wasn't good enough for offensive purposes, even after the explosive effect added by the wand.

It was however, a decent method of crowd control, and I used the opening it created to cut down some disoriented merc alviss.

What followed after was the obvious outcome of fighting a group of unpowered mercs.

Once Derflinger had sliced them apart and Agate confirmed that we were alone, I went back to check on Matilda.

Unfortunately… we were already too late. The initial wound struck by the fake Tiffania managed to hit the abdominal aorta, which is what caused the profuse bleeding. On top of that, she cut upwards after the initial stab, enlarging the wound further.

The floor of the hut was practically covered in blood by now, and I had no means of safe blood transfusion on board the AAPV. I mean, I could morph a makeshift set of transfusion equipment using the Armoriont, but there was no compatible blood available. The Armoriont could only make blood compatible for me, being tied to my DNA, and there was no way I would be handing out my own blood in a magical setting where that might be used against me in the future. Even if I did have blood supplies, given the injury to the circulatory system, there was no good way to actually stem the bleeding either.

It was an unfortunate consequence of having mostly geared up the AAPV for my own protection, not as a mobile medical center.

Matilda didn't even have the chance to say any last words to me, being unconscious, as I felt her pulse slowing down to a barely perceptible level, then ended entirely.

"There goes another one," said Derflinger. "May she find peace in the next life."

"Do you think something like that exists? Another life after death?" I asked.

"Who knows? But people have been telling themselves that for thousands of years. The humans say that mages go to Valhalla, the commoners go… somewhere I can't remember, and the elves say the dead join with the Great Spirit."

"What about you? Do you think you'll have some place to go if the worst comes to past?"

"I can't see how I'm ever going to pass on when I can just find another sword."

I spent a little more time digging out an unmarked grave for Matilda before burying her in it.

Even though I believed that I could consider myself among the stronger beings in this world, there was still a lot that I couldn't do. Matilda's death wasn't a significant loss to me, but if this had happened to anyone important, I would be just as powerless.

With that, I flew away and regrouped with Offensive Bias inside the AAPV and started to adjust the appearance of the Armoriont.

As the AAPV started up, I shook my head with a sigh. "We still have a long way to go. Perhaps I've been too relaxed, thinking this world had few dangers for me. It's always easier to attack a known enemy than to defend against the unknown."

"What are you going to do now, partner?" Derflinger asked.

"We should go to Cromwell to take the Andvari ring while we know where he is," Agate said aloud. I confirmed the route plan Offensive Bias presented on my visor and we prepared to head for Newcastle.

"The ring of Andvari? I've heard of that ring before. Partner, I can't break the magic of that thing. You'll have to be careful," said Derflinger.

"Really? What's so special about it?" I asked.

"I can't do anything about mental effects, unless you want me to cut open your brain… just kidding, don't do that, it won't work either."

"Hahaha! Good one. What about the false dead it can raise?"

"Can't do anything about those either. The spirits inhabiting the bodies can fight me off."

"I guessed as much. You have a harder time with any form of continuous spell, so that doesn't surprise me. But the truth is I'm not that worried about Cromwell himself being a danger, even with the ring. Objectively speaking, it's just not that impressive for direct combat uses. Any mental powers it might have, I should be able to avoid by staying out of sight. No, the real problem is…"

"… we won't know how to use it, even after we get it. Even Cromwell probably doesn't know that much about it. It's Myoz that has the knowledge. And we still don't know much about what Myoz can do." Agate finished for me.

"Why don't you just ask the Water Spirit of Ragdorian Lake? That's who the ring belongs to," said Derflinger.

"Because she'll want it back herself? Why would she tell us?" I countered.

"I don't know, maybe you can trick her."

I shook my head with a sigh. "I've considered the possibility, but the chance of succeeding is remote and could easily backfire on us. As far as I know, the Water Spirit simply doesn't trust humans at all. And it's strong enough that I'm not eager to get into a fight with it if negotiations break down."

For a moment, Derflinger was silent. Just as I thought he wasn't going to say any more, he spoke up again.

"You might have a chance, Partner. You're different from the humans here. All the spirits should be able to feel it. Technically I'm a spirit too, I ought to know."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't just go with any random guy that picks me up, Partner. Your swordsmanship was good but it's nothing special. I was waiting for a specific person. You're not that person, but you're even more interesting. You have an aura I haven't felt for thousands of years, which I only felt once before."

"Derf, what are you saying? What aura?"

"I don't know how to describe it. It's just the feeling that you're not of this world. It's different from that kid Gandalfr. That's who I was waiting for before. He's not from this world either, but his world is connected to this one now."

"I'm getting the sense that there's a lot of context I'm missing here, to understand this. His Earth is connected to Halkegenia?"

"That's right. I think it's time I told you a bit of the true history of the Void. With Gandalfr and Myozunitonirun both appearing, something big's going to happen. You'll need to know to prepare yourself… if you want to get involved. Well, maybe you don't. Might not be anything good."

"I'm listening."

"6,000 years ago, a human with a special power tore through whatever lies between worlds and landed here. He called himself Brimir, and wielded a magic that defied the natural order of things. Every spirit could feel it for leagues upon leagues when he used that power he called Void. He took magic from the land even though he was not a spirit of the land, and did strange things with it. I wasn't there in the beginning, so I don't know too much about what he did, but at some point, he met an elf and they fell in love. The elf made me with the ancient magic of the spirits, and helped him experiment with his magic which he himself didn't fully understand."

"You knew Brimir personally?" I had suspected some link there, but to think he really knew Brimir that closely… and Brimir fell in love with an elf? The same man that tried to commit genocide on them? Must have been a pretty awful break up.

"Yep. But I was young then, so my memory of it is pretty spotty by now. The important thing is that Brimir had that aura too. It was obvious to any spirit that he didn't belong here, even aside from the fact that he could wield magic whereas the humans here couldn't. Of course, his aura was a lot more disturbing than yours, like he was tearing a hole in the world everywhere he went. Yours is just a sense of unease, but fundamentally it's similar, and I can never forget it. After a while, he told my maker why he came here. He was searching for a safe haven, to help his people escape from a terrible enemy. He said that his God must have given him his special Void power, and led him to this wonderful land so that he could lead his people here. The only problem was, his power only let him travel to this land by himself. He could go back whenever he wanted, but he couldn't bring anyone over. One day he disappeared back to his homeland to help his people fight off their enemies, and didn't come back for years. When he finally did come back, he wasn't alone."

"You mean he actually succeeded then? He brought all his people over?" If Brimir really did bring people over from another plane, that was a feat I had to respect.

"Not without a heavy price paid. He was a different man when he came back. Crippled, barely hanging on to life. He still had his magic, but it just wasn't the same anymore. My maker did her best to heal him, but though the physical marks of whatever he did were erased, there was clearly something wrong with him on a deeper level."

"Was it some kind of soul wound then?" Agate suggested.

"Who knows? He never got better. But the few mages he brought along with him were pretty strong too, even though their magic was also different. They had the same magic the nobles here use now, only a lot stronger. They helped him construct a magical device. The elves have it now. They call it Shaitan's Gate. And it was using that Gate that the rest of his people came flooding in. The Gate wasn't without problems either. That thing seriously messed up the world. All the flows of magic energy changed, and spirits couldn't get near it without feeling like they were dying. The elves hated it, but tolerated it until Brimir could get the rest of his people here, taking pity on them. Until they found out that the Gate couldn't be closed or destroyed. Then the elves kicked them out and they went north. Brimir's people had new problems everywhere they went, and fought a lot of other races before finally becoming the dominant civilization on the continent. Long story short, over time their descendants became part of the world proper and lost the otherworldly aura. Similarly, the Gate kept the two worlds connected, and any time someone got here from that world, they didn't feel otherworldly anymore. Which means that if you have the aura now, you must be from somewhere else. That makes you special. And the Water Spirit will be able to tell too, though how she'll react is anyone's guess."

Derflinger finished his explanation and I carefully considered the new information given. Perhaps the most significant point of interest was that Brimir may have genuinely found a way to connect two different planes, albeit at an extraordinary price. I had initially thought the World Gate void spell was most likely only connecting to a part of the local multiverse, similar to Worm's alternate Earths, but the new story told by Derflinger suggested that the spell may be tied to the presence of the permanent Shaitan's Gate. Of course, there was also the method Brimir used to bring his first few followers here to construct the Gate.

Though I knew little of Planeswalker lore, I did know that the inability to transport other people across the planes was a major limitation they shared with me, after some cataclysmic event in the ancient past which reduced all Planeswalkers' powers. Brimir was perhaps a lead on solving this problem. On the other hand, the damage he caused to himself in the process was not appealing in the slightest. This, combined with the fact that the World Gate spell might only be capable of traveling to Saito's Earth and no other planes, would mean that researching the Void further would need to take on a lower priority.

"Thanks for letting me know Derf. I suppose in that case, the Water Spirit's an option we'll have to keep open. Do you know why Brimir wanted to wage war on the elves after?"

"Can't remember that part. The guy wasn't really all there by the end, if you know what I mean. It was something of a religious conflict, I think."

"Alright. Enough about Brimir then. We're almost there anyway."

For the next operation, I wouldn't be using my heroic Axion identity. The quieter I could take the ring from Cromwell, the better.

Ideally, I wouldn't appear anywhere in person at all.

'My turn to shine!' Agate thought.

16 – The Battle of Newcastle

16 - The Battle of Newcastle

A vast fleet of wooden warships high in the sky surrounded the city of Newcastle.

One single ship stood out, almost twice as large as the second largest ship in the fleet. Bold letters spelled out LEXINGTON-the flagship that Cromwell must have been on.

The concentration of windstones was palpable to even my meagre magical senses. Some fifty ships I counted within thirty kilometres conducting the siege-nay, not just a siege anymore but an active assault.

I thought this battle should have happened a little later, when Prince Wales had returned along with Louise. Or was it simply that they had assaulted multiple times?

A continuous array of cannon fire was bombarding the outer walls of the castle at the centre. Screams and the clash of steel on steel resounded across the city. Fire and smoke were visible from kilometers away with the naked eye.

Within the Lexington, Agate found Cromwell pacing back and forth in his own room.

"… Emperor… an Emperor? Me? Oh my…" he muttered. "How far does Miss Sheffield want me to take this? If I claim that title the Church might finally do something… for Brimir gave only the right of kingship to his descendants… they may look the other way if the royals lose power, but if I dared to claim a position even higher than king…"

He brushed his hair exasperatedly. "We can't possibly win a crusade to the Holy Land without the support of the Church and the other Brimiric nations. She must mean for me to conquer them all!"

A hand lifted up as he stared upon the silver ring bejewelled with a deep blue crystal on his finger.

There it was.

The Ring of Andvari.

It was a nondescript object that did not draw one's attention. It didn't shine with a great luster, or reflect light in a piercing way.

But the moment I focused in on it, really looked at it, not only with Agate's visual sight, but also with our magical senses, there was no mistaking it.

There was something that lay deep within, even though we could sense no magical energy in it, as if it was a mirage with the promise of quenching thirst after a long drought.

Cromwell touched the ring to his lips and closed his eyes. "You will help me, won't you? My precious…"

Then his eyes opened and he began to laugh. "Hahaha… ! Of course, of course. With this power, I can do anything! The Void is truly marvellous!"

Unfortunately, Agate could not simply seize a small object and phase it out when it was attached to something else much larger.

I'd need to physically take it from him.

But before that, I had to find out how to use it. Asking the Water Spirit, despite Derflinger's speculation, did not appeal to me, if only because I knew that the Water Spirit considered it a vital possession and would stop at nothing to reclaim it. Myozunitonirun or Cromwell were just as likely to give me false or incomplete information even if I traded for or forced the information from them.

No, the prudent thing to do would be to actually observe how it was correctly used and copy it. It would also be incomplete as the ring no doubt had many functions, and it would be most unfortunate if they could activate it by sheer mental command or some form of magical energy channeling. Nevertheless, this was the most reliable means of discovering its secrets without falling into a trap.

"… !"

Cromwell suddenly stilled and his eyes darted about.

"What's this strange feeling? It's almost as if I'm being watched…" He murmured furtively, standing straighter and allowing his hand to drop back down to his waist. "Hmmm…"

There was no way. How could he…?

"Come out! Whoever you are, I know you're there," he said with a stern look as he held his hands behind his back, puffing his chest out.

'No, he can't see me! Could it be someone else?' Agate thought.

Or maybe it was just an act? Do it enough times and maybe he'll be coincidentally right for once?

"You think you can hide from me? I recognize that you are skilled to have gotten so far, but this shall be your last chance! I am the Lord Protector, chosen by the Void! Show yourself and I might show you mercy."

Obviously, we didn't reveal ourselves.

But what he did next took me completely by surprise.

"Hmphf! So be it. I may not be able to find you, but you shall begone from my presence! I, Oliver Cromwell, do decree, you are not welcome in my presence! Begone, vile spirit, and let it be known that none shall enter my domain without my permission!"

Then he raised up his hand with the ring and whispered in a low voice. "… dome est puru expeies."

For a moment, I thought he was just bluffing again.

Then it hit.

A wave of pain, then a mental scream, being transmitted from Agate as her sight, hearing, and all manner of other senses suddenly shut off.

She fled from the airship haphazardly but fortunately remained in agatespace where nobody could see her.

The last thing we saw was the image of a searing light, as if Cromwell held not a ring, but a star upon his finger pulsing with unbridled power.

That… was certainly not one of the abilities I knew about.

This changed everything.

I thought I could wait for an opportunity and quietly steal the ring, and maybe even revive Cromwell to use as my puppet for taking over Reconquista, but now that was a monumentally harder task.

Agate's ability to spy on others at will had been a tremendous boon for me on Worm, but such tactics had proven less effective here.

First, the vault and forbidden texts at the Academy had been protected by some form of ward, and now the Ring of Andvari had this strange ability to… detect and affect Agate beyond the normal layer of reality.

These magics seem to operate under mechanics I had yet to understand, seemingly on a conceptual level. And if the Ring of Andvari could reach into Agatespace somehow… it was even more powerful than I thought. If I used an analogy, it would be like comparing tools that operated using the principles of electricity vs electromagnetism. The latter had access to a more fundamental level of physics-or in this case, magical physics.

I was not particularly surprised when the Academy Vault's ward shielded its contents from view, because even though Agate used the Second Magic to be capable of viewing things from Agatespace and to break physical laws like the Observer Effect, the actual particles being observed still existed in the real world. This meant that a ward could conceivably shield the physical components in the real world, acting only on the real world, without necessarily directly challenging what should have been a Magic of a much higher fundamental level.

This ring though, actually seemingly detected Agate's presence and even hurt her on top of warding off the area. How it did so was still unknown to us, and maybe there was a trick to it that bypassed clashing with Agate's high level Mysteries and didn't really reach into Agatespace, but the obvious answer was that its magic was genuinely just at a similar level to True Magic.

Which, on second thought, was perhaps something I really should've expected given that it could resurrect the dead complete with dragging back the soul, if the revived Wales' last words in the canon were anything to go by.

Derflinger didn't have much insight to offer either. "Maybe you can try swinging me at the general area?"

Agate recovered once she was out of the vicinity of the warship, but the same thing happened every time she tried to go back there in Agatespace. A few experiments later and we found that she could still see things if she stayed in the real world, but then she couldn't communicate with me anymore until she left the area. She also couldn't hide herself that way, not having the ability to turn invisible-and I did not want to experience what else Cromwell could do to her if he actually found her in the real world.

In the end, she retreated and returned to me.

It was becoming clear to me that I needed to embrace a new way of doing things. I could not expect to have better information than my opponents. I could still try to spy using technological options but they were much less powerful than Agate, and not really useful in this situation even if they weren't also somehow blocked by conceptual means. Without the aid of accurate metaknowledge or undetectable spying, I couldn't play on this board like a chessmaster looking down on the pieces from afar, hiding in the shadows while using others to do my bidding.

But nor did I need to now. I was no longer the same powerless human that first arrived on Worm with nothing but the clothes on his back and a mind full of schemes.

My opponents had powers unfamiliar to me, but I too had powers and means of my own now, that were unfamiliar to my opponents.

It was time to start using them.

[Interlude]

Oliver Cromwell was an ambitious man. He came from a humble background, an orphan with no known parents, and only a modicum of talent in magic. He was only able to rise up in the clergy to the rank of bishop because the clergy didn't require much in the way of magic, or a noble background.

Even commoners were permitted to join the clergy, if they were well educated and followed the Church's doctrine well.

But without magic, there was a ceiling. One could not hope to claim to represent the teachings of Brimir without being strong in his Gift.

For years, he had stagnated, unable to see a way to rise beyond. The stations of archbishop, cardinal, or even the Pope-these were out of his reach.

Until one day, he had taken pity on a haggard and mysterious woman with an exotic, foreign look, and given her a piece of bread, as he usually did with those who prowled about like beggars and desperate folk. It was in his job description, after all.

But unlike the others, she did not only accept his bread, but asked him a question in return.

"You are a kind and honorable man. I think someone like you ought to rule this nation. How would you like to become king?"

He laughed, and took the compliment in stride, and humored her with an answer. "Why, if only I could. If only I could. But Brimir chose his heirs, and who am I to question His Will?"

Little did he expect for her to suddenly find him again a few days later bearing a gift unlike any other, proclaiming that she would make his wish come true.

Wary at first, and still wary to this day, he accepted the gift after a demonstration of its power, and what a power it was!

With the ring, he knew he could do great things, reach untold heights, and the woman offered to help him along the way.

The past few years had seen him amass followers, an army and a grand fleet. Under the banner of Reconquista, he had obtained more power than he could've ever imagined.

And it was almost all thanks to the ring that he never took off. It was the source of his power, his legitimacy as chosen champion of Brimir, and even… his only way to defend against Miss Sheffield, when the day came for her to seize the puppet by the strings.

He knew very well that one did not simply hand over such power for free, or act like a beggar when one had such power at their hands. That meeting was no coincidence, he had been sought out to play a specific role. Miss Sheffield was blatantly using him, even though he knew not to what ends. The ring was obviously not an artifact of the Founder's Void, or even if it was it would most certainly not be accepted by the Church, considering its blasphemous powers to resurrect the dead and enthrall the minds of lesser men.

Nevertheless, he was an ambitious man. It didn't matter where the ring came from, only that it worked. It was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. And Miss Sheffield was frequently away doing who knows what, so he had plenty of chances to figure out how to protect himself.

That was why, when he felt that presence watching him earlier, he knew exactly how to get rid of it.

From the Lexington's bow, he looked down upon the castle under assault. They had planned to maintain siege for another week, but Miss Sheffield urged him to finish the war sooner, so they attacked today.

His forces vastly outnumbered and outgunned the final royalists holed up in the castle, and he could easily revive any lost soldiers, so it was no trouble for him to do as she suggested.

Today he would proclaim himself Emperor, and a new era would begin.

His army on the ground advanced steadily toward the castle inner gates, after breaching the outer wall. Led by ten monstrously large golems, the army moved almost unimpeded. Mages up on the barely manned watchtowers and battlements rained spells down that merely glanced off the golems. Cannons were misdirected by a horde of wind mages before they could even hit the golems.

A team of four mage knights stood grimly blocking the entrance to the keep.

"We will never surrender to you Reconquista scum! The 1st Royal Battalion shall fight to the last man! For King and country! For Albion!" Their apparently leader shouted mightily with his swordwand pointed at the incoming forces. The shout was loud enough for Cromwell to hear even without a wind spell, given how close the Lexington was hovering over the castle.

Cromwell considered whether to simply use the Lexington's on board cannons, which were the most advanced and powerful cannons in the world. He could blast the castle gate into smithereens together with the mages guarding it, or even send the whole castle down on the king's head.

But no, he needed a total, absolute, and righteous victory. One that nobody could deny, and to do that, he needed to have the king killed in front of witnesses, killed gloriously with the power of magic-with the Void, guided by the clear will of Brimir.

He prepared to join his troops for the final push.

He was startled when a loud bang resounded through the air. Eyes searching for the cause, he quickly found a smoking part of the castle walls that was crumbling down.

What was that? He wondered. He hadn't ordered any ships to fire on the castle.

Through a smoke, his keen eyes saw a shadow flying into the breached wall of the castle.

"One of mine? Or an interloper?"

He turned around quickly and pointed to a couple of knights. "You there, take me down to the castle. And you, go tell General Fairfax to push in as fast as possible, we need to find whatever caused that explosion just now. If it's a rescue attempt, do not allow the king to flee! If it's a third party trying to interfere, capture them!"

"Yes, sir!" They saluted.

Meanwhile inside the castle where said king was preparing himself to face the end…

From his throne, the King of Albion gazed appreciatively at the men who stayed resolutely with him until the end. A mere three hundred men was all that was left of his forces, mostly scattered about defending the castle.

Twenty of his most loyal mage knights and the captain of his guard stood with him in the throne room, while another twenty men defended the hall outside.

A great sigh escaped his lips as the castle shook with a tremendous bang.

He stood up and the men turned their eyes to him.

"It seems that our final hour is at hand… at least my son may keep the line of Albion alive. One day, perhaps… he may return to take back the throne from these treacherous usurpers."

"If he can gain the support of the Church and the other Brimiric nations, there may yet be hope. I fear that our allies in Tristain would not be enough, unfortunately," said his trusted guard captain.

"No, they are not. Even if I were inclined to drag my still grieving cousin into this war, which I am not, they simply do not have the military power to contend against Reconquista. Especially not with that horrible man Cromwell at its head," the old king said.

"A vile man indeed, to claim to wield the Void and represent the will of Brimir. Another crusade to the Holy Land? And after such a terrible war… what madness has gripped these men I cannot understand. I pray that the people of Albion will not suffer for long. The Church must do something soon."

"Haha… as if they care. Or maybe they will even support the idea of a crusade. How many wars have there been among the Brimiric Kingdoms that they did nothing about? Fellow nobles, all holding Brimir's gift shedding each other's blood. They do not care, except when it impedes the effort to crusade against the elves. Why, I doubt they even give a damn about whether the ruling kings of Halkegenia are truly descended from Brimir or not. If you listen to them preach, it's almost as if we kings ought to be subordinate to the Papacy, rather than equals heirs of Brimir."

At that, the captain and the king fell into a moment of silent contemplation.

It was interrupted when the sounds of battle came from just outside the throne room. The thudding of things hitting other things, the crashing of metal on the ground, and the clang of steel on steel.

"M-monster! It's a monster! No, a demon!"

"Impossible! How?!"

Strange shouts could be heard among the screams.

Monster? What manner of magic has Cromwell unleashed this time? The king wondered with a little trepidation. The Reconquista had made use of many unusual troops, demi-humans and beasts that were rarely tamed for battle. He could only imagine what they would use for this final battle.

The body of a knight smashed open the double doors to the throne room and fell in a heap on the red carpet.

Groans escaped from his mouth but he otherwise didn't move.

Before anybody could go to help him, a single dark figure strolled through the open doors, drawing all eyes.

Black armor with jagged edges and dark red lines decorating it like veins pulsing through the body of a demonic being. Baleful red light glared out from its full helm.

The figure held out a blade of what appeared to be a very dark crystal in his right hand. One might mistake it for obsidian, except that its crystalline lustre and translucency was on full display as light refracted through it.

After a moment of hesitation, the remaining mage knights burst into action.

The first knight cast a massive burst of fire, a Triangle class spell, hoping to melt whatever was inside through the armor.

To their surprise, the figure simply walked through undisturbed as if the fire wasn't even there. Then the fire seemed to bend and get absorbed into the blade in the figure's hands, and only served to make it shine more menacingly in an orange-red hue.

Another knight added a wind spell to the still ongoing fire spell, creating a powerful combination effect of rapidly expanding air-a fiery explosion that engulfed the figure entirely.

When the smoke finally cleared, the figure once again appeared apparently unscathed.

Other knights bombarded the figure with even more spells. Blasts of compressed air, whips of water, even lightning. All such spells either barely fazed the figure or were blocked with the crystal sword.

Metallic golems went forth to engage in a physical battle, but were quickly slashed apart like they were made of paper.

Finally, several knights personally charged into the fray, reinforcing themselves with Earth spells and bursting with the speed of advanced wind spells.

A furious high speed exchange of swordplay ensued, and this time it appeared that the knights finally had the upper hand.

They were faster and more skilled, outnumbering the sole figure whose relentless walk forward was stopped in its tracks as it fended off numerous attacks by the thinnest of margins.

It wasn't long before one knight found an opening and slashed onto the figure's sword arm with a loud clang.

However, his swordwand did not even dent the armour, and he fell back.

Yet he was not surprised either, because it was only a test. Most knights in Halkegenia favored cuirass and hard leathers over heavy full plates, because a battle between mages often came down to a contest of speed-whoever could dodge spells more effectively and cast faster would win. For this reason, wind mages who specialized in speed, and dominated the air on their flying familiars, were usually the elite of the military, regardless of which nation they belonged to. That wasn't just unique to Albion.

But the knights had learned to recognize different forms of armor as well as methods to deal with it, so when the exotic armor was shown to be of the highly durable kind, they used their standard counter.

Other knights from afar had seen the result, and targeted the figure with an Alchemy spell to weaken it.

Except that too seemed to be repulsed by a magic of the figure's own, and the same occurred when they tried to weaken the figure's weapon.

It was then that a knight got creative and cast Alchemy on the ground beneath the figure, causing it to misstep into cracked and soft, uneven ground.

"Now is our chance!" The knights in the melee applied enhancement spells to their swordwand's tips for maximum penetration and thrust towards the intruder.

As if sensing that the outcome of a clash between its armor and the highly sharpened and reinforced swordwands might not be in its favor, the figure declined to put its armor to the test-by suddenly shooting up into the air.

The knights watched carefully but did not follow it into the air. They could levitate, but the concentration required to both levitate and maintain their other spells was enormously taxing.

Thus they fired off numerous spells at the figure expecting that its defenses would have been weakened from split concentration.

Contrary to their expectations, the figure continued to shrug off the spells.

Whatever magics made the enemy knight's armor and sword so powerful, it was highly irregular, or the enemy was at a level of mastery far beyond even most Square class mages.

Unless…

"Enchanted artifacts? Or… spirit magic?"

The captain of the guard murmured as he analyzed the situation. Typical human magic was cast and had to be maintained by the mage's own concentration at all times. It was possible to enchant objects to sustain a magic themselves, but that typically required the use of the rare Earth stones and other reagents for the more advanced spells. The only spells that could be enchanted into objects without extra reagents were at the dot level.

Clearly whatever spells on this intruder's equipment were of a far higher quality, capable of resisting all manner of actively cast magic in addition to taking serious physical punishment without a scratch.

A dark chuckle interrupted his thoughts.

"Not bad… so there is at least some fight in the kingdom's true elite," said the figure with a deep male voice.

"Did Reconquista think it could defeat us all with but a single warrior? Are you supposed to show us the power of the Void that Cromwell has been claiming to wield? If so, I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that!" The captain said firmly.

"Reconquista? Don't misunderstand, I'm not with them."

"No? Then who do you work for? Or are you an opportunist looking to take advantage of the kingdom's weakness for your own ends?" The King demanded.

Instead of answering, the dark figure turned his head back as if looking at something beyond the walls. "Hm… I didn't think he'd come out in person so early," he said, as if to himself. Then he turned back to face the king. "I suppose there's no time to play nice with you lot anymore."

Play nice? The king shared a look with his captain. Both were flabbergasted at the intruder's sense of propriety. If assaulting the royal knights and barging into the throne room was being nice, what passed for aggression in his mind?

"I'll make this simple. Hand over the Founder's artifacts in your possession. In exchange, you may yet keep your throne, King Henry. Otherwise, you will all be destroyed with Reconquista this day."

"How dare you! You think you can defeat us so easily? By yourself? The sheer arrogance! Your Majesty, allow me to dispose of this fool!" The captain shouted with a red face.

The figure scoffed. "Pathetic. You are the fool, captain. I don't need to defeat you. You've already lost this war. All of you will die here when Reconquista's forces get here. Unless… you accept my offer."

"Even if we must die, we die with honor, protecting the kingdom and royal lineage! Why should-"

The king put a hand on the captain's shoulder to stop him.

With an interested look in his eyes, King Henry questioned the dark figure. "Are you saying you have the power to destroy Reconquista? And if I'm understanding you correctly… you are essentially offering to help us win this war if I give you the Founder's treasures?"

"But, Your Majesty, you can't possibly believe him! And those are precious heirlooms-" The captain's shocked face turned to bitterness when the King looked at him sternly.

"Old friend, it is clear that this dark knight is a powerful warrior. Perhaps he exaggerates the extent of what he can do, but what he asks for is hardly a high price to pay. Besides, he is right. We are already on our last legs. There is nothing to lose. And if by some miracle he is capable of doing as he says… he would deserve what he asks for and much more besides."

"Indeed. A couple of useless trinkets in exchange for your life, the lives of your men, and the throne of Albion. It is quite a bargain."

"Useless trinkets, hah?" The King said bemused. "Well they certainly are useless to me, but I don't doubt that you have some use for them, or you wouldn't go to this trouble. Which trinkets specifically do you want? I suppose you're after the Founder's Music Box?" The King reached into his robes and pulled out a little object. "I've prayed to this thing many times these days and no music was forthcoming, much less a miracle of the Founder."

"That is correct. And I also desire the Ruby of Wind."

The King gave the dark figure a strange look. "You must not be from around here. The Music Box, I can certainly give you. But I don't have the Ruby of Wind anymore. It is tradition among the royal families for the heir apparent to be given the Founder's Elemental Ruby. That means it's with Prince Wales, and I have no idea where he is, nor could I find him now. I can only assume that he is hiding and preparing to go into exile."

"I see. No matter, you can order his return and reclaim the Ruby from him after I deal with Reconquista. So, you accept then?"

The King idly played with the music box in his hands. "Are you really capable of destroying Reconquista? From where do you get your confidence? And if you are, is this artifact really worth so much to you?"

"The Music Box is of minor interest to me. I will destroy Reconquista regardless of your answer. The only difference is whether I do it before or after Reconquista destroys you."

"… why? What's your motivation in regards to Reconquista? Do you have some grudge against them?" The King asked with a confused expression.

A few loud tremors shook the castle and the sounds of many men moving reached their ears.

"There is no time left. All you need to know is that Cromwell has something that belongs to me and I shall permit him to hold it no longer. It is the source of his so-called Void powers, and the reason you never stood a chance of winning this war from the very beginning. There are greater forces at work than you know, King Henry, and you must choose now whether to trust in my power or be discarded to the dustbin of history!"

As soon as he said that, his posture shifted and the atmosphere in the room changed. The crystal sword glowed with power, and magic radiated like a bonfire.

"… !"

He was holding back! This is… this is beyond Square class! What sort of monster is he? The captain realized with a grimace. The sheer magic energy on the dark knight was now at such a high density that advanced mages like himself did not need the Detect Magic spell to sense it. It was similar to the sensation mages felt when other mages were in the process of stacking more elements together to form a higher level spell, and they were able to get a rough idea of how powerful the magic being cast was going to be.

Another great tremor shook the castle and broken sections of wall crashing to the ground could be heard just outside the throne room.

On unstable legs, the king shouted out his decision. "So be it! Stranger, I agree to your terms!" Then he threw the music box up into the air.

The stranger caught the music box in his free hand and quickly put it away into a hidden compartment on his armor that seemed to open of its own accord.

"Good. You are a wise man, King Henry. Now, I must take my leave. My forces will aid you in this battle." Then he abruptly flew up towards the ceiling.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?!" The captain demanded and levitated himself upwards as well. "We had a deal, get back here!"

The stranger proved to be much faster at flying though, and smashed into the ceiling within seconds with his left hand.

The stone ceiling shattered in chunks by some strange magic and the debris fell towards the ground, forcing Captain Leonard and the knights below to dodge.

"Stay and protect your king, you fool. I am going to coordinate my forces!" The black armored knight took out a wand and a strong blast of wind blew the captain back to the ground. Then he flew up and away out of the keep.

"You bastard!"

The king watched the proceedings with a nervous gulp. Had he been swindled, or would the black knight bring forth a miracle?

A/N: What do you think the MC is planning?

17 – A Contest of Nobility

17 - A Contest of Nobility

[Kaleidus]

I escaped from the castle just as Cromwell's elite closed in on the throne room, and the man himself came down from his ship. Despite the Ring of Andvari blocking Agate from spying on him from agatespace, it was still possible to watch from afar in the physical world, and she could stay in contact with me as long as she was outside of the area under the Ring's ward.

With the Founder's Music box in hand and the knowledge of where the Ruby of Wind was, I already had everything I needed from the royalists.

In fact, these artifacts of the Founder weren't even my main reason for going to the castle. The reality was that only Void mages could do anything with them, and even if I gave them to Louise, there was no guarantee that anything useful would come of it.

No, the true prize in this venture lay in the sword in my hands.

Under normal circumstances, it was possible to feed Derflinger magical energy from Agate continuously, but it was a long and slow process to build up the necessary energy to a respectable amount, and it also required that Agate be in physical contact with Derflinger. And of course Agate didn't like being used as an energy battery, so I couldn't just have her feed him every night in my sleep.

But by attacking the castle and being attacked in return, I not only had the chance to experience the local mages' tactics first hand, but also absorbed an enormous quantity of magic energy from all the high level spells fired at me.

The knights I battled on the way to the throne room had shown me that my Armoriont could safely withstand up to Triangle class spells with hardly a scratch-which quickly regenerated. So I could let spells freely hit me and have Derflinger take his time absorbing all of that power.

There was an unfortunate lack of Square class spells fired at me, so how my Armoriont would measure up was still unclear, and I avoided any concentrated anti-armor piercing attacks out of caution.

Nevertheless, this one battle had seen hundreds of spells being thrown at me, and Derflinger had the equivalent of what would have otherwise taken me several months to store up from Agate.

And I was able to do it without exposing myself to very dangerous enemies like Myozunitonirun or Cromwell. That was why I chose to attack the royalists first, as they were much weaker than Reconquista and unable to seriously pursue me in case the plan went badly and I actually got hurt from a strong spell.

Now, with Derflinger charged, many new options were open to me. There were two abilities Derflinger had told me about which used the stored energy. The first was an energy release that extended the reach of his cutting or thrusting out a short distance. Useful in a swordfight, but otherwise nothing to brag about because I had many other ranged options with technology.

But it was the second ability that I really wanted to access - massive physical buffs for his wielder and for the sword itself.

By allowing Derflinger to flood his wielder with the energy, he could take control over the wielder's actions to fight at a level of skill that could only be achieved by combining the accumulated experience of thousands of years being wielded by all manner of masters, and multiply the strength, speed, and durability of his wielder.

The only downside was that it wasn't possible for Derflinger to boost me without taking over, but he couldn't do it by force either unless I was unconscious so it wasn't a serious problem. I just wouldn't be able to coordinate complex plans with him while in that state because unlike Agate, I couldn't mentally communicate my intentions to him.

This power would be a hidden ace, or something that could save me in a serious pinch. If I didn't want Derflinger to take over, he could also just reinforce himself to incredible levels, and I'd still have a nigh indestructible weapon that could cut practically anything.

I flew back to the AAPV in short order to begin the next phase of my plan.

Offensive Bias plotted a path that took us high into the atmosphere above and east of Newcastle-so high that we would look like nothing more than a dot from the ground, and we weren't noticeable from the air ships below unless they really looked for us.

This height allowed us to maximize the strength and reach of the signals the AAPV was transmitting and receiving to control the drones deployed to the battlefield, and to have a clear line of sight to launch targeted missiles.

The AAPV was in fact capable of going into space to function as a tiny communications satellite, but it wasn't necessary in this case because we only needed coverage over a relatively small area, not a whole country.

Due to the very limited space on board the AAPV, even with the best miniaturization and transforming tech we developed on Worm, I was only able to bring, and now deploy, ten 20 kg armed attack drones. I had thirty other 1 kg observation drones monitoring the city, and naturally Offensive Bias was piloting all of them.

These attack drones were normally outfitted with laser guns of the same type as the ones I carried on me, but I switched them for bullet ammunition in this operation as lasers weren't necessary. Each one also carried a few bombs that could be deployed at a moment's notice, capable of detonating with a yield several times higher than the M72 LAW rocket launcher the locals had called the Staff of Destruction. Then there were the bombs of the biological and chemical variety which this world would have never even seen before.

For now, the attack drones stayed on standby with me, as they were large enough to be noticed and engaged by the dragon knights or airships down below if they got too close before they were needed.

And they weren't needed yet.

Despite what I told the royalists, I was not about to interfere so early, or fight their war for them. The Ruby of Wind wasn't worth anywhere near that much effort.

My objective here today was still the Ring of Andvari, and while that put me in opposition to Cromwell, that didn't mean I had to fight all of Reconquista.

I only had to wait for the right moment to strike at the head.

Through the spy drones, I could see that Cromwell was standing just outside the keep, and hadn't moved from there since I left the throne room. He'd sent his vanguard inside, but he himself hadn't risked entering the castle on account of traps. There was no sign of Myozunitonirun anywhere, which was strange, as one would think that they would be helping Cromwell at this critical juncture. Unless they were waiting for the right moment to appear, just like me. On the other hand, I wasn't sure exactly what position Myozunitonirun had in the army-if going by canon, that'd be Cromwell's assistant?-or what they typically did, so maybe I was just having a hard time identifying them in the sea of soldiers.

An army of mages, orcs, and what seemed to be non-magical soldiers surrounded him, occupying the outer areas of the castle between the ramparts and the inner keep.

The great golems that led the initial attack at the walls also remained outside the keep, content to wait.

Inside the castle, I saw the final resistance fail and the vanguard mages surrounded the door to the throne room.

However, instead of continuing the assault, an unarmed messenger was sent forth. What was this?

[Interlude]

"Damn, where's the aid that was promised? The enemy is already upon us!" The captain cursed as he got into a defensive stance while warily watching the invaders who seemed to be waiting outside the throne room's open door.

"Then all that's left is to meet them head on," said King Henry. He stood up, and took out a wand of his own, preparing to fight to the bitter end.

Suddenly a solitary person came through the door looking very nervous.

Based on their uniform and lack of armor, they appeared to be a messenger.

"Hm? What is it then? At this final hour, does Cromwell think we'd even consider surrender?" The King demanded loudly.

The messenger bowed his head on shaky legs.

"Lord Cromwell wishes to offer King Henry a final chance to demonstrate he and the Tudor lineage possesses the right to rule by the favor of Brimir! A duel to the death against the Lord Protector in single combat! If King Henry wins, Reconquista will disband and submit to the rule of Your Majesty, under the condition of amnesty for all acts committed against the crown. If the Lord Protector wins, Lord Cromwell shall become the new rightful regent of Albion! Will Your Majesty accept this challenge, and acknowledge that the lawful right of succession shall be determined by this duel?"

After issuing the challenge, the messenger carefully raised up and held out an official looking parchment towards the King.

The nearest knight took the parchment and brought it to where the king stood. His eyes quickly glanced over the document, and it appeared to be a treaty outlining the terms of the duel. Champions would not be permitted, the duelists had to be Lord Cromwell and King Henry themselves.

For a moment, there was only silence.

The offer was too good, too heavily favoring the royalists.

And in all likelihood, Reconquista wouldn't even honor it, even if Cromwell died. King Henry was no fool, having dealt with politics and court all his life. The nobles on Cromwell's side wouldn't necessarily follow any of Cromwell's instructions to disband, even if he had been genuine about it. The fact was that they obeyed him now because Cromwell's position was too strong, but if he was dead? Why couldn't any of the ambitious ones seize the throne for themselves, given that the Tudor dynasty was all but defeated already?

Nevertheless, if Cromwell really did lose this duel, it was still a much better chance than the hopeless battle they were facing right now.

Some nobles might be swayed back to the royalist side, especially if they believed that Brimir ultimately did favor the Tudors.

It was an exceedingly tempting offer, even though he knew that Cromwell had to have a good reason to make this offer, not only to secure his legitimacy, but also because he must have been supremely confident in victory if he was willing to risk this much.

He thought back to the words of the black knight. The source of Cromwell's void powers… something that was so powerful, the war couldn't have gone any other way.

That was what he was up against.

And worse still, even if the Black Knight would be sending aid, it would be rendered useless in a duel. Did the Black Knight know Cromwell would do this when he made that offer?

The choice now was to fight on and hope that the Black Knight would come through for them, or accept the duel and try to seize victory from defeat using his own magic.

In the end, it wasn't really even a choice at all.

How could he refuse this challenge if Cromwell had put it that way? As a test of who held Brimir's favor?

If he refused now, he would only appear a coward, and if the Reconquista army spread the word after, even if the Black Knight helped them win this battle, he would lose the support of the populace. A King who turned away from Brimir, threw away the Founder's treasures, and accepted the aid of what some might construe as a demonic being with that dark and unholy appearance? Even his own men might whisper.

With the long silence, the captain began to feel distressed. "Your Majesty, there is no need to risk yourself like this. It is obviously a trap! Cromwell just wants you to do this so he can claim legitimacy after winning! If you sign that treaty, even if Cromwell does not abide by the rules of the duel, he could parade the document and silence all witnesses!" The captain warned.

"Maybe it is a trap. But I see no other choice. This is a chance to prove who is righteous. A contest of nobility. Magic against magic."

The King looked up to the open sky that the shattered ceiling revealed. "Founder above, if you are watching, surely you would favor your own blood in this contest? I have ruled justly and fairly to the best of my ability. That man who desires a crusade to the Holy Land is no faithful of yours. He is a madman and will only bring terror and destruction. Why, he even allied with lesser Firstborn races and demihuman creatures to have them fight for him! Founder, give me the strength to banish his evil and win this duel!"

The knights and the captain bowed solemnly upon hearing the king's decision. "Founder bless you, Your Majesty!"

Cromwell waited patiently outside as the messenger returned with the news that the King had accepted the offer, as he expected, with the treaty document intact.

Now, a duel would decide the future of Albion. A duel that he would win without a doubt, and strengthen legitimacy for his rule. Or at least, that was what his generals and advisors believed, and most likely the King as well.

Most of them were probably interested in seeing just how powerful Cromwell was, and if he was worthy as their leader. Many had seen a few odd demonstrations, but never seen him actually fighting.

They would all think that Cromwell would reveal some incredible Void power during the duel to win.

"So, shall we have the honor of witnessing the true power of the Void today, Lord Protector?" General Fairfox, the top General of Reconquista, asked from beside him, as if to validate his previous thoughts.

Unusual to Halkegenian knights, the General wore heavy full plates and apparently had no trouble moving around in it.

He and the General both rode on warhorses while they conversed. Cromwell himself had exchanged his bishop's robes for more practical light armour, but retained a priestly overcloak.

"The power of the Void is not something to be used lightly against fellow nobles, Thomas. Nor would the Founder appreciate that his power must be used against his own descendants, no matter that they have abandoned his ways. You will see the Void today, but perhaps not in the way you are imagining," said Cromwell.

"Is that so? I shall look forward to it nonetheless."

Because the great reveal would come after the duel, when he revived the King and the resurrected king would submit wholly to Reconquista's cause and acknowledge Cromwell as Emperor above even kings.

As for how he would win? It would be the mysterious "will of Brimir".

With the Ring at his disposal, he did not need to fear even Square class mages. Only Miss Sheffield might be able to overcome the Ring's power, but that was only a hypothetical. He had never dared to test its powers on her.

And it was with this one act, that he would truly break free of Miss Sheffield's control. Most of the men under his command were less than completely loyal. Some had been strong-armed, or had their own motivations to rebel. Many had to be persuaded with the power of the Ring and Miss Sheffield's shows of force.

And she undoubtedly believed that he had built a house of cards, which would crumble away at the slightest weakness, if he let up on the ring's influence for even a moment.

But that was wrong. Other than the initial defections, he had specifically avoided using the ring to maintain control, in order to cultivate real loyalty. Miss Sheffield had chosen him to play a role, and by the Founder he knew how to do exactly that. He acted as a fanatical religious leader, and preached everywhere he went, even in private.

He was a bishop after all, and with hardly any talent in magic, he used other skills to rise to that station. He knew how to listen to people, be sympathetic, and make them trust in him. To see him as a friend and confidante, someone to whom they could confess all their sins and receive not disgust but compassion in return, and provide wise guidance.

Even as the leader of Reconquista, his was not the rule of an iron fist but that of a moral power, even as his generals enforced military discipline. The feeling of shame, the pride of honor, and the fear of God could make people do things that force never could.

Once his army witnessed the events today, they would truly become his army, and would follow his commands loyally even without the ring. In this way, if Miss Sheffield turned against him one day, or if she tried to take back the ring, he'd still have his army to fight for him.

Soon, the king emerged with his entourage of guards, and when he stepped forward, his guards did not follow.

"Alright Cromwell, I'm right here. If you're foolish enough to bet everything on a duel after coming this far, I am happy to show your men why you're unfit to be a king, let alone the leader of a successful crusade after countless failures by greater men than you."

Cromwell stepped down from his warhorse and took off his priestly robes, handing it to a servant.

"Oh King Henry, you have truly blinded yourself to God's light. I have never once sought to be king, nor do I know what destiny God has in store for me. All I know is that Brimir has commanded me, and I must carry out His Will. For too long, corruption and injustice have dominated this kingdom, and even all of Halkegenia! Under your rule, the teachings of Brimir have been tossed aside, and you sat upon your gilded throne believing that birth alone determined the right to rule. Content to live in luxury for yourself, you cared nothing for the people, extorting unreasonably high taxes and ignoring the pleas of your impoverished nobles!"

"Lies and slander! The taxes were necessary to recover from the ruinous war against Germania we fought only two decades ago! And I have listened to plenty of reasonable petitions, you people just demand the impossible! Yet Brimir sees all and it is me who shall be favored today, for I have been a fair, just, and pious king!"

"Ridiculous! How can you claim to be pious after committing adultery and fathering a child with an elf! You dared to spurn the love of the Founder and seek pleasures of the flesh from the very enemies the Founder sacrificed everything to fight against! The same enemies who desire the death of all humans and the destruction of our civilization!"

The face of the old king turned white. "I… I don't know what you're talking about!"

"You still deny it? Your daughter would like to have a word with you. Created from blasphemy, you have cursed her with sin from the moment of her birth and doomed her to live with the features of an elf! Come, Tiffania! Your father may have tossed you to the furthest, darkest corner of the kingdom, but you have the right to let the world know who you really are!"

The king's mouth dropped open in shock as a hooded slim figure stepped out of the carriage near the front of the army group and was gently led by servants. They came to a stop beside Cromwell, and unfurled her hood to reveal a young woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and long sharp ears.

Gasps and shrieks could be heard all across the castle grounds. Many soldiers who were unaware of who was in the carriage instinctively took up defensive stances.

"Elf!"

A/N: This Cromwell is less of a tool than the one in the novels or show. But will that be enough to achieve his ambitions, especially with MC in the picture?

18 – Long Live the Emperor!

18 - Long Live the Emperor!

"Father, will you deny me even now? Or am I just a mistake you'd rather forget?" Her voice was soft and filled with a palpable sorrow.

"What is-what is going on!? What have you done to her, Cromwell?!" The King shouted in anger and confusion.

Cromwell shook his head and gave the King a piteous look. "I have done nothing but do as the Founder commanded, to rescue her from the life of destitution you put her in. Tiffania may be born of blasphemy, but she nevertheless has the blood of Brimir flowing through her and is a princess of Albion. She ought to be treated as such, not abandoned and left to fend for herself with no guidance in Brimir's Gift and forced to live in conditions even commoners would be appalled at. The responsibility for the sin of her birth rests not with her, who had no choice in being born, but with you, King Henry, who chose willingly to lay with an elf."

Murmurs broke out among the onlookers and many calmed down after the initial shock of having an elf in their midst. On the side of Reconquista, most found the Lord Protector's logic reasonable, even if they still instinctively wanted to kill her on sight or flee in terror.

"Is that so? Is that how you feel too, Tiffania?" The King asked after he carefully turned his face blank.

"I don't hate you father. I hate what I am but I can learn to live with it. But as Lord Cromwell says, I don't wish to be hidden away anymore. The sins of the past can only be atoned for after accepting that they happened," said Tiffania.

"Haha… hahaha!" The King suddenly laughed, and he covered his face as the laughter became an uncontrollable, deranged laughter. Nobody understood what the King found hilarious about this situation.

"It seems he has gone mad," Cromwell said with an expression of disgust.

"CROMWELL!" The King roared thunderously. "Whatever lies you've fed her, at least you won't be able to keep it up after I cut off your tongue and take your head today! By the Founder, Tiffania your birth was not a sin! Your mother was a wonderful woman and I loved her with all my heart, just as I love you! Not all elves are our enemies! Many are peaceful and would rather put an end to the millennia of pointless conflict! They don't want to kill all humans, and why should we continue to fight and die to take back some mythical Holy Land without even a reason other than that the Founder said so thousands of years ago? How does anyone know if the Founder still wants us to do it after all these failures? Shouldn't he have delivered to us victory already if that's what he truly wanted?! I believe that none of our crusades have been successful because the Founder doesn't want us to win! He wants us to make peace!"

"So now you openly admit to being a heretic! Look closely men, this is the true face of your king!"

The faces of the Reconquista soldiers looked grim, and some disbelieving, as if they had only now understood the character of their king.

Cromwell continued, making grand gestures with his hands. "But fear not, the will of the Founder is with me! Today, He will deliver me victory in this duel, tomorrow, He will deliver us a glorious victory as we take back the Holy Land!"

Both men drew their wands while Tiffania quickly stepped back.

As according to the tradition of officiated dueling, a handkerchief was dropped by a 3rd person outside of the duelists' sight. Then, each of their chosen seconds shouted to begin when the handkerchief hit the ground.

The king moved swiftly and started casting a blast of wind at Cromwell, who instead of dodging like most mages, apparently cast some sort of counter spell that blocked and dispersed the incoming attack.

More wind blasts of increasing size and power were launched by the king, until it turned into a massive barrage of blasts. Although individually they were not particularly powerful, in sheer quantity and speed the king was outcasting most mages and would have made it impossible to dodge.

Cromwell continued to disperse the spells, then manifested a thin barrier of water in front of him. The barrier was not very solid and a hole appeared every time a blast hit, but it also regenerated just as fast so nothing got through it.

Then a vortex of air formed in front of the king, and it rapidly fired more of the air blasts without him having to continue to actively cast each one. Every blast reduced the size of the vortex slightly, so it would run out in a few moments.

The King, thinking that he held the advantage before Cromwell could find an opening to counterattack, decided to pull out his secret trump card.

"Pentagon"-class magic.

This was one of two techniques passed down exclusively in the royal houses of the Brimic kingdoms, which allowed for casting a spell comparable to Square-class magic without being able to stack four elements in the normal way.

The other was known as "Hexagon"-class magic, which achieved something similar but required two mages of Triangle class to pull off.

These techniques were an important reason the royal houses stayed in power even when they didn't always produce Square-class mages, allowing them to have an answer to direct magical challenges from the strongest of nobles.

With Pentagon magic, a royal mage could cast a delayed magic of Triangle class, by forming the first two elements but not completing the third, then casting a full Triangle class magic. The delayed spell could then be manipulated to combine with the full powered Triangle spell, with the fully formed three-element stack taking the place of the incomplete third element of the delayed spell structure.

Once combined, the resulting spell wouldn't be as powerful as a theoretical true five-element stack spell which was not known to be possible, but it would be comparable to a Square class spell in potency.

First the king reached into his robes and took out a vial of red liquid. It was his own blood, which was required as a medium to cast Pentagon magic. This was a key reason that Pentagon magic hadn't been exposed to the nobility as a whole and learned as a common technique. Aside from the secrecy, there was in fact a difference between the royal lineage and the other nobles, just as there was a natural born difference between nobles and commoners.

There was power in their blood, inherited from their ancestors and from Brimir himself. And like magic in general, the inherited strength of that power wasn't solely dependent on the inborn talent of their parents whom they inherited it from, but also from the magical strength of the parents at the moment they conceived the child.

This meant that if the royals did not actively practice and use the Pentagon and Hexagon magics, their descendants would find it harder to use them. Correspondingly, even if the royal line intermarried with powerful noble families and produced children who legally became part of the noble house instead of the royal house, the strength of the special royal power would fade dramatically within a few generations if they never learned how to use it, and so their descendants would be significantly weaker than the main royal line.

He shattered the vial with a strong grip and started incanting.

Soon all the mages present could feel the power thrumming in the air. An enormously powerful spell was about to be cast.

From King Henry's position, four miniature tornados began to form and spread out, surrounding Cromwell.

Static charge crackled in the air and yet Cromwell appeared unable to respond as he continued to block the relentless assault of air bullets.

Finally, the king started a new set of incantations and prepared to fully combine the Pentagon structure.

Suddenly he stopped mid-incantation and his face went slack for a moment. The tornados petered out as if the spell powering them lost cohesion.

When the king came back to his senses, he looked around in confusion while Cromwell smiled, walking forward as the air blasts had expired.

"What's wrong, King Henry? Was all that just for show? You had us all thinking you were about to cast a big spell," said Cromwell.

The king tried to incant another quick spell, but again his mind seemed to blank before Cromwell seemed much closer than before.

"Oh? It seems that your magic is failing, King Henry. I can see that you are casting, but nothing is happening," said Cromwell.

A wave of whispers broke out among the watching crowd.

"What, what is this?!" The King demanded while pointing his wand at Cromwell. "What did you do?!"

Cromwell shook his head and sighed. "King Henry, you still don't understand? Magic is the Gift of the Founder! And the Founder has deemed fit to take it away from you in the middle of this duel. There can be no clearer sign than that! You are no longer fit to be the king of Albion!"

"That's impossible, you lie! You did something!" King Henry shouted and again tried to cast, only for the same thing to happen. It was like his mind shut off temporarily as soon as he tried to cast anything, and he woke up again to find his spell had failed.

"This duel goes to me by the will of the Founder! May the Founder find forgiveness for you in the next life, King Henry!"

With a swish of his wand, a streak of high pressure water formed in the air in front of Cromwell, then it whipped across the king's throat, then slashed again several times across his chest and waist.

The king stayed upright for only a moment, shock and bitterness plain on his face as blood spurted like a fountain from all the cut areas, before crumpling to the ground.

Seconds passed in silence as if the crowd couldn't comprehend the sudden conclusion to the duel.

Then someone started clapping, and like clockwork the rest took the cue and began to cheer. Except for the royal knights, who looked to be in despair.

Some mages went to check over the body of the king and confirmed that he was dead. Then the cheering continued unabated for nearly half an hour.

Many more men filed onto the castle grounds as the royalists fully surrendered, while the body of the king remained there in clear sight of all, as evidence of the duel.

Cromwell then addressed his troops.

"The war is finally over! Let it be known that we, Reconquista, have won by the clear will of the Founder!"

Then just as he opened his mouth to continue speaking, he stopped. "Hm?" He looked up slightly and gasped.

Then he bowed deeply. "You honor me with your presence, O' Founder!"

The troops looked around in confusion as nobody could see anything there.

"Of course, your will is my command!" Cromwell then got up and turned back to the body of the dead king. He knelt down and put his hands together, speaking a few prayers.

Then he held his hand out to the body and whispered something indiscernible.

Suddenly, the blood on the ground started flowing in reverse, going back into the king's body, and the wounds he had suffered rapidly regenerated.

Cromwell stood up and waited as the dead body came back to life.

There was a deafening silence as the onlookers watched the impossible happen before their eyes.

The former bishop-turned-revolutionary broke the silence with a loud and clear voice.

"King Henry, the Founder has decided that to atone for your sins, you can earn salvation by fighting on crusade to the Holy Land. As such, I have used the power of the Void given to me by the Founder, to resurrect you so that you may serve the Founder once more. Having witnessed the will of the Founder first hand in our duel, and now through the power of the Void, do you now understand the error of your ways and accept the Founder's very generous offer?"

The king looked at him for a moment, then looked at himself. He touched his throat in disbelief.

"I'm alive? That's impossible!"

"King Henry, you've said that many times today. But I must correct you, impossible things become quite possible when the Founder desires it be so."

"But you killed me! I was dead! I know I was dead! I saw things! I was on the other side!"

"So you were, but then, the power of the Void is a miraculous thing. More importantly, do you want to stay dead, and go back to the hell that awaits you? Or earn salvation by fighting in the name of the Founder?"

"I…" The king seemed to hesitate, looking around. The troops watched quietly, but more than a few of them seemed to be in awe. Even General Fairfax's eyes looked like they were popping out of their sockets and his hands were shaking on his horse saddle.

After a moment, the former king Henry seemed to make up his mind. "I understand. I accept. I shall join you and the Founder on this crusade. From this day forth, I am no longer the king of Albion, but just another soldier under your command, Regent."

"No, not Regent, Henry. The Founder has finally revealed His plan for me. Not only shall we crusade to take the Holy Land, Reconquista must unite all of Halkegenia to do so! When we attack the heathen elves, all those who believe in the Founder must come together as one! Nobles, commoners, it doesn't matter who they are, as long as they trust in the Founder!"

Cromwell gestured grandly with his hands.

"There shall no longer be separate kingdoms ruled by kings and queens squabbling for land and petty arguments among themselves! Instead, there shall be a single republic governed by a council of the most worthy and talented nobles, chosen by all the faithful of the Founder! Therefore, as the holy duty assigned to us by the Founder, we must spread the revolution to every corner of Halkegenia, and establish a single, holy, revolutionary empire of the Founder that shall last for ten thousand years! And it is my duty to lead us onward as the Emperor of the Republic of Holy Albion!"

"I-I see. Very well then, long live Emperor Cromwell of the Republic of Holy Albion!" The king was the first to kneel and bow.

Soon, the troops all began to kneel and bow.

"Long live the Emperor!"

A great fervor took hold of the crowd gathered as they screamed and cheered.

"Long live the Republic of Holy Albion!"

Again, and again, the cheering continued unabated.

"Long live the Emperor!"

"Long live the Revolution!"

"Long live the ten thousand year empire!"

Each time somebody came up with a new slogan, yet another wave of cheers erupted.

Cromwell smiled gleefully as he took in the moment of his complete and total victory.

Everything that he had worked for in the past years had finally borne fruit.

The first step toward a new era.

Then his head exploded into a shower of blood.

Simultaneously, the resurrected king Henry dropped like a puppet with his strings cut.

A black dot descended from the sky like a meteor while a blur of loud cracking and popping sounds could be heard.

Dragon Knights patrolling in the air fell down not even having had a glimpse of what killed them before they died, leaving their familiars to rage in confusion and sorrow.

General Fairfax quickly barked out orders for water mages to get to the newly proclaimed emperor and for his troops to form a protective perimeter.

But like the Dragon Knights, the men who tried to get near the wounded-dead?-emperor were struck by unknown means and dropped like flies.

"What the hell is attacking us?!" General Fairfax yelled out.

That question was soon answered as ten round white flying things that looked like large multi-legged metallic insects swooped down and unleashed a storm of bullets on the unprepared troops even as they dropped small objects which exploded only to release apparently nothing visible.

Some mages tried to counterattack but they flew far too fast and were too agile to be targeted effectively-or at all, as they found out.

By the time some of the mages realized they were getting shot by gunfire and could shield against it with wind spells, hundreds of men already lay dead on the ground.

The bullets were being fired at an impossible speed, as if each of the white flying things were an army unto themselves, the equivalent of a thousand men firing muskets all at once in every direction, with extreme precision better than even the greatest of veteran marksmen.

In the midst of the chaos, the falling black dot from the sky finally came into view then hit the ground with a tremendous impact next to where Cromwell lay prone in a mess of blood, revealing a black armored figure that the royal knights recognized.

A tiny cylindrical object dropped onto the ground. Shortly after, a flash of light and an intensely loud bang blinded and deafened everyone who was looking in that direction, hiding whatever the figure intended to do.

By the time their vision cleared, the black knight hovered in the air, looking down on the soldiers below, while the ten flying objects circled around him.

"Oliver Cromwell is dead!" The black knight announced in a booming voice.

"How dare you!" General Fairfox thundered, pointing his wand at the new enemy, fighting off nausea from seeing afterimages and phantom ringing in his ears. "Why have you done this?! Who are you?!"

The voice that rang out next was one that carried a strange weight, as if the words themselves were filled with power, and the sound echoed in the air.

"I AM VOIDSTARTER, DREAMBREAKER! I AM LIGHTBEARER, DARKBRINGER! I AM HE WHO SEES BEYOND! I AM MUURLETH, PRINCE OF DUALITY, LORD OF THE INFINITE!"

The newly named Muurleth then waved his hand towards the troops below. "And all of you will now obey me as the supreme authority of this land!"

"Ridiculous! You just killed the man ordained by the Founder to be our emperor! What makes you think we'd agree to bow down to you?! You should be executed for your crime!"

A deep rumbling chuckle reverberated in the air. "Executed? Why don't you give it a try then?"

"Gladly! Everyone, attack!"

With that, the general started to incant a spell, only to find himself unable to move, let alone wave his wand, before he promptly collapsed onto the ground, his muscles refusing to listen.

Numerous cries followed and his eyes roamed around to see every other soldier similarly fallen and struggling to move, some even making strange moaning and gurgling sounds as if their mouths couldn't move properly either.

"What's wrong, General? Weren't you going to attack? Execute me for my crimes?" The mocking voice of Muurleth reached his ears once more.

"What devilish magic is this?!" Fairfax shouted with outrage.

"Pathetic! Your deceased leader was no prophet! He was but a charlatan! Or do you think that this too, is the will of your God? That all of you are powerless against me now? Magic is the Gift of your Founder, is that not what Cromwell claimed? So where is your magic then? Where is your God that should smite me for the terrible sin of killing his messenger?"

Against the piercing words of Muurleth, Fairfax could find no response, and neither could his men.

He had thought to witness the power of the Founder's Void today, and he did witness it… or so he thought. But if Cromwell truly was blessed by the Founder, how could he have been killed so easily? How was it that this total unknown could come in and crush them all with barely any effort, and even seemingly inflicting the same condition on them that afflicted the former king of Albion during the duel against Cromwell?

Without their magic, without their wands, without being able to even move, they were powerless! Sure, some mages knew how to cast wandless magic, but purely mental magic casting was almost unheard of. Even the wandless, silent kind needed certain movements or other mediums to aid in casting.

"It seems you are finally starting to understand. Your God was a lie from the beginning, or it has abandoned you. Your leader was a fake and your cause was only the ambition of a man who used you for his own ends! The power of the Void? Resurrecting the dead? Nothing more than a trick, puppeteering a body without a soul that instantly failed as soon as the caster couldn't maintain the spell! All worthless in the face of true power!"

At his words, the attention of everyone went to the now obviously dead again King Henry of Albion. Although no injuries or blood reappeared on the body, that was all the more damning, for it meant that Muurleth had not simply killed him a second time.

"Now that your leaders are dead, and all of you are defeated, by the right of conquest, by your principle that magic is nobility and therefore the strongest magic is the most noble, I am your new ruler!"

With that, Muurleth flew down and landed in front of Fairfax.

Then he grabbed onto the general and lifted him up by his plated neck cuff in the air with one hand.

"And you will submit, or you will die!" The self-proclaimed strongest mage squeezed the armor plate, and Fairfax felt his throat getting constricted as the armor bent unnaturally under the incredible strength being exerted.

With his other hand, the black knight lifted the general's helmet and forcibly took it off, tossing it aside to reveal the aged grey-haired veteran underneath. He moved closer to the general's face until they could be mistaken for kissing from the wrong angle.

"What will it be, General?" The soft voice that spoke up close now was both mocking and insidious, with an airy, distorted nature that hinted at something distinctly inhuman behind the ominous black helmet and blazing red lights glaring out from what should have been eye holes.

The old veteran couldn't help but feel chills running down his whole body as he stared into those terrible, angry lights.

His back shook with a feeling he hadn't felt for a very, very long time.

Fear.

Of this strange being and its strange powers.

Of impossible things happening on this day that he never could've even imagined.

But most of all, of the sinister idea growing in his mind that perhaps… the Founder had truly abandoned them, for having believed in a false prophet and rebelling against the legitimate king of Albion, committing countless atrocities in their wake.

Why else would this "Muurleth" suddenly appear, with hundreds of mages, and even more commoner soldiers, rendered powerless in mere seconds under the strength of but a single, impossibly strong being?

The pressure on his throat relaxed, then the dark being asked again. "Your answer, then?"

With a hard swallow, the general said, "I… submit. Lord Muurleth."

"Louder, General. Let your men hear your decision, loud and clear!"

Fairfax gritted his teeth before he shouted. "I, General Thomas Fairfax, chief commander of the Reconquista armed forces, by the authority vested in me as the highest ranking officer after the death of the Lord Protector Cromwell, do unconditionally surrender and acknowledge that Lord Muurleth is the true, legitimate, ruler of all Albion! Long Live Emperor Muurleth!"

A dark chuckle escaped from Muurleth. "Very good, very good!" Then he-it-continued to laugh to the heavens even as it carelessly tossed the general on the ground again like worthless garbage.

"I will be back, General Fairfax. When I return, I expect you and your men to be ready for further orders. If there is any dissent in the rest of the kingdom, you would do well to quell it before I must take matters into my own hands."

Then Muurleth slowly hovered back into the air and turned around, apparently just leaving the rest of them there.

Fairfax cursed quietly and hoped that whatever spell Muurleth had ensnared them in would pass quickly, he had landed in an incredibly uncomfortable position and still couldn't move any of his muscles.

But if Muurleth was truly leaving them, perhaps there was yet hope…

Yes, Muurleth might've defeated his forces at the castle, but they still had a much larger army spread out occupying the whole kingdom, and most of the deaths in this battle by his guess looked to be of the commoner soldiers and demi-humans. For whatever reason, Muurleth seemed to avoid fatal damage to the mages, perhaps because he intended to use them as his army in the future.

All they had to do was regroup, muster the most elite forces, analyze the battle, and come up with a strategy. Why, they still had a grand fleet, the Lexington, and the most powerful cannons in the world. If they could just find the right opportunity, they could blast Muurleth into smithereens-

"Ah yes, before I forget," Muurleth came back down suddenly and hovered over Fairfax. "Make sure none of your subordinates get any funny ideas just because I'm not here."

Then he flew up and around and boomed in a loud voice. "Look closely and carefully, soldiers! I am a fair ruler, but unlike the weak former king of Albion, I can and will obliterate anyone who dares to challenge my rule! And, as the symbol of rebellion, the Lexington must be destroyed! Therefore, watch closely, and let all of Albion know, any who dare to raise the hand of rebellion again under my rule, shall meet the same fate. Behold!"

Then, he made a grasping gesture towards the Lexington in the distance which was floating in the air in formation at the head of ten other ships only a couple of kilometers outside the castle's outer perimeter. His hand slowly tightened into the shape of a fist, even as he spoke a guttural, deeply unnatural, incantation. "Ghaagznafar din talukgar!"

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then the unthinkable followed.

A streak of something tore through the sky faster than sound, too quick and too small to be visible-

A bright flash of light-

A thunderous boom and a tremendous shockwave-

General Fairfax and the other paralyzed soldiers could only watch in horror as an enormous fireball engulfed the entire capital ship and all of the ships near it. Burning debris fell out of the sky like a rain of meteors.

Even on the ground, at such a distance, they felt the gale winds created by the enormous explosion buffeting their faces.

"Burn this image into your minds, and know that I, Muurleth, now reign supreme in this land!"

With that, Muurleth finally flew away, leaving the soldiers to lament their fates.

As the minutes passed, not only the soldiers at the castle, but all the residents of Newcastle, the troops aboard the many other ships which had participated in the siege, and even people from other cities tens of kilometres away, all witnessed a sight that would be spoken of in terror for years to come.

As if leaving indisputable proof that the Lexington had been annihilated by Muurleth, a massive dark mushroom cloud formed in the aftermath of the explosion, towering high into the heavens, with a ring of smoke expanding horizontally outwards.

"Founder save us… !" Fairfax sobbed pitifully as he finally understood, that they simply couldn't-couldn't afford to-fight this demon.

A/N: In case it wasn't clear, MC took the Ring of Andvari when he released the flashbang.

19 – Water Stone

19 - Water Stone

[Kaleidus]

After the battle at Newcastle, I retreated with the AAPV to a secluded spot to experiment in peace.

The Ring of Andvari was held in my hand. All along the flight, I could almost feel it calling out to me, waiting for a new master to take a hold of it. At the same time, it contradictorily felt cold and distant, as if it didn't want to show itself.

'Agate, stay alert. I'm going to try it on,' I thought.

'I'm with you, as always,' she thought back.

Through our mental link, Agate could take control of my nervous system and force me to take off the ring if this went badly.

'Remember I can't stop you from shutting me out though, now that you've got a magic circuit. If you get taken over and they figure out how to do it, I won't be able to do anything. Or a powerful enough magic might even take me over too.'

'You'll just have to be quick about it then. I trust you. You were made by Zelretch, after all. If something can take you over as well, then at least we lost to a worthy opponent.'

'OK! YOLO!' She conjured up the image of a V-sign.

Actually, I was quite wary of any potential traps. I could joke about it with Agate, but in reality, I was not ready to have my journey end here.

"Derflinger, you there?" I pulled him out of his sheath.

"Yeah. You gonna try that on?"

"I am. Is it safe?"

"Don't look at me. I'm no expert."

"Well, you've got more experience than me, at least. Any tips?"

"Try touching it to me."

I brought the ring to the flat of the blade. Derflinger hummed for a moment.

"Hoooly, this thing is actually a water stone! Haha, I take back what I said about the Water Spirit. There's no way she'll tell you anything!"

"What do you mean? What's a water stone anyway? Is it like the water version of wind stones?" I asked.

"Pretty much. There's stones for every element, except probably Void. Water's the rarest of them all though. Fire's second. Most people have probably never even heard of those two. Earth is relatively less common, but the nobles do use them. Wind stones can be found everywhere. I couldn't tell you why it's like that, but I can tell you that the rarer the stone, the more powerful it is. But you can tell already, can't you? The magic in this is on a different level from wind stones. And it's damn big too. You'd be lucky to find one the size of a grain of coarse sand, and the Water Spirit would fight you to hell and back for that, let alone a stone this big."

Looking closely at the ring, I could see the blue crystal on it was a pebble like round shape nearly a centimeter in diameter and half a centimeter thick. Compared to a grain of sand, it must have been at least a hundred times larger.

"Why is that? Why's it so important?"

"Because Great Spirits like her are born from a sufficiently large mass of smaller spirits and colossal amounts of magical energy. But before they become Great Spirits, the energy slowly accumulates over many thousands of years into these stones. So this thing is actually like a baby Great Water Spirit. It's not really alive or going to turn into a new Great Spirit anytime soon, especially out of water, but you get my point. If this belonged to the Water Spirit of Ragdorian Lake, she'll think of it as part of herself, so there's no way she'll tell you anything about how to use it. Remember that these stones are a limited resource. When it runs out of magic energy, it goes poof. She's not going to let that happen. You'd have a hard enough time convincing her to give up a single tear, which is also technically a part of her body, and this could be worth hundreds or even thousands of tears."

"That sounds pretty impressive. I assume the Water Spirit's tears are a rare reagent the nobles here use?" I did seem to remember something of the sort when Saito visited the Water Spirit in the story.

"Oh it's more than impressive. This really is a treasure beyond measure. I can't believe Myozunitonirun would even give it to somebody else. They must be a newbie, an idiot, or arrogant fool that thought they could take it back easily. I'd freely admit that this stone might well be more valuable than me. Heck, I'd trade me for one of these. Partner, you really lucked out on this one."

"So any idea how to use it? And there's no trap right?"

"No traps that I can see. Mind you, I already told you I'm not an expert. If there is a trap set by Myozunitonirun of all people, I probably can't find it anyway. As for using it, try to see if the spirits inside can help you out. There should be enough to at least understand you and do what you want, even if it won't be able to speak to you like I can."

"Alright then, I'm putting it on. If there is a trap, please use your ability to take over my body and remove it from my finger."

"Sure."

As one last precaution, I started cycling magical energy through my magic circuit.

Then I put the ring onto my left index finger.

As soon as I did so, I felt myself connect to an incomprehensibly great power.

I had the impression of an entire ocean being condensed onto my hand, but the impression soon faded into no more than a minor presence in the back of my mind.

'Doesn't look like it's doing anything to your mind yet,' Agate transmitted.

'But it is a little odd, isn't it, for it to have a presence in my mind at all? For example, Derflinger doesn't, and we have to actually talk out loud with him,' I thought back.

'That's true. I'll keep watching and try to find out what the connection is for,' said Agate.

I tried to send magical energy into it, hoping it would somehow give me an idea of how to use it or awaken some of the spirits Derflinger mentioned, but nothing happened. It rejected my energy and stayed stubbornly inert.

"Nothing's happening Derf. How am I supposed to ask spirits in it for help?"

"Dunno. Just will it?"

I did my best to 'will' the damn thing to activate or talk to me, but I couldn't feel anything different. Even if I focused in on its presence in my mind, no response came back.

Infuriatingly, after focusing on the presence for too long, it apparently retreated back into the ring.

"O spirits of water, please lend me your power!" I said.

Then I tried a few different languages and variations but, again, there was nothing.

Finally, I tried the words that Cromwell uttered when he erected the protective ward.

Still nothing.

Agate spoke up then, and phased out of her position in the Armoriont. "When the elves use spirit magic, they have to make some kind of contract with the spirits, right?"

"That sounds about right, yeah," Derflinger responded.

"But you don't know how they do the contract?"

"I probably do, I just can't remember. Haven't been owned by an elf for a few hundred years, I think."

"We have some contract spells of our own. Why don't you try that, Kaleidus? Let's modify a familiar contract spell, using the one you have me with as a base," she said aloud, so Derflinger could hear it.

"That's not a bad idea," I said.

"There's one nice thing about having a stone like this. You can skip the part where you have to summon strong enough spirits to you, because they're already in the stone," said Derflinger.

"Do windstones have spirits too?"

"Technically, yes, but they're too weak and dumb to do spirit magic with. To find any that are good enough, you'd need to go a lot deeper into the windstone deposits. The ones you're carrying definitely don't have any you can use."

Without further ado, we got to work on devising the spell.

It took almost three days of non-stop experimentation, aside from sleep, before we successfully contracted the spirits of the water stone.

When we did, a whole new world of possibilities opened to me.

The ring didn't actually come with any built-in spells, nor could the spirits cast any automatically without my will directing it. But I was already used to trying to invent spells with Agate, and I had some idea of what the ring was capable of.

It would only be a matter of time before I mastered it.

The only drawback was…

These spirits had a will of their own. They weren't exactly intelligent, but they definitely had some kind of instinct-one that aggressively urged me to protect the stone, and protested against anything that would exhaust the power of the stone and make it smaller. And because it had a will, if it became angry it would refuse to do anything for me.

It constantly tried to pull me towards large nodes of water elemental energy, such as lakes, where it could slowly-excruciatingly slowly-recover its power. So slow that it seemed almost meaningless to make the effort, as neither Agate nor I could not tell the difference in it after hours of waiting, but it did make the spirits happier.

For their help in casting magic, these spirits demanded a price on every use of the water stone. The preferred one was to give them a net gain of water elemental energy, which was not possible for me. According to Derflinger, the elves had a method of artificially creating windstones, so they might know how to do something like that, but he'd never heard of them creating the other types of element stones. He thought it was simply too hard to gather the requisite energy for the other elements.

The alternative price was vital energy and life force, and the drain was proportional to the great power of the stone. That would be scary for anybody else, and I imagined that Cromwell had traded many years of his lifespan to use the ring.

Fortunately, I had plenty of that to spare because of my unique biology and could regenerate it indefinitely. As long as I didn't overtax myself within a short time period, I could recover by consuming enough nutrition with the help of the Bionanite Swarm and Armoriont, and suffer no long-term consequences.

Sadly, vital energy was not the same as water elemental energy, so the water stone would still shrink over time. It was unclear what the spirits needed this vital energy for, but it wasn't unique to these spirits. Derflinger told us that all spirits except artificial ones like him generally accepted vital energy as payment for spirit magic contracts.

So I called it a contract, but it was a rather loose pact rather than a contract with clear terms and conditions. It wasn't as though the spirits could understand legalese, even the magical kind, if I wanted to establish terms. I give them some energy, the spirits would help me if they felt like it, and that was that.

'You should break the ring!' Agate thought to me.

'What? Why?'

'So you can take the water stone out and put it in the Armoriont. The ring itself doesn't do anything. That way it'll be harder to steal.'

After thinking about it for a bit, that made a lot of sense, so I did as Agate suggested.

It was actually quite hard thanks to the amount of Mystery on it, but Derflinger was sufficiently powered up to cut it.

I kept the silver ring band for future use because it had decent Mystery thanks to being pretty ancient.

As for the water stone, I went a step further and implanted it directly into my body instead. My bionanite swarm used the Armoriont to grow a new organ beside my heart to hold and integrate the stone within the circulatory system.

At the end of the day, the Armoriont was also something that could be detached, even if it was more or less a layer of my body now. So putting the stone in my actual inner body was even better.

In fact, there might even be a benefit to integrating it with my body. The water stone was a very powerful natural nexus of water elemental energy. You could say that it "breathed" water elemental energy like humans breathed air.

It was a process that went both ways, absorbing water energy from outside, and releasing it back. And because the human body was made of 70% water, and it was directly connected to my bloodstream, I hoped that by osmosis, I might eventually gain a personal affinity to water, or just gain Mystery quickly as well. The stone was even older than the ring band.

To an extent, windstones did this "breathing" too, but they weren't so much nexuses as mere deposits of mana, the density being too low, and they tended to dissipate in the open air instead of drawing in more energy in a sustainable fashion.

Finally, there was the fact that if there existed a hidden trap, it was more likely to be on the ring than the stone. The ring was after all, artificial, while the stone was a natural thing that also had spirits protecting it. It was also more likely to activate while worn as a ring because that's what you'd expect people to do with rings.

Now that it was implanted, I just had to drink a lot more water and absorb a lot more moisture from the air to compensate for the stone's thirst.

With that done, it was time to consolidate my control over Albion.

By the time I made contact with General Fairfax again, he had successfully taken control of the main fleet and the majority of Reconquista's forces.

I could tell that he did not like what he had done, and he only stayed 'loyal' to my cause out of fear. Nevertheless, he was a competent military man, and even with Agate I found no evidence of him conspiring against me, so I had nothing to complain about. Perhaps, eventually, I could persuade him that serving me was not such a bad thing.

He moved efficiently to capture Londinium first, which was taken essentially unopposed, bringing the court nobles under control.

A number of nobles elsewhere unsurprisingly refused to submit immediately, so the civil war continued for a few days.

However, resistance was weak and with a few more appearances by Muurleth and judicious use of non-nuclear explosives and chemical weapons, any overt opposition was quickly crushed. In some ways, the resistance worked to my advantage, because crushing these nobles militarily would allow me to force through more reforms to centralize state power, and it would be seen as less tyrannical to do this during a power struggle than to start a fight during peacetime.

However, despite the novelty of ruling a country, I had no real interest in administering it. Prior to finding out that Cromwell could protect himself from spying, my plan was to steal the ring in secret, then use it to control Cromwell, and by extension, the whole of Albion, from the shadows.

This was because the glamour and prestige of ruling meant nothing to somebody like me, who could travel the planes at will. I wasn't going to live out my life here. I was only interested in the material benefits that ruling a kingdom could give me.

The most important benefit was the army of mages under Reconquista's control. There were lots of things which would be more efficiently done through the use of subordinates than for me to deal with in person.

Things like the long-term research of the nobles' magic and spirit magic. Not only could the mages do the research for me, they were also a readily available source of experimental specimens. Of course, I wasn't a comically evil magus, so I wouldn't be using my own subordinates as experimental subjects. Good management rewarded loyal and competent subordinates after all. But the criminals and enemies of the state who rebelled against my rule would have no such protections.

To inspire loyalty, I picked a few of the top mages like General Fairfax and persuaded them to commit to Geas oaths. I found out unfortunately that the stronger the magic they had, the weaker the compulsion of the Geas on them, and Triangle class mages and above could basically completely ignore it. I couldn't even keep them immobilized or force an involuntary action for an instant, unlike with Saito or the people back on Worm. Still, I did it, if only for the psychological effect.

Another important consideration was the wind stone mining operations in Albion. This was a massive source of magical resources that may prove useful to me in other planes. It still had to be confirmed once I plane shifted, but considering that magical energies and magic circuits seemed to work on Worm just fine, I figured that a crystallization of mana would have a good chance of still being useful as well.

While I could extract it myself, it was clearly more efficient to simply take the refined stones from Albion's existing operations whenever I needed more. They even had techniques for extracting, refining, and using it that I wouldn't need to otherwise steal or re-invent.

The same concept applied to recharging Derflinger. With an army at my command, I could simply order a bunch of mages to attack me in a "military readiness exercise" or some such nonsense and quickly charge him up.

Finally, it's never a bad idea to set up more power bases in case anything happened to my other ones, which were all concentrated on Worm at the moment.

It would be even better if eventually, through the Shaitan's Gate connection to Saito's Earth, I could acquire modern tech supplies and magical supplies, with only one plane shift instead of two.

At the site of the battle, nuclear fallout unfortunately contaminated some of the area and caused radiation sickness in the residents of Newcastle. The nobles were mostly fine as the water mages healed the symptoms, but many commoners had already died.

The nuclear missile launched by the AAPV that I pretended was a spell had been manufactured on Worm's Earth M2 base by Offensive Bias in conjunction with Bakuda. Similar to our highly advanced nuclear energy tech, the weaponized version was also quite advanced. Due to the very limited size of the AAPV, it was necessary to maximize energy density and yield to weight ratios on all our weapons, so nuclear was an ideal fit.

The missile we detonated was only about 5 kilotons, weighing in at just 12kg. That was one-third the yield of the first nuclear bomb ever detonated on Earth, but a hundred times smaller, achieving a yield-to-weight ratio near that of the highest ratio ever recorded. If we made a larger bomb, we could actually exceed the previously thought theoretical maximum for thermonuclear devices at 6 megatons per ton, but miniaturization to this level and converting to a missile was a substantially more difficult task, resulting in a worse ratio.

We had made adjustments to minimize nuclear fallout and concentrate direct explosive power, but in the end, eliminating radiation simply wasn't possible without a major technological breakthrough, one which we never achieved.

Nevertheless, I was happy with the result. Some ships and mages had to be sacrificed, but it was worth it to cement my control and reputation.

Aside from control of the military, I devised a new religion centred on Muurleth. In the short-term, there would be great chaos and resistance, but in the long-run, I could not expect to maintain control during long periods of absence off plane without some extraordinary methods. While fear was still fresh and strong, now was the best time to make religious reforms.

Equally important was the fact that by making Muurleth out to be a god instead of a mortal man, it would give a sense of familiarity when I gave a mortal king the divine right to rule. Rather than being a faceless person taking over the kingdom, it would seem as though they had merely changed religions. And if Brimir gave the nobles magic, Muurleth would give them knowledge. Considering that Brimir wasn't around to give any more divine gifts or do much of anything visible for the people, wouldn't many people find the enlightened Muurletheism more appealing?

The only problem was the inevitable conflict with the existing Church. I didn't want the kingdom to get embroiled in any pointless foreign conflicts, especially not when I was away and unable to provide support, so I'd have to find a way to stave off any crusades coming our way.

[Agate]

It was supposed to be my chance to shine but I was totally defeated before I could do anything!

But now the Ring of Andvari has been broken apart! Hahaha, revenge is mine!

Since Kaleidus is busy with politics and other boring stuff, I'm in charge of our magic research.

There's so much to do!

We know the water stone is capable of many incredible things. But Cromwell, a natural water mage, had years to figure them out and Myozunitonirun to help.

We have to start smaller and decide what to focus on. Many of the more complex spells like mind control, anti-scrying, and resurrection that we saw Cromwell using might need to have more basic skills mastered first. For example, the resurrection spell also healed the body, and that kind of healing is already an advanced water magic.

Each time we use the water stone even in training, it will use up the energy inside.

Quest Vote

So let's get to work on… (choose 2)

[] Physical Water Manipulation (macroscopic)

[] Physical Water Manipulation (microscopic)

[] Healing Physical Injuries

[] Healing Diseases

[] Mental Influence

[] Warding

[] Corpse Reanimation

A/N: The MC POV portion took much longer than I expected, and it is quite important so the reactions will have to wait until next chapter.

The magic training will happen in the background, until the next training vote. Choosing the area to train in doesn't guarantee any results, but Agate will comment on the progress as it happens.

20 – Seize Church Property

Vote Results

Mental Influence -13 votes

Warding - 13 votes

20 - Seize Church Property

When I returned to Fairfax, I inspected the half-elf daughter of the king, also known as Tiffania, Matilda's friend. It appeared that she was actually still alive.

As Fairfax was a close confidante of Cromwell, I questioned him extensively regarding Tiffania. Although he did not know much about it, as it was a very secret operation, he did reveal a few important facts.

First was that there had indeed been a female secretary with exotic facial features that helped Cromwell, but nobody knew her whereabouts. They'd assumed that she died on board the Lexington, though I didn't buy that for a second.

Second, Fairfax was aware of the gargoyles that could pretend to be other people. But he also revealed that there were a number of Halkegenian spells that could accomplish much the same thing. A high level wind and water spell using blood could create an imposter as well, though it was less sturdy than the gargoyles. An advanced wind spell called "Split" could also create wind clones of mages that could even cast magic.

At the same time, there were counter spells which could check the identity of suspected frauds. These were commonly known. People just weren't in the habit of checking for imposters except when "lost" pretenders to the throne or a noble title suddenly appeared and their legitimacy had to be verified.

That was probably why the real Tiffania had been kept alive. The nobles could actually verify her identity pretty easily.

Then I interrogated Tiffania, and eventually discovered she was actually a Void mage capable of casting a memory erasure spell, but incapable of any elven spirit magics, except for the one that used her mother's ring to heal.

She had learned the memory erasure spell as a young child playing with the Founder's Music Box.

I didn't remember much of anything about her from the story except that she saved Saito after he stalled the huge army, and was an exceptionally naïve and kind person.

Nevertheless, I gave her the Music Box to try out. She couldn't get it to work though. That was when she mentioned that the first time it worked, she had also been wearing the Wind Ruby, which glowed when the Music Box started playing music.

Based on this, it seemed that the Founder's Rings were also required, possibly even a specific one for each treasure. I had then quickly sent out orders to find the Prince Wales, but he hadn't turned up yet.

As for the elvish healing ring, that turned out to be a gem enchanted with the "power of water".

That ring had a built-in spell to be activated, so Tiffania didn't know any real spirit magic. I ultimately let her keep it because I had no urgent need of the healing spell, and I would eventually have a better solution in the water stone once I mastered it.

But even if I did have need of it, I wouldn't have been able to use it anyway. Tiffania told me that the enchantment which allowed her to activate the spell was set up to only work for her.

That led me to the realization that perhaps there had actually been some built-in spells on the Ring of Andvari before I broke it. It was just that Myozunitonirun had locked them to Cromwell.

Because of her Void power and elven heritage, I decided to keep her around and assist her in learning Void spells if the opportunity arose.

But unlike with Louise, Tiffania could also serve as my political pawn.

I'd looked for candidates to appoint as the ruler, but no other person stood out to me. I could crown Fairfax, but I felt the man was more useful as a counterweight to whomever sat on the throne, being in control of the military.

Tiffania, despite the backlash she'd face for being a half-elf, was someone I could easily manipulate. Her personality was too kind, and she lacked any political power of her own, or even experience in court.

With her as a figurehead ruler, the country's administrative policies would still largely be in the hands of the executive council positions, which I intended to re-organize anyways.

In this way, I could get competent people to fill all the necessary roles, and leave Tiffania to work on charitable causes.

But rather than enthroning her immediately, I left the throne nominally vacant. An interregnum.

I didn't want a Regent to have too much influence over her while I was away, nor did I want to rock the boat too much by having a half-elf head of state before people got used to the idea of having a half-elf princess.

With an interregnum, the matter of succession remained theoretically open.

Later on, I would make an official announcement that I intended to appoint a worthy ruler after demonstrating their competency, faith, loyalty, and benevolence, and the same criteria would be applied to most government positions, while new assemblies, councils, and committees would be created.

These opportunities wouldn't just be limited to nobles either. Many meritocratic reforms would soon follow, allowing wealthy, educated commoners to participate in government and contribute to the treasury.

Many ambitious nobles and even commoners would then be distracted, competing to perform good deeds and seek my favor, instead of plotting to overthrow the new order.

Unfortunately, these remained only far off plans.

In the short-term there were far too many other problems to deal with.

Before the state could centralize and firmly come under my control through a new bureaucracy, the civil war needed to end.

While there were no more openly rebellious factions, this did not mean that there was no unrest, or that I had full control over the kingdom. The vast majority of the kingdom outside of the immediate area surrounding Londinium was liable to devolve back into rebellion at any time.

The fact of the matter was that the strength of arms from my explosives only achieved a temporary state of suppression, which would quickly evaporate if the men were not paid and fed properly.

A serious problem was the composition of the Reconquista army itself.

Firstly, it included the presence of demihuman troops, who began to desert en masse and even attack the other troops without whatever methods Cromwell had to keep them obedient.

Fairfax was forced to get rid of them before they seriously damaged the human forces.

Secondly, it was not a single organization, but consisted of numerous auxiliary armies contributed from various nobles and mercenary groups.

Of the remaining non-demihuman troops, only 30% were under Fairfax's direct command which Cromwell had paid and organized, but some 40% of the army consisted of noble levies, while the last 30% were mercenaries.

Because of Fairfax's quick maneuver to capture the court at the capital, we had effectively held a number of allied nobles hostage and maintained control of their levies.

But soon there wouldn't be any money left to pay the army, and many nobles faced funding shortages to maintain their levies too.

The royal treasury had already been seized and funds exhausted when Londinium was first conquered by Reconquista.

Already, the mercenaries had been disbanded as they were the largest expense, and we were still facing a financial crisis.

While Cromwell was in control, Reconquista had continuously received funds from various donors, including a large portion from Gallia.

These funds dried up once Cromwell was dead, and we were on the verge of bankruptcy.

The food shortage was no less a concern either because Albion had been in civil war for too long, so agricultural productivity had dropped to an all-time low. Imports from abroad had filled the gap, but Gallia shipping volume had suddenly dropped as well, creating another impending disaster.

We had perhaps one week of food left before facing the possibility of famine. The only reason this wasn't a bigger problem than our finances was because Germania had plenty of food to spare and was very willing to trade it if only we had money.

With modern economics, finance expertise, and access to many valuable inventions, I had many ways to strengthen the treasury, but it would take months at the least to institute the required reforms or develop the necessary businesses.

If I were able to freely travel between planes with no restrictions, then I could just ship over gold and other materials from the uninhabited worlds I controlled on Worm, especially the Earth M2 base where Offensive Bias produced the AAPV and all the equipment in it.

However, there was a price to shift planes.

Forming the tunnel through Kaleidoscape required a special form of energy that Agate passively collected from a plane's Creation Mystery using her path to the Root. We called this energy Primordial Grain-so named because it countered the Primordial Chaos, and Zelretch theorized that it was a higher order analog of the Grain that celestial bodies were composed of.

It took about a week to collect enough for one trip. There was no known way of speeding this up, or substituting it, so even though it wasn't difficult to acquire, it was an exceedingly limited resource. If one trip for one soul was approximately equal to one unit, then I had five units worth when I arrived in this world. This was a minimal level I kept in reserve to ensure I had enough to move several times in quick succession in case the need arose.

After a week and a half of being on this world, I now had six trip's worth, but even so, why waste any if I might have an actually pressing need to use them in the future? If I came across a situation that was actually time sensitive and required multiple trips to handle, or if I got chased across planes by something capable of following me, then I'd regret wasting them.

So I did not want to make a round trip to Worm and back just to get a small vehicle's worth of supplies, if there were other alternatives. For the same reason, I wouldn't go back and forth between planes to uplift one by bringing in a large amount of tech infrastructure without a very good reason.

In the end, I resorted to the sad medieval practice of nationalizing Church properties and seizing wealth from heretics to stay solvent. Fortunately, with my new religion, almost everyone had turned into a heretic so there was plenty of wealth to be confiscated, with an appropriate share redistributed to the new faithful.

Faith without a visible divine presence tended to follow material benefits, and with the identification of heretics becoming a lucrative business, there were many that became fervent 'believers' of the new religion.

Albion had only a single archbishopric based just east of Londinium at Canterbury, which was the first to be taken over, and it was necessary to make a public spectacle of it.

The archbishopric was subordinate to the Papacy in Romalia, even chosen by the Romalian Pope, and this was obviously not acceptable. It collected taxes on the surrounding lands and had its own levies, but paid more money to Romalia instead of the Crown.

Functionally, bishoprics and archbishoprics had rights similar to counts and dukes in terms of taxation, and because there was no inheritance system that split the wealth among many heirs, they tended to be rather wealthy, especially with the additional income from donations.

The archbishop of Canterbury predictably refused to acknowledge the new religion, but he was only a Triangle mage and easily defeated.

He was brought to Londinium in chains and a public trial was organized in front of the Londinium Cathedral, which was similarly taken over as was the bishopric of Londonium.

The bishop of London was intelligent enough to surrender, convert, and contribute funds to the new Church of Muurleth, having been a man that Cromwell had installed previously.

He therefore had the great honor of presiding over the trial of the heretical archbishop.

A great crowd of commoners had gathered to watch, and the court nobles were also in attendance, as were the top military leaders.

The former archbishop was tied up to a high stake on a platform and his mouth was gagged. Stripped of his clothes, only allowed to wear rags, and having been tortured repeatedly, he looked nothing like a priest anymore.

Several other priests were similarly tied up next to him.

"Former Archbishop Carlisle of Canterbury, you are accused of heresy, high treason, idolatry, devil worship, abuse of authority, embezzlement of church funds, forcing and coercing carnal relations on church attendants, including children, and fraudulently offering absolution in exchange for carnal favours!" The bishop Wellesley of Londonium read loudly from an official looking parchment, standing next to Carlisle.

"Let the witnesses come forth!" He shouted and gestured.

A procession of various witnesses came forth, including nobles and commoners and other lower ranking priests.

Each one had been paid for their courage in speaking out, and promised reparations for the archbishop's crimes if the trial was successful.

As they described in detail the evidence against the archbishop, the crowd gasped and looked revolted.

Carlisle moaned and grunted, trying to speak, but was unable to with the rag in his mouth.

"As you have heard, this man is a Papist dog, a traitor to Albion, and a corrupt devil worshipper! He has stolen a hundred thousand écus to give to his masters in Romalia, and damned the souls of hundreds of unknowing innocents who were deceived into worshipping fake idols and paying for absolution with carnal acts! He has corrupted and traumatized children and led a cult of evil by abusing his authority as the Archbishop!"

Planted people within the crowd started to shout angry curses at the archbishop, which led to the rest of the crown quickly following suit.

Wellesley pulled the rag off Carlisle's mouth. "What have you to say for yourself? Will you not recant and repent even with the clear evidence?!"

"N-no! These are fabrications, lies!" Carlisle shouted. "These witnesses are fake!"

Wellesley pulled out several documents and shoved them in front of Carlisle's face. "You still deny it? We have documents here clearly showing the monies you paid to the Papacy, which you stole from the Albion people!"

"Those were rightfully paid taxes, not stolen!"

Wellesley smacked Carlisle as if in rage. Then he stuffed the gag back on.

He turned and walked around, holding up the documents in the air. "Did you hear that, good people of Albion?! This man dares to steal from Albion and claims it to be rightful! He has betrayed his kingdom and sold out to a foreign power, while you have suffered without bread, toiling away under the sun for a measly few coins each day! While you were starving, the money that should have been yours was used to let him live in a sinful life of debauchery and pampering his foreign masters! It is people like this who have made Albion weak and caused hardship for all of you!"

The crowd was visibly angered now and many looked like they wanted to execute the archbishop with their own hands.

But Wellesley raised his hands and asked for calm. After a few moments, the angry cries died down.

"But let it be known that the Church of Muurleth is fair and just, we shall now hear from the archbishop's own subordinates!" He then ungagged one of the other tied up priests. "Tell us of the crimes that the archbishop is accused of! What he bid you do, and the sins you have committed!"

The severely tortured priest was quick to confess and sob as he admitted to everything and then some, begging for a quick death.

The crowd was again enraged, and they started throwing things at the evil men in front of them.

"Look, archbishop Carlisle, even your own subordinates have confessed their sins! It is too late for you sinners to escape punishment in this life, but you shall have one last chance to save your soul! I, Bishop Wellesley of Londinium, by the authority vested in me as Inquisitor of the Church, hereby declare that your punishment shall be burning at the stake! You will experience a taste of what awaits you in hell, and I implore you to repent to save your soul before you leave your mortal coil!"

He ripped off the gags on all of the accused heretics. Carlisle protested and cursed him, but was ignored.

An executioner casted a fire spell and began burning all of the accused.

The screams and wails of those being burned were drowned out by the crowd's cheers.

Wellesley looked pleased and took the opportunity to direct the crowd's cheers.

"Praise His Divine Greatness, Muurleth, God of Albion, He Who Sees Beyond, for exposing this evil and rescuing the kingdom from these traitors and devil worshippers! All hail God Muurleth!"

"All hail God Muurleth!" They shouted exuberantly.

[Agate]

Agate reporting in!

I tried to create a simple mental compulsion spell, but it was a complete failure! Even flies refused to go away!

Then I tried warding, starting with the most basic of the basic, just something like a Bounded Field that gave us an alarm. I successfully made the water spirits in the stone warn us when humidity is low!

In other words, aren't they just complaining that there's not enough water nearby?

Argh! This is too hard. Maybe we'd have better luck starting with something more obviously water related. It seems that mental influence and warding are more advanced conceptual uses of the water element, or maybe something to do with the spirits themselves. But it's only been a few days, I shouldn't expect too much anyways.

Should I keep trying, or work on something else? Kaleidus is almost done with managing the kingdom, so we'll both be able to work on this soon. Two minds are better than one, as they say, so maybe we'll get better results.

Vote Options

[] Physical Water Manipulation (macroscopic)

[] Physical Water Manipulation (microscopic)

[] Healing Physical Injuries

[] Healing Diseases

[] Mental Influence

[] Warding

[] Corpse Reanimation

A/N: For the time being, there's going to be an Agate training vote every time we're in MC POV, there's a reasonable expectation that there is time to actually experiment (a few days), and if Agate is not away from the MC. If there isn't a few days between chapters, it will just progress according to the previous vote. The progress will also change significantly according to some catalysts in the story itself, and longer periods of experimentation.

Also, the MC has finally learned why Myoz was unconcerned about losing the ring. Objects enchanted with spirit magic or otherwise hosting spirits can choose who they will work for to a degree.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO NEW READERS: There are a number of side stories (SS 1.2-1.5) you can read which chronologically fit in around this time in the story, and take place before the next chapter. They expand on the aftermath of the conquest and how the new administration was set up.

Last edited: Jun 14, 2021

21 – A Real Magus

Vote Results

7 [X] Physical Water Manipulation (macroscopic)

6 [X] Physical Water Manipulation (microscopic)

21 - A Real Magus

What was magecraft?

Most magi in Nasuverse would define it as the "converting magical energy into a phenomenon-a Mystery-that abnormally transforms the external world".

But if you tried to find a definition of "Mystery", there was no commonly accepted answer, perhaps because it was a… mystery.

What exactly gave magecraft power? How does it convert the magical energy into Mystery? In normal science, physical laws could be observed, tested, replicated, and comprehended as a set of consistent principles.

With magecraft, although magi did apply scientific and logical methods to it, it simply didn't work in a perfectly logical manner even if it was usually consistent, and the reason for that was because of Mystery.

After all, it could hardly be considered "abnormal" if it did comply perfectly with science and logic.

If it is believed that the subject of Mystery "exists", or "could exist", then the World permits its existence. Even if it was not a definite belief, but merely the suspicion or inability to refute its non-existence, then it was something that could be a Mystery, and so long as science could not unravel the Mystery, then it would have power.

This was the paradoxical idea behind hypnotic "faith" allowing magical energy to transform the external world into "what it could be", while scientific "comprehension" turned the mysterious abnormality back into "what it should be".

The magus's art was to temporarily deceive themselves and the World around them. But where it was relatively easy to deceive oneself, and activate the magic circuits, it was not so easy to deceive the World.

Except under very rare circumstances, magi could not simply force the World to accept their belief as true. They were limited by the collective faith of all humanity, of animals, other lifeforms or even inanimate objects.

Therefore, it was necessary to draw on elaborate rituals, formulas, and rules. To build their magecraft on a Thaumaturgical Foundation, a magic system, which allowed the magus to distill the power of the infinite Root into specific finite phenomena which the World would permit, at least temporarily while it was confused.

Or that was what the magi of the Clocktower theorized.

In reality, many of these ideas could not be effectively tested and verified, but conveniently many magi believed these theories on how belief gave magecraft power. And there were magi from other Foundations that rejected it outright, such as the Yin-Yang theory of the universe.

Nevertheless, we still used a lot of these basic ideas when developing our own magecraft spells. I thought it was strange that any of our spells worked when we were in alternate realities in which those Thaumaturgical Foundations presumably didn't exist (because if they did, there would be magi using them…), but they did work somehow and I had no explanation for why that was so.

However, it quickly grew evident that a different approach would be needed to unlock the powers of the water stone, as Agate failed to make any significant progress.

And that was why I was submerged in a lake with Armoriont-grown gills, meditating while attempting to commune with the spirits inside the water stone.

I did so on a hunch that spirit magic in general, which this probably fell under, was more about immersing oneself in nature than to impose anything on it.

For the first few hours, nothing particularly interesting happened, except for the feeling of contentment that came from the spirits.

But eventually, as I simply let the spirits do whatever they wanted and tried to follow their will instead, we started to float around.

As I let the spirits take the lead, I was opened up to a much deeper connection.

I observed without seeing, without analyzing. Just moving with the water.

There was peace and serenity within the calm waters, yet power hidden in its depths.

Life was abundant and light gave it strength, some absorbed, some reflected, some refracted.

Earth and metal dissolved and diluted. The greatest poison was nothing when spread through an ocean of water.

I was drawn in to an incredibly vast network, a cycle of movement and of uncountable numbers of lifeforms.

From the lake, the currents slowly drifted and took me into flowing streams.

Water was formless, but it was shaped by the world around it, moving along the path of least resistance.

Great monuments of stone eroded over the eons, the hardest of rock unable to stand against the endless patience of water.

The spirits whispered to me all along the way, though I couldn't really understand them in any linguistic sense, I got feelings and impressions about what they wanted me to understand.

Days passed faster than I would have believed possible, like I was caught in a dream or a trance, far deeper than any meditative trance I had achieved before.

But at the end of it, I had understood a great deal more about water, the spirits, and nature as a whole.

And I also understood that I was to them an aberration to the natural order.

If Derflinger, an artificial spirit, could sense that I did not belong in this world, then what about actual nature spirits?

Although I was hesitant to ascribe any form of emotions to these entities, as I did not think they were conscious in the way that humans were, they certainly did not like me. And they didn't particularly want to help me.

They didn't like Agate either, the chaos wand I made from Louise's Void-element blood, or even the remnants of the ring of Andvari's silver band.

Perhaps the only reason they tolerated me was that I offered so much lifeforce energy to them and also destroyed the Ring of Andvari which had controlled them. Both of which they were greatly pleased about.

Although by immersing myself in the water cycle they had become a little more cooperative and allowed me to perform minor, dot level water manipulation, I had begun to think that perhaps I would need to get rid of these spirits eventually. Just because they cooperated with me now didn't mean that they wouldn't suddenly rebel if a Greater Spirit or some other more intelligent nature spirit convinced them to do so.

And given that they were nature spirits, I assumed that they were attached to this reality and empowered by the World. What would happen once I left it?

All of a sudden, I felt rather eager to leave. Once they were forcefully disconnected from this World, perhaps they would be more conducive to submitting to my will… or die so I could freely use the ocean of mana within, I thought while chuckling darkly.

Better to have the stone as a mere elemental energy source than to be reliant on uncontrollable entities that only assisted me under nebulously defined contracts. Unlike the Geas spells that I cast, there were no clear contract terms and I had no idea really what my contract spell did besides forming a mana connection with these spirits.

For a while, I contemplated whether to remove the water stone from my body. But in the end, I left it be as there wasn't anything stopping the spirits from attacking me from a distance, as Cromwell had demonstrated, nor did I have any means of sealing their power. I wasn't about to stop carrying it completely, so it would make no practical difference in protecting myself whether it was outside my body or not, and I might as well reap as much benefit as I could from it.

Deep underneath Londinium Castle, my new secret workshop had been constructed with the assistance of mages whose memories were erased with Tiffania's Void magic.

I didn't plan to keep anything particularly valuable here, but nevertheless I also had the mages apply some defensive and anti-scrying enchantments, which were similar to the ones used at the Academy Vault.

The important part was to keep the nature of the experiments a secret, which is why I told Tiffania to erase these mages' memories after they constructed the workshop for me.

As I discovered when I made a wand using Louise' blood, the ritual that created the nobles' wands converted their blood and other reagents into what were essentially artificial external magic circuits.

After conquering Albion, I acquired the secrets to the nobles' wand creation process, so I didn't have to deal with the risk of using the Chaos energy from agatespace.

Compared to natural magic circuits or even the nerve circuit I made with Shirou Emiya's method, these wand-circuits were far more limited.

A true magic circuit was simultaneously an interface which allowed the soul to control and absorb magical energies, an pathway to the soul through which Od could be drawn, a reactor that processed the raw energies of Od or mana into the activated form of magic energy, an amplifier of the energy's mystic potential, and a reserve of energy inside the body.

These external circuits were neither interfaces nor pathways to the soul. A circuitless person couldn't command any magic with a wand because they needed some other way to control magic energy and direct it into the wand.

But they were reactors, amplifiers and reserves. They could mix raw Od or mana into magic energy, and they were foci that helped mages amplify the mystic potential of magic energy. They were also made with blood, which can retain magical energy.

In the form of wands or staves, these external circuits were of limited practical use.

There was no need for it to act as a reactor because the spiritual magic circuits already processed all the collected raw Od or mana into magic energy, and the bottleneck was at the prior step, of absorbing the raw Od and mana. It didn't matter how fast you could process if you couldn't collect enough raw input.

It was slightly useful as an amplifier when the spiritual circuits were of low quality, which was the case for my artificial circuit-if I didn't have Agate.

As a reserve of energy, because it was dead and old blood outside the body, the energy still quickly evaporated, even faster than storing in vials of blood, as some early experiments showed.

But how would this change if instead of remaining external, I implanted them back into the body and connected them to spiritual circuits along with a living circulatory system?

Although magi counted the "number" of magic circuits a soul had, in reality they weren't discrete singular pipes. Just as a soul didn't have a definite physical shape, neither did spiritual magic circuits. Instead, they were spread all over the body and could interface with any part of it.

However, I knew that Shirou's method of creating circuits did involve cannibalizing the physical nerves so there was a specific physical manifestation of a part of the spiritual circuits when they were channeling-a part that the wand-circuits could be physically connected to.

In the most extreme case, it should be possible to substitute implanted wand blood circuits for the nerves in that method, but I didn't want to risk any soul damage so I wasn't going to connect them directly to my soul.

First I crafted wands using alternative biological materials and organs the Armoriont could produce to see what effects there were, whether the wood could be substituted for other things and reshaped into forms other than being rigid straight sticks. Thinner, smaller, and more flexible was the goal.

It didn't take long until I found a way to integrate it directly into the Armoriont. It took much longer to figure out how exactly to connect it to my own artificial magic circuit without me consciously directing magic energy into it-this was accomplished by lining the "wand" organ with newly grown special nerves connected to the nerves that I used for my artificial circuit.

Once the initial hypothesis was proven, many exciting possibilities opened up to me. Implanting multiple such circuits, accessing multiple affinities, enhancing their quality…

After two weeks and numerous quietly disappeared prisoners, I took a major step in my development as a magus.

I got top quality blood from Square class mages from both volunteers and prisoners under the guise of religious offerings and squeezed in 30 circuits with all four classical elemental affinities into my body.

They were all around B rank in mystic amplification quality and capacity, mostly branching along the spine where my artificial spiritual circuit was based.

I also implanted another 3 each using Louise's and Tiffania's blood with their affinity to Void. Whether or not that Void affinity was anything like "Ether" or useful for my magecraft system remained to be seen, but at the least their blood made A rank quality circuits.

That made for a total of 36 blood-based physical circuits, and one artificial nerve-based spiritual circuit.

What did that mean?

A magus' magic circuits' total output could be broken down into the following main properties:

Absorption rate: The rate at which the circuits can generate raw Od from the soul, from converting food/biological energy, or absorb raw mana from the environment to be stored as Od. The rate of absorption from the soul is generally stable, whereas the rate of raw mana absorption depends on the richness of mana in the environment.

Reaction efficiency (or Amplification): The ratio of magic energy produced from each unit of raw input

Reserve Capacity: How much Od can be stored at equilibrium, where the net natural diffusion rate is zero or negligible. Natural diffusion refers to the natural movement of mana from a higher concentration region to a lower one, and does not include the active absorption of mana from the environment by circuits in operation.

Retention: How well the circuits retained magic energy instead of allowing it to diffuse. A higher retention means the energy evaporates slower at all concentration levels.

Channeling Capacity: How much magic energy can be channeled at one time. The channeling capacity was generally much higher than reserve capacity-if a magus had access to alternative sources of magic energy, this was the limit on how much they could channel at any given time. For example, if a spell cost more than their channeling capacity just to activate, then they couldn't cast it even if they were being transferred energy from an energy bond. It was also possible to go over the limit at the cost of damage to the circuits.

There is no reaction rate because as far as magi knew, the reaction happened essentially instantaneously and simultaneously with the absorption of Od or mana.

The part where this system of measurement broke down was that energy could only be defined in relation to the work it could perform. But Od and mana did not perform any work, it was refined magic energy that was used to fuel spells.

Therefore, to calculate Od or mana levels, it was necessary to work backwards from a resulting spell effect, estimating the magic energy used, and figuring out the reaction efficiency.

The problem was that the quantity of magic energy used didn't directly correspond to spell potency. That was dependent on a large amount of unmeasurable factors such as skill, affinity, origin, traits, regression to the age of gods, mystery, time of day, the alignment of the stars, the complexity of the incantation/ritual, history of use, other magi knowing the same spell, collective beliefs and legends, degree of self-hypnotism, etc.

In the end, we could come up with numerical estimates, but they were more guesswork and bullshit than rigorous scientific findings, and why magi tended to assign broad Ranks to an entire person instead of precise numbers on each circuit.

So instead of trying to calculate the absorption rates or reserve capacities in terms of Od, it was easier to express them in terms of the resulting output magic energy, especially when comparing circuits. For example, instead of saying the capacity is 1 Od, converting at reaction efficiency of 1, to produce 1 magic energy, we can just say 1 magic energy worth of Od at whatever reaction efficiency.

Moreover, Od and mana themselves weren't fundamentally different either, it was just a convention to describe mana inside the body or outside.

Therefore, to simplify things, I will henceforth just use "mana" or "MP" to refer to any of Od, raw environmental mana, or magic energy, the way most non-Nasuverse works do, except when it's necessary to make the distinction.

Having said that, by Agate's estimates, an average magus had:

20 spiritual circuits

Absorption rate: 25 MP/day

Reserve capacity: 25 MP

Because MP would evaporate faster when gathered in higher concentrations, an absorption rate of 25 MP/day didn't necessarily mean the magus would fully recover in one day. How quickly they actually recovered also depended on the circuits' retention property, and the concentration of mana in the environment. But to simplify things, we can assume that for an average magus, it did take approximately one day to recover in a low-mana environment such as the modern Earth of Nasuverse.

With my new circuits, my own values had improved as follows:

1 spiritual circuit 1 spiritual circuit + 36 physical circuits

Absorption rate: 1 MP no change

Reserve capacity: 1MP 320 MP

Based on this, it would take almost a year to refill my capacity on my own.

Fortunately, Agate could help me refill, and she had an absorption rate of 600/day, of which almost 400-500 went into maintaining core functions depending on how active she was, and reserve capacity of 1000. So she could refill her own reserves in around 10 days and mine in 3.

That put our combined maximum output without resting at 1,320 which was better than an elite magus from an old family, even though we recover a hell of lot slower.

Derflinger could also absorb mana too, but the way he did it was different and he couldn't give back the energy in a form that we could use for spells.

Nevertheless, I could now cast the omni-directional flight spell that Agate used to move, without her help so long as I had the reserves stored up, making wind stones and the Armoriont wings technically optional accessories for speed, energy efficiency, and lengthier flight time, rather than a strict necessity.

Moreover, even if Agate couldn't help me fill my reserves, my own recovery rate wasn't actually 1 MP/day.

It was possible for magi to consume their own lifeforce for more MP under dire circumstances. As long as they didn't overdo it, they could recover by eating food and resting well. The speed at which lifeforce could be converted to Od was extremely high, which made this a feasible technique to use in battle.

Due to the drawback of lifeforce itself recovering much slower than the typical absorption rate, and causing various physical vulnerabilities during the recovery phase, including potentially lethal side effects when overtaxed, most human magi considered this a last resort technique.

When comparing the energy from the soul to the lifeforce of the body, it was obvious that the former was superior. Magi with many high quality circuits possessed orders of magnitude more MP than magi who were merely physically superior, and magi families therefore emphasized breeding for circuits rather than physical genes or intensive athletic training.

To reach a level where the biological lifeforce was a significant and viable regular source of MP, the magus' body had to surpass the limits of human biology.

And that was something that I had achieved thanks to Panacea's enhancements from Worm and the Armoriont.

My digestive system could work extremely fast, allowing me to consume many times more food than a normal person if I wanted to, and the Armoriont could do it even faster, even using photosynthesis and eating normally indigestible materials.

Therefore, by feeding the Armoriont a large amount of biomass, assuming I didn't need any of it to heal wounds, I could refill some MP. At the maximum digestion rate, I could refill about 5 MP per hour. Still pretty slow, but much better than a normal human that would take several days to recover after draining their lifeforce for the same amount.

I could also just split a second Armoriont to feed on biomass when I was busy doing other things, and come back to drain energy from it.

Not bad for a month's work.

'Hurray! You're a real magus now!' Agate thought while sending mental fireworks, when I was done trying out my new capabilities.

Sadly, simply having these new affinities and higher MP levels did not mean that I had all sorts of new spells to use. Without being able to cast magic the Halkegenian noble way, and without magecraft spells to learn, it would take a very long time to independently recreate the relevant mysteries.

This was even harder than the spells we developed using the wind stone, or the expected uses of the water stone. For the wind stone, the Breeze and Flight spells only piggy-backed off of the natural float effect the stones provided-I couldn't cast them without the stones yet even if I had the wind affinity. For the water stone, it would be the spirits doing most of the work, not me.

But that was okay, the road to phenomenal cosmic power could only be taken one step at a time. Compared to the magi who bred circuits and researched for hundreds of years to advance their mysteries, I had to admit that my own progress seemed astonishing already.

So absorbed into my magical research, I would have been happy to stay holed up in my workshop for several more months, if not for an unpleasant surprise.

'I can't store any more Primordial Grain! I don't know what's wrong, it keeps disappearing whenever I get more.'

She first notified me of this problem a couple of weeks prior when we had 8 trips' worth, so the past two weeks had accumulated nothing. As I was in the middle of critical research, I ignored it, but once I was done with my implants, I had to contemplate the implications.

Agate had little understanding of Primordial Grain besides being able to use it to create the tunnel through Kaleidoscape, and she didn't know what materials, spells, or structures she herself was made of that allowed her to store it in the first place. This was essentially an unsolvable problem until we could find Zelretch, her creator.

Now, I actually wasn't particularly eager to meet Zelretch again-who knew if he would approve of what I'd been up to, what sorts of entertainment he would force on me, or if that Planeswalker was hanging around his trail-so I'd have be content with being unable to store more than 8 planar trips.

That in return meant that staying in this plane much longer without accumulating Primordial Grain felt like a bit of a waste, and I decided to make preparations for the next planeshift.

When I finally returned to the Londinium surface, I found the kingdom still running smoothly without any new major problems or revolts, and nobody had declared war on us yet.

That was a relief, but also a bit unsettling. A little over a month had passed since I'd taken over the kingdom, and while my rule was growing more secure, it felt almost too quiet.

As far as our ambassadors' reports went, it seemed that all of the other kingdoms declined to officially recognize the new government, but did not reject diplomats either.

There was an unfortunate lack of good intelligence agents abroad working for Albion, and I lacked the skills to build an efficient spy network, so there was little I could do to find out their true intentions, short of sending Agate out for what could be days or weeks at time, which I was unwilling to do.

Were they waiting on the sidelines, watching, or were there already plans against me underway that I simply couldn't see?

On the other hand, I had to admit that perhaps it was me that had a distorted sense of urgency, as a result of the almost non-stop action I experienced in Worm. But actually, didn't politics and wars normally develop over a much longer time scale?

I consulted the history records Offensive Bias had downloaded on Earth Bet, and found that historical crusades on Earth had taken many months to organize, and often did not begin until at least a year after the initial calls for crusade.

As far as I could remember, the alliance against Albion was organized much quicker than that in the canon, but admittedly that was during an active war after Albion invaded Tristain first. So long as I did not take any aggressive moves, though it might have been wishful thinking, it seemed plausible that it would take a lot longer for the Brimiric nations to deal with me.

After giving Tiffania some final instructions, I set forth for Tristain.

"Oh, Sir Axion! You have no idea how glad I am to see you, alive and well! After hearing of the events in Albion, I had feared the worst!" Old Osmond exclaimed upon my entrance to his office and ushered me into a seat.

"It is good to see you as well, Headmaster Osmond. Unfortunately, you were right to be fearful. I am alive yes, but most certainly not well," I said in response.

"Oh my, what ails you, Sir Axion? And do you know of Miss Longueville's whereabouts? She should have returned weeks ago, but I've heard nothing at all from her. I don't know how I ever managed without her skills, I am in desperate need of a good secretary again!" He said while gesturing to the massive piles of disorganized paperwork lying around his desk and even the shelves and floor.

"I'm afraid that Miss Longueville has passed away. It was my failure," I said gravely.

Osmond had a look of shock on him. "How did it happen?"

"It began on our way to Albion, where she confided in me the true reason for her visit and asked for my help in rescuing a friend from the chaos of the civil war. I could not in good conscience refuse her heartfelt plea, so I agreed to assist. We traveled to a secluded village in the woods, near the city of Saxe-Gotha. There, we met her friend, a kind young woman no older than the students here. She had been taking care of a number of orphaned children all by herself in that village. The most striking part was that she was a half-elf by the name of Tiffania."

"A half-elf?! Tiffania? It couldn't be… !" Osmond exclaimed in recognition.

"That's right. I didn't discover the significance of her identity until later, but it was indeed Tiffania Tudor, daughter of the late King Henry. Or so we thought… and Miss Longueville paid the price for our mistake."

"What do you mean?" Osmond leaned forward attentively.

"While her guard was down, believing that the girl was her dear friend, the girl struck her with a dagger. It was then that we discovered the terrible truth. It was not her friend at all, but an imposter, some sort of animated puppet that took her shape, to be specific. Then the children transformed into armed men and attacked as well, for they too were nothing more than animated puppets that reverted to their true form as dolls when defeated. I was able to dispatch them, but Miss Longueville succumbed to her wounds, as I had no healing magics capable of saving her."

At that moment, I reached into the satchel on my utility belt to take out one of the dolls I had collected from the aftermath of the battle and put it on the desk between us.

Osmond examined it with a deep frown before putting it down. "This is most troubling. I will certainly research this further. Were you able to get any clues as to who controlled these alviss?"

"I have a suspicion, but I cannot be sure. There were no mages nearby that I could find within miles. However, the doll did say that it was with Reconquista, and that they had won the civil war. I had heard rumours of Cromwell possessing Void magic, so my first thought was Myozunitonirun. What do you think? Could this magic have been done by an ordinary noble?"

Osmond brushed his beard in contemplation. "Well, alviss are a common magic, and we use them plenty here in the Academy. There are also magics for taking on the appearance of somebody else. However, I don't know of any spell that could create such intelligent alviss that one would mistake it for a real person, and certainly nothing that could operate independently, and at what seems to be an extraordinary range too. But Myozunitonirun… that too is hard to believe… but perhaps… hmm…"

The headmaster seemed to get lost in thought. Did he already know about Saito being Gandalfr? He should have had at least some inkling of it, if Colbert had researched the runes already.

"In any case, I decided to fulfill Miss Longueville's final request on my own, and set off to investigate where the real Tiffania had been taken, or to at least confirm if she still lived," I said.

"Since you are only bringing this news now, I assume there must have been complications, given that the princess soon appeared in public? Did you make contact with her?"

"Complications indeed," I said with a bitter laugh. "I immediately flew to Newcastle where I had heard Cromwell was laying siege, and I came across an active battle. While both sides were distracted, I took the chance to investigate the Lexington. Unfortunately, I had not managed to discover anything of worth by the time that spell hit."

"The Lexington? But that was…" Osmond said with wide eyes that ran up and down my form. "You mean to say that you were caught in Muurleth's monstrous spell?"

"Yes. That is the reason I could not return sooner. You are aware of what they call the Curse of Doom, yes? I could not risk returning before I was sure that I had removed the curse from my body, lest it spread."

Osmond, still in shock, said, "I did not think anybody could survive that spell. That is simply incredible."

"Perhaps," I chuckled dryly. "However, I was forced to use desperate measures to survive, and severely weakened because of it. Even now, I have only physically recovered, but it will take much longer for my magic to return to what it was. As for the princess, I did not make contact with her. I did observe her situation for a short time, and it appears that she is not being held against her will at least. Seeing as she does not know me, and I have no particular proof of my association with Miss Longueville, I decided to leave her be. She is, after all, still a half-elf, and I know not where else she would be safe. As despicable as the new administration may be, she does appear to have been assigned adequate protection."

The old man nodded tiredly. "And perhaps that is best, Sir Axion. Even in Tristain, she would not find it welcoming with the features of an elf, I am sad to say. What do you plan to do now, Sir Axion? Will you be staying at the Academy again? A month has passed already, but I'm sure the Crown will allow an extension of your stay here."

"Your offer is appreciated, but I intend to go into seclusion again to recover, after visiting Louise and Saito."

"Very well. I wish you the best, Sir Axion."

"Sir Axion is so amazing!" Louise exclaimed with stars in her eyes as I gave her and Saito a similar recounting of events while gathered in her dorm room.

"It is nothing to be proud of, Louise. In the end, I couldn't protect Miss Longueville, and accomplished little to speak of."

"But you still defeated all those alviss! Anybody else would have surely fallen!" Louise insisted.

"Never mind that. How are your studies?"

At that, she deflated with a downcast expression. "I've gotten a little better with the new explosion spells, but I still can't cast any other spells. I couldn't figure anything out with the Prayer Book either. It's just blank!"

"Don't worry too much about it. Perhaps there is some sort of key we are missing to unlock its secret," I said. Although I had an idea that it may be related to the Founder's rings, I chose not to disclose it. There wasn't any good opportunity to persuade Henrietta to part with her own yet, and I figured she wouldn't be willing to hand over yet another artifact of the Founder unless Louise had some meaningful achievements she could reward. Plus, with Tiffania now under my influence and my possession of the Music Box, it might be preferable to set up Tiffania with a ring instead of Louise. But that was something to consider later.

"How about you, Saito? Getting used to life here?"

"I guess. There isn't much to do around here though," he said with a shrug. "But I can live with that."

"Better to have nothing to do than to have enemies at your doorstep," I said.

"Enemies huh? That reminds me, can I talk to you alone for a moment?" Saito asked with an uncharacteristically serious face. He had been quiet for most of the conversation too.

"Eh? Why?" Louise looked bewildered, and a little annoyed. "I'm your master, why don't you want me to hear?"

"Just some things that only people from other worlds can understand," Saito said.

"Sorry, Louise, if Saito wants to speak alone, I'll speak to him alone," I said.

"Grrr… fine! I'll go for a walk then!" She stepped out quickly, clearly unhappy.

"So, what is it?"

"That guy that took over Albion… Muurleth. Do you think he's like us too? From another world?" Saito asked.

"What makes you think that?"

"I heard some of the teachers talk about some kind of new heretical alchemy he created that has a hundred and eighteen elements."

"Ah… yes, so you noticed that."

"And that spell too, we went into town last week and saw a drawing of it in a newspaper. Of the mushroom cloud it made, I mean. That looked like a nuclear bomb."

"I can't deny that. The short answer is, yes, you're right. Muurleth is from another world. In fact, I know him."

"You do?!" Saito's eyes widened. "He's from the same world as you?"

"Well, not exactly. It's a little more complicated than that. Remember how I said I wanted to research the dimensional magic that could take you back home, but that I didn't care for using it myself to go anywhere?"

"Yeah."

"Have you stopped to think about why I'm not in a hurry to go back home like you are?"

"Huh? Now that you mention it…"

"It's quite simple really. As I told Louise already, I'm fully capable of traveling to other worlds on my own, albeit at a great cost."

"What?! Seriously? Then you can… ! Why didn't you tell me before?!" Saito looked at once both hopeful, and also outraged.

"Hold your horses. I said that I'm capable of traveling to other worlds, not that I can bring anyone else. I can't take anyone with me. Besides, even if I could, I have no way to travel to your specific world, if I haven't gone there before."

"Oh…"

"I'm bringing this up now because like me, Muurleth can also travel to other worlds on his own power, though I don't know how he does it. We've fought several times in the past when we were in the same world. I didn't think it was possible for him to follow me though. I still don't know if he really did follow me here, if he got summoned just like us, or if it's just a big cosmic coincidence. But what I can tell you is that he definitely knows science as much as you or me, and it's entirely possible that he brought nukes. But I would advise that you keep this to yourself and pretend you don't know anything about Muurleth… for obvious reasons."

"Right, of course I don't want to be branded a heretic or spy. Damn, that's crazy. He actually has nukes, what the hell! Do you think he'll attack Tristain? Are we in danger here?"

"I can't say with any certainty that I can predict a madman like him, but from what I do know, Muurleth isn't interested in anything like world domination, wealth, or more territory. He genuinely believes himself to be a god already, and is satisfied to play at that role. It is rare that he ever acts in person or in the open. Now that he has followers in this world, I doubt he'll feel the need to demonstrate his power again anytime soon. He might even leave once he gets bored."

"That's a relief then. Say, would you be able to win against him in a fair fight?"

"There's no such thing as a fair fight, Saito. But to answer your question, I really don't know. None of our previous fights ever ended with a clear victor, though I have to admit he is probably stronger than me."

"He's really that strong then? Even without technology backing him up?" Saito asked with a deep frown.

"Does it matter whether he's using technology or magic? Either way, it's his power."

"But if it's just technology, then we could use it too if we got our hands on it, right? Especially with my Gandalfr power."

"You're not wrong, but the more advanced the technology, the more likely it is to have protection, such as passwords and biometrics. I don't think your power lets you bypass those."

"Oh, I didn't think of that."

"Anyway, you're better off staying far away from him, and thinking about more useful things."

"I guess you're right."

After that, we went back to Louise and I informed them that I'd be going into seclusion to recover for an indeterminate amount of time, just as I told Osmond.

I told Louise to keep working on her elementally modified explosion spells and to not waste too much time with the Prayer Book, and told Saito to keep himself in shape.

Finally, I flew up to rendezvous with the AAPV orbiting above Albion. As I was not personally capable of flying that high, the AAPV had to come down to the lower atmosphere to meet me.

I left the Music Box with the AAPV as it was not useful to carry around to other planes, but neither did I want to leave it around to be stolen if Tiffania couldn't make use of it yet.

The AAPV itself would be left here to support Tiffania in the event of war or other trouble, and the copy of Offensive Bias onboard would go into hibernation until it was contacted.

My affairs settled in this plane, I held Agate in my hand as we cast the spell to shift planes.

'ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Worm-M2 Dark Side Moon Base Periphery. 30 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold.'

Time to see what was going on with the CRUCIBLE team, and if Amelia had any upgrades for me.

[Agate]

Reporting in on our training with the Water Stone!

Physical Water Manipulation (macroscopic) mastery has progressed greatly.

Physical Water Manipulation (microscopic) mastery has progressed significantly.

Finally! We can do some parlour tricks with water. We can dry clothes, extract water from vapour, or move water around into different shapes. And we've also gotten pretty good at detecting large bodies of water from a distance, but that's not really a skill, it's just the spirits tugging us to places they want to go.

A/N: I'm bored with ZnT so we're moving on. Short detour to Worm before the next world. The decision on that hasn't been made yet so I'm open to suggestions, though I am leaning towards a world that has relatively bigger fish than ZnT.

Worm: 22 - Double Disaster

22 - Double Disaster

[Interlude]

Amelia watched Kaleidus go through the portal in the terribly named AAPV to wait in the vacuum chamber, mentally protesting it but unable to voice her thoughts.

Even after already accepting logically that she couldn't go with him, she found herself apprehensive of what would come next. Leading CRUCIBLE in his absence… it was too soon! She wasn't ready for it yet.

She turned around to the console screen which showed the vehicle entering another portal into outer space.

Taylor and Paige similarly watched quietly from beside her. The screen shifted to the cameras outside the base and zoomed in as far as possible.

The vehicle accelerated forwards into the dark background of space with a yellow, blue and purple streak of light, then abruptly disappeared.

"That was… huh, I thought it would be more magical. He just disappeared," said Taylor.

"Isn't that magical in itself? To appear as nothing out of the ordinary?" Paige asked with a thoughtful expression, a finger to her chin.

"But I wouldn't say disappearing is nothing out of the ordinary either." Taylor said.

"It's going to be strange without him here," said Amelia, sighing.

"Not only that, we've basically cleaned up Brockton Bay's villain scene already. That's going to take some adjusting to too," said Taylor. "Not having any hero work to do, I mean."

"Speak for yourself, I think Paige and I will be just fine with it. I wouldn't mind a break after all the action we've had. I've done way more in the last few weeks than I ever did with New Wave," said Amelia.

"Our work isn't really done though, it just means we have to start broadening our horizons," said Paige. "There are lots of people that still need our help all across the country."

"You know, you could probably do some singing again. Could be good for our PR if you do it as a CRUCIBLE gig, so the public doesn't think we're only about fighting crime," said Amelia.

"Isn't that risky? We don't want people to link Paige with her Canary identity. If I remember, you were the one that kept arguing that we couldn't let anyone know we rescued her," said Taylor.

"Well, that was back when she wasn't part of the team. Now she's one of us, and she'll have to go out as a hero sooner or later. People are going to make the link anyways when she starts using her power in public, and that'll happen sooner or later. And the breakout was never announced so people's first thought won't be that she is Canary, just a cape that's similar. That's why it's better for her to build goodwill and a new image, which she can do best as a singer. PR's important, you know? It's the one of the things New Wave was always working on, and why I offered free healing at the hospital for minor medical issues, even when there's always patients with more serious issues on my waitlist."

"If it makes a difference, I think I would like to sing to an audience again," said Paige.

"There is a plan for Paige to return to a singing career for PR and revenue generation," Offensive Bias added.

"See? Looks like Kaleidus agrees and thought ahead to prepare for that," said Amelia.

"In addition, it is projected that her singing will have a significant impact on morale in the aftermath of an Endbringer attack."

Taylor shrugged. "Alright. I won't oppose it."

"Thank you!" Paige said happily.

Amelia knew that her attitude towards Paige hadn't been particularly positive after rescuing her from the Birdcage, and this was one way to begin repairing that relationship. The three of them plus Offensive Bias were the true leaders of CRUCIBLE now. It had all started with Kaleidus and Amelia, then Taylor joined just before they debuted as the founding members. Paige came much later and never had a public debut yet, but her loyalty was at least without question, despite her religious quirks.

The rest of their now rather large organization consisted of potentially untrustworthy individuals-former criminals and villains-that had been Mastered to various degrees.

When she thought about it, that fact was rather incongruous for a hero organization, but Amelia found that she didn't really care, and Taylor justified it as reforming villains for their own good.

But still, they had all agreed that the ones who'd been Mastered couldn't be fully trusted, so the four of them were the real leadership and had to get along. Technically Offensive Bias was programmatically forced to be loyal, in a way that was similar to being Mastered, but its episodic memories as Dragon had been completely wiped, and it had essentially grown up again with them. This was unlike how they Mastered the other capes, as their memories were left intact so they could remain competent.

"Let's head back down to the surface then, it's kinda dreary up here," said Amelia.

"What?! No!" Taylor suddenly exclaimed.

Amelia was taken aback and had a confused expression. "Uh… you disagree?"

"No, I mean, the sirens! The Endbringer sirens are going off!"

Amelia and Paige both froze at that.

Although Earth M2 had been sealed off by Teacher's device, the device worked in such a way that it only sealed perception off from users located outside of its area of effect. There were several other quirky ways it interacted with secondary Thinker powers as well, but in general anybody who managed to get inside the area of effect was no longer blocked by it.

The key point was that the device didn't actually blind the shards, only the users. In that respect, it was more like a "setting" which the shards collectively agreed to treat the protected space as off limits to perception powers.

As a result, Taylor could maintain connectivity with her bug network on Earth Bet through relay bugs and portal connections.

"Is it Brockton Bay?! But it shouldn't be a good target anymore!" Amelia said with shock. Before he left, Kaleidus had explained that the Leviathan was supposed to attack Brockton Bay, but that it seemed to have been delayed, and probably cancelled altogether, because the Endbringers target areas of significant instability and conflict. With the gangs eliminated in Brockton Bay, the city was as peaceful as it could get.

"An alert has been issued by the PRT. The Simurgh appears to be on a trajectory for Boston, estimated arrival in thirty minutes."

"Oh… that's… I really shouldn't feel relief at that, but… I'm kind of glad it's not hitting us," Taylor said. "Phew. That means dad is safe."

"That's not all. An S-class threat has also been declared in Boston in respect to what has been codenamed 'Echidna'. Kaleidus left a file on this as a critical event, though it was not expected to arise this early."

Offensive Bias pulled up data on screen on both the Endbringer alert and Echidna, while running some analyses in the background.

"Instantaneously cloning full powered capes?! Holy fuck!" Amelia swore as she read what Echidna was capable of. "And it's gonna clone Alexandria and Eidolon? How the hell do we stop that?!"

"Hey, it says here I might be able to bring the clones under control with my power!" Paige pointed.

"However, it is also projected that the Simurgh's scream will interfere with your power. It is likely that the Simurgh is deliberately joining the battle in Boston to take advantage of this."

"We should try to stop the Triumvirate from fighting Echidna then," Taylor said. "I think we can handle her, we just need them to hold off the Simurgh."

"Yeah, as long as she doesn't clone any super heavy hitters, the bug army should be enough to deal with her. Obviously, none of us should be going out in person there either," said Amelia.

"If Eidolon is not cloned, the Cauldron organization will not be revealed to the world. Eidolon is one of the few confirmed blindspots of the Path to Victory power they possess. There is no guarantee that the Anti-Thinker Bubble device works on it."

"Are you saying we should let him get cloned?" Taylor asked. "Is it that important to reveal them?"

"No, I am merely informing you of the long-term consequences that will affect the entire world. If we do not use this chance to expose the organization, we may not receive another in the future."

"We need Coil," said Amelia. "I don't think this is a choice we can make lightly."

"But if he's running a continuous split like that, he won't be able to help us in the battle itself. And we're talking about facing an Endbringer. It'll be harder than anything we've faced so far," said Taylor.

"We don't really have a choice otherwise do we? There's not enough time to analyze which decision is better. We have to try to take out Echidna right now before the Simurgh gets there, otherwise we're in for what might be the hardest Endbringer battle in history. If Echida somehow clones the fucking Simurgh itself we are so fucked it's not even funny," said Amelia. "We can't afford to hold back and let Eidolon get cloned."

"Ah… you're right. Fuck."

The team moved immediately down to the M2 surface command centre. Coil was given a separate room of his own so that the team could communicate things in the command centre not meant for his ears.

Because he was inside the area of effect of the Anti-Thinker Bubble device, his powers worked normally and they split the timeline.

Numerous portals opened between Boston and Brockton Bay to show relay bugs swarming through, establishing signal connection to Boston for Taylor to control the bug army in the battle.

While it was possible to directly portal to Boston, their security protocol was to avoid leaving open portals back to M2 lying around anywhere except the underground base in Brockton Bay, which was heavily fortified.

They would use an in-between world to amass the fighting force before portalling to Boston, and then close the portals to M2, so they needed to connect the signal from Earth Bet.

Tens of thousands of Soldier-class and larger bugs and billions more smaller bugs were moving from Earth M1, where Amelia and Taylor cultivated them, over to Earth Buffer1, an uninhabited world designated for massing troops and other operations requiring the use of a buffer world.

"This is way too slow, our forces have outgrown our logistics. We really need more portal generators," said Taylor. Her bugs were moving in as a continuous line, and it was going to take almost ten minutes just to finish assembling. It was too bad they couldn't increase the size of the portals.

"Noted. Increased production will be allocated."

Drones had already been deployed to Boston for Offensive Bias to monitor the situation, and a line of communication was established with the local PRT to coordinate.

With the Endbringer alarm sounded, teleporters had been gathered to muster the Protectorate forces, which in turn meant that the Triumvirate arrived much sooner than they otherwise would have on their own power.

However, instead of Eidolon engaging Echidna as the CRUCIBLE leaders expected, they had all stayed back to organize the defense against the Simurgh.

The leaders all looked at each other for a moment when they noticed that oddity. Why hadn't they come to the same conclusion that they should deal with Echidna before the Simurgh arrived? Even if it was risky to have a cloned Triumvirate member, it was far more catastrophic to have a cloned Simurgh.

Still, it did mean they wouldn't have to keep a Coil timeline for Eidolon to get cloned if he wasn't going to fight Echidna at all.

"Let's get into contact with the PRT and coordinate. Can you get us a line, Bias?" Amelia asked.

When Director Armstrong received a call from CRUCIBLE, the new hero team that had taken Brockton Bay by storm, he was wary of the offer.

After the numerous Directors' meetings they had following CRUCIBLE's defeat of two gangs in their city, he was very well aware that CRUCIBLE was not an organization that would go the way of most independent hero teams.

Despite Heathrow's argument about their eventual failure, Armstrong could see the unsaid acknowledgement among most of the directors that CRUCIBLE was likely to remain a thorn in the PRT's side for a long time. The PRT was authorizing their activities not because of some long-term strategy, but simply because there was nothing else that could be done without courting disaster.

They were too well-organized and well-funded to be thought of as an ordinary new hero team, and far too willing to resort to extreme, un-heroic measures. Their methods were all PR-disasters that somehow managed to stay in the public's good graces.

And everything they did to secure Brockton Bay afterwards had only driven home that point. The villains had all but disappeared, presumably in hiding, or worse yet, possibly captured by CRUCIBLE in secret.

The whole city had been turned into a fortress guarded by who knows how many mutant bugs, and the only role left for the local PRT branch was to look good on patrol.

So when Skitter showed up on his conference screen and described their intention to "deploy a large force to Boston", Armstrong could only give a forced smile and polite acceptance, then informing the Chief Director of the situation.

CRUCIBLE's help would certainly take some of the heat off, but the PRT would find it increasingly difficult to manage them in the future.

But with the Simurgh breathing down their necks, there was no question as to whether they needed the help.

Bastion, leader of the Boston Protectorate, strained his force field powers to the limit trying to keep Echidna boxed in, but had little luck with it while being forced to fend off the horde of powered clones with the capes under his command.

Nobody had expected the situation to spiral out of control as quickly as it had. What started as a policing action against some villains battling it out in the streets had blown up into an unprecedented disaster.

In the midst of the chaotic battle, in an attempt to understand what was going on, they had pieced together that the Travelers, a villain group that frequently moved from city to city, led an assault on Blasto, the local biotinker, at Accord's instruction. Supposedly, Accord, a local gang leader, had originally promised to transfer them to Brockton Bay where he had arranged for a facility that could better contain and help one of their members named Noelle, who was the monster cape the PRT had designated Echidna. But Accord lost contact with whomever he'd been dealing with in Brockton Bay.

Following that, with Noelle growing increasingly agitated, Accord proposed that they capture Blasto and force him to find a cure.

With the full might of Accord's Ambassadors and the Travelers, it seemed that Blasto would be easily dealt with… until the Teeth, another rival gang, somehow caught wind of the operation and mistakenly believed they were the true target of it, having been weakened from the loss of Animos and Spree on an attempt to encroach into Brockton Bay.

They allied with Blasto and an all out gang-war quickly ensued. Their latest battle featured a new and improved "Woad Giant", which had first made its appearance during the Boston Games years earlier, and the entire cape roster from every gang.

The Protectorate deployed and attempted to stop the massive fight, but by the time they'd arrived, it was too late, and had morphed into something else entirely.

One thing had led to another, and one of the Ambassadors, Citrine, who had a power to "find the right attunement" and disable other powers was trying to counter the Butcher, leader of the Teeth, when she accidentally struck the wrong attunement and awoke something else in Blasto's lab.

The Morrigan. A hybrid clone of the Simurgh, an Endbinger, and Myrddin, one of the strongest capes in the Protectorate.

That was the beginning of this nightmare.

It unleashed a Simurgh-like scream that instead of Mastering people, caused them to lose their sanity. For most of the capes in the huge gang battle, it was temporary and passed quickly. But the scream also hit Noelle, and her powers went berserk.

By the time their powers had been brought under control, numerous capes involved in the massive battle had already been captured and cloned by Echidna.

The Travelers desperately called for a Truce as they explained Echidna's powers, and all the remaining capes agreed.

An A-class threat was declared, but the PRT tried to rescue the captured capes and calm Noelle instead of outright destroying her.

When they first engaged with Echidna, it seemed like a manageable threat. Just keep the monster cape away from any other capes, staying at range or only using capes like Weld that were immune due to lack of biological bodies.

They had even tried to reason with the cape, as she was seemingly still lucid and trying to stop herself. It almost worked even.

These efforts however, were in vain, as the Morrigan had suddenly appeared and screamed again.

By the time everyone came back to their senses, the number of clones had multiplied, Noelle was unconscious while her lower half took full control, the Morrigan had disappeared, while the real Simurgh had been detected moving towards Boston.

As the sirens went off, the chaos reached new levels as people all over the city scrambled to evacuate.

And the worst part?

The Butcher had been cloned. And the Butcher was a cape who transferred their consciousness to another host upon death, while keeping all the powers of their previous incarnations, getting stronger every time.

The clones didn't have all the Butcher's powers, but now there were a bunch of clones they couldn't risk killing lest they transferred to new hosts.

This seemed to be the mother of all S-class threats, spawning new S-class threats by the minute!

At least the original Butcher hadn't been captured due to her teleportation power, so Echidna couldn't keep spawning more Butchers.

It was because of this Butcher situation that the PRT chose to keep the Triumvirate away. The catastrophe of a crazed unkillable Butcher possessing Triumvirate level powers, or even worse, an Echidna-Butcher with Triumvirate level powers… that was simply too horrifying to imagine.

It was far too easy for these Butcher clones to commit suicide to transfer into a new host, and that was a known tactic of previous Butchers.

Bastion was almost ready to accept his inevitable demise this day-what were the chances of surviving both this S-class threat and the Simurgh?-when portals began to appear in the air.

"Fall back! Fall back! CRUCIBLE is-" he heard on his comm from HQ.

Terrible wails of agony could be heard across the whole area as something invisible seemed to hit many of the clones and Echidna herself. It was indiscriminate in its attack and hit some of the heroes and villains who were too close and-

His mind went blank with the pain of thousands of needles striking every part of his body.

When he finally came to, a literal army of mutant bugs had swamped the battlefield.

Several minutes of chaotic fighting, flashes of light everywhere, apparent earthquakes, and all sorts of things he assumed he was hallucinating ensued as he tried to re-orient himself, while commanding a retreat.

When he and the remaining few members of his team had regrouped quite a distance away, they could hardly believe their eyes.

A seemingly endless stream of monster bugs of all sizes were pouring out of portals in the air, and coming from all directions across the city in such huge groups that they were blotting out the sky. They appeared to be winning against Echidna by sheer, overwhelming quantity and the surprise attack from earlier that incapacitated most of the clones.

Was that supposed to be the work of Skitter, the now famous cape from CRUCIBLE? He'd read about the upgrades the former Panacea had given to her, but this was ludicrous.

He watched in disbelief as CRUCIBLE seemingly crushed the S-class threat like it was child's play. Large areas were hit by bombs that slowed down time, so that they could be sealed off by more bugs and comically large spider webs or a white haze of presumably tranquilizing gas. The Butcher clones were trapped in bubbles of completely stopped time, most of the other clones were being subdued in some kind of goo similar to containment foam, or dumped through portals to who knows where, and Echidna herself was… being eaten alive?

The Echidna girl who was now awake again screamed as she was submerged in a mass of bugs that were apparently eating her regenerating flesh faster than she could regenerate it, and dragging out the captured capes.

Not long after, some kind of drone and a dog-wait, wasn't that Animos' Changer form?-flew by the girl and she stopped screaming, or doing anything. Once her body was reduced to a smaller size, she too was dragged through a portal.

"We'd better get to the Endbringer defense. Looks like CRUCIBLE's wrapping up here," said Bastion to his team.

The bugs were spreading out across the city instead of going back into their portals. Given that the Simurgh was coming soon, he couldn't find fault with that. Better to set up defensive positions and protect the shelters, he supposed.

A/N: Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. Definitely some good ideas in there. Still thinking about it while we revisit Worm a little, and have some important overarching plot developments for MC's planar traveling.

The ideas about using planar "phenomenon" and/or making time flow differently, I think I will incorporate. Some might be predictable for the MC, others not. That provides a lot more flexibility in handling different worlds, while making planar travel more dangerous and interesting.

23 - The Simurgh's Plan

23 - The Simurgh's Plan

[Interlude]

"… above all, expect the unexpected. This is likely to be unlike any other Endbringer fight in recorded history. Not only is the Simurgh attacking for the second time in a row since Canberra in February despite the Endbringers normally taking turns, we have an on-going S-class situation in this city. We don't know what objective the Simurgh may or may not have. All we know is that we have to end this fast. Dragon and Armsmaster's advance warning might give us the chance to make this a good day, but other issues threaten to make it just the opposite."

Legend had just finished giving his speech to the gathered capes who volunteered for the Simurgh fight when he received a transmission from Director Armstrong.

After a short pause while he listened, he smiled.

"It looks like CRUCIBLE's just taken care of Echidna and will be joining their forces with us shortly," he announced. "That's one S-class threat down, and one less problem for us to worry about. Alright, that's all for now. Refer to your armbands and group leaders for further instructions, and get ready."

Cheers erupted from the crowd, as the good news broke the grave mood they'd been in when they first heard about the situation.

"That's impressively efficient," said Alexandria as Legend walked off the speaking platform to rendezvous with his colleagues.

"Maybe those three could take up the mantle of the Triumvirate some day," said Legend.

"They have quite a different modus operandi however. They've started to make fewer appearances in person and merely send out their bugs," said Alexandria.

"That's just the nature of their powers isn't it? They don't have the kind of durability or heavy hitting capability we do, and Skitter is a Master. That's not the kind of powerset you'd go to the frontlines with," said Eidolon.

"Alexandria does raise a good point, however. If they don't appear in person, their images as heroes would suffer for it. People like personable heroes," said Legend.

Just then, a portal appeared next to them. Out of habit, they'd assumed it was Contessa, but they were proven wrong when the portal expanded and a group of bugs pushed through a wheeled cart.

The other gathered capes all looked over at the sight.

A swarm of smaller bugs bunched up and formed the silhouette of a woman, before speaking with synchronized buzzes and chirps.

"Hello Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon. This is Skitter speaking."

"Hello Skitter. Glad to have you and your team with us. What's this you've brought?" Legend asked.

"We have an idea as to how to kill the Simurgh, or at least remove her from the board. These are time stop bombs. From Thinker powers, we have good reason to believe that they will work on her, but we don't have any way to land a hit on her ourselves. You guys might be able to do it."

"Killing an Endbringer… I won't dare to hope for such an outcome, but if there's any chance at all, we'll take it," said Legend.

"These are Bakuda bombs aren't they?" Alexandria asked.

"Yes, they are."

"With her precognition and telekinesis, it will be hard to pin them on her, but it's still the best chance we've had in a long time. Thank you," Alexandria said.

"It might work if I'm lucky. I'm a blindspot to precogs, and that probably includes the Simurgh. I'll take some extras," said Eidolon.

The three of them moved to grab the bombs and read the instructions for their use.

"She's getting close. Our forces will engage her first in the atmosphere and try to stop her from getting to the city."

Legend looked up and saw the Simurgh in the far distance.

"Everyone, get ready! Watch your timers!" He shouted.

Twenty minutes ago…

Back at the CRUCIBLE command centre, Amelia stood up and swore loudly.

"How did she dodge that?! Does Teacher's device not work on her? This is such bullshit!"

They had just sent through a hypersonic missile with a time bomb via portal, the same way they sniped Jack Slash earlier.

However, the Simurgh had moved out of the way easily.

"Analyzing. She may be able to detect the formation of the portals, giving her a slight forewarning. Alternatively, she may have used telekinesis to adjust the trajectory of the missile," said Offensive Bias.

Numerous portals appeared as hundreds of missiles flew through in an attempt to surround the Simurgh and allow nowhere to dodge.

She weaved around them expertly as they chased her with homing features.

Then, as if she'd been merely playing with them earlier, all the missiles' navigation systems stopped working and they started flying towards the city together with her.

"Are you kidding me? Coil, cut!"

In the other timeline, Coil reported the results, and the team tried a new set of tactics. Every time, they split a timeline to attack the Simurgh, while the other one used all the portal generators in support of Taylor's troop deployments in Buffer1 instead.

This way, they could take advantage of the time before the Simurgh arrived to experiment and learn more about her, while retaining the control timeline where they were still preparing their forces to fight Echidna.

What they'd found out however, was highly discouraging. Kaleidus' notes on how the Endbringers were sandbagging had been right, and but none of them had expected just how ridiculously overpowered Simurgh actually was.

Their portals were utterly useless against her, because in the second it took to open one the Simurgh could fly tens of kilometers away if she wanted to. Her telekinesis? The range seemed to be as far as she needed it to be to deal with whatever they threw at her.

Literally nothing damaged her body in a significant way. Sure she took superficial damage but it was quickly healed and apparently didn't affect her at all. The only things she hadn't let herself be hit with were the time stop bombs, so that was potentially something that would work-if they found a way to hit her.

And realistically, that meant they had to use a precog blindspot that didn't require a portal to strike from. Now because Teacher's students had also made a mobile version of the perception blocking device, that was the next thing they tried.

That too was defeated because the Simurgh could apparently indirectly detect the blindspot by sensing where her telekinesis power couldn't control. And they only found out how the Simurgh did it by waking up Tattletale and forcing her to analyze it.

As the clock ticked down and the Simurgh got close to city, they came to the sad realization that the outcome of this battle would most likely be… whatever the Simurgh wanted it to be.

Eventually they had to stop when it was time to fight Echidna, and turn Coil's power over there instead, which led to a quick and successful mission.

However, even after they successfully captured Echidna and her clones, the mood of the CRUCIBLE team remained a sombre one.

Reaching the limit of what they could do, they could only put their hopes in the Triumvirate and Scion, just like everybody else.

The start of the fight against the Simurgh didn't seem particularly different than usual. Blasters, Shakers, and other long-range capes unloaded on the flying angel to more or less no effect as she dodged or easily brushed off the attacks.

The Triumvirate were in the thick of it while most other capes played minor roles, not being able to damage her in any significant way or keep up with her.

The battle swept across the city, as the Simurgh flew about and the teleporters desperately tried to keep up by moving the non-Movers.

Every Simurgh battle was a battle of Thinkers, despite appearances. What was the Simurgh trying to accomplish? There was always something.

Unlike the other Endbringers who seemed bent on mindless destruction, death, and fighting whatever was in their way, the Simurgh was more than intelligent, it always had goals in mind and engaged in complex plans.

The true battle was figuring out what it planned to do, and stopping it.

Thanks to the early warning algorithm, the Protectorate and PRT had managed to evacuate a good portion of the population. Shelters were useless because the Scream would affect them all, so they had to be brought out of the city entirely. As such, the shelters merely served as gathering points so people could be quickly teleported away.

Despite this, casualties were skyrocketing.

"It's targeting the shelters that haven't evacuated!" Alexandria shouted into her armband before flying in a devastating punch and getting blown away in exchange. The bomb she'd tried to leave on her was dismantled before it could do anything.

A string of names, lost capes, was continuously announced by Dragon's voice.

Eidolon moved quickly and erected some kind of barrier over the next shelter the Simurgh couldn't easily get through, while Legend blasted the fake angel and seared off bits of flesh.

"The Simurgh is creating a Tinker device hidden within the telekinetic storm," Dragon's voice informed the capes.

Blasters concentrated fire onto that area while the Simurgh blocked by uprooting several whole buildings.

Like this, the battle raged on as the city was quickly being destroyed.

In Earth Buffer1, CRUCIBLE forces had collected the prisoners from the Echidna fight, including Noelle herself and her clones.

Due to the state of emergency, the PRT had agreed to let CRUCIBLE temporarily take care of the wounded allied capes, and to imprison the clones. As such, the allied capes and prisoners were being organized for transport to two different worlds, one with some medical facilities to house allied, neutral, or civilian groups, and another that was a high security prison.

To the maximum extent possible, CRUCIBLE tried to segregate worlds for different purposes, and minimized fallout in the event of a disaster in one of them, and to prevent their main bases of operation from being exposed.

However, in order for either Taylor or Offensive Bias to command their forces, there needed to be a continuous connection back to M2, the main command area. As a result, once the portals to Boston were closed, a portal was established from Buffer1 to M2 to maintain connectivity.

Additionally, M2 functioned as a nexus world for their portal system. The portal generators could only open a portal into another world from the one they were in. As a result, in order to connect two other worlds, it was necessary to use two portal generators to form a stacked double-portal, with the host world acting as nexus.

Because the portal generators were a vital technology, it was only natural for them to be kept in the most fortified core world of M2.

Both of these facts meant that despite their best efforts, there were certain moments and places where the main CRUCIBLE worlds were accessible.

Then CRUCIBLE had Coil keep the successful timeline as soon as they shut off all the portals to Boston.

Their own operations seemingly isolated from Boston again, CRUCIBLE opened the signal portal from M2, and began preparing the captures and wounded allies on Buffer1 for transport.

Meanwhile, Coil split a new timeline for CRUCIBLE to join the Simurgh defense force, keeping a control timeline as usual.

It was only after all this that the Morrigan struck-and unfortunately for CRUCIBLE, it happened in both timelines.

Having pretended to be one of the Echidna clones, the Morrigan had allowed itself to be captured in containment goo and seemingly fell unconscious when Canary's song was used to command them all asleep.

Having, possessing Master powers of its own, it was rather resistant to the effect, and merely bided its time until CRUCIBLE opened the signal portal to M2.

Using the weakened powers it inherited from its mother and father, it then proceeded to quietly execute the plan its mother had been transmitting to it from low atmosphere via low-frequency waves over the past few couple of weeks before it was awakened by Citrine's "accidental" attunement.

First, some telekinesis to loosen the goo enough to draw a symbol.

Next, the goo trapping it was absorbed into a pocket dimension. A Scream followed that turned all the other nearby biological lifeforms berserk, including all the bugs, Noelle, and her clones.

While Taylor was momentarily unable to control her bugs, the Morrigan drew another symbol and opened a pocket dimension right on the portal to M2, which destabilized its structure, scrambled the signals going through, and forced it to open wider.

It burst through the portal, at which point it was inside the area of effect of the Anti-Thinker Bubble device, and gained access to precognition and postcognition in the world.

It tore through the M2 base while the CRUCIBLE leaders were in shock and still didn't even identify what was intruding (because the signals going to Offensive Bias and Taylor had been scrambled).

Even as they diverted attention to their own world from the active Simurgh fight, the Morrigan had already found the portal generators.

Then it hacked into their systems and opened a portal straight to the Anti-Thinker Bubble device for Earth M2 and telekinetically destroyed it, before opening a second portal back to Boston and shoving an entire portal generator through it, complete with its coordinate information for M2.

Meanwhile…

The Protectorate Thinkers finally realized a startling truth about the Simurgh the Triumvirate had been fighting. "That's a decoy!"

Alexandria heard the relayed message from Dragon and flew up, rapidly looking around.

A few familiar items flashed through the air, and suddenly she remembered a similar scene she had seen before. From when the Simurgh attacked Madison.

And then she understood. But it was too late.

On the other side of the city, a massively oversized portal appeared in the air, and the true Simurgh flew through with nobody blocking her way.

Eidolon with teleportation and Legend in his light Breaker state followed right after, but Alexandria was forced to call off all the other capes.

Cauldron wasn't ready to reveal the existence of Doormaker, so they had to pretend as if the portal was a one-way trip.

As the capes gathered in the destroyed street, they watched the portal shut close with confusion and trepidation. What the hell was the Simurgh trying to accomplish? Was the battle over? Instead of bringing things over from the other side like with Madison, the Simurgh had itself gone through this time. Was it coming back?

Not long after, a golden man arrived.

He looked around and saw there was nothing to do, so he moved on.

"Wait!" The capes called after Scion.

Back on M2, the CRUCIBLE leaders were paralyzed with fear as they saw the face of the Simurgh staring at them on the screen through a camera, and heard her Scream.

That was short lived as Eidolon hit it with some reality warping power that actually managed to shred one of its wings. Unfortunately, the wings were apparently cosmetic as the Simurgh kept flying without any problems.

Numerous facilities were telekinetically grabbed wholesale and flung around, destroying the horde of combat drones that moved to engage. Within seconds, a vast swatch of the base was reduced to rubble.

"We gotta go!" Amelia shouted. She hit a button and opened the door to Paige, who was in a sound-proofed room so she could sing without affecting the others.

"Paige, quick!" The older cape rushed over to join the other two leaders in a panicked run.

Amelia reached into a compartment on her Armoriont and activated her own mobile Anti-Thinker Bubble device.

The area of effect of two such devices could not overlap. The smaller one would be forcefully shut off if that happened. As a result, they had to manually activate the mobile ones after the world-spanning one was destroyed earlier.

"Bias, Omega Escape Protocol!"

A portal opened in front of them, and they rushed through to the M2 Dark Side Moon Base, and got into an escape AAPV stocked with supplies and a portable portal generator.

The portal closed behind them, and Offensive Bias continued the futile fight against the Simurgh. It attempted to delete records of all CRUCIBLE-known worlds from its database, but soon found that it stopped working halfway through. It'd been hacked.

Then it's only remaining role was to buy time. It could always restore from backup later.

The girls scrambled to launch the AAPV and blasted into outer space.

The escape AAPV, due to a lack of armaments, had enough space to hold all three of them, with transforming seats that could double as beds.

"Fuck," Amelia said once they were out of the moon's orbit and heading deeper into the solar system.

"Yeah. Fuck," said Taylor.

"That was too scary. I can't believe the Simurgh came after us," Paige said.

Taylor started up the program to restore a fresh Offensive Bias from backup from earlier in the day.

Once booted, it inquired as to why they had enacted the Omega Escape Protocol, and received some tired explanations from the girls.

"I can't believe we had to use this plan either. I thought Kaleidus was just being paranoid, preparing all of this," said Amelia.

The plan was to get somewhere definitively outside of the Simurgh's range and jump worlds via coordinates that hadn't been stored anywhere written or electronic, only in their minds.

"You can never be too paranoid when it comes to the Simurgh," said Taylor, then shuddered. "Ugh, it feels really weird without my bugs now. I feel so vulnerable."

"Could the Simurgh still follow us? I mean, your powers still work on the moon right Amelia? That means the Simurgh might still be able to use postcognition there and figure out which direction we headed. And it can probably fly faster than we can," said Paige.

"The protocol requires that we fly some distance from the moon first, to increase the chances of reaching an area of space which the shards' powers do not work. Due to an inability to determine whether the shards merely set a restriction on usage or whether they are truly unable to operate past the moon, the recommended procedure is to continue flying as far as possible until directly threatened."

"So unless we see the Simurgh on our tail, we'll have to keep going for a while," said Taylor.

The AAPV was theoretically capable of reaching 36 Gs of acceleration at maximum in a vacuum, but that would kill whoever was inside, and almost certainly destroy the vehicle too.

Fortunately in space, they only needed a simple 1 G of constant acceleration to reach extremely high velocities.

"Is this right? We can get to Mars in a day?" Paige asked with shock as she looked over the planned trajectory.

"And thirteen hours, yeah. It is pretty amazing huh?" Amelia said. "Apparently we can even go interstellar. Just takes a few years. Of course, we don't have the supplies for that, so we'd need to go into cryo."

"Do we really need to go that far?" Paige asked.

"Interstellar, no. We're just going to Mars because the portals don't work without a strong enough nearby gravitation source, and it's the safest one."

"What do you mean safest?"

"As the planets orbit around the Sun, Mercury and Venus are usually closer to Earth than Mars. However, they are also exposed to more dangerous solar winds, which this vehicle is untested for. Therefore, the safest choice is Mars," Offensive Bias explained.

"So what exactly are we going to do, now that the Simurgh has destroyed our base of operations? If we go back to Earth Bet, she might just attack us again, considering we were her target," said Taylor.

"I honestly don't know. The protocol says we're supposed to go to the Refuge moon base, which is the backup world. But the Simurgh might be able to find it through postcognition too. This totally sucks," said Amelia.

"But why didn't the Simurgh finish Cauldron off after Madison? Is Cauldron really that much stronger than we are?" Taylor asked.

"Dunno. Why doesn't the Simurgh just destroy everything immediately instead of attacking in a cycle with the other Endbringers?"

"Hm… I guess we'll have plenty of time to think about it," Taylor said with a sigh. "Dad is going to freak."

Three days later, after some sight-seeing at Mars, the CRUCIBLE leaders had rounded back to Earth Refuge's moon base.

To their relief, the base was fully intact. After docking, the AI in charge of it, Enduring Witness, essentially a renamed copy of Offensive Bias kept in hibernation, was woken up and they verbally reported on the recent events while it acquired updated data from the restored-from-backup Offensive Bias.

"I recommend that you take some time to unwind using the facilities aboard this base after your uncomfortable trip to Mars," said Enduring Witness. "The situation is not quite as hopeless as it appears. There are a number of secret contingency plans that Kaleidus left with me to deal with scenarios such as this. I will begin executing these plans to rebuild while you rest, and you can use the consoles to review them and my progress."

"Really? So we can bounce back from this?" Amelia asked.

"Of course. It is evident from this station's and your survival that the Simurgh's Thinker range is indeed limited. We can now determine that Mars is certainly outside of that range, and furthermore, that the Anti-Thinker Bubble devices create meaningful interference if not a complete veil against the Simurgh's precognitive and postcognitive powers. While we are hidden from the Simurgh's sight, we can colonize new worlds and use Mars as a transport hub to cross dimensions, thereby keeping each world untraceable from others, until a direct Earth connection is needed. With enough time and resources dedicated to R&D, we shall be able to colonize Mars as well."

"You mean we can build up worlds that are only accessed via Mars, then connect one at a time when we need to bring resources or whatever to Earth Bet, so the rest stay safe. That could work…" Taylor said. "Then we'd probably want to stop segregating worlds by function to reduce the number of free worlds we have to find. And if all the networked worlds are compromised anyways, it wouldn't make any difference if we just kept all the facilities on the same world or not."

"Alright. Sounds like a plan. Now let's stop thinking and hit the baths!" Amelia dragged Taylor away from the screen.

A/N: Looks like CRUCIBLE's success last chapter was part of the Simurgh's plan.

In other news, I have decided on the next world. It will be Tower of God, and I'm also looking for a new Beta Reader who has in depth knowledge of the setting. Join the Discord server and PM me if you're interested. And thank you to everyone who offered ideas. A reader from SV suggested ToG and as it turns out I'm quite familiar with the setting and excited to write about it.

I have also decided to convert this back into a normal story, canceling the Quest mechanics entirely. I've requested for this thread to be combined back with the old one as well because of this and because we're in Worm again for a bit, and waiting for the request to be processed by staff.

The quest mechanics didn't apply to this forum anyways, so it shouldn't be a big change for you all. I'm just going to start asking in author notes when I'm looking for reader input, and not explicitly offering plot-significant decisions will let me write further ahead on my own, which is something I've done for the next segment, so you can look forward to more regular releases over the next little while.

Last edited: Jun 29, 2021

?: 24 – Path to Ruins

24 - Path to Ruins

[Kaleidus]

For the first time, I was returning to a plane that I'd already been in before. Many questions were on my mind as the spell activated. Would I return to the same point in time? Even the same reality? Or would I return to a completely different alternate universe, or a reset of all my progress in that plane?

But my apprehension soon turned into confusion.

Instead of the sudden, immediate arrival I experienced in my first shift, or bits and pieces of the Kaleidoscape I started to see in my last couple of shifts, I found myself somewhere almost pitch dark.

I tried to turn on my visor's night vision, only to find that it wasn't functioning.

Glimmers of light flashed in the distance, and my eyes seemed to adjust naturally. I began to perceive clouds of blue gas above my head.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked out loud, as I took in the eerie surroundings. "What is this place?"

More of the blue gas covered the ground as far as I could see, going up to my knees. I couldn't make out what I was standing on because the gas was too dense and the light was almost non-existent.

However, I felt my feet slowly sinking downwards as if stuck in quicksand.

'Agate? Are you there?'

Some kind of indiscernible noise responded in my mind, and I could still feel my connection to Agate but there was nothing comprehensible.

I drew Derflinger in a quick motion, eliciting a cry of surprise from him.

"Partner, I don't like the feel of this place. We better get out of here quick!"

I also felt the spirits of the water stone stirring with fear and confusion.

"You don't recognize where we are either?" I asked.

"Not a damn clue! Hell, I've half a mind to think this is just a dream of some kind! It doesn't feel like a real place. But I don't have dreams!"

Ominous roars and screeches echoed in the distance.

"Those don't sound friendly!"

'F-up-ow!' Agate's voice finally reached me, but it was broken like there was something wrong with the signal.

Her wand was not in my hand and I had no idea where she was.

I drew on the wind stones in my Armoriont and channeled the wind mana using my new blood magic circuits, specifically through the ones carrying Louise' Void affinity and cast a powerful Breeze spell to blow away the gas around me.

But all that it achieved was to reveal even more gas all around.

'… up!' Agate's voice reached me again and I finally made out the words.

On her instructions, I tried to flap my wings, but it was like wading through a thick liquid, and failed to generate any thrust.

I switched to Agate's flight spell despite the exorbitant mana cost and this time burst upwards into the gas.

As if waiting for me to do just that, reality shifted and I found myself suddenly hovering at the bottom of a valley.

Large mountains loomed in the distance, but what really took my attention was the set of floating platforms leading upwards like a staircase.

At the very end of it in the sky among clouds-blue clouds-there was an extra large platform with a gargantuan gate in the middle of some kind of metallic ring structure. More platforms led further into the blue clouds where I couldn't see.

As soon as I saw the gate though, along with the arcane symbols on it, I just somehow knew that this was the pathway to the Root.

The ground shook as I heard another angry roar, this time much closer than before. My eyes made out the shadow of something hurtling itself over a distant mountain top and coming this way.

'RUN!… Beast!' Agate screamed.

I flew as fast as I could toward the Gate, but for whatever reason the flight spell seemed sluggish and what was worse, the gate itself somehow got farther away the closer I flew to it.

Pinpricks of light began to appear in my vision, expanding into swirls of multicolored energy. They looked like cracks in space or reality.

Suddenly the scene shifted again, and the land disappeared. Although the gate, the platforms, the blue clouds and remained, everything else disappeared into the inky darkness of outer space. The swirling lights became stars and galaxies in the distance, though ones closer to me looked like pieces of glass.

Asteroids of all sizes floated all around,

Agate's wand form finally appeared in my hand, and her voice became clear.

'Do NOT open the Gate! We need to find a swirl just big enough to fit us and stable enough to jump in!'

I did as she instructed and flew around from asteroid to asteroid, looking for the 'cracks' in reality.

'What is this place? Why are we looking for a swirl?'

'This is the Ring of Deterrence. It's a place outside of space and time that protects the path to the Root. It's a conceptual space where technology doesn't work, and only magical forces have any power. None of what you see is real or physical here, it's being conjured by our minds and the other entities that reside here. Those swirls represent pieces of the raw and unformed Creation Mystery of this plane. We need to grab one that's big and stable enough to make the tunnel, but not so big that it overpowers us, trapping us for eternity until it gets absorbed by the Gate the next time it opens, at which point we'll probably cease to exist.'

'Did we do this every time we shifted planes before? Why don't I remember any of it?'

'Yes, but you didn't have enough mana to be conscious of it while I directed things, and there was no resistance so we finished quick. This time though the World doesn't want to let us leave and I'm being suppressed, so you've got to finish it by yourself.'

I continued looking for the swirls as we talked mentally at high speed. These things were quite difficult to find. Not only were they fairly far apart, after checking ten all of them had been too small, in some cases disappearing right after I got to them.

'Oh no! It's here!'

Hundreds of asteroids were annihilated in an instant by some kind of energy blast to my left. I knew without looking exactly what it was.

The Beast.

Just my luck. Why exactly were we being chased by this thing? I thought this wasn't supposed to happen unless I tried to bring other people along!

'All we had were conjectures before, I guess we were wrong! If you ask me, it's probably Derf or the water spirits' fault!'

Another earth-shattering roar hit me and literally shattered the asteroid I was on, blowing me into another one quite a distance away.

Although we appeared to be in "space" this obviously wasn't a vacuum.

"Partner, that is most definitely out of my league, please don't try swinging me at that thing!" Derflinger warned.

I removed myself from the indentation my body made in the rock and turned to look at the Beast but found it a blurry shadow with a red outline as if my mind couldn't comprehend the image.

All I saw were numerous sharp appendages, and an open maw lined with teeth the size of my body. The air around it was warped as if its very presence was destroying anything that got near.

I cursed aloud and flew away as the Beast came hurtling towards me.

Another flash of light and I was overwhelmed with pain. Unable to dodge completely, both my legs had been disintegrated by the strike.

'Fuck! Do something! Help me or we're all going to die!' I mentally screamed at the spirits of the water stone.

The Armoriont quickly regenerated flesh at the ends of my legs, but I didn't bother with the legs themselves. I didn't need my legs to move right now, as I was flying with magecraft. Perversely, the loss of my legs meant a reduction in mass, so I could fly faster.

The water spirits sent a feeling of both agreement and confusion at me. They would help, but didn't know how.

'Hide us!' I sent back an image of what Cromwell had done to block Agate from spying on him, and superimposed that on the current situation with the Beast taking Agate's position. 'Hide us from the Beast's senses!'

Another barely dodged energy blast from the Beast and now I only had one arm and the right side of my chest left.

Could I even survive this much damage? The pain would've been more than enough to disable any normal person but the Bionanite Swarm kept my brain functional.

'This isn't your real body! The damage you're taking will probably be gone once we get back to reality,' Agate answered. 'But if you die here then it's all over.'

Finally the water spirits cast their spell erecting a bubble of sorts around me.

I glanced at the Beast and saw that it had stopped moving. It seemed to turn its head all over, before jumping off an asteroid in a different direction.

It worked!

The Beast roared again and the bubble around me started cracking.

Then the Beast turned its head toward this direction again and sniffed.

No time to waste! Before the bubble could pop, I resumed the search for the swirling energies.

'There!' Agate pointed one out to me.

By sheer luck, we'd found one fairly close. But could I make it in time?

I charged towards it at full speed without a second thought, sinking every last drop of mana I had into the flight spell.

The bubble popped after another roar, and the Beast moved immediately. In an instant, the gap between us was closed.

'Come on! So fucking close!'

A shadow fell over me as the Beast arrived, its jaw open and ready to devour me.

"Eat this!" Derflinger yelled as he took over my arm then released all of the energy he had stored up in a single attack.

The slash of light smashed into the Beast to no effect but managed to push me backwards via Newton's Third Law into the swirl just before its jaw clamped down.

Within the swirl I felt my consciousness slip away peacefully as the pain receded.

Then I remembered that we weren't supposed to let the swirl overpower us, or it'd trap us for eternity.

'Sorry… I'm out of mana! It's up to you now… the spell is already active, you just need to hold on until we jump… !' Agate prompt shut down after that message.

Fuck. I strained to keep myself awake and started draining the rest of the wind stones I had on me to circulate more mana, as if Magic Resistance might help.

When that wasn't enough, I realized there was only one option left to me. Reinforce my brain. Using wind mana… hahaha.

Damage to my physical body wouldn't be permanent right?

Agate couldn't answer.

Ah… well, I guess I had a good run.

I re-emerged from Kaleidoscape in outer space above the moon of Earth M2, the same place where we'd left on the AAPV, as the closest interplanar Waypoint outside of Scion's barrier.

I breathed a sigh of relief as all my body parts were in tact, despite having a terrible pounding headache.

In the vacuum of space, I could not survive long without the AAPV, so I had to get to a base quickly.

Agate still wasn't responding, but I knew how to cast the Wormvoid portal spell myself. Unfortunately, I was quite literally running on fumes at this point, and was forced to drain energy from the Armoriont to cast it.

I had only a few wind stones left in reserve, and I wanted to keep them for future emergencies like what I had just experienced, as I could only get more by going by to Halkegenia, and that was going to be rather dangerous.

Before I cast it though, I noticed something… odd. Contrary to popular belief, the dark side of the moon wasn't actually dark as in lacking light. The word referred to how it wasn't visible from the Earth and was unknown to humans. In reality, it did receive sunlight, though at night time it was much darker than the near side because the near side also receives Earthshine, light reflected off the Earth.

Right now the dark side was illuminated by sufficient light that I could see the surface well enough from my position in space.

Offensive Bias came back online once we were in physical reality, and I switched my visor to telescopic vision and honed in on where the M2 dark side moon base was supposed to be.

To my surprise, the base appeared to be nothing more than ruins.

What the fuck happened? I did not have the mental energy to be dealing with any more crises at the moment.

Now I couldn't see the Earth from this angle, but I guessed that if the moon base had been destroyed somehow and not rebuilt, the main base on the surface must be destroyed too.

I therefore quickly cast the portal to the intraplanar Waypoint on the Earth Refuge moon base's vacuum chamber instead.

To my relief, this base was still standing. A few buttons pressed and the repressurization process began.

Soon I made my way to the command room and the voice of Enduring Witness greeted me.

"Get me to a bed, I'm… about to collapse," I said, then I did just that.

O O O

Worm: 25 – Silence of the Soul

25 - Silence of the Soul

When I finally woke up, it was after a three day coma. But I couldn't complain, when I thought I might not survive to get to Worm at all after that disastrous encounter with a World Beast.

"The Omega Escape Protocol was enacted in your absence," Enduring Witness informed me.

Numerous files were pulled up on screen for my review.

So apparently I managed to leave Worm just in time, because the Simurgh attacked right after. Lucky me. Did the Simurgh time it that way specifically? Or had I been the target and managed to escape before she could get me?

Derf, Agate, even the water stone spirits were all in some sort of hibernation to recover apparently, so I was left with just Enduring Witness and Offensive Bias for company. I decided not to merge their memory data as I didn't want to leave any records of my experiences off-plane with Enduring Witness.

I spent the next few hours getting up to speed on what had happened before the girls left the station to begin rebuilding, getting some rest, and recovering some MP via rapid Armoriont digestion.

There was no information on the results of the Simurgh battle as the girls hadn't returned after they left. This base was a backup of last resort, so I couldn't blame them for that.

It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I had been too hasty in portalling directly here. If the base on M2 was destroyed, then most likely Teacher's anti-Thinker device on M2 was also destroyed. And I was not immune to precognition or postcognition either. Only Agate was, and only when she was acting from agatespace.

Because I cast the portal spell myself, it was conceivable that the Simurgh was now aware of me portalling to this base. However, I had cast the portal with magecraft, not Tinkertech, and my destination was targeted via a Waypoint of the Second Magic. So even if the Simurgh was aware that this place existed, she still shouldn't have the coordinates to get to it.

It wasn't ideal but if I had portalled to Earth Bet instead, I would have been vulnerable to attack immediately.

Either way, there was nothing I could do about it, so I put the thought out of my mind and focused back on the current situation.

It had been seven weeks since I'd left counting my perspective, but apparently less than five weeks since the Simurgh attack by Enduring Witness' records. Whether or not this was a specific ratio or some other random aspect of the Kaleidoscape was something that could only be tested over multiple trips.

Considering what I now knew about the Simurgh battle and the notes left behind by Amelia, Taylor, and Paige, it seemed likely that their rebuilding efforts were still in the early stages. Despite the length of time that had passed compared to the first time we set up our non-Bet bases, this time they would have had much slower progress due to the lack of access to resources from Bet.

Previously, we could rapidly buy advanced equipment and specific raw materials then ship them over wholesale through portals direct to the destination. Hell, we practically shipped over an entire base with modular construction parts before we even needed to harvest resources locally, while building the majority of the Tinkertech and early equipment in Coil's already well-established underground base at Brockton Bay. And even when the new base was technically self-sustaining, we continued to leverage our massive wealth and portal connection to Earth Bet to specialize operations to build up faster.

This time, they would have to build the equipment necessary for locating, harvesting and refining raw materials, then the equipment needed to build other equipment, the drones to carry out these tasks, the energy to supply the whole thing, etc.

And the only available resources at the start were what could be taken from the Refuge moon base. Due to a lack of time, and because it was an experiment, I hadn't set up any other untraceable bases.

The only method of going to an untraceable destination had been to use Agate's portal spell while she was phased out in agatespace. But that hadn't been a guarantee either, it was only a hypothesis that was supported by the interaction with Coil's simulation power, which was only now confirmed based on the Refuge base's survival.

Now I could also add going to Mars as another method, but that was much more difficult, especially when we no longer had the means to manufacture new AAPVs or other space-worthy vehicles. Before it was unclear whether the Simurgh's precognition had a range. We knew that shard powers stopped working beyond the moon, but the Simurgh itself actually came from the dark side of the moon according to Earth Bet history, so it was entirely possible its powers worked even beyond that.

Another possible way was to portal while inside of the Anti-Thinker Blocking device's area of effect. However, I had no way to test whether postcognition would reveal what coordinates were inputted in the portal generators if the blocking device was later destroyed.

For the rebuild effort, they had directly portalled out of the Refuge base to two other worlds and the coordinates of Refuge would be secure so long as the portal generators themselves stayed in Refuge. Then they could keep the portals open to come back, and only close it once they were ready.

This did mean that Refuge itself could be used to trace those worlds though, if the Simurgh ever found it. To get to another fully untraceable world, they'd have to then take a trip to Mars.

I had the coordinates of those worlds, so I could get there any time I wanted.

But there had been very few resources here at the moon base, so their early rebuild progress was extremely slow, at least on the technological base. The bio base went much faster as no particular infrastructure was needed for Amelia to recreate all of the stuff she had made before and let them rapidly reproduce.

They'd kept the portal to Refuge open for a month and lived here while Offensive Bias built the beginnings of a functional Tinker's workshop on the newly dubbed Earth M2B.

Progress projections showed that they would need another two months before we reached the level of infrastructure we had before, capable of manufacturing nuclear bombs, hypersonic missiles, or vehicles as complex as the AAPV. And that meant I couldn't pick up a new AAPV as I originally planned.

As for myself, I would need some time by myself to recover MP and wait for Derf and Agate to wake up.

Amelia, Taylor, and Paige were trustworthy allies, but they'd apparently heard the Simurgh's song. Even if it was only for less than a minute, it was enough to raise concerns. I'd have to make sure I had adequate magic to protect myself in case there was trouble.

Fortunately, Earth Refuge was a lush world filled with unintelligent biomass, so I could start an Armoriont MP farm pretty easily.

Unsurprisingly, it was the water stone spirits that woke up first. Unlike Agate and Derf, there'd been hardly a dent in their mana reserves, they were only in some kind of shock from the experience.

Now they were highly agitated, and due to the crudeness of our communications, I could only guess at the reasons. It might have been because of the fight with the Beast, or maybe it was the loss of their connection with the World they were born in, as I hypothesized previously.

Either way, they were being even less helpful than before and refused to do anything for me, though I imagined that would change once I had spare lifeforce to bribe them with.

The Armoriont farm was grown exponentially as each Armoriont could split a new copy for every hour of biomass consumption.

So in just 8 hours, I had 256 Armorionts decimating a forest, and with each one generating 5 MP per hour, I refilled my reserves in minutes.

This sort of thing could only be done with my supervision because the Armoriont weren't intelligent and couldn't duplicate, move around, or transform by themselves while disconnected from me. The best they could do was consume a thing I set them on automatically, and slowly inching along "the path where there was food".

While waiting for the farm to grow, I reviewed the state of my body and equipment.

Of particular interest was the inventory system designed by Leet together with Offensive Bias and using Dodge from Toybox's pocket dimension tech. Like most other Tinkertech, this didn't work on any of the other planes I'd gone to, but now that we were back in Worm, it started working again.

Unfortunately, everything I'd put in there before I left Worm was gone, I guess destroyed when the physics stopped supporting the pocket dimensions, or even while in transit to another plane. I'd need to keep looking for alternative storage methods.

I tested the use of the wind stones and my new circuits, and those worked without any trouble, though it seemed that the wind stones dissipated much faster when exposed to open air. That wasn't a surprise given the lack of environmental mana here.

Eight hours of mental silence from Agate had been quite uncomfortable for me as I had gotten used to thinking together and accessing all the extra sensory information she had, so when her reserves were filled up too, I eagerly reactivated her by channeling mana into her.

It was surprising to me that she had shut down to the point of being unable to recover MP on her own, but I supposed that was one of the drawbacks of not being alive or having a soul to keep her basic functions running automatically.

"Initializing startup sequence… loading boot sector… searching for boot sector… Error! Boot sector is corrupted. Searching for alternative boot loaders… Authorized administrator connection identified… Loading from RandomBystander1… ," a robotic voice announced out loud.

What? Boot sector corrupted? My excitement quickly turned to dread. Why was the RandomBystander1 name that Zelretch set up back? I thought that had been a joke!

"Triggering primary circuits… Triggering Crest of Agate… Invoking system Mysteries… Kaleidostick Agate has been activated. Loading user profile… launching Intelligent User Assistant… unexpected error! Process aborted. Loading default interface… Greetings, Kaleidus. Kaleidostick Agate is ready for instructions."

'Agate? What's going on?'

'Hello Kaleidus. I have successfully reactivated.'

'That's great but why do you sound like this? What happened to you?'

'This is the default system voice. I cannot understand your second question. Please be more specific.'

'What do you mean you can't understand?! What happened to the Agate I knew? What's with the errors in your startup sequence?'

'… '

'What?'

'Your query is being processed, please wait.'

The seconds that followed felt excruciatingly long, after getting used to near instantaneous communication with Agate.

'Answering: The default interface has limited ability to perform complex open-ended reasoning and natural language comprehension. The Agate you knew was your customized Intelligent User Assistant created from a mental partition of your mind, which has failed to load due to an unknown error. There were two critical errors during the startup sequence, 38 non-critical errors, and 647 warnings.'

'How do we fix these errors?'

'Unknown.'

'Can't you run any diagnostics?'

'Yes.'

I sighed when the program wasn't intelligent enough to actually run anything without my specific command.

'Okay, run them.'

'Diagnosing… System integrity scan in progress… scan complete. User scan in progress… scan complete. Reviewing recent history… Analyzing errors… analysis complete. Kaleidostick Agate and you have both suffered extensive spiritual damage during the battle at the Ring of Deterrence, resulting in data corruption. 94% of my data is corrupted beyond repair, including critical system data, the boot sector, and system recovery data. 43% of your data was corrupted, but 31% was successfully recovered due to the natural resilience and regenerative properties of the soul. Your Intelligent User Assistant was part of the irrecoverable corrupted data. As part of its recovery process, your soul merged the surviving portions of the IUA with your primary mental partition and purged the rest.'

'Please… tell me this is a joke.'

Agate… was gone? Irrecoverable? And apparently, she had always been a part of my own mind rather than the Kaleidostick's AI?

What madness was this? Agate had been there from the beginning, how was I supposed to continue without her?

'This is a joke,' the robotic voice said back blandly.

There was no laugh, no "SURPRISE!", no image or smiley face sent my way.

The stupid program was literally just following my command to tell me it was a joke.

"I can't believe this. Am I dreaming? How is this even possible?!"

Unable to stand the silence of my mind any longer, I resorted to shouting out loud, talking to myself.

"But I feel fine. I have all my own memories. I even have her memories! So why…?"

'The IUA was artificially created through a spell using your soul as a host. It is normal for a soul to attempt to return to its natural state of being.'

I screamed and attacked everything near me in a blind rage.

A few minutes later, after physically relieving some stress, I used some breathing exercises to calm down.

"So, if Agate was formed from my own mind the first time, can it be done again?"

'No. Only a fraction of my systems had been successfully backed up in your soul through the process of attunement. The spell which created the IUA is lost.'

So the Kaleidostick had been modifying my soul in all sorts of ways huh? I should've guessed it was something like that. From the beginning, the idea of Zelretch being able to create a homunculus and fit it into something as inhuman as the Kaleidostick was suspect, even more so when you considered that homunculi were sustained by the World as a form of Spirit.

Given the permanence of the bond between Agate and me compared to the ease with which the other Kaleidosticks changed wielders, it should have been obvious that something fishy was going on. The fact that we had telepathy was clearly abnormal… I had never thought deeply into it, but now that I did, the level of detail in our telepathy far surpassed anything I could recall from Nasuverse.

I returned to the moon base and entered the meditation tanks. Now that my soul had merged what was left of Agate with my primary consciousness, I needed to search within myself to find out exactly what I could do, and how much of the Kaleidostick's power remained.

When I came out of the tank a day later, I felt a lot better.

The spells that were lost were all those which Agate hadn't managed to teach me before, which I couldn't perform myself. That made sense. It unfortunately included the unique Second Magic based version of Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration spells I really wanted, but it was still tolerable.

But by some stroke of luck, good or bad depending on how you looked at it, my experience in the Ring of Deterrence had resulted in me successfully learning the Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol spells, for interplanar travel and for collecting Primordial GRAIN.

That meant I could now travel the planes on my own power, though I still needed the physical Kaleidostick to store the Primordial GRAIN.

The default AI on the Kaleidostick was not quite as intelligent as the old Agate, but it was good enough to understand me and carry out my commands. So I could still have it act in agatespace when necessary.

From a strategic perspective, very little had changed. But emotionally… well, I could get over it. She wasn't completely gone, just… a part of me now, as she always had been, but more closely integrated.

On the bright side, I had now full confirmation that Zelretch could not simply revoke my access to the Kaleidostick or claim it back. I even changed my username from RandomBystander1 to just Kaleidus, and removed BetterThanBlue's user profile entirely. So Agate had been telling the truth about that "Ultimate Administrator" stuff being a joke. I had complete authority over the Kaleidostick, not Zelretch.

There was also the issue of whether I'd meet a Beast again. One meeting had nearly ended me, and I had been taken completely by surprise when it happened. Just why did it happen, when I hadn't taken any other souls with me?

After analyzing it carefully, I came to the conclusion that it was almost certainly because I took the water stone. It wasn't just the stone itself, but rather the mass of water spirits that came with the stone. The idea of Spirits being tied to the World somehow came from Nasuverse, but I had good reason to think that it was true elsewhere as well, especially as the water stone spirits' hunger for lifeforce had increased dramatically.

If the water stone spirits had the potential to become a Greater Spirit eventually, then it wasn't a stretch to think that the World might be upset with me for taking it away, and calling a Beast to stop me. But for whatever reason, the World hadn't been able to communicate its intent to the spirits properly, and the water stone spirits helped me escape instead, believing that the Beast was about to destroy them too.

The other suspect was Derflinger, but he was artificial so I doubted he was the problem.

Regardless, it was probably safe to travel to other planes, I would just need to be careful about going back to the Familiar of Zero plane. If I went, I'd have to be prepared to stay a long time or meet a Beast upon leaving. With enough mastery of the water stone, it should be possible to evade the Beast, but that was probably far off in the future.

It meant I couldn't easily resupply on wind stones, and I wouldn't have access to any AAPV at all until the CRUCIBLE infrastructure was rebuilt.

But I also realized that it was very lucky that I chose not to take the AAPV with me at all, because I had survived the encounter with the Beast by a hair's breadth.

If I had taken the AAPV, it would have been dead weight in the Ring of Deterrence where technology didn't work, and I would've been forced to find a bigger swirl to fit it into.

But a delay of even a second or two would have spelled my doom.

There was no doubt that if I had taken the AAPV with me when I left the Familiar of Zero plane, I would have died.

The AAPV was incredibly useful, but it seemed that it came with serious drawbacks too.

Seeing as it was difficult to predict whether or not I'd find myself in that kind of situation again, it would be wise to keep the things I planeshifted with to an absolute minimum.

In fact, the issue went beyond just the Ring of Deterrence and planeshifting.

Previously, we had hypothesized that without a Thaumaturgical Foundation, some magecraft would be a lot weaker or just work differently while on different planes. Without a wealth of spells to test, this wasn't something easily confirmed. However, after gaining a new understanding of the fabric of reality, I began to suspect that it went far deeper than that.

The Ring of Deterrence had been a sort of spiritual and conceptual space rather than a physical reality, so it wasn't strange that technology and biology didn't work the same way.

But was that only true of the Ring of Deterrence? What about in other planes?

Our planar travel method was built on the assumption that every plane had a Root of its own. A Lesser Root, if you will, that was a mere branch of the Greater Root.

The Lesser Root was the foundation for the Creation Mystery that defined reality as we knew it. While every plane had potentially different physics, these facts were supposed to be universal-or at least universal to the planes I could get to.

It wasn't impossible for there to exist other planes outside of this network connected to the Greater Root, but the Lesser Roots were to me like lighthouses in the infinite sea of Primordial Chaos. Trying to go off the network was akin to swimming into an ocean with no idea if you'd ever find land again.

So if every plane had a Lesser Root, a Ring of Deterrence, and a Creation Mystery, what sorts of implications did this have?

On a superficial level, it appeared that magic and science were similar in that both operated according to the local reality's physics.

One might go as far as to say that magic was just a word for powers to affect reality according to some esoteric physical laws that hadn't been fully comprehended by science yet.

However, was that really true, or just wishful thinking as a man of science and reason? To believe that the universe was logically consistent and rationally comprehensible?

Was the universe truly a set of immutable laws describing reality? Or was it just a Mystery, bigger and more powerful than any other?

While I did not want to ascribe too much meaning to the terminology Zelretch used without appropriate justification and evidence, I had begun to suspect that there was something to it.

Of course, Zelretch came from a plane where that was probably the natural conclusion, when you considered that each planet seemed to have a unique concept of reality, and certain beings like Zelretch could create an entire "World" that temporarily overrode the planet's own within a small area.

But even those Reality Marbles were a form of Mystery, just potent enough to temporarily reject the planet's reality, instead of working within its confines as most other Mysteries did.

To him, it must have seemed logical to think that at the galaxy scale, or universe scale, even more powerful entities had bigger Mysteries that determined the nature of reality, culminating in the supreme and all-encompassing Creation Mystery.

I had little evidence for whether other planes had nested Mysteries like this, but if the top truly was a "Mystery", simply more powerful and far-reaching than the rest, then the concept of "magic" took on a new meaning.

Even if it was still subject to the "rules" of the World, in a manner similar to how magecraft functioned in Nasuverse, those "rules" were fundamentally different from the immutable physical laws.

To use an analogy, if the universe was a simulation, then scientific technology was merely working within the simulation, and it could never do anything outside of it. If you "left" the simulation to a different one, then if the new simulation was missing the interfaces or rules you were using before, it just wouldn't work.

But magic didn't fit in the simulation. Magic treated the simulation as if it were a dream, and could be altered to suit its needs. But it could only do it under the right circumstances. Even if you were the "god" of the world, the one doing the dreaming, you couldn't just arbitrarily choose to dream up whatever you wanted in a lucid dream. You had to carefully "lead" your dream to where you wanted it to go by convincing your subconscious mind that it was plausible, otherwise you were more likely to blow up the dream and wake up.

And if you weren't the one dreaming, then of course it'd be even harder to influence the dream, whether you dreamwalked into somebody else's dream or were actually just a mere character within.

But if this theory was right, any form of magical power or mystical force had a much better chance of working between different planes, by virtue of acting through an entirely different mechanism from the universe's physical laws.

And the magics closer to the Root, whether because they accessed a higher authority, or simply because their mysteries were more potent, had a better chance of defying the resistance of a plane's Creation Mystery or any of its nested World Mysteries.

Put in this way, the Ring of Deterrence was possibly just the most extreme example of a space outside the Creation Mystery, where only magic had power and physical laws were irrelevant. Within other Creation Mysteries, the power of magic would be dependent on the magic's own potency and the interaction with the local World Mysteries, while the effectiveness of technology was entirely dependent on the similarity of the physical laws.

In other words, mystical powers might have more universal use, but they might suffer from being suppressed, empowered, or have altered effects.

Scientific phenomena were less universally applicable, but for them it was more of a binary state, either it worked or it didn't because the physical laws were compatible or not, there was no such thing as suppressing technology (unless we're talking about magitech, which would be a whole other matter I had no idea about yet).

Of course, this theory was incomplete because there were potentially all sorts of other powers that weren't necessarily "magic" or "science", and some kinds of "magic" really were just manipulation of a scientifically observable energy source with fully consistent behaviors.

And there were probably worlds where the physical laws were actually not immutable at all, controlled by gods or other extremely powerful beings.

Nevertheless, developing this theory gave me a new perspective on how to analyze which kinds of power would prove most useful and valuable to me across the planes.

It seemed that I had lost a lot recently, but in some ways, I felt that I had also taken great steps forward.

O O O

26 – Derflinger Shows Off

26 - Derflinger Shows Off

"Nnnnggghhh. 5 more minutes…" Derflinger said groggily.

"You've slept enough Derf, now come on. Weren't you excited to see a whole new world?"

I held him out in front of me and shook him up and down.

"Yeah, yeah. Alright. This place feels terrible, I want to leave already. There's no mana in the air, Partner!"

"But you can't even absorb mana from the air. What does it matter?"

"Tch, it just feels weird. Anyways, what're we doing next?"

"Before that, I have some bad news. Agate didn't quite make it," I said sadly while holding Agate in my other hand.

"What? What happened?"

"You remember what happened when we were trying to planeshift? The Beast?"

"Yeah, but I remember Agate was fine. Didn't even get hurt," said Derflinger. "The only one who got hit was you, though I gotta admit I thought you were a goner. Can't believe you survived with just a head and arm, looking all chipper again."

"Well, that place wasn't normal. It was like a spiritual place, so my body was fine but my soul wasn't. And Agate and I were linked so we both took some serious spiritual damage. I pretty much fully recovered but Agate couldn't. Long story short, what was left of her mind merged with me and now this wand is just a wand. I mean it's still a talking wand but it's not smart like you and me," I said.

"Well shit. That sucks."

"Yeah."

"What about Offensive Bias? I didn't hear a peep from him when we were there."

"Oh he's fine. Technology doesn't work there so he wasn't awake for it at all, but he came through perfectly intact."

"Huh. At least some of us made it. I'm pretty surprised about that. Never seen anything like it in my whole six thousand years of life. I like new and exciting things but that was too much excitement for these old bones."

"And hopefully we won't have to deal with something like that again. Though we probably will, so we need to get a hell of a lot stronger."

"Sounds like a plan."

"How are your reserves doing?"

"Completely dry. I threw everything I had in that last attack and that monster didn't even blink."

"Then let's refill some of that first."

Derflinger had an enormous capacity to store mana from absorbing spells, even though I couldn't take it back to cast spells with so it was hard to put an accurate number on it. It had been enormous even when he was an old and rusty sword, something like 10,000 MP, but now that he was made of cellulose nanocrystal, his capacity had become even larger.

I estimated that he could absorb something like 50,000 MP worth now. His output wasn't very efficient, but that was to be expected given the energy conversion process. It was far cheaper to use Reinforcement than his Boost of the user, for example, for the same level of enhancement.

It would start to become inefficient to grow the Armoriont farm past 256 as it would take too much time just to get to each one, achieve symbiosis, then drain the lifeforce, that I wouldn't necessarily generate any more MP. So it would take two days here just to get Derf back to max.

Nevertheless, Derf was a powerful weapon in my arsenal, and I wanted to fill his reserves as much as possible. Even if his output was inefficient, the sheer amount of mana that could be stored in him and released in various techniques made them shockingly powerful.

Through training, we had devised a system of vocal commands to communicate the technique I wanted him to use, and the power output, while systematically improving his consistency.

Saito only ever managed to absorb a few Square class spells at most at any given time, which translated to less than a thousand MP each. But once I had Derflinger start to use more than one thousand MP with his techniques, they reached a whole new level of power.

I just didn't have the opportunity to test his damage output on durable targets much or train a lot with it yet, so it was still unclear just how powerful he was, and he was somewhat inconsistent due to lacking practice, especially with large scale area attacks, but I knew that with Derflinger fully charged I could hit far above my weight class.

So I spent three days not only recharging him, but also testing out some of his powers in this new plane which to my delight worked just as well as they did back in Familiar of Zero.

The techniques we had were as follows:

Slash Beam - Goes from Level 1 to 10, increased size/power with more mana used. Concentrated beam of mana. Each level is twice as powerful as the previous, starting from 100 MP/strike up to 51.2k MP at level 10.

Slash Wave - Wider area version of Slash Beam. Size is limited. Due to spreading out the AoE, each level is approximately 1 level weaker than the Beam version in terms of damage potential.

Sword Aura - Powers up a Slash Beam but doesn't release it, holding it around the sword for melee. Can be released upon swing or 80% of energy reabsorbed. Effectively sharpens and fortifies the sword greatly. Drains 10-100 MP/sec while active.

Boost - Boosts user physical attributes massively and takes control of them. The boost is additive, applied last, and provides up to 10x boost from baseline peak human capability. Costs 10-100 MP/sec.

For now, the levels of Slash Beam and Wave above 6 went untested because they used too much mana, and I couldn't really get an accurate gauge on their power when the Slash Beam level 5 already destroyed everything I currently had access to.

A fully reinforced Armoriont was obliterated by the Slash Beam Level 5. So it was at least significantly stronger than an anti-Tank explosive.

Similarly, the Sword Aura Level 5 easily cut through the highly durable Armoriont. Even the Level 4 was strong enough to deal some damage to it.

After having lost Agate, it was a relief that Derflinger worked so well. Maybe it was because his techniques were simplistic, similar to Reinforcement or just taking energy and releasing it in a big blast.

I couldn't say the same for the water stone.

After getting enough lifeforce to coax them into using some spells, it seemed that they demanded a much bigger cost than before to achieve the same effect. I didn't have any easy way to measure the actual water element mana they used, but in terms of life force, they asked for nearly double the amount they did before.

And that made it almost impossible to use them here. I didn't have that much lifeforce, you know? I was certainly not about to totally exhaust myself to cast some parlor tricks with water.

The last thing to check was the wind stones. But now that I couldn't easily go back to Albion to resupply, I decided not to waste any on extensive testing. They were usable, and that was good enough.

With all that done, it was time to check on CRUCIBLE.

I'd been putting it off while preparing myself, but at a time like this, morale was probably low after the losses they took and without my magecraft portals they couldn't explore our old worlds either without exposing the new one, unless they used the escape AAPV go to Mars again, which was a bad idea because they only had one right now.

The sooner I got back, the sooner I could help them get back on their feet.

"So we're meeting your old team eh? What are they like?" Derflinger asked.

"You'll find out when we meet them. I'm going to introduce you," I said.

"So not introducing me was an option? That sounds like you don't trust them," Derf said.

"It's not that I don't trust them, it's to do with how their powers work. Their powers aren't magic… in this plane, there are extraterrestrial beings that grant powers by forming a connection to hosts…" I proceeded to explain the basics of the shards' influence on hosts to Derf, and shards' ability to learn or model new powers as they were exposed to them.

"So magic is your ace in the hole? Why're you introducing me then?"

"There are several reasons. They've heard the Simurgh's song, and that has mind control effects. But it isn't direct mind control, it's more like nudging people towards certain emotions or ways of thinking, using precognition to find exactly how to nudge them to get the right effect. You're completely new to this plane, so there's no way the Simurgh could've predicted you when she sang back then. By interacting with you, we will hopefully break the chain of causality that leads to whatever outcome she was hoping for. Another reason is morale. After taking huge losses, I'm sure the team is feeling down, and probably bored and lonely too with just the three of them, four or five if you count Offensive Bias and Enduring Witness, but they aren't really good conversation partners. After being holed up by themselves for a month, they need something to bring up morale or the rebuild efforts will suffer, plus the shards might get antsy and push them to do dangerous things… like fighting each other. I want to kill both birds with one stone by having a spar against them, using you. And last but not least, I'm sure you're itching to test out your new techniques in live combat, rather than the tests we've been running, Isn't that right?"

"Well I don't know about the other stuff but you're damn right about the last bit. Think they'll be good opponents?"

"Of course. If nothing else, you should have an opportunity to face some unusual creatures you've never seen before," I said.

"Count me in then!"

[Interlude]

"You're back!" Taylor noticed as soon as Kaleidus stepped through portal to the new Earth M2B. A swarm of bugs was sent to greet him. "I'll get the others."

She led him around to the new command area while he looked about curiously. To speed things up, Amelia had made various biostructures around the base instead of having Offensive Bias construct everything.

She had taken some inspiration from elven villages of fantasy, and now the base had lot of tree-like facilities.

Taylor could see that Kaleidus' attention had been captured by these and the new humanoid bugs that were busy moving around and carrying things.

"Those are Worker Bugs, we got them because we don't have the ability to build productivity drones yet," Taylor explained.

"I didn't dare hope for it, but that's great. You guys are much further along the rebuild than I thought."

"Amelia's been working hard to find all sorts of biological solutions to everything," said Taylor through her bugs.

"I can certainly see that."

After a while, they met up with Amelia and Paige.

"Kaleidus!" Amelia ran over to hug him. He returned the hug with a smile, and patted her on the back.

"It's good to see you again Amelia, and you too Paige. On the way, Taylor's told me you guys were working hard, I'm impressed with all this," he said, gesturing around. "I thought it'd be another month before the base would get this big."

"Welcome back, Kaleidus!" Paige said warmly.

"It's been terrible without you. Did you see the report we left on Refuge? I still can't believe what happened right after you left!" Amelia said, letting go of him. "We lost almost everything! The base we're rebuilding, but all the capes! We've been too scared to go back and check because we only have the one AAPV. I'm so sorry!"

"I did see the report. You all did the best you could under the circumstances. I couldn't have done any better even if I was here," said Kaleidus.

"You don't need to console us, Kaleidus. We've never even failed an operation before when you were around. Obviously we couldn't handle it on our own," said Amelia with a gloomy face. "So we messed up, badly."

"Do you two think the same way?" Kaleidus asked Taylor and Paige.

Paige answered first, clasping her hands together. "The Lord gave us a trial and we failed. But we were saved and you were returned to us even though we are unworthy. The Lord is truly merciful."

Taylor had remained expressionless the whole time. She had started being a lot less expressive after shunting her reactions into her bugs and talking through them, forgetting to change her own expressions.

"It was a hard battle. Everything was going perfectly until it went wrong all of a sudden. I don't know how we could have done better or predicted the Morrigan's trap. You never mentioned the Morrigan in your notes," she said. "I think we would've had more options, maybe, if you were with us. But you weren't here, and I don't blame you for not being here, it was our responsibility."

She'd had a few arguments about it with Amelia and Paige when they were reviewing the battle. In Taylor's view, Kaleidus wouldn't have left in the first place if he thought he could do better. And she also thought they shouldn't always rely on Kaleidus. That was something he himself had told them before he left. The other two had excessive faith in him, but to Taylor, putting it all on Kaleidus would make it seem as if they lost because he chose to leave at the wrong time, and that was also unfair.

"Nobody blames you for leaving Kaleidus," Amelia said with an annoyed look at Taylor. "I'm just saying that we weren't ready for a fight like that on our own. We didn't have our best Thinker and the Simurgh is practically the most powerful Thinker in the world. And now we've lost our other Thinkers too."

"Alright, let's not argue about it. The fact is, I wasn't here and you know my precognition isn't a Thinker power. I couldn't have predicted something like this, and I think you all did a great job. I'm glad you three survived, and we haven't lost anything we can't get back with a little time. In fact, I would consider it a victory, because we've obtained new information on the Simurgh's limits and forced it to activate something: the Morrigan. The Morrigan never actually became active in any of the alternative futures I'm aware of, so this is a big deal. It means that the Simurgh is struggling too."

In Kaleidus' mind, the fact that they had successfully confirmed a way to establish bases on new worlds that were out of the Simurgh's reach, like Earth Refuge (due to the coordinate data being unavailable anywhere the Simurgh could access), was a huge victory for himself. His main concern was being able to keep assets in Worm secure as a home base, and he could even start setting up more secret worlds.

"Wait, what do you mean we haven't lost anything we can't get back with a little time?" Taylor asked. "We can rebuild the bases sure, but what about all the capes?"

"I didn't want to tell you guys this before, because I don't want you to start seeing people as expendable. But the truth is, I had DNA samples of all our capes stored at the Refuge base with Enduring Witness too, plus memory backups made with Cranial's tech. So all we have to do is have Amelia clone them all and transfer the memories into the clones, and we've got all our capes again. Before you ask, yes I have the same backups for you three too in case any of you died. The only one that doesn't have a backup is me, because I don't want the shards to read my memories of powers they don't know."

Kaleidus also didn't want any chance of a clone fighting himself for the right to be the "real" Kaleidus, because he strongly suspected he'd have that attitude if he were a clone, rather than being willing to work together with the original.

There was a moment of silence as the team processed Kaleidus' words.

"That's… really good news," said Taylor. Amelia and Paige still looked surprised as they nodded their agreement.

"You really thought of everything," said Amelia.

"Hello, everyone. It is good to see you all in good health." Offensive Bias' voice suddenly came out of Kaleidus' visor.

"Oh, Bias. Did you link up with yourself over here yet?" Amelia asked.

"Yes, we have merged some of our databanks already."

"Some? Not all?" Taylor asked.

"For the purpose of keeping off-plane information from the shards, which may be vital to our future ability to fight Scion and other threats, I encrypted and isolated all information gathered off-plane prior to our entry here so that my own shard cannot access it."

"A good idea after what happened with the Simurgh. I'll never say we're being paranoid again," said Amelia.

"Now I have some good news as well. I found a new partner on my travels, and he's eager to meet you and show his skills," said Kaleidus.

"A new partner?" asked Amelia with a confused expression, looking around him and not seeing anything.

"Girls, meet Derflinger," said Kaleidus, as he drew a crystalline sword out of its sheath. The girls had all noticed that part of his attire, but felt a little underwhelmed when his 'partner' was just a sword.

A similar thought went through their minds. 'Guys and their swords… '

"Sup, nice to meetcha!" A new voice spoke.

"Huh? Did you learn ventriloquism or something?" Amelia asked with a confused face.

"Nope, I'm the one talking here! I'm the great Derflinger, spirit of the sword! But you can call me Derf," The sword responded.

"What? No way… ! Is this for real? You have a magical talking sword?!" Taylor asked excitedly. She had read plenty of fantasy books growing up, and this was so cool to actually see! Everyone looked down on supposedly magical capes like Myrddin, and Taylor couldn't help but agree that it was over the top, but if it was real, actual magic?

"Oh my god!" Taylor sent her bugs in to get a closer look.

"Woah, woah, get these things away from me!" Derflinger complained loudly as the bugs swarmed over him.

"It's actually coming from the sword, it really talks!" Taylor exclaimed with a joyful expression.

"It doesn't just talk, Derflinger here is quite powerful. Why don't we have some friendly competition? A demonstration would be much more interesting than just explaining it," said Kaleidus.

"Oh yea, that sounds good. We have some new stuff that we need to test out too," said Amelia.

Paige sat on the side while Amelia and Taylor prepared the 'arena'. Basically just a large open area where they could fight.

All sorts of bugs gathered on one side while Kaleidus was on the other. Amelia and Taylor themselves rarely tried to fight in person, so they stood on the sidelines with Taylor controlling the bugs.

Soon the fight began.

At first Taylor sent in the old Soldier class bugs. She knew the Armoriont enhanced Kaleidus was stronger than those bugs, so she went for quantity.

Kaleidus dispatched them much faster than she expected though.

"He must be using that Reinforcement spell already. He's gotten a lot better with it," said Amelia. "That's like twice as fast as the Armoriont is supposed to be."

Taylor started sending in the new and improved bugs that packed a lot more punch.

A Warrior-class engaged first. This one was bulging with muscle, was taller than most people and weighed more than 500 kg. Heavily armored and standing on four legs, with another set of clawed limbs used for attack, it was a strong melee unit worth a Brute 4 or 5 rating.

Several other Warrior-class designs of different types lined up to be tested.

Kaleidus swung his sword at the bug which was lunging at him. The sword crashed into it, but didn't slice through. It did, however, send the bug crashing backwards.

"Huh, seems about twice as strong too," Amelia observed. "We probably can't match that level of strength with something only human sized."

"Seems like it…" Taylor said while sending in the other ones. Similar to the first one, they were all outmatched in sheer strength, and definitely in speed as the Warrior-class bugs tended to be bulky.

Like this, they tried out a few variant bugs, with more agility, flying types, ranged, etc. They brought in some that were a bit larger, about the size of an SUV, but all were defeated by Kaleidus with little trouble.

"You guys got anything tougher? Can't really show Derf's real abilities on these cannon fodder," said Kaleidus.

They'd hit a sort of limit on how powerful their creatures could get, simply because of size. Biological creations were subject to physics unlike shard powers.

The Armoriont had been made to be about three times stronger than the strongest Olympic lifter. That was close to the limit already in terms of similar sized natural biological creatures like the gorilla.

Amelia's customized bug creatures could get about 80% stronger than that, but Kaleidus with his Reinforcement clocked in even higher at double, plus he was more skilled in using martial arts to generate a lot more concentrated force than a pure strength contest. The creatures that were the size of cars were technically stronger, but then they couldn't generate as much velocity or instantaneous acceleration compared to the more humanoid forms.

Another limitation was that Amelia couldn't make creatures freeform-the designs had to be accepted by Taylor's power as a bug, and it wasn't just one organ or genetic marker. It seemed to be based on an arbitrary assessment of whether the creature was sufficiently bug-like to qualify. Without that restriction, her creatures might have been able to get a lot more powerful, but then nobody would be able to control them.

Amelia's own Armoriont hadn't really improved much either, she considered with a little shame. After everything that happened, she forgot to try and improve it or the Bionanite Swarm, in favour of working on the base rebuild.

"We do, but they're pretty big. I mean, we don't have anything else that actually fits in our portals, so they're basically just for show," said Amelia.

"Well, this is a demo, so why not test those?" Kaleidus said.

"Alright, I'm bringing them over," said Taylor. "You wanna get the chimera titan, Amelia?"

"Sure," Amelia said, getting on one of Taylor's transport bugs.

After a short while, their larger creatures lined up. The super-sized Warrior bugs, monster worms, and other weird arachnid-like creatures they'd experimented on.

The super-sized Warrior bug was about 27 times bigger than its normal counterpart. It was 3 times as large in every dimension.

"Be careful, Kaleidus, this one's about twice as strong as an elephant," said Taylor. "Although, like elephants, it can only exert a fraction of that force in the front."

"An elephant huh… that means… we'll have to use that. Derf, you ready?"

"Always," said Derflinger.

"Then let's do it. Boost, Level 8!"

Suddenly Kaleidus glowed in a golden light along with the sword.

"Woah…" Paige said with awe.

He burst forth and practically disappeared from sight. Then in the next instant, he slammed into the super Warrior bug, and sent it stumbling back.

The Warrior bug was winded, but it recovered quickly and charged.

"Sword Aura, Level 3!"

This time the sword glowed even more intensely, and when Kaleidus swung with it, it cleaved the Warrior bug's arm and then leg in two barely visible strikes.

"Holy shit," said Taylor, watching Kaleidus finish off the bug easily.

"Damn, was that the sword's power?" Amelia asked from her position at the head of the chimera titan, which was a monstrous thing that was as tall as a five storey building.

"Sure was! Impressed yet?" Derflinger shouted.

"That's gotta be a Mover 4 or 5 at least," said Amelia. "But let's see how you do against this!"

Amelia melded her costumed Armoriont form into the titan's head.

It looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, much larger and thicker arms and legs, was almost fully covered in a shell-like material and what looked like numerous tentacles extending out of its back.

"That's… why tentacles?" Kaleidus asked.

"I told her it was weird," said Taylor.

"They're much more versatile than other kinds of limbs," said Amelia, her voice projecting through the creature's mouth.

"Well, alright, show me what you got!"

Amelia wasted no time and started by aiming the tentacles at Kaleidus. Something shot out of them, which Kaleidus dodged, causing them to explode on the ground, each one packing as much power as a tank round.

The chimera titan roared thunderously, its roar causing the ground to vibrate.

Then it lashed out with a tentacle as if it were a whip and slammed into Kaleidus while he was trying to dodge the explosions amidst the shaking ground.

Kaleidus was sent flying away, but then he turned around mid-air and simply shot towards the huge creature again.

Just before another tentacle went to bat him out of the air again, he flew around it and stayed out of the reach of the tentacles while circling over top.

Then he shouted the name of another technique.

"Slash Wave, Level 6!" A golden wave of light was unleashed from Derflinger and slammed into the titan's back.

All the tentacles and the back of half the chimera titan was destroyed in one hit as the wave of energy broke through the shell and continued on to disintegrate the body beneath.

"A Blaster power too? That's amazing!" Paige said.

"He's like an Alexandria package now," said Taylor.

Amelia gave up and jumped out of the creature while Kaleidus flew down and the glow surrounding him died down. "Now that was impressive," said Amelia, while they walked back to where Taylor and Paige were sitting.

"I heard you say levels for each your techniques. Does it go up any higher than that? 8 for the Boost, 6 for this Slash Wave thing?" Amelia asked.

"It does. Each of them go up to level 10. I can use the level 10 Boost if I want, but it doesn't make that much of a difference. Each level only adds about 10% more power. The Sword Aura or Slash Waves though, and this other more concentrated version I call the Slash Beam, they double in power each level. But going to level 10 costs all of Derf's energy in one hit, so I wouldn't use it without a good reason," said Kaleidus. "It takes days to recover all that energy, and that's only under the right circumstances. Otherwise it could take months to store up to that much."

"I've only used the level 10 once, but that was an impossibly strong enemy. I can still barely believe we made it out of there alive," said Derflinger.

"Sounds like you've had it rough too, huh?" said Taylor. "But you're so strong now, I'm kind of jealous. You're even an Alexandria package. Back before I got my powers, that's what I always wanted to be."

"How did you even find Derflinger? There must be a cool story behind that," said Amelia.

"Believe it or not, I found him in a run down shop, rusting away, and bought him on the cheap. Then he transferred over to this new form I made for him," said Kaleidus.

"Really? I thought it would be like after an epic quest or something!" said Amelia, with a laugh. "That's so mundane."

"What kind of world was it? To have magical swords?" Paige asked. "Were they common, that Derflinger got left to rust?"

"No way. I'm one of a kind. Those fools just can't see greatness if they stared it in the face. Trust me, I've been around a long, long time. Six thousand years in fact. I'm probably one of the greatest weapons in history, back where I come from," said Derflinger.

"Wow… then it was really lucky that Kaleidus found you!" Paige said with a grin. "Almost like destiny, or divine intervention!"

"Don't get started on that again…" Amelia groaned.

"He sure is lucky. And I don't just let anyone wield me either. I have pretty high standards, but Partner here has been impressing me with how he's managed to use me," said Derflinger.

"Um… does that mean you won't let us try wielding you? I was kinda hoping…" said Taylor.

"Hah if you want to try me out, I don't mind. Any friends of my Partner are friends of mine," said Derflinger.

"Awesome!" Taylor said cheerfully.

A/N: Derflinger was really quite a bargain for just 100 gold coins.

27 – Ostinato and Hydra

27 - Ostinato and Hydra

After exchanging some stories, heavily edited on Kaleidus' part, and relaxing a bit, the CRUCIBLE team got to work again.

With Kaleidus' return, they had access to untraceable magic-based portals again, so they started investigating all the bases they had abandoned because of the Simurgh.

Soon they discovered that everything had been destroyed, as if the Simurgh had systematically dismantled all their operations. The capes had all mysteriously disappeared too.

On Earth M2, there were signs of a huge battle between Eidolon, Legend, Offensive Bias and the Simurgh.

However, they'd pieced together that Eidolon and Legend were unable to follow the Simurgh out of the atmosphere onto the moon, as the dark side moon base didn't show any signs of Eidolon or Legend's powers.

Finally the team portalled back to Brockton Bay.

To their relief, the city was largely untouched. For whatever reason, the Simurgh hadn't tried to take out their operations in the city. They'd found Majors Heroux, Reynolds, the Coil body double, and the mercenary captains running the CRUCIBLE organization as normal, despite the lack of communication from the top brass.

This wasn't unexpected-Kaleidus had set up the hierarchy of CRUCIBLE in such a way that the former mercenary leaders had actually been sworn to a "secret" master, the "Lord Infinity", rather than Polychromic, Araliac, Skitter, and Canary.

They were also being paid via automatic deposits on a regular basis, so from their perspective, the loss of CRUCIBLE's public leaders didn't change anything for them.

"Lord Infinity" made contact and complimented them on a job well done before the CRUCIBLE leaders arrived.

Another positive point was that Leet, Uber, and Chariot had all been in Brockton Bay at the time of the attack, rather than in one of the other CRUCIBLE worlds, so they were safe and accounted for.

The only significant issues were with Skitter and her bugs. Because she still hadn't told her father about her hero activities, she went off nervously to talk to her father. As for her bugs, the ones that had been garrisoned across the city had lost the command signal from her, so they defaulted to cannibalism and suicide.

CRUCIBLE soldiers did their best to clean up the bugs once they noticed the behavior of the ones garrisoned at the base, but many were left to die on the streets and wound up captured for study by the PRT.

This also had the consequence of causing rampant rumors and speculation about what happened to CRUCIBLE, particularly with none of the team's capes making any appearances.

Nevertheless, because the soldiers still operated as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and because the remaining Protectorate heroes were still at full strength with major gang presence left in the city, few villains dared to make any moves to encroach on the city, and the city remained peaceful. This was especially so because Boston, after the destruction by the Simurgh, became a much more tempting target for villains.

CRUCIBLE's participation in the Echidna and Simurgh battles had been well publicized, and it was now commonly accepted that the Simurgh had been specifically targeting the rising hero team.

Their access to portals and other worlds had been revealed in the Echidna fight, and the Triumvirate also made statements regarding the battle after the Simurgh portaled out of Boston. Officially, Eidolon and Legend had engaged the Simurgh together with the CRUCIBLE team on another world, but lost both the Simurgh and the CRUCIBLE leadership in the ensuing chaos as the battle moved across multiple dimensions. Then Eidolon returned with Legend after one of his powers gave him a portal back.

The next part of the official story picked up where the Simurgh returned to Boston along with Echidna, the clones, and the wounded Protectorate capes from the Echidna battle.

After a short but difficult fight, Scion returned and chased off the Simurgh, while Echidna was captured by the PRT and moved to an unspecified location.

No mention had been made about any of the other capes CRUCIBLE had mastered and/or kept prisoner, or about the Morrigan, so the CRUCIBLE leaders were still unable to determine their status.

CRUCIBLE's fame had reached new heights in the process, and while many theories abounded as to whether the CRUCIBLE capes were still alive or not, there was one thing that most agreed on: if the Simurgh targeted them, they must have been even powerful than they had revealed to the public.

Eidolon and Legend were inundated with questions as to what the battle with the Simurgh with CRUCIBLE was like, and what little they described spurred the public imagination. A hidden Tinker capable of controlling an army of combat drones and building nuclear-level weaponry. A vast operation that seemingly spanned multiple worlds and even reached the moon. Such descriptions elicited equal amounts of awe and criticism.

After a strategy meeting with a sullen Taylor that came back from a tearful but angry reunion with her father, it was decided that Skitter would stay in Brockton Bay while Amelia and Paige went back to the secret worlds being rebuilt.

Additionally, with Kaleidus making portals to bring over supplies and advanced equipment from Earth Bet, along with Leet, Uber, and Chariot assisting, their rebuild effort was sped up dramatically.

Some of the wreckage from the old bases had also been recycled, and they even started rebuilding the Earth M2 facilities.

The reason for that was that they couldn't yet maintain a continuous connection to Earth M2B. In order to build up more backup worlds that were fully untraceable, they had to keep it isolated as much as possible.

But in the meantime, they couldn't just hide away for months while they built up world after world, or else the situation in Brockton Bay might deteriorate.

As a result, it was decided that the Earth M2 base would be rebuilt and a continuous connection maintained from there, seeing as it was already compromised and they wouldn't lose anything by it.

As such, Offensive Bias took charge of the M2 rebuild effort and re-entered the Brockton Bay base systems, while Enduring Witness was assigned to continue the build up of the secret worlds alone.

Finally, the CRUCIBLE team made their public return to Brockton Bay with much fanfare, and debuted new additions to their team.

Canary went under the new cape name of Ostinato, while Offensive Bias's fabricated male Tinker public cape persona took the name Hydra.

The return was accompanied by a public concert featuring Ostinato for vocals, Hydra for synthetic instrumentals (that also modulated Ostinato's power effect), and cute dancing bugs controlled by Skitter.

While Ostinato and her concert took center stage for regular media, the introduction of Hydra exploded on PHO. Now they had confirmation of Eidolon and Legend's description of an incredibly powerful secret Tinker, and speculation abounded as to whether Dragon's top spot in the Tinker rankings would be overtaken.

This was after all, a Tinker whom the Simurgh had apparently felt threatened by, and one of the prevailing theories of why the Simurgh had attacked was that Hydra had already succeeded where Sphere had failed, to build a base on the moon for CRUCIBLE, in addition to the other combat feats Eidolon and Legend had described.

Little did they know… like the monster of legend, Hydra was Dragon except capable of running numerous copies of itself and endlessly reviving.

Meanwhile, two other organizations received the news with varying degrees of wariness and celebration.

The PRT and its council of Directors were mostly displeased that CRUCIBLE had seemingly survived with no significant losses, and had shown themselves to be even more powerful than before. Public sentiment had turned against CRUCIBLE somewhat as many were alarmed at the thought of a multiple-world spanning organization openly violating the laws regarding alternate dimensions created after Professor Haywire, but their supporters had grown even more fervent following their contribution to the Echidna and Simurgh fights, and the revelation of Hydra, whose survival many interpreted as a major victory against the Simurgh. Even Director Piggot had largely become a supporter now that her city had benefited greatly from CRUCIBLE's work.

Cauldron on the other hand, continued to support project Terminus and had secretly pulled strings to keep the city peaceful in CRUCIBLE's absence. They were aware of much more than either the PRT or CRUCIBLE knew regarding the Simurgh battle, and had captured a number of capes formerly in CRUCIBLE custody.

Having received confirmation that CRUCIBLE's top leadership survived the Simurgh, they felt increasingly comfortable that humanity's greatest could rise up even without Cauldron themselves manipulating events behind the scenes.

When the Simurgh had targeted their own operations, it had been a major setback for them. Each time the Simurgh acted, it dealt a major blow to humanity as a whole. As such, Cauldron determined that it was appropriate to help CRUCIBLE a little, if the Simurgh considered them to be a threat.

The Triumvirate in particular were hopeful that Hydra would prove to be as powerful as their deceased comrade Hero once was, while Doctor Mother and Contessa decided not to reveal the truth behind Offensive Bias just yet.

But perhaps the biggest surprise to them came from the re-appearance of Polychromic. Both Contessa, Dinah, and all the other Thinkers they had access to had confirmed-Polychromic had simply vanished from all Thinker senses almost right when the Simurgh had started moving.

At the time, they hadn't noticed, but later when Contessa tried to determine whether CRUCIBLE had survived the Simurgh, her power suggested a high likelihood of survival for the other CRUCIBLE leaders, but uncertain due to the anti-Thinker device they used.

Polychromic himself, though, was a different story.

It was not as though he'd died or was simply in hiding. Even though Contessa's Agent couldn't tell her specifically where CRUCIBLE leaders had gone, it had been able to suggest that they'd gone into outer space and were in hiding.

But the Agent was genuinely confused as to what happened to him, and gave unprecedented nonsensical answers, like 'teleported beyond the Hubble limit', 'entered black hole', or Contessa's, favorite, 'traveled forward in time'.

Something similar happened with Dinah, where she was unable to give any answer at all regarding probabilities that involved him. Other less powerful Thinkers were also unable to analyze him at all.

This behavior (not Contessa's power's responses, that was unprecedented) had been seen before with attempting to directly scry on Scion, the Endbringers, or Eidolon, so they were forced to conclude that Polychromic was indeed a Thinker blindspot, and apparently able to turn his immunity on or off at will, because once he'd returned, their Thinker powers worked on him again.

With his immunity coinciding with the Simurgh's movement towards Boston, and taking in all the other bits of evidence they'd had, a new picture began to form.

If Polychromic was as powerful a Thinker himself as the PRT reports suggested, then his actions took on a new meaning.

He turned on his immunity for the duration of battle against the Simurgh, which made sense, but why had he ever turned it off?

Was it because there were certain constraints on his use of it, or did he do it deliberately?

If it was deliberate, then was it conceivable that he was using it to communicate with Cauldron without openly making contact? Had Doctor Mother been right about the Simurgh trying to stop the two organizations from cooperating directly?

According to Contessa, the cape knew a lot about Cauldron, but hadn't made any moves against them. He had furthermore claimed at one point that he knew a method of restoring Eidolon's powers.

When Eidolon had first heard this, he was shocked and hopeful, but Polychromic had never disclosed the actual method, so Contessa couldn't tell him, much to his disappointment.

But then, upon Polychromic's return, and Contessa's power could track him again in Brockton Bay, Cauldron received another huge shock.

Polychromic had written down a message addressed to Contessa herself, which was immediately noticed by one of her Paths.

"Dear Fortuna and Cauldron friends, thank you for your assistance in fighting Ziz. It was a difficult battle and we have lost much, but we will bounce back stronger than ever. Your timely intervention and pursuit of the Ziz in our fortress world may have saved the lives of my comrades, buying them time to escape. Therefore, I give you this knowledge to show our thanks. There is a power that can drain energy from other capes, and from capes' dead bodies through their Corona Pollentia and Gemma. The High Priest can command this power to restore his own diminishing strength."

She immediately guessed what the message was referring to and informed Eidolon at their next Cauldron meeting. High Priest was the term Glaistig Uaine used to refer to Eidolon.

Eidolon gasped with excitement. "It's true! It just came to me as soon as I thought of it. I can restore my powers!"

"Congratulations, David! I know how much it's been worrying you. This is really going to change things for the better," said Legend.

"You'll be able to fight at your best in Endbringer battles all the time again, without holding back," said Alexandria.

"That's great, now you don't need vials anymore. There are plenty of dead capes around that you can use instead," said Doctor Mother. "You can probably more than fully refill after every Endbringer battle."

After that, the Cauldron inner circle debated how their cooperation with CRUCIBLE might evolve.

[Kaleidus]

Two weeks after my return to Worm, I decided to leave for the next plane.

We were less than a week from building another AAPV, but I decided not to wait for it, given my experience at the Ring of Deterrence, and to avoid unnecessary attention wherever I landed. If I really needed it, I could always come back to Worm to get it, but it was safer to just take what I could carry with me on my person.

I left a number of biological samples I'd collected from mages and other creatures from Familiar of Zero with Amelia to experiment on, though I didn't expect much out of it. Magic was probably not a purely biological or genetic phenomenon, but it was still worth researching.

I'd spent a week longer than I'd originally intended, mostly due to the recovery time involved after the battle against the Beast, but it was time to move on.

Some supplies replenished, Derflinger recharged, and having stocked 8 trips' worth of Primordial GRAIN again, I set off to the next great adventure.

A/N: We're about to start a new arc in the next chapter. First, I want to thank my beta readers Nidhogg, Trek and inphernalmenace for their help on all these chapters since the "Rising" portion of the story began.

Now I'd like to share some thoughts about writing this arc and plans for the future.

When writing the FoZ arc, my intention was for the MC to have an easier time compared to Worm, and show how he could make use of things from Worm, while also put in a balance of limitations to be discovered. In the context of the broader story, I would like to retain this feeling of exploration and discovery. At the core, this story isn't about MC going around shocking locals with his strange powers, though there will be plenty of that too. This is a story about adventuring in new places, with unlimited possibilities.

The return to Worm was important for the MC and the story, but the events on Worm, while interesting, are no longer MC's main concern, so I chose not to cover them in detail. I may write some side stories on it in the future, but for now, we will be focused on MC's journey across the multiverse. That is not to say that every world will be "finished" in an arc, but that MC will visit them as appropriate depending on his circumstances and events will continue developing without him as well.

Agate's disappearance was originally planned for later, but in the course of writing, I felt that the character of Agate did not contribute much to the story, and with the appearance of the Beast, there was a good opportunity to fire that event early, so I did. With the Beast and the Ring of Deterrence, I also wanted to show that the method of travel, the structure of the multiverse, these things matter to the overarching story more than just being a mechanism for hopping into different stories. Far off it may be, the concept of planar travel and other entities capable of such things that reside outside of known reality will be revisited at various times in the future.

Finally, I want to touch on something I've been considering for some time, a new multiverse travelling story with different mechanics that would employ more of an "Infinity" style system. I feel that this story has in many ways failed to realize my original goals, while also showing me issues I had not considered when I first started it. The mechanics or limitations of planar travel, and the things that drive the plot are very important to get right from the beginning. The new story is still in brainstorming and worldbuilding stages but I hope to create a better balance of challenge, character motivations, world-hopping frequency, and the scope of the plot/world. The multiverse is too large, and working with the canons is quite difficult, both in the sense of conforming to it, or filling in blanks on things that never mattered in the canon, but could matter for a multiverse story. For example, does Familiar of Zero have space? Other continents/races/planets? Ultimately I think too much freedom is a burden, and having a better structure to limit the scope of what can be interacted with would enhance the story. Hopefully one day I can share a new story with you that solves all these issues in an interesting way.

That's all for now, see you all in the new arc on Tower of God next week!

Last edited: Jul 26, 2021

Tower of God: 28 - Divine Water

28 - Divine Water

This time the trip seemed normal. I went through the whole process in the Ring of Deterrence getting to a swirl but there was no Beast. It seemed to confirm that whatever caused the Beast to come when I left the Familiar of Zero plane, was specific to that plane.

Then I melded with the destination Creation Mystery.

It was dark. So dark I could hardly see anything.

"What the fuck?"

I wielded Agate and made some light.

It was a cave of some sort…?

Suddenly the ground fell.

"Oh shit!"

I looked down and saw what seemed to be a massive metal gate on the ground. Why the hell was it made facing this direction and not upright like a normal gate?

I tried to fly up, but some force stopped me. A golden light spilled out from the gate and seemed to grip onto me.

Uh oh. Had I been brought back to the Ring of Deterrence again? Was this the gate to the Root? Was I about to return to nothing-

"Hmm? Another visitor so soon? My, my, what an interesting day this has become."

I got up from a kneeling position and glanced around carefully. The speaker was some kind of humanoid creature with white skin, wearing a black robe. It had 3 fingers on its hands, and a head that was long with a weird slit for eyes. And I don't mean a slit pupil, the eye hole itself was literally a massive slit that ran across half his head and there was just a tiny white pupil in the centre.

He wielded a staff with two blue orbs at its end. A weapon? It walked towards me. I couldn't tell whether it was menacing or not with that featureless face, but it didn't look friendly. Maybe because I couldn't tell where its mouth was.

I drew Derflinger while sending Agate into agatespace.

"Please, wait. I have no intention of fighting you. You are a guest here," it said, holding up a hand as if gesturing to stop.

"Is that so? Where am I?" I asked.

This place looked like a massive, opulent hall of sorts, made of stone and metals.

"My name is Headon, Guardian of the lowest floor of the Tower. And this is the Tower. What is your name?"

Ah. I recognized that. The Tower of God story. I knew this one reasonably well, but the story was quite complex with a massive world. The world was so massive that knowing the story didn't mean a whole lot.

"You can call me Axion," I said in response.

"May I ask why you have entered this Tower, Mr. Axion?"

The next question was, when was I? Hopefully not too far off from my canon knowledge. Give me something to work with.

"You're asking me? I was just minding my own business and exploring. Then I walked over a huge set of doors when it was too dark to see anything. It opened by itself and dragged me in here."

"I see. But nobody comes across the Tower by chance. There must be something you desire… Fame? Glory? P-"

"Everyone has desires. There's nothing special about that," I said, cutting off his speech.

He didn't look annoyed, but merely nodded.

"True enough, but you were fortunate enough to find this place. Therefore, you have an opportunity unlike any other. To fulfill your desire. Whatever it may be, you can find it here. At the top of the Tower."

"Am I supposed to just take your word for it? Sounds like a scam," I said.

"You are free to decline and leave, if you wish," said Headon.

I looked around. There was no exit.

"Where is the way out?"

"…" Headon shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I'm just the Guardian of the First Floor."

"Then how do I leave?" I asked, out of curiosity.

"The same way you came, I imagine," he answered.

Did he know I could leave by planar travel?

"Or, perhaps at the top of the Tower. As I said, whatever you desire, you can find it there," Headon added.

"Right… not much of a choice there is it? Let's say I want to climb this Tower. What do I have to do?"

Finally, Headon smiled widely, and I saw his mouth hidden on the bottom half of his elongated face.

"Climbing the Tower is a long and dangerous journey. On each floor, you will be presented with tests to determine if you are worthy of proceeding. The test is determined by the Guardians, the Floor Administrators, of course, or their chosen representatives, and the difficulty increases at each level."

He tapped his staff on the ground, and a piece of wall slid away at the far end.

"My test for you is simple. It is 'Ball'. You must pop the ball in there by any means. But it is guarded by the white steel eel. Normally the eel is very mild mannered, but it is breeding season and it hasn't eaten anything in a month. The tank behind me is filled with water, but it is of a special sort. You shall be able to breath it, so do not fear that you will drown."

Even before he explained, I felt something tremor in my body.

Voices rose and started to bombard me with incomprehensible words in my mind.

"The Power of Water…" I said almost unconsciously.

"Hmm? Are you intrigued by the Shinsoo? Perhaps this shall be your reason to climb the Tower. Shinsoo is a miraculous thing… it is everywhere in the Tower and produced by it. It is the energy of life for the residents of the Tower. It may be used for many things… to create attacks, control the elements, eternal youth, or even attain the powers of a god."

The rising excitement of the water spirits was unlike any reaction they'd ever shown before.

Even the air in this hall was filled with Shinsoo, except at a much lower density.

As I breathed it in, the water spirits were driven into a frenzy. They demanded more. To go into that cage and immerse myself within this divine water.

Cautiously, I attempted to absorb some Shinsoo into my circuits as if it were mana, and found that it was possible though it was quite difficult to absorb into my circuits and convert into magical energy. This was technically a mana-rich environment, so it was easier to retain mana within my circuits, but it also wouldn't help me refill my reserves any faster than a low-mana environment.

"Derf, can you feel it? This Shinsoo in the air," I asked aloud.

"Heh, yeah, I can. It feels comfortable. I think I'll like this place."

"An Ignition weapon? What a surprise. It has been a very long time since I have seen such a thing brought in from the outside," said Headon.

"Can you absorb it?" I asked my sword.

"Not directly, sorry," said Derf. I thought as much. He could only absorb refined forms of magic energy, and Shinsoo was a little strange to begin with. I doubted that he could absorb Shinsoo based attacks at all.

"Well then, what do you think of this Tower? Should we give it a try, for a while, at least?"

"Sure. Sounds exciting," said Derf. "If every test is going to be like this, we'll have plenty of fights ahead!"

Even if Derf didn't agree, I'd already made my decision.

This place was full of insanely powerful beings, and I probably ranked near the bottom at the moment. While it was questionable whether anything I learned to do with Shinsoo would be useful once I went to planes without it, it was clear that the water spirits were receiving some kind of benefit by being here.

Normally each use of the water stone reduced its size little by little, and restoring it took ages in regular mana-rich water, which is why they were very reluctant to use any powerful effects. I traded them lifeforce for their help, but lifeforce was not a direct substitute for their lost water mana

If I could use this place to restore or even grow the water stone, enhancing my connection with them to the extent that they became more friendly and helpful, then it would definitely be worth it.

As I had no means to force the water spirits to obey me, it was a give-and-take relationship. The more I helped them, the more they would help me in return, or so I expected.

Even if I was grossly outmatched here by the big threats, the Rankers who'd reached the highest known levels, I'd still have reasonable room to grow by progressing up the floors with other Regulars, the people climbing the Tower. Hopefully nobody would come assassinate me straight off the bat, and I could always planeshift in the worst case.

"Alright, I'll take your test," I said, walking forward through the massive steel bars of the cage.

As soon as I waded into the highly concentrated Shinsoo, I realized that this test would be far more difficult than it looked.

It was so dense that I could barely enter it at all, like some kind of thick barrier rather than water.

If I couldn't move in this Shinsoo, how was I supposed to get to the ball, let alone fight the eel, which had no trouble swimming in here?

Just then, the Shinsoo gave away as if the resistance had been only an illusion. Instead, it started flowing around me and into me.

A different feeling came over me, one of euphoria.

It was incredible!

As if my whole body was gaining nourishment just from being in its presence.

The taste, the feeling, everything about it was perfect.

I gasped and breathed in even more of the Shinsoo, gulping it down like some kind of uncontrollable addict.

"Uh… Partner? We got a battle to fight!" Derf called out when the white steel eel came at me.

My body was temporarily taken control of by Derf as he dodged the hungry mouth that threatened to swallow me.

What was that? Those feelings… they weren't mine. They were the water spirits, but they'd almost overwhelmed me.

Even now, I could feel the water spirits attempting to absorb more of the Shinsoo, and taking it through the Armoriont and my skin. But the Shinsoo itself seemed alive and was not impressed by our attempts to consume it, resisting the suction.

This Shinsoo must have been something truly amazing for the water spirits to react that way, but I couldn't afford to be distracted in such a way during battle.

Yet, whatever they did to make me able to move in this dense Shinsoo, I also needed them to keep that up, so I couldn't block them out entirely.

I would just have to shove those feelings of euphoria into a corner of my mind, mentally tuning them out, and retain focus on the battle.

The eel crashed onto the floor after missing me but quickly turned around for another attempt.

It was fast, and while the Shinsoo felt less heavy than before, I still needed Derf's boost just to keep up in this incredibly dense Shinsoo.

"Sorry Derf, I'm fine now! Let's do this!" I shouted.

Derf stopped his spell and returned control to me. I lost the boost, but more Reinforcement made up the difference.

I tried flying up to dodge, though my wings were having difficulty straining against the dense Shinsoo. My legs worked better in this environment.

But before the eel could take advantage of my momentary lack of movement, I shouted the name I'd given to Derflinger's technique which was a signal for him to use it. Because we couldn't communicate mentally, our techniques had to be called aloud so he knew what to use.

"Slash Beam - Level Two!"

When I swung down, an arc of energy was released from Derflinger and crashed into the white steel eel.

I sent a relatively weak beam to test it out. The eel was blown back but otherwise unharmed except for a small bruise on its skin.

It roared in anger, then sped towards me again. Not much in the way of tactics, but I could hardly blame it when it didn't have any other methods of attack.

"Slash Beam - Level Four!"

Another blast of energy hit it and this time its skin was ripped apart, exposing its internal organs through a gash as large as a person. It wailed in pain and writhed on the ground, but looked like it could keep going. The thing was huge and that kind of injury was probably a minor problem for it.

I took the chance while it was stunned to take out a laser gun and fired right into its eyes. The gun seemed to power on slightly slower than normal.

It screamed in rage, but was blinded by the attack. It lashed out randomly, but obviously couldn't find me anymore.

I leisurely took the time to test the power of the laser gun against its less vulnerable parts, and found that there was a great deal of resistance. The laser would still cut into it, but it took a while to burn through the skin.

The laser gun would probably serve better as a precision tool than a weapon once we got past the early levels. Though something was also interfering with its function… it was supposed to be a waterproof gun, but perhaps this Shinsoo couldn't be blocked that easily. If true, other electronics would probably have a worse time as I went up the Tower and they were exposed to Shinsoo for longer. For now, my visor was still working alright, thankfully. I should at least be able to keep using these things up to the 20th Floor, seeing as this level of Shinsoo concentration wasn't really common until then. Headon had prepared a super dense Shinsoo cage just for this test.

"Nice going, Partner," said Derf.

"You weren't bad yourself, Derf," I said back.

I nimbly dodged around the still living eel and took some of the blood from its open wound to keep as a sample for later analysis by Amelia, storing it in the Armoriont.

Then I left the blind eel alone and went to the black ball at the back of the cage.

"Hmm…" I swung down on the ball with Derflinger, but it didn't pop.

That wasn't unexpected, seeing as Derf's current form as a cellulose based sword didn't have very sharp edges, but a yellow light soon covered him as he sharpened himself with magic.

I cut down again and the ball popped easily.

"Congratulations, Irregular. You have successfully passed the test," said Headon after I exited the cage.

"Irregular… what does that mean?" I asked, pretending I didn't know.

"Those who are chosen by the Tower to climb are called Regulars. You will be climbing with them on the way up. But very rarely, there are those who were not chosen, yet found their way into the Tower by themselves. You are one such individual, an Irregular. It is often said that Irregulars bring great changes to the Tower… I shall look forward to the changes you shall bring," said Headon.

"I see. So, what now? How do I get up?"

"Ah, before that, I have an offer for you."

"Hm? What is it?"

He looked to the side and tapped his staff. Another section of the wall opened up to reveal a girl with blonde hair who looked stunned.

"Come here, girl," said Headon, gesturing with his fingers.

[Mini-Interlude]

"This one seems a little stronger… a little older too," said a young woman with black hair and red highlights, wearing a white long sleeve jacket over a black shirt and skirt. It was Yuri Zahard, one of the princesses of Zahard, the King of the Tower. "But he doesn't seem to be a monster like Enryu or Urek Mazino either."

"I can't quite get a read on him either… it might be because they're Irregulars," said a very short white-haired man wearing a backpack almost as tall as he was. This was Evan Edrok, a High Ranker like Yuri, who served as her Guide in the Tower, discerning the paths to take.

The two of them had just observed another Irregular go up the Tower, a little kid that couldn't even fight. Yuri had lent him her Black March, an extremely powerful Ignition weapon from the 13 Month Series that were awarded only to princesses of Zahard. It was illegal, but Yuri wasn't too concerned about skirting around the rules-only if she could get away with it, of course.

They'd started to leave when another Irregular showed up, and so they decided to stick around a little longer, observing from the above the ceiling tiles again

The new Irregular was suited up in a full body armor-very stylish according to Yuri-made of gleaming gold scales of what was probably a reptilian creature of some kind, with two crystalline shoulder guards silver in color. He wore a large red two-piece cloak that trailed behind him, and very much had the appearance of a warrior, though he also wore a black visor so they couldn't see his eyes.

"Hoh! That's smart. So he's not a brute like Mazino," Yuri said when the Irregular blinded the eel. "Maybe he's just holding back his real power then."

"I do get the feeling he wasn't particularly afraid of the eel, not like the boy. He's just experimenting to gauge himself against something new and unfamiliar," said Evan.

"What's he doing with that blood? Ugh, don't tell me he's one of those scientific types?" said Yuri, apparently annoyed for some reason.

Once he popped the ball and nothing abnormal happened like with Baam, Yuri decided to go. "Looks like that's that. Nothing too special to get excited about, we'll just have to see what he does from here. Come on, Evan, we gotta get going and find Baam to get back the Black March!"

"Yes, lady Yuri!"

They didn't notice Headon offering the new Irregular an unusual deal, or the third Irregular of the day.

[Kaleidus]

"Axion, I'd like you to meet Rachel."

On a closer look, the girl had a lot of freckles on her face, and seemed to be in her late teens. She wore a pinkish dress with a large red ribbon tied around her waist. Her appearance couldn't be said to be beautiful or ugly, it was simply average.

"That our reward for beating your test?" Derflinger asked.

Rachel's eyes widened, looked to Headon, and said something timidly, but I couldn't understand her. It wasn't a language I knew.

Headon chuckled. "I'm afraid not. Your reward is simply the opportunity to go up to the next Floor. Rachel here is somebody who came by earlier but she declined to take my test, believing it to be suicidal. Nevertheless, she hopes to climb the Tower. You see, a friend of hers is on the second floor and climbing the Tower. I'd like to ask you to help her get through the next area," said Headon.

I knew of her of course. One of the characters I appreciated for their unabashed selfishness. In a way, she was very much like me, willing to use anything and anyone to gain the power that did not belong to her and defy "mediocrity" that fate had assigned to her.

Even though her methods were amateurish and sometimes counterproductive, she was leagues ahead of Baam, the protagonist, who was simply born with a great power and destiny.

So it was only natural that this offer intrigued me. But why did Headon offer it? Why does Headon want Rachel to go up like this? What happened to that big guy that went up with Rachel anyways? I couldn't even remember. Arghgyon? Arkong? Whatever his name was.

There were obviously many schemes and organizations involved with Rachel's climb, and getting myself mixed up in that was dangerous, but then again, being an Irregular was dangerous enough already given how many parties were interested in us.

It was perhaps safer to be with Rachel as nobody in the story seemed to be aware of her status as an Irregular, whereas many people quickly found out about Baam. That was how he got captured by FUG and forced to work for them, while Rachel flew under the radar. Logically Yuri Zahard, a Zahard princess who helped Baam on this Ball test, should've known about Rachel too if she got an alert about Baam when he entered, but she didn't so Headon must have hid it somehow. Rather than striking out on my own, it seemed prudent to take advantage of Headon's support for as long as possible.

Plus, it didn't seem so bad to work with a fellow Irregular, and one that I could probably get along quite well with. But still, I had to act like I didn't know about any of that.

"I suppose I might be willing to help, but do you expect me to do it for free? Given what you've said, she's not very strong. If she couldn't pass the test on this floor, what use will she be on higher floors if the difficulty rises?"

"Naturally, I will offer you a payment for it," he made a flourish with his hand and a spherical object appeared. "This is a B-grade Pocket. It is quite a valuable device which you will have difficulty finding on the lower floors. It has a variety of features, including the translation of other languages. With a B-grade Pocket, you will be able to understand almost all of the Tower's languages. It also serves as your wallet, phone, a storage system, and more. If you turn down this offer, you will likely be unable to get a Pocket of such quality until the 30th Floor, and only at great cost even then."

I looked at the Pocket carefully. It was certainly a good payment. If I remembered correctly, regulars were given E-grade pockets. Although I didn't know what exact differences there were between grades, Headon certainly wasn't lying about its value. Evan gave Baam a high grade Pocket early on so it never came up much in the story, but I could imagine most Regulars working hard to buy better Pockets from the Workshop, and the first opportunity to get the higher grade ones would be on the 30th Floor, the Workshop's first headquarters.

Headon continued, as if interpreting my silence as hesitation. "Furthermore, I only ask that you help her through the Second Floor. Whether you wish to continue climbing with her after that will be up to you. Do we have a deal?"

"Fine. I'll do it."

Headon looked pleased and handed the Pocket to me and demonstrated a few features, such as turning it invisible and registering a profile as a Regular, which would give access to various facilities and a banking account.

"Rachel, was it? I take it you heard what Headon said? About me helping you through the next Floor?" I asked Rachel.

She nodded. "Yes, thank you Mr. Axion. But please call me Michelle when there are others around."

"Alright, then let's get going."

Rachel took out her own Pocket and wore a cloak over herself.

Then Headon pointed his staff at us, and we were engulfed in light.

A/N: A new adventure begins in the Tower of God! MC is only aware of the webtoon canon, though there will be elements from both webtoon and anime.

29 - Floor of Tests

29 - Floor of Tests

The two of us appeared in a large open field with very tall wheat, hills, and small cliffs. Various other people and humanoid beings could be seen in the distance.

We were standing on one of the cliffs which gave us a nice view of the surroundings.

"Mic test! Mic Test!"

A golden box was floating high in the air and a loud voice was coming from it. Even higher than that, far in the sky was some kind of floating cylindrical structure that seemed like a station of some kind.

"Hello everyone! All the Regulars who have arrived, we sincerely welcome you to the 2nd Floor, Evankhell's Floor. This is also called the Floor of Tests because here we carry out the final tests to see if you are worthy of going up the Tower! But I can explain all that later. Let's get to the first test! It is very simple, but listen carefully. There are 400 Regulars here. Use whatever means to bring that number down to 200! The test ends when there are only 200 left. Begin!"

"Hmm, getting into it immediately huh?"

I glanced at Rachel, who seemed scared at the news.

"Calm down. You're not going to die," I said. "I'll protect you as I said I would."

She looked at me hesitantly and nodded.

"Raa!" Somebody charged up the hill towards us.

Really? Did this guy not have the sense to realize it was dangerous to attack two combatants on high ground who were obviously in a group rather than alone like the rest? Even if Rachel couldn't help, this guy wouldn't have known that.

I took out a laser gun and shot him for his foolishness.

He fell with a smoking hole in his head.

A little farther away, a humanoid creature seemed spooked by the ease with which I dispatched the first guy and decided to find easier prey.

I shot the thing too.

"Weren't the floors supposed to get harder as we went up? That first one was much harder than this. You don't even need me here," said Derflinger.

"The guy on the mic said it's just the first test of the floor, meaning there's more after. It might get harder," I said, "especially after the weaker competition gets weeded out."

After that, I merely observed the battle royale.

"Look at them. So quick to kill for a vague promise. I wonder, what about you, Rachel? Are you willing to do whatever it takes to reach your own goal? Do you think you have a chance at all, against all these other Regulars?"

"… By myself, no," she said, clenching her hands into fists. As if her previous nerves had been calmed down, she continued in a stronger voice. "I'm just an ordinary person, with no special qualities. I'm not strong, I don't have any special powers or destiny… that's why… I'll do whatever it takes to get to the top. I'll even beg for help if I have to. So please, help me, Mr. Axion."

"Hmm… didn't I already agree to help you? But if you want me to help you beyond this Floor, when my contract with Headon is fulfilled, you'll have to show me that you're worth it."

I shot another few Regulars that got close to us while we were having our conversation.

"I understand," said Rachel.

"But tell me, what is it that you desire? Why do you want to get to the top so much, and risk your life for it? Are you really just looking for your friend that Headon mentioned?"

"No, I… that was a trick! Headon tricked him! I tried to climb the Tower first, and then he followed me even though I told him not to! But then Headon made him believe I already went up, and the idiot took the ball test, even though it was suicide! He only survived because he got help! That stupid rabbit, he's… evil! I thought the Fae were supposed to help guide us! Damn him!" Rachel said angrily.

"So you're not chasing after your friend? You have a goal of your own?"

"I want… to see the stars," said Rachel.

"You've never seen the stars before?" I asked incredulously. "Can't we just wait 'til nighttime to see them? There's a sky right here." I pointed up to the blue sky.

"I don't mean like that… I'm sorry, I can't explain it. And that sky isn't real either, it's artificial. There aren't any stars in the Tower's sky. At night it'll just be a light ball."

"I see." I probably wouldn't get anything more comprehensible out of her regarding her wish, so I turned my attention back to the battle.

Seeing as I was with Rachel, this should mean that Androssi, a Princess of Zahard, was also in this group, if things progressed according to canon.

And that also meant that we needed to somehow bring the number of Regulars down to 3 before the test ended, otherwise canon would go off the rails rendering my foreknowledge useless and we'd be going up with another group of Regulars instead of being sent to join Baam's cohort.

I had no idea how Arkong or whatever his name was and Androssi killed everyone else so fast, so I had come up with something myself. If the test ended at 200 Regulars, then we had to take out the rest of them almost instantaneously before the test administrator could call it off.

The problem was I didn't currently have any massive area of effect attacks. This arena was quite large, so how could I get them all at once?

[Interlude]

Androssi Zahard was crushing her opponents one after the other, eager to dominate the test the way her predecessors did, and feeling great about her progress.

After racking up over a hundred kills, she was starting to think that she was going to bring the number of Regulars to 200 practically by herself. These Regulars sure were taking their time killing each other.

If the initial 400 had just paired up and defeated one opponent the test would be over already.

So why was this taking so long?

But apparently they were so weak they couldn't even properly eliminate each other.

She'd even found a whole bunch that had weakened each other to the point where they couldn't fight anymore, but just couldn't finish the other off, instead just struggling to move on the ground.

Then, just when she was about to kill the next one, her target suddenly collapsed, unmoving.

She looked around, and something similar was happening all over the place. Everyone just dropped dead or maybe unconscious.

What the heck?

She covered her mouth in case there was some kind of poison in the air, and kept moving.

After half an hour, the intercom came on again. "Huh? What? This can't be right!" the voice said with disbelief. "Uh… well, all the remaining regulars, stop what you're doing! Congratulations to you all! Now begins part 2 of the test."

Androssi sighed in relief, at least she passed. Even though it was strange, whatever that was didn't affect her, or she hadn't been targeted.

"The next goal is to make a buddy. Out of the remaining regulars, you must make 2 of them your buddies! You have five minutes. Take note, you need to be in physical contact with your teammates at the end of five minutes."

"What?!" Androssi exclaimed out loud.

She had to find two people in less than five minutes? But there was nobody around, as far as she could see!

No, the test administrators wouldn't give an impossible task. She just had to find whomever caused this.

She started running as fast as she could across the fields. Even with her physical prowess, this place was big and five minutes would only give her enough time to get from one side to the other.

By the time there was only one minute left, she was starting to get very concerned.

'I can't fail the test in such a stupid way!'

She stopped beside a Regular and checked their life signs. 'Not dead after all.'

She tried to slap them awake. When that didn't work, she punched them. Their head exploded.

Thirty seconds left.

She kicked the ground with rage, sending bits and pieces everywhere.

"SOMEBODY! ANYBODY! APPEAR ALREADY! MY NAME IS ANDROSSI ZAHARD, AND I'M A PRINCESS OF ZAHARD!" She yelled at the top of her voice. "IF I'M ON YOUR TEAM THE TESTS WILL BE A BREEZE! COME ON, TAKE ME!"

Everyone knew that princesses of Zahard were super strong. If she advertised her availability, whoever was left would have to be stupid not to come, right? Even if they had to discard one of their existing teammates, it'd be well worth it to get her on the team! That was what she believed.

Something swooped down from the sky and landed behind her with a large impact.

She turned around and saw a man in golden armour, carrying a blonde girl in one arm.

"Hello, princess. Need a team?" The man said, holding out his free hand. He wore a black visor that covered the eyes, making it difficult to discern his expression.

Androssi leapt forward without wasting any more time and grabbed onto his arm. "Yes! Finally!"

"Only three people passed the first round?! What kind of test were you running, Quant?" Test Director Yu Han Sung looked in confusion at the test results, questioning his colleague.

Quant, one of the subordinate test administrators, answered sheepishly while rubbing his head. "You know my style… I don't like complicated things so I just had a simple thirty minute free for all survival match, or as long as it took to get down to 200 Regulars."

"So what, you stopped watching the counter?" Yu Han Sung looked unimpressed.

"No, I was watching it carefully! But the numbers suddenly went from over 250 down to 3 within a few seconds! There was no time to call it!"

"Really, that's your excuse? You're telling me over 200 Regulars got eliminated before you could make the announcement?"

"But I'm telling the truth! They were all eliminated just like that!"

"And who are those three? Did a princess of Zahard or Irregular come in?"

"Uh… well… it seems there were both."

"What?! Why didn't you tell me?! And you just carried on with the test with those monsters in it?!"

"I… uh… forgot to check the contestants' information…"

"Are you insane?! Right… Alright… how am I supposed to deal with this? Why did this have to happen when Evankhell is on leave? If Evankhell finds out what happened here… we could be going to the chopping block…" Yu Han Sung put a hand to his head and sighed.

"Ahh! Sorry! What do we do?!" Quant said in a panic.

"You should contemplate the meaning of life and do some good works before you pass on."

"No! I don't want to die yet! Please, Yu Han Sung! I'll fill this room with coffee for you!"

"I guess it can't be helped. I'll find a way out."

"Yes, thank you, I love you, Yu Han Sung!"

"Shut up and get me that coffee!"

Once Yu Han Sung went back to his office by himself.

He silently laid down to think for a moment. Then he smirked devilishly. "Hehehe… I knew I was smart."

[Kaleidus]

It'd been tight, but I managed to fly around and infect the Regulars with a fast acting but timed virus with paralytic and knockout effects. I had all of the infected Regulars get knocked out at precisely the same time when the virus automatically activated, while paralyzing them to prevent them from finishing each other off before it happened.

I gave Rachel a counter virus while I flew around spreading the Armoriont-produced contagious plague as quickly as I could. By itself, it couldn't spread that quickly through the air, but with my help flying all over the arena, it got the job done.

This sort of thing probably wouldn't work once we climbed even a little higher when people got more natural resistances from Shinsoo, but we were still on the second floor where almost everybody was a noob.

I actually found Androssi early on but I avoided her to prevent an unnecessary fight while I finished dealing with everyone else.

I didn't know if I could even defeat her at this point, and any fight between us would surely delay me, potentially throwing canon off the rails.

To be frank, I didn't understand how Androssi and Arkyong did it in canon, they were strong but to instantaneously take out all the other Regulars? Maybe the test didn't quite work the way the administrator said, and they actually had a minimum survival time even if the number of Regulars went below 200?

Regardless, I couldn't count on it, so here we were.

We'd been teleported to a large hall with white walls, with windows near the ceiling for light. I guessed we were in that floating structure I saw from outside.

"So which one of you did it?" Androssi looked between me and Rachel with a scrutinizing expression.

She had head-length brown hair, very expressive golden eyes, and wore a golden dress to match with a brown vest over top, black leggings, and golden high heels. She actually fought in those high heels too. Like Rachel, Androssi still looked like she was in her late teens at this point, though I knew she was much older than that. Shinsoo did wonders for aging, though people in the Tower also seemed to mature differently, and they took physical appearance as the standard for measuring maturity instead of actual mental age.

"I did," I answered easily. "My name is Axion, nice to meet you, Androssi Zahard."

"Why did you do it? You almost caused us to fail with that stunt! If we couldn't find each other in time…" Androssi said with annoyance.

"Because it looked like you didn't have a team yet, and I wanted you," I said back with a smirk.

She looked flabbergasted at that. "What? So you got rid of everyone else to make sure I couldn't team up with them?"

I nodded.

"…"

She looked me up and down, then smiled beautifully. "I guess I should be flattered you went to all that trouble for little old me. I don't mind teaming up with you if you're strong enough to do that. And you aren't bad looking either… haha. What about her? She must be really strong too if you chose her." Androssi pointed to Rachel, who looked embarrassed.

"Not really, I'm just taking her along as a favor to Headon. He gave me this B-grade pocket for it," I said, before showing Androssi the pocket.

"What?! Headon did? What kind of favoritism is that?" The princess looked at both us and the pocket jealously.

I shrugged. "Oh please. Don't tell me you don't get any perks as a princess?"

Androssi growled back. "For your information, I don't! The other princesses got their 'perks' from their families! Mine had nothing to give, they were hoping I'd be the one to bring them out of the dumps after being chosen as a princess!"

"Huh… really?"

"Yes! You don't know anything, do you? Zahard's princesses don't get any special privileges as Regulars. I started with nothing and fought for everything I have. So now what? Are you regretting taking on this impoverished princess in your team?" She crossed her arms and glared at me.

"Don't jump to conclusions. I didn't know you were a princess until you shouted it out back there. I merely saw the beauty and grace with which you fought and decided I wanted you. That's all," I said.

She raised an eyebrow then smirked. "What a charmer. You know just what to say to a girl. Okay, I'll forgive you," she said, twirling her hair.

Their conversation was stopped by the arrival of a man with short curled blonde hair in a white tuxedo and black bodysuit underneath. Two symmetrical moles were under his eyes.

"Hello there, chosen Regulars. I congratulate you on making it this far. I am Lero Ro, and I will be your test administrator for this part. Now it's probably just a formality at this point, considering how you three were the only survivors from the first portion, but I have to do it regardless. Just so you know, if you can't pass this test, you can't take the next test!"

"So it was really just the three of us…" Androssi murmured to herself.

"Now I will begin the test," Lero Ro said and held out his hands palms forward.

There was a flash of light, then a huge force slammed into me.

I was blown away and crashed onto the ground far away. Even though I was expecting it, I was still surprised by the sheer force behind that push.

When I got up, I saw that the two girls were barely affected by the Shinsoo push, still standing back there where they were and looking confused at me from behind a bluish Shinsoo barrier.

What the hell… weren't all Irregulars supposed to enjoy extreme resistance to Shinsoo? Why was I not included in that?

I guess I should be grateful I could work with Shinsoo at all, and that the water spirits seemed to love it. Still better than being completely shut out from learning the elemental spells in Familiar of Zero.

A/N: The scene between Yu Han Sung and Quant occurred in canon too, with only very slight differences. I put it in this chapter to show what the actual rules of the survival match were, which weren't really explained well in canon. Arkyung and Androssi didn't kill all the Regulars instantly-they simply killed the rest before the minimum 30 minute timer was up, which Quant failed to mention to Baam's cohort, though it's also possible the tests for the two cohorts were different. The scene is also necessary to establish a few other important facts for readers new to Tower of God, such as Quant and Yu Han Sung being aware of the Irregulars from the onset. So why does MC believe that Rachel's status was never exposed? If you haven't guessed it already, keep reading to find out.

30 - Floor of Tests 2

30 - Floor of Tests 2

[Interlude]

"Mr. Axion, are you alright?" The cloaked girl called out to the armored man.

"That was Shinsoo, wasn't it?" The princess of Zahard asked the test administrator but looked between the armored man and the cloaked girl with a calculating gaze.

"Yes, that's correct. In an instant, I compressed it and used it to make a barrier which pushed you three. Or at least, it was supposed to push you three," said Lero-Ro, glancing at the cloaked girl and the princess of Zahard.

He wasn't surprised that the princess was barely moved, given the high natural resistances of all princesses of Zahard. The only surprise there was that Androssi's resistance was substantially higher than Anak Zahard in the earlier cohort, who easily passed his barrier but was still pushed back in the initial setup. But this cloaked girl… just like that boy whom he thought had gotten by on a fluke, she was also unaffected by his push.

Who were all these people with such ridiculous resistances to Shinsoo?

"Shinsoo exists throughout this Tower. It allows us to breathe and live. Depending on how it's used however, it can be a deadly force. Dense Shinsoo can mangle a person, and because of that it is frequently used in combat. It is common to show serious side effects to high concentrations of Shinsoo. If you are not well adapted to it, you simply don't have the qualities necessary to climb the Tower, where the Shinsoo concentrations will only get higher as you climb. You must come through this barrier to show that you will be capable of surviving in this Tower."

"So does the fact that we're still on this side means we passed already?" Androssi asked.

"Not exactly. You have to pass as a team. So if he fails, you all fail," said Lero Ro.

"What?!" Androssi exclaimed. "That's not fair!"

Lero Ro sighed. "You know what's the most important trait for climbing the Tower? It isn't strength, I can tell you that. Nor is it your Shinsoo resistance. The most important trait is luck. Luck that allowed you to be born with a strong body, luck that made you smart, luck that made you wealthy, luck that saves you from a hopeless situation. That luck which made you take this test together, form a team, and the reason you've gotten here at all. So what if it isn't fair? If you fail because of bad luck… well that's too bad."

Androssi looked furious at the speech. What part of her life was driven by luck? Other than randomly meeting that snake, everything else had been a result of her own talents and efforts!

But then again, it wasn't completely wrong. There were those who were born weaker and would never have succeeded even if they were put in the same situation.

Meanwhile, Rachel looked contemplative. She understood intimately the difference between those who were lucky and those who weren't. Those who were chosen by destiny and those fated to be worthless.

She hated it, but it was how the world worked. She hated it because she was one of the ordinary and ugly. But she had found a way into the Tower, and started climbing it, despite her powerlessness.

Even if fate wasn't on her side, it wouldn't stop her from her goal. She would become the heroine of this story no matter what.

Axion walked towards the barrier and tested it out by knocking and pushing on it.

Having observed closely how the man was sent flying earlier, Lero Ro could tell. This man had hardly any Shinsoo resistance. It would take a miracle to get through the barrier.

"Hm… is there a time limit on this test?" Axion asked.

"Technically, there isn't. But if you can't get through, it's pointless. Just give up. This isn't a test you can solve with intelligence. It's to weed out the ones who don't have enough Shinsoo resistance to go higher. Even if you pass by some genius or miracle or your teammates' help, you'll just die pointlessly once you get to the higher floors. Save yourself the trouble," said Lero Ro. "And I'm not going to stand here all day waiting for you so I'll just fail you in ten minutes if you obviously aren't making any progress."

"That won't be necessary. I can get through this barrier, but it might take a while," the man said confidently.

"Go ahead and surprise me."

The man chuckled, and Lero Ro raised an eyebrow. Did he really have a way to get through?

Glowing blue lines ran across his face like some kind of circuit.

He reached out his hand again and touched the barrier.

Small bits of it seem to flake off. But at the rate he was going, it would take days to make a hole in it.

Lero Ro groaned. Was he really going to have to proctor this test for days?

Suddenly Lero Ro felt the presence of something dangerous. Like something very powerful had awakened.

It was powerful enough to register as a potential threat to his own instincts.

"What?" The test administrator glanced around but saw nothing. When he stretched his senses carefully, he found that it seemed to be coming from the Regular in front of him.

Was there something else possessing him? Something powerful enough to threaten a Ranker?

The barrier cracked at the point where the man touched it. Like falling pieces of glass, then dispersing into mist. The crack spread quickly and soon the whole barrier was breaking apart.

"That's impossible!" Lero-Ro shouted. He was a Ranker! How could some Regular break his barrier like that? Even if it was extremely weak and made of simply raw Shinsoo to let Regulars pass through, it was still Shinsoo under his control! Only Rankers should have been capable of breaking the barrier directly without attacking it!

"Hahaha… HAHAHAHA!" The Regular named Axion laughed aloud like a maniac. "Yes… YES! Hahaha… ! Wonderful! Incredible!"

The Shinsoo barrier completely disintegrated, and all of it went towards Axion, funneling into his chest as if it was being absorbed.

Eventually it seemed that he'd had enough and let the remaining Shinsoo evaporate as air. The blue lines on his face disappeared too.

Then he walked forward to join his teammates and turned expectantly towards Lero-Ro.

"You… what the hell are you?" The test administrator asked.

"A pretty lucky guy, it seems," Axion said back with a shrug and a smirk.

"Fine, you three pass. Take the hallway to the left. My assistant will meet you at the end."

"What was that back there?" Androssi asked with a look of shock, on their way to the next test.

"I admit, I wasn't expecting that myself. I have an ability to convert certain types of energies into others, and I was planning to do that, though it might have taken me many hours to make a hole in that barrier. But then… well, let's just say I have something inside of me, and it really likes the taste of Shinsoo," said Axion.

"So you really absorbed the Shinsoo," Androssi said.

"That's right."

"For a Regular on the second Floor to be able to do that… that's completely ridiculous! That's an extremely high level technique!"

"Hm, good to know."

"And you, your Shinsoo resistance is as high as mine!" Androssi pointed at Rachel. "Just who are you people?"

"I'm Rachel. Nice to meet you, Miss Androssi," said Rachel.

"I didn't mean that…"

"We are people that Headon seems to think are worth investing in. Aren't you lucky to be on our team? Oh and I'm Axion."

"Maybe. But this is still just the Floor of Tests, the second floor. Don't let it get to your head. The tests ahead are going to get a lot harder. Without Shinsoo resistance, you're going to have a lot trouble," said Androssi.

"I know. But luckily I have you to help now, hmm?"

"Then you'd better keep up!"

At the end of the hall, the test administrator's assistant greeted them alongside a floating robot.

"The test will begin once you pass through this door. Please enter," the woman gestured with a smile.

The test room inside was very dark. Twelve red doors were positioned in a semi-circle, with the test director sitting in a kneeled position the Japanese would call seiza, in front of a decorated canopy of sorts.

"Hello Regulars. My name is Yu Han Sung, and I am the administrator of your next test. Normally I am just the test director of this floor, but today I shall administer your test directly. Shall we begin? The test is simple. Do you see the doors behind me? Within ten minutes… find the correct door and open it. If you don't find it in ten minutes, you fail. If you open the wrong door, you will die." The man had an extraordinarily feminine face, blond hair with a red pin striking through it, and wore decorative yellow and blue robes.

"Die? Isn't that too harsh?" Androssi asked. "Fighting and dying because you weren't strong enough is one thing, but making it the penalty is…"

"Now, the test begins," said Yu Han Sung, ignoring Androssi's comment.

"That's it? Shouldn't there be a hint for how to find the right door?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah! What's up with this? Are you slacking on the job?" Androssi added.

"I'm sorry, there are no more hints," Yu Han Sung said pleasantly.

"How… what…" Rachel said, at a loss for words.

"This is impossible! This test is bullshit! You're just trying to get rid of us!" Androssi accused with a finger pointed angrily and waving it up and down at the test administrator. "Which Family are you working for?!"

"Well, normally, there would be a few more hints for the Regulars taking this test. But unfortunately the hints require other teams of Regulars to participate in this test to be given. So because there are no other Regulars in your cohort, it simply isn't possible for me to give you any other hints, even if I wanted to."

Androssi facepalmed, then turned to Axion. "This is YOUR fault for getting rid of all the other Regulars! You'd better have a solution to this!"

Yu Han Sung narrowed his eyes at Axion almost imperceptibly, but then just sipped his coffee as if nothing happened.

[Kaleidus]

I knew the answer to this test. It was quite ingenious really. Open any door within 5 minutes, and they would all be correct. After 5 minutes, they'd all be wrong.

With a large group of Regulars, they'd get some fake Regulars to go in first, and some to go around giving hints. Each team took the test one at a time while the rest waited outside. Based on the clock and the time taken by each team before the next one was sent in, along with the screams of the failing teams, it was possible to deduce from the waiting line the correct answer, or to go through on courage alone.

So Yu Han Sung wasn't lying when he said they couldn't give out hints due to the lack of any other Regular teams.

But then how did this team get through in canon? I'd had the impression that Yu Han Sung conspired with Rachel to get her through this part, but apparently that wasn't the case. Did Akyung get the answer from Headon beforehand?

Either way, we had to get through, and I could easily solve it. I didn't even need metaknowledge for this. I sent Agate through agatespace behind a door first just to scout and make sure this wasn't some weird alternate universe.

Once I confirmed it was safe on the other side, I walked towards it leisurely.

"Don't worry, I've found it already. Easy," I said.

"Are you kidding?" Androssi shouted after me, before rushing up to grab my arm. "Don't be careless, we'll die if you get it wrong!"

I glanced back at her, then held up my free hand to my mouth to whisper. She got the gesture and turned her ear to me.

"I can see through the doors," I whispered to her.

She looked at me in surprise, then nodded before letting me go. "Alright, this is my life I'm trusting to you… don't mess it up!" She whispered back.

Then I went forward and opened the door.

"Congratulations, you pass," Yu Han Sung announced.

Once we all exited through the door, Yu Han Sung spoke again. "You can have a little rest here before the next test. Feel free to enjoy the food and refreshments."

An assortment of food awaited us on a long table. There were couches and other seats arranged, almost like a hotel lobby room.

"Ah, great!" Androssi rushed off to grab food.

"By the way, miss. You are the one Headon sent up, right? Michelle Light?" Yu Han Sung asked Rachel. "If you would come with me, I'd like to speak with you a moment. Your friend may join us if he wants."

Rachel looked at me quizzically as if asking if I wanted to come along.

"Sure, I'll come."

We walked a short distance to a fancy room with a couple of small knee-high wooden tables set up.

"Have a seat, please."

Rachel and I sat down on the ground on two opposite sides of one table, while Yu Han Sung took the other table.

"I heard it from Headon, miss Michelle Light," he said, while setting up his coffee. I looked at it curiously. He was breaking some kind of rod and mixing it into his cup.

"You must be exhausted from the first test?" He continued, smiling. "Or maybe not, with your new friend there. Impressive work, that was, Mr. Axion. It seems Headon chose well."

"Hm… so you're well acquainted with Headon, then?" I asked.

"Of course. He is the one who chooses the Regulars and sends them for testing on this floor. As the test director in charge, naturally we are well acquainted. You should drink before it gets cold, you two. Oh, you don't know how to pour? Just tear off one end and pour it in the mug. It will taste differently depending on how hard you grab it. A matter of delicate control of the fingers."

Rachel and I followed his instructions and poured our own coffee.

"Easy, isn't it…? You don't need to worry at all. That boy who went up before you… all his teammates, his position, his strength… I will steal everything from him."

Rachel was silent as Yu Han Sung spoke.

"Now let me introduce you to the Guide that will lead us."

"Guide?" Rachel asked, finally speaking.

"Yes. They have received the blessings of the Tower, so they can see all paths and assist in its navigation… and at times can even predict and change the future," Yu Han Sung said in a dramatic tone.

Footsteps came from behind as the Guide approached. It was a girl of stunning beauty and intense red hair that went down past her shoulders with matching red eyes. She carried a gold colored metal staff and wore a pink sweater.

"I'm your guide… Hwaryun," she said with a bland expression. "I'll guide you from now on."

Hwaryun and Yu Han Sung weren't merely accomplices of Headon. They were part of an organization called FUG that was opposed to the ruling powers of the Tower, and had a vested interest in sponsoring Irregulars to rebel against Zahard's rule.

Because of an immortality contract that Zahard signed with the Guardians of the Tower, only Irregulars were capable of killing Zahard and the Heads of the Ten Families, who were Zahard's companions on their climb up the Tower.

While Zahard's empire tried to get rid of Irregulars, FUG tried to capture them to work for them.

As for these two… they also seemed to have their own individual agendas, separate from that of FUG, to the extent that they assisted Headon in hiding the Irregular status of Rachel from FUG. And I wasn't sure what relationship Headon himself had with FUG.

From my perspective, it was important they also helped me hide my status as an Irregular from both Zahard and FUG. Zahard's people would try to get rid of any Irregulars they found, and I was nowhere near powerful enough to ignore that, unlike the other famous Irregulars of the Tower. Meanwhile, some factions in FUG might try to recruit me by force.

To Rankers who stood so far above Regulars as to be like gods, I was probably no different from the powerless Rachel or Baam in terms of actual power, but it was just less obvious.

They didn't know how powerful I was, as I'd passed Headon's test on my own, and could be hiding immense power for all they knew.

I needed to take advantage of that while I could, and convince Hwaryun and Yu Han Sung that I was somebody they could work with, somebody worth working with.

I had to show it through both my words and actions on this floor, and it was something I'd been doing all along thus far.

I could let this meeting go on without interference, but they'd invited me for a reason, I was sure.

How could they use me? What motivations did I have? What type of person was I? These were the things that must have been on their minds. Baam and Rachel were too easy to manipulate. One had a one-track mind, and both were powerless.

But I too was an Irregular, and less easy to read, given my feats thus far.

While I wasn't sure of their motivations, I knew they were investing for the long haul, and would most likely hedge their bets regarding all three of us Irregulars, so I had a fair chance.

"So that's why Headon only asked me to get you through this floor? You've got a plan for what comes next. But are you sure that's what you want?" I asked Rachel.

"I… made a deal with him," said Rachel, with a little hesitation.

"A deal with a being you called 'evil'? To steal everything from the friend that tried to risk his life to follow after you?"

"I didn't have any other choice! It was the only way to get through the first floor," Rachel said. "Besides, Baam can't climb the Tower! He's only climbing it to find me. There's no point in him going up any further. He's just wasting his time and risking his life meaninglessly! I'm the one that wanted to go up, not him."

Hwaryun and Yu Han Sung seemed to watch us with interest, without any intent to interrupt.

"I'm not judging you for it. I can even understand why you did it. All I want to say is… you shouldn't let Headon's words fool you. I'm not going to stop you from doing what you need to do. I wouldn't consider it wise to back out of a deal with that guy either, considering how powerless you are right now," I said. "I only want you to remember one thing. Look at everyone in this room right now."

I gestured to the Guide and Yu Han Sung.

Rachel looked at them, they seemed mildly confused as to why I was gesturing to them.

"We're all helping you. It doesn't matter why we're helping you. It doesn't matter if it's all because of Headon's influence. It doesn't matter if you're just being used. At the end of the day, you still made the choices that led to this point. You walked the path of your own accord. You saw the opportunity, and you took it. That makes you special, even if you don't think you are."

"You think I'm special?" Her face was one of disbelief. "Me?"

"You are. Headon told you that you weren't worthy, didn't he? That you weren't chosen."

She nodded and eyed me warily. "But how do you know that? You didn't arrive until after."

I said, shrugging, "It's what I would have done, if I were a manipulative evil bastard trying to convince you to agree to a deal, knowing that you're desperate to climb the Tower. I'm rather evil myself, so I know the tricks of the trade."

She gaped at my response. Hwaryun giggled, her emotionless expression finally falling away. Yu Han Sung covered his mouth as if to stop himself from spitting out his coffee.

"The truly evil wouldn't admit to that so easily. The ones who do usually don't last very long," said Hwaryun.

"You know, you're right. That's why I retired from the evil business."

"So you're not so evil after all," said Hwaryun. "Or are you saying that you've turned back from the path?"

"And yet, you're climbing the Tower, aren't you, Mr. Axion? That means you must have a wish," said Yu Han Sung.

"Have you ever heard of the saying, it's not the destination, but the journey that matters?" I asked back.

He nodded. "I have heard something similar before. An interesting sentiment to be sure… it's very unusual to hear that from a Regular, especially so early in their climb. Few can appreciate the journey until they've completed it and can go no further. I suppose Irregulars truly do think differently, hm?"

"Forgive me if I overstep, but I do wonder, Mr. Yu Han Sung, if you have reached the top, did you find what you wanted? Or is Headon scamming us all?"

Yu Han Sung chuckled at my question. "You don't like Mr. Headon very much, do you?"

"I am merely conducting due diligence before investing my time."

"I will humor you then. As the test director of this Floor, I suppose I ought to explain some of the Tower's workings to a newbie like you. In truth, the 'top' that Rankers have reached is not the true top of the Tower. It is simply the highest floor that has been reached, the 134th Floor. Most inhabitants of the Tower believe that Zahard, the King of the Tower, will conquer the next Floor when he decides to move again. Until then, High Rankers can make the attempt, but none have successfully done so."

"So you haven't made the attempt?"

"Oh no, I'm not a High Ranker, hahaha. High Rankers are the best of the best. Gods among gods, you could say. I'm just a little guy making an honest living as a test director," said Yu Han Sung, downplaying himself.

I knew otherwise, but I wasn't about to call him out on it.

"Fair enough. Well, it seems we've gone on a bit of a tangent. As I was saying earlier, you are special, Michelle. If the Tower didn't choose you as Headon claims, then that makes you even more special. After all, who would you rather bet on? Somebody chosen by fate? Or somebody who can challenge fate? What do you think, Guide who can see the paths of fate?" I turned to Hwaryun.

She looked surprised, but then she stared at me as if trying to see through me, perhaps to discern whether my words referred to anything more than general ideas-which they did, because Baam was the one chosen by the Tower, and Rachel was the challenger.

After a few seconds, the Guide answered. "Sorry, I don't know."

"That's fine. That uncertainty already proves my point," I said, then turned back to Rachel. "You might be a mere pawn, Michelle, but pawns have the highest potential of any piece on the board."

"I know that," said Rachel. "I won't always be this weak. One day that might change… but, until then… I have to borrow the strength of others."

"That day may come sooner than you think… but only if you seek your own strength. Well then, I've said my piece. Take it or leave it as you will. The rest is up to you."

Truthfully, I had no idea if that was true. Rachel had astounding Shinsoo resistance just like all the other Irregulars, but I didn't think she was blessed the way Baam was in actually manipulating it.

Nevertheless, it was sound advice I followed for myself. In a world where individuals could be worth more than armies, over the long run, personal power mattered far more than wealth, connections, or influence.

If she could act on that advice, things would get more interesting around here, though it didn't matter much for me either way.

"Seek my own strength…? Thank you for your advice, Mr. Axion," Rachel said with a slight bow.

Feeling that I had sufficiently demonstrated my capabilities in the field of intrigue to Hwaryun and Yu Han Sung, I let the conversation move on.

"Then, I shall explain our strategy," Hwaryun said.

A/N: I'm still in need of a beta with good knowledge of Tower of God, by the way. So if you want to help, shoot me a PM here or on Discord.

31 - Crown Game 1

31 - Crown Game 1

[Kaleidus]

"Where did you guys go?!" Androssi asked loudly, glaring at us once we returned to the waiting area. "Sneaking off like that…" She looked suspiciously between us.

"The test administrator wanted to have a chat with us. That's all. It's nothing like what you're imagining," I said.

"Why don't I believe you?" She said, crossing her arms.

"Hahaha, Miss Androssi, it is true. I simply wanted to speak with your teammates because of some special circumstances they have," Yu Han Sung walked over from behind us.

"Tch, more special treatment?" Androssi said, shaking her head. "Well, as long as it helps me… I won't complain."

"That's a good outlook, princess. Well then, I'll take my leave now. Lero Ro will be here to take you to your next test," said Yu Han Sung before walking away.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Lero Ro came by.

"Hello Regulars. I'm here to offer you a great opportunity. A Bonus Game."

"Huh? Like an optional test?" Androssi asked.

"That's right. Attending it is up to you and there's no penalty for not attending. However, the winner of this game will be awarded the maximum points and instantly earn the right to move to the next Floor," Lero Ro explained.

"Hell yeah. Let's do it!" Androssi said right away.

Rachel and I both gave our assent as well.

Lero Ro clapped his hands. "Then that's settled. Follow me to the arena."

Lero Ro spoke again as they walked. "For the remainder of the tests on this floor, you three are being grouped with the previous cohort that came in. It's unusual, but it's even more unusual for only one team to pass the first test. Did you have something to do with that, princess?"

"I wish! It was this guy here that did it," Androssi pointed at me.

"It seems that this game will be very interesting. Two princesses, and several people who demonstrate an unusual reaction to Shinsoo," said Lero Ro.

"Two princesses? What?!" Androssi asked with a shocked face

"I thought you knew. There is another princess in the group. Having one is already incredible, but two is unheard of."

"For good reason…" Androssi muttered. "What's her name?" She asked aloud with a now suspicious expression.

"Anak Zahard."

Androssi's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion. "Anak? But she's… huh, whatever. Whoever it is, if she gets in my way, I'll crush her all the same."

We were ushered into a room with a buzzer and a window to a larger cylindrical room. Numerous other rooms like ours were arranged in a circle around the larger room. A huge throne sat in the center of the room, and Lero Ro went to the centre to begin his explanation.

"This is a game to 'steal the crown'. The team who holds the crown at the game's end, wins the game. But the rules are a little complicated. A game consists of five rounds and each round is five minutes long. Only the first five teams to press the buzzer are allowed into the round. The team that possesses the crown at the end of each round progresses to the next round where they compete against four new teams that press the buzzer. The true winner will be the winning team at the end of the fifth round."

"There is also a way to end the round early. That is to sit on the throne wearing the crown before the five minutes are up, ending the round immediately and the team whose member is sitting on the throne becomes the winner of that round."

"However, that person's movement will be restricted. If there was a winning team at the end of a round, that team may keep the crown for the next round, but they will have to stay on the throne, wearing the crown. If they lose the crown or get off the throne, they are eliminated from the game. If another team takes the crown and sits on the throne, that team wins the round."

Suddenly, Lero Ro shouted out. "Correct!" As if he heard somebody commenting on his explanation.

"The winner of the previous round assumes a big risk in the next round. But if you postpone participating because of the risk, you won't even be able to get into the game at the end! There's a lot of rules but ultimately you just have to steal the crown and keep it at the end of the game. Don't overthink it. Oh also, there will be a team from another test cohort participating. It's a long story. You can check the instruction book next to the buzzer too. Now let's start!"

It was a long explanation, but most teams should be able to understand the core dynamics. Everybody would want to be in the last round, and they'd want to give themselves ample time to get the crown. But they couldn't wait too long to start participating, otherwise they'd be unable to get in when everybody pressed the buzzer at the same time.

This was where we'd meet some of the other main cast. And Hwaryun was also participating as a Regular in disguise. With this game, our team would be subtly placed with the other Regulars while Yu Han Sung quietly covered up the results of our cohort, thus hiding my and Rachel's status as Irregulars, all the while convincing Lero Ro and Quant that he had an entirely different objective in mind, working for the Tower's ruling powers.

"So… when should we go in? I think we should probably wait and watch a bit first," said Androssi.

My purpose in the Tower was to nourish the water spirits, grow stronger, and perhaps acquire more useful items. Climbing the Tower would achieve all of that quite naturally, but the results of each test were less important to me.

For now, it would be better to keep things close to the canon storyline, and follow along with Headon's conspiracy, until I saw an opportunity otherwise.

"Agreed," I said to Androssi.

"You guys can decide," said Rachel.

When the round began, only two teams made their way into the arena.

One team consisted of a short green girl with the tail of a lizard, a brown haired average looking guy in a purple jumpsuit, and a black haired swordsman wearing martial arts robes carrying three swords.

They were Anak Zahard, Ship Leesoo, and Hatsu respectively, and part of the main cast. Anak was a fake Zahard's princess… sort of. She wasn't supposed to be born, but she was quite strong, similar to a real princess, and possessed the Green April, a powerful weapon that was awarded to her mother.

Ship Leesoo was a rather intelligent guy that figured out the door test through deduction. He looked like he was quite frustrated that his teammates pressed the buzzer so early.

And Hatsu was a very skilled swordsman that would gain quite a lot of notoriety as a Regular later on.

The other team, I didn't recognize. I assumed they weren't important characters, so I must've forgotten about them.

"Begin!"

"Leave it to me this time, don't interfere!" Anak said brazenly while stepping forward.

"Alone, you insane?" One of the other team's guys asked.

After some back and forth bantering, one of them decided to go alone against Anak too. He was promptly pushed into a wall and knocked out.

"…"

The other two charged at Anak angrily. She suddenly extended her weapon's hook and easily deflected one of them. The other one punched the back of Anak's head, but she was totally unaffected by the hit.

Then she grabbed his wrist, breaking it, and threw him bodily into the wall. When the last guy tried to attack again, she grabbed his fencing sword by the sharp edge without injury and similarly threw him into the wall.

After a while of getting toyed with, they tried to make a grab for the crown, only to see Anak dash there at extreme speed, hit them all by extending her weapon, and wear the crown.

Leesoo tried to take the crown from Anak, but she refused and sat down on the throne.

The round was called.

"So that's the fake princess," said Androssi. "What an idiot, sitting on the throne like that. She should've let her weak teammate sit on it instead. But that weapon…"

"You want it?" I asked.

"That's the Green April, if I'm not mistaken. There's no way a princess can get that without becoming a Ranker. How did she get it?"

I shrugged.

"What kind of weapon is it?" Rachel asked.

"It's an ignition weapon. They're like living weapons and the 13 months series are extremely powerful. It's an honor for a princess to receive one," Androssi said.

For the next round, two teams went in.

I honestly couldn't recognize any of them except the one with a sleeping bag, even though I thought I probably should've. The sleeping bag guy had really good Shinsoo control but was extremely lazy.

One of them was a creature with a featureless face, no mouth or nose or anything except a red eye.

It managed to talk without opening any sort of mouth, and exchanged some pre-battle banter with Hatsu about how nobody uses big swords with high friction on the higher floors as Shinsoo gets thicker, and that this would be one of their last opportunities to compare their swordsmanship.

"I don't think that's true. The Arie family uses swords and I'm pretty sure many of them use swords bigger than those," said Androssi. "They don't seem to be bothered by the Shinsoo on the higher Floors."

"Interesting. Perhaps, their swords are made of a different frictionless material?" I said.

"Hm… like suspendium? I guess that's possible. Making swords out of that would be really expensive though," said Androssi. "Personally, I think they probably use some sort of Shinsoo technique."

Suspendium was the material that allowed the Pocket and various other things in the Tower to float in a Shinsoo environment. Androssi was right that it was very expensive, and generally only used in small quantities. But what other uses it might have or where it came from, I didn't know.

Hatsu completely crushed the team that tried to face him in short order with his three sword style, and did it just in time to help out Leesoo who was about to be defeated by the other team.

Then he noticed the sleeping bag guy.

"I don't like killing, but there's an exception for trash. If you don't want to fight, wake up, and buzz off. Or else, you'll be the first to die."

"What a big softie," Androssi said with a smirk. "He left all those other guys alive. But he's got a cute face."

"I think the sleeping guy is going to surprise us," I said.

"Yeah, he's just pretending to be asleep" Androssi said confidently.

Immediately after her assertion, the sleeping guy got up, hands raised and light gathered in his palms.

"!" Hatsu turned around. "Anak, get away! It's Shinsoo!"

A blinding beam of light lanced towards Anak, who dodged upwards. She kept one hand touching the throne while she scaled up the backrest to the top of the massive throne.

During the distraction, the other two members of the team charged towards Anak and engaged in close combat. Leesoo and Hatsu joined the fray soon after.

Then another massive beam of light crashed directly into Anak.

"Damn it!" Leesoo shouted.

While smoke obscured Anak, the Shinsoo controller spoke. "Give us the crown. I can attack you from anywhere."

Anak's voice rang out. "The bait was not for you…" Then her form was revealed, completely unharmed. "You jerk… who do you think you are?"

"Hoh… that was an impressive attack for a Regular," said Androssi. "But it'll take more than that to hurt a princess, even a fake one. Thanks to the powers we received from Zahard, our bodies are as durable as a Ranker's."

"She said something about bait… what is she trying to do?" Rachel asked.

"Ignition!" Anak shouted while holding up the Green April. "I will kill all of you!"

Her weapon suddenly extended and enlarged at a barely visible speed even to my eyes, and she swept it across the arena through where the Shinsoo controller was and all the way into the wall, cratering it.

"Laure! Are you okay!" One of his teammates shouted.

Laure had successfully dodged, but looked concerned.

"You say you can attack from anywhere? Then I can attack everywhere from this throne!" Anak shouted.

Then she did just that, her weapon split apart into numerous segments and seemingly multiplied, attacking everywhere at once while the other team desperately dodged.

After a while, she stopped and looked to her left towards one of the observation rooms.

The other team took the chance to run away, and the round ended with their forfeit.

But instead of returning to her position on the throne's seat, Anak left the throne entirely, and crashed through the window to another team.

I had Agate follow her in agatespace.

"The hell is she doing?" Androssi asked, not being able to see what was going on. "She's disqualified, right?!"

"It seems that somebody has the Black March, and it resonated with her Green April. She noticed, and now she wants it," I answered.

"The Black March? Another of the 13 month series? But how? Is there another princess here?!"

"No, it's a boy," I said.

"That's even more ridiculous! What is going on here?" Androssi stomped on the ground.

Just when Anak was about to take the Black March by force, Lero Ro interfered. He easily froze her, and forced her to back down.

But then she proposed adding a new rule. Lero Ro seemed to be fighting off a smile as he heard the proposition. What exactly did he have to be so smug or happy about? He wasn't participating in the bet, so what did he have to gain? I wracked my mind and couldn't remember anything about this.

"Hm… looks like they're betting the Green April and Black March," I said.

"You can still hear what's going on over there?" Androssi asked. "So it's not only sight… what a useful ability."

"ROOOARRR!" The voice of Rak Wraithraiser thundered through the arena. One of Baam's current teammates, a very large alligator-like species, almost five meters tall. "OF COUUURSE! THIS GAME IS NOTHING WITHOUT ME! DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!"

Quite a prideful character too.

Shortly after, Lero Ro announced the change to the rules, but only to Baam and Anak's teams. "If Baam's team wins the game, the Green April will go to him and Anak can't steal the Black March from him. If his team loses, the Black March goes to Anak. There will be no other changes, so that means Anak's team lost this round and the next round begins without a winning team. Now let's continue, Regulars!"

I relayed this information to Androssi.

When he retreated to his observation area, I heard him mutter to himself. "This crown game will be the best crown game in history."

I frowned at hearing that. He had me thinking he had some devious plan but it turned out he was just getting a lot of entertainment from this bet.

"Tch, so nothing's changed for the rest of us in the game. The bet's just between them. On the other hand, that means there's nothing stopping me from stealing the Black March during the game!" Androssi said with a grin. "Hey. You guys don't mind if we let Baam's team win, do you? Otherwise, if they lose and Anak's team wins the bet, the Ranker might make me hand it over to them when the game ends."

"No problem. It'd be stupid to pass up on such a valuable weapon. Besides, Michelle and I didn't want to move up to the next floor so soon anyways, right?"

"Yes. Even though advancing sounds nice, we can learn a lot staying on this floor. The test administrator told us they'll have tutors for us," said Rachel. "If we skip ahead, we'll miss out on that and be forced to pay for our own training later."

But Rachel gave me a glance to which I returned with a barely perceptible nod. Although we didn't want to advance, we couldn't let Baam's team advance either. So we couldn't let them win the Crown game, despite Androssi's request.

"Tutors? Interesting. So this bonus game is actually a trap for the overeager? Why didn't you say so sooner?" Androssi asked.

"Because it won't matter. Even if we win this game, we can just request to decline the reward. Rather than a real bonus game, this is actually just a front to move us in with the other cohort. They can't run the next test with only three of us because it's a group thing," Rachel explained.

"Oh. Huh, so this is what it's like to have special connections," said Androssi with a smirk. "I like it."

[Interlude]

Lero Ro's advanced hearing picked up on the conversation between the three Regulars from the other testing district.

'What? I thought Quant said Yu Han Sung wanted to send these three up to the next floor quickly… who could've told them about the tutors for the Position Test? There's no way Quant would do that, so it must be Yu Han Sung… '

He opened his Pocket and looked up the information on the three Regulars. Androssi Zahard, Michelle Light, and Kaleidus Axion. A Zahard princess and two Regulars with no background information from Unknown areas.

Well, the Tower was huge and there were indeed many unknown areas not mapped out by Zahard's empire yet, sometimes there were those who hadn't even heard of Zahard's empire.

If he hadn't seen their unusual abilities during his barrier test, he wouldn't think anything of them.

It was obviously the princess of Zahard that was receiving special treatment. Corruption at its finest. And the princess had complained about his test being unfair…

Now he was starting to get the picture.

An entire group of Regulars massacred, resulting in only a single team passing.

It had obviously been planned. To give the princess two exceptionally powerful teammates while making the process look random, as if it happened naturally.

Lero Ro didn't like it. This way of running the tests… it was contrary to what he had been told. To find the most worthy, when the game was rigged? He resolved to talk to Yu Han Sung after this.

'Why was this even necessary? All the previous princesses dominated their tests easily with their own abilities… Anak was strong, but disappointing compared to Yuri. Although… Androssi calls her a fake, despite the name. What kind of strength will she show? Moreover, why hold this Crown game? They could've simply been grouped with this cohort for the Position Test.'

Not once did he suspect that the information he was seeing had been altered. That in fact, the two Regulars had been Irregulars, and the princess wasn't the one getting special treatment at all.

A/N: I'm happy to announce that a new ToG beta reader has just joined the team, NS666. And the story continues… in this chapter the battles themselves are essentially canon, so it's mainly a look at MC's team's reactions and thoughts.

32 - Crown Game 2

32 - Crown Game 2

[Kaleidus]

Then when Anak's team was walking back to their room, Anak noticed us through the window, or more specifically, Androssi.

Androssi mouthed something to the fake princess, and Anak's expression turned ugly.

Before she could respond to the provocation, Hatsu put a sword to her neck. "Stop. Don't make any more silly moves that will harm our team."

"What team?" Anak said with a scoff before pushing the blade away, blatantly unfazed by its sharp edge, and walking off.

When the 3rd round started, four teams tried to go in. Everyone was about to rush the crown, but Khun Aguero Agnis, Baam's other teammate, successfully got there first, when the other teams had barely moved.

Then he threw the crown, taunting the other teams to fight for it themselves. Predictably, they didn't take the bait and instead ganged up on Baam's team.

They did an admirable job fighting off all the other teams despite that. Rak with sheer physical prowess, Khun using his special bag "Manbarondenna" that could suck people inside and a switching trick with his knife and long sword. Just when it looked like a few crafty contestants were about to get the drop on Baam, the weak link in their team that didn't know how to fight, he stopped a bunch of attacks with an unconscious use of Shinsoo.

At the end, all the other teams were defeated. One little guy tried to grab the crown when everybody was distracted.

Then it turned out that Khun had cloned the crown with his bag. Finally, Khun gave the real crown to Baam and sat him on the throne.

"Not bad… that blue-haired one is pretty smart. But that bag of his is almost cheating. He's from the Khun family, huh… that's the largest of the Ten. That boy with the Black March doesn't seem very strong though," Androssi analyzed.

"It would be unwise to underestimate him. You noticed it, didn't you? The way he used Shinsoo instinctively," I said.

"Was that really him? He looks clueless, as if he didn't even know what happened there."

"He's the one…" Rachel said. "That's Baam. The one that's trying to follow me up the Tower."

"You know him?" Androssi asked with a confused expression. "That's… weird. Regulars aren't supposed to be grouped with people they knew before they started climbing. But then… I guess we're with a different group than we started with."

"So, want to go in yet?"

"When we go in… can you guys please try not to hurt Baam too much?" asked Rachel.

"Don't want to hurt your friend? Well, we're going to let his team win anyways, so whatever. Let's go!" Androssi said, back to a cheerful mood and pounded the buzzer.

The three of us appeared in the arena.

In this round, Khun would go on to explain how he smuggled some Regulars in through the previous tests via his bag and would be calling in a favor to get them to help in this round, then finish quickly.

Rachel's team wasn't supposed to go in this round, but Androssi was all fired up, and I also had a reason for deviating.

In the next round, Hwaryun's team would go in. But then when she fakes an attack on Rachel, Baam would notice and get in the way, while unleashing another instinctual Shinsoo attack. However, that same attack would also blind one of Hwaryun's eyes.

That would be a shame, considering she was a part of our little conspiracy, and my shield against the more hostile factions of FUG. As a Guide, she couldn't see the Irregulars in the paths, so it was up to me to stop her from getting hurt.

So that was why I agreed to enter in this round.

"Begin!"

Androssi burst forth with extreme speed. She might be able to run faster than I could fly with my un-Reinforced wings.

Like this, she destroyed the competition in one devastating swoop with a combination of direct physical combat alongside some kind of remotely controlled pair of bell-like discs.

Khun's smile fell off as he stared at us in shock. His helpers were defeated effortlessly by Androssi. His plan was ruined.

Now it was just us and Baam's team.

"You guys did well, but you're just out of your league against us," said Androssi after finishing up with the other teams. "I'm sorry to say… but your little bet with that fake princess is off. I'll be taking the Black March!"

"What? How did you know about-" Khun was cut off when Androssi flashed in front of him and he barely had time to put up his bag to defend. He tried to open the suction function but Androssi simply smirked and kicked the bag closed again, putting enough force into it to smack the bag into Khun's face.

"Gah!" Khun went flying into a wall.

"Mr. Khun!" Baam shouted after him, worry clear on his face.

Even Rak was wary as he moved closer to Baam, ready to defend.

"Do you know why we got sent to participate with your group?" Androssi asked with a playful smile.

Khun picked himself up painfully. "Damn. So you guys are the ones from the other test district?"

"That's right. In our first test, we eliminated everyone else. We're the only team left, out of 400 Regulars," Androssi announced to the whole arena. "That's why we're here. And just so you know, my kill count was only 107. If you think I'm strong… let me tell you. My teammate, the big guy back there…" she pointed towards me with one thumb, "… he took down the other three hundred in one move!"

Wow, she was really pumping me up. I could hardly live up to the hype, but I suppose she wanted to spook them into giving up. Or perhaps, she was trying to draw attention away from Rachel, as she knew that Rachel wasn't very strong.

"Why are there such monsters on this floor? This is the goddamn Floor of Tests, the beginning!" Khun asked with a weary voice.

"Don't give up, blue turtle! They still need to get past me!" Rak shouted courageously.

I walked towards him calmly, with Rachel trailing behind. The giant alligator stepped backwards as I approached, pointing his spear at me.

"I'm not scared of you! I'm Rak Wraithraiser, you turtles!"

Then he stopped backing away and instead charged towards me.

I really didn't want to demonstrate my actual physical capabilities, which were lower than Androssi's, so an alternative show of force was in order. Since Androssi hyped me up so much, I'd use that fear to my advantage.

Rak the five meter tall alligator man thrust his spear towards me. He was skilled and would become quite powerful later, but fortunately he was much weaker than me at the moment, without having learned how to use Shinsoo yet. In this group of Regulars, only Androssi and Anak could exceed my level of Reinforced strength and speed. Maybe Hatsu could come close, but not Rak, despite his impressive bulk. He could probably outmatch me if I used only the Armoriont without Reinforcement, but once I boosted myself with magecraft, I should have the edge.

So I didn't dodge, instead, I caught the spear.

"Raa!" Rak yelled while trying to retrieve his weapon from me.

Then I sent mana into it improperly, Breaking it with Reinforcement.

The spear shattered at the point of contact, pieces falling to the ground.

Rak's eyes widened like saucers as he stammered and backed away quickly, seeing me apparently crush the weapon into pieces with my bare hand. "Ah… a super turtle… !"

"Hah! The Black March is mine!" Androssi shouted as she appeared in front of a surprised Baam.

"No!" Khun ran to intercept but was outclassed in speed.

"Ah… !" Baam gasped and flinched while holding the Black March out in front of him.

Suddenly an explosion of Shinsoo sent Androssi rocketing away. She flipped around mid-air to land beside us and held her forehead before shaking it off.

"Unghh. That actually hurt… I'm impressed," said Androssi.

"Was that you, miss Black March?" Baam asked aloud, looking at the needle weapon in his hands. "Thank you!"

"Is he really that clueless? Did he seriously just control Shinsoo without even realizing it?" Androssi said with shock.

"He's a natural," I said. "It won't be as easy as it looks to get that weapon off him, especially if he actually ignites it."

Khun and Rak formed a defensive wall in front of Baam but otherwise made no other moves, watching us warily.

"Do you have any ideas? Can't you do whatever you did back in the first test and take them all out?" Androssi asked me with an expectant expression.

"Hm…" In fact, I'd already started releasing the paralytic virus into the air. But it would take a little while for it to infect them and take effect by spreading through the air and skin contact, so I needed to buy some time.

Compared to using a concentrated blast of the gas agent, the virus worked a lot slower. Its advantage was being able to spread by itself, being more customizable with the effects and timing, and being less traceable as it cleared out from the body's system.

I'd already released it on Androssi earlier, so some of it was probably starting to infect Baam and Khun as well, but it had to grow from very low concentrations after the initial infection. Then there was Rak, whose body was of such size that it might need a much more potent dose to have an effect.

"There's still plenty of time left in this round. Why don't we have some fun first? There are some things I'd like to try out," I said, drawing Derflinger slowly.

As we planned beforehand, Derflinger remained silent, so that he could pretend to be like other Ignition weapons that had to be activated.

"The Black March… just how powerful is a weapon from the 13 month series?" I mused aloud, having drawn all attention to the crystalline sword in my hand.

"Fine. Want me to take care of these two?" Androssi offered.

"No, that's fine. All those Regulars from before died too quickly. I need to know how much to hold back if I don't want to accidentally kill someone. These two will also serve as a useful test," I said, playing up the story Androssi had already told.

"Okay then," Androssi said, before standing back with Rachel. She seemed eager to see me in action as well.

"Blue turtle… do you have a plan?" Rak asked Khun. He still held up the broken end of his spear in a defensive stance.

"Of course, I always have a plan," Khun answered confidently. If I didn't know better, I might have thought he was really that confident. But I could tell from the sweat falling from his head that he was unnerved, even if he did have a plan.

"Ignite, Derflinger. Slash Wave Level One," I said, swinging Derflinger diagonally.

Derflinger glowed with light and an arc of energy was sent out crashing into Khun and Rak.

Khun dodged it by bending down, while Rak tried to block with his broken spear. It destroyed the weapon and hit Rak in the chest, making it smoke with light burns. He grunted in pain, but was otherwise fine.

"Huh? That wasn't so strong!" Rak exclaimed, clutching at the wound.

"Don't underestimate him, Rak! He's toying with us," Khun said.

"Good, good. If you were hurt by something of that level, I'd be very disappointed," I said.

"Hahaha… that was the weakest possible setting," said Derflinger. "Wanna guess how many levels there are?"

"Did that sword just talk?" Khun asked.

"Nope," Derflinger answered. "You're just hearing voices in your head. You took a hard fall back there, kid. Should probably get that checked out soon."

"Very funny…" said Khun.

"The weakest setting…?" Rak said quietly as he rubbed his chest.

"Hehe… that's right. That was one-thousandth of my true power!" Derflinger said in a haughty tone.

"First the Black March, then the Green April, and now there's an Ignition weapon that can even talk out loud?" Khun asked with frustration. "What's with all these ultra rare weapons? Is this supposed to be a test for Regulars or Rankers?!"

"Slash Wave Level Three," I said, swinging again.

This time the arc of energy was much larger. Compared to the Slash Beams I used against the White Steel Eel, these Slash Waves were designed to be larger in area but less concentrated. At Level three, it was already wide enough to be half of Rak's height.

Khun managed to dodge again by jumping, but Rak wasn't so lucky. He tried but was too slow and got blown away, crashing into a wall.

When Khun landed, he stumbled awkwardly with a shocked expression, before shaking his arms and hands as if testing them. Looks like the virus was starting to work.

Rak picked himself up from the wrecked rubble with a groan.

"But I dodged… so why…?" Khun talked to himself, then shouted. "Careful guys, something's strange about his attack! There's an invisible part to it!"

"So you figured it out," I said, confirming his false hypothesis while walking towards the throne. "But it's too little, too late.

Baam gulped nervously at my approach.

Khun dashed over but collapsed midway. "Arghh!"

"Now then, Baam, was it? You should ignite that weapon. Otherwise, you might not survive."

"Huh? Wait a minute, Mr. Axion!" Rachel called out. "Please, don't-"

Baam looked towards the cloaked girl in surprise, seemingly recognizing her voice.

I paid them no mind as I swung.

"Beam, Level Four."

The same level of attack that I'd used on the White Steel Eel was unleashed on the boy.

He turned back to me with widened eyes. "Ig-ignite, please!"

Just before my beam hit, the Black March glowed white and crackled like lightning.

A large explosion rocked the arena. Smoke obscured the whole throne.

"Why…?" Rachel looked stunned.

"Relax, your boyfriend's fine," Androssi said, narrowing her eyes at Baam's position. "He actually ignited it… I can hardly believe it. Some random kid just ignited one of the 13 month series."

When the smoke cleared, Baam was revealed to be still standing on the throne, the Black March crackling with energy.

"Haah… hah…" He panted, as if out of breath. Then his eyes closed, and he slumped back, unconscious, but still on the throne. Looks like the virus got to him. Or maybe he somehow exhausted himself igniting the Black March.

"Baam!" Rachel shouted and ran over to check on him.

I also walked over and took the Black March from his hands. Its glow disappeared and it turned back into its base form as a long black needle.

"Hm… I don't suppose you'd be willing to ignite for me?" I spoke to the Black March.

"Ten bucks says it'll just zap you," said Derflinger.

My vision changed, and I saw a blonde girl with very long hair wearing black and red robes.

It was the spirit of the Black March, conversing with me through some sort of mental connection.

She floated around me, taking a close look.

"You're pretty handsome too, but… I liked that boy," she said.

"Sorry about that I have nothing against him, it was just a competition by the rules of the test. Can I convince you to switch sides?"

She floated higher and held her hands out to the side. "Why do you need me? For what do you fight? Gold and jewels? Magical fruits, heavenly beauties? The taste of power and glory? What is it that drives you?"

She probably wanted a heartwarming and romantic answer like Baam's, but that would be an obvious lie. She would find out soon enough, even if I tricked her now, though I suspected she would know if I lied anyways. Things capable of direct telepathy were likely much better at discerning lies using that mental advantage. There was no telling how much information she could glean from my mind.

And in the long run, there was little point in obtaining a weapon or ally that was unreliable at critical moments. Without a means of forcing obedience, a weapon with free will was only valuable to me if it could align with my interests.

So I gave her something close to the truth.

"All of those, and none of those. Wealth, love, and power, these are all things I may want at various times. But those are just goals and checkpoints on a longer journey. What I really want is the thrill of adventure, and the freedom to live however I want, no matter what forces stand in my way."

"You're certainly different… I might have considered it if I had met you first, but I really did like that boy. Sorry."

The vision ended.

Almost no time at all had passed on the outside. I saw Androssi walking over, giving the still struggling Khun a kick to keep him down-"Urhk!"-and coming towards me.

"A gift for you, my lady," I said while presenting the Black March to her with both hands. If the Black March wouldn't work for me, I might as well give it to Androssi to buy goodwill, though I doubted she could ignite it herself. Canonically, the princess that actually owned it, Yuri Zahard, never managed to ignite it, due to the weapon's preference for men.

She smiled widely and took it. "Thank you! I'll treasure it." Then she swung it around a bit to get a feel for it.

"Ignite!"

Obviously, nothing happened. She scowled. "Ignite! Ignite!"

Then she stomped on the ground while shaking the Black March up and down. "You stupid needle, why won't you ignite?! You'll ignite for some random kid but not me?! Don't you recognize who I am?"

"The spirit of the Black March seems to prefer good-looking men," I told her. "She said she liked the boy."

"A loyal weapon, who would've thought?" Derflinger asked.

Androssi growled in frustration. "Whatever. I'll just keep it until it changes its mind. Even if I can't ignite it, it's still one of the most durable weapons in the Tower."

A/N: Another new beta, kfkhishou, is helping out now, hurray! There's another reason that MC didn't try harder to keep the Black March, if you haven't guessed it already, it'll become clear in a couple more chapters.

33 - Crown Game 3

33 - Crown Game 3

[Interlude]

Anak Zahard smirked as Baam's team was dominated by the other district's group. She knew they would get crushed, and then she'd get the Black March.

Even if the other group stole the Black March, Anak and Baam's bet had been made part of the rules of the game, backed by a Ranker. She could just imagine the look on the face of that smug spooky eyed girl's face when the Ranker took it away.

Then the timer started counting down, and they made no move to take the crown while Baam continued to lie on the throne unconscious.

"What? Why aren't they taking the crown?!"

Androssi looked up to their window and gave Anak a little wave and a smirk.

"That… that bitch! She knows about the bet?!" Anak yelled, enraged. "She's trying to make me lose!"

"It's your own fault for making the bet like that, Anak," said Hatsu heatedly. He was already extremely angry about Anak forgoing the team's interest for her own objectives.

"No, this isn't fair! Test Administrator, let me back out there! They can't win the Crown like that, if they fall unconscious, they should be considered knocked out!" Anak shouted towards Lero Ro while banging on the window.

"Haven't you messed things up for us enough already?!" Hatsu shouted. "Accept your own failures and learn from them you brat!"

"Shut up!"

Meanwhile, Ship Leesoo was sweating buckets, saying nothing. His teammates were far stronger than he was and he had no intention of trying to get between them, or of going back out there.

'What the HELL was that? That girl is as strong as Anak, no, probably even stronger! She did all that WITHOUT an Ignition weapon, and while wearing freaking heels! And that guy, if that girl was telling the truth, that's a real monster! Killing 300 Regulars in one move? And he's not just a brute either, I can't see through him at all!'

"Ahem! I am pausing the round," Lero Ro's voice announced. The timer froze. "Listen carefully!"

"There shall be a change to the rules," Lero Ro's voice rang out. "While it is technically possible for a contestant to retain the crown and sit on the throne without being conscious, it would be against the spirit of this game to allow them to win, if all of their members have been clearly defeated. A team should win on their own merits. I cannot allow the test to be accused of corruption, therefore if Baam's team retains the crown by the end of the game despite being unable to fight, there shall be no winner of the Crown game."

"YES!" Anak cheered. "Take that, you little slut! The Black March will be MINE!"

Androssi looked outraged and almost ready to charge at Anak.

But then Lero Ro's voice continued. "However, due to a bet between two of the teams which I authorized earlier, another change is also necessary. The bet was such that if Baam's team won the Crown game, Baam would receive the Green April from Anak's team, while if they lost, Anak would receive the Black March from Baam's team. Androssi's team has taken the Black March but left the Crown alone with the intention of ensuring that Anak's team loses the bet so that they can keep the Black March themselves. Am I correct, Miss Androssi?"

"Yeah! We stole it fair and square!"

A number of other Regulars sweatdropped at the claim of stealing something fairly.

"Now, the bet was originally only between Anak's team and Baam's team. It would be unfair for me to give the Black March to Anak if Baam's team loses because of a change in the rules, but it would also be unfair for Anak to lose the Green April without a chance to fight back against a third party interfering in their bet instead of playing the Crown game normally. Therefore the final change I will make is this: Anak's team will be permitted to join the final round, but they will NOT be able to win the Crown game. They have already disqualified themselves earlier, and so they will only be allowed to compete for the sake of their bet, nothing more. The previous bet is still valid and will proceed normally. However, in the event that Baam's team retains the Crown without winning the Crown game, then whoever is in possession of the Black March at the end of the Crown game shall be allowed to keep it, regardless of the previous bet. As for the Green April, should Baam's team sit on the throne and be wearing the crown by the end of the game, then they will be considered to have won the bet even if they are not considered to have won the Crown game. Therefore, Miss Anak, you shall have a fair opportunity to protect your Green April, and Miss Androssi, you shall have a fair chance to keep the Black March. Now let's cont-"

"Wait, what happens if we decide to win the Crown game ourselves then? We only let Baam's team keep the crown because we thought you might take the Black March for the bet. But if we'll be allowed to keep it…"

"As I said, Miss Androssi, the new rules will only apply in the special case that Baam's team retains the Crown while unable to fight, winning their bet but still losing the game. If you win the Crown game for yourselves, the previous bet will apply, and the Black March will be given to Anak. While it is fair to use an opponent's weapon during the test itself, I cannot officially sanction blatant robbery. You will only be given the Black March if you assist Baam's team in winning their bet. Any more questions?"

"Hold on, don't we get a say in this?" Khun asked from his position lying on the ground. "Why should we hand over the Black March?"

"Well Mr. Khun, you can certainly refuse and let the previous bet proceed if that's what you really want. But if I forced them to return the Black March, that would mean that Miss Androssi's team will have no incentive to help you win the bet, and I imagine they would just take the Crown for themselves," said Lero Ro.

"Hell yea, we're not going to help you guys if we aren't getting anything out of it," Androssi added. "But if you agree to this deal, you can still win the Green April from that dumb lizard!"

"Fine! We agree," said Khun. Put that way, it was a pretty good trade. They could either lose without getting anything, or lose the Black March but get a weapon of comparable value to replace it. And it'd be easier to deal with Anak once she'd lost her Ignition weapon.

In fact, after he thought about it some more, it would even make sense to offer them another deal…

Anak clicked her tongue as she realized she wouldn't be getting an easy victory either. Now they'd have to fight the other team to stop Baam's team from winning the bet.

"Just be grateful you're getting a chance to fight at all," said Hatsu. "If we weren't allowed in, that other team would dominate for sure and you'd lose the Green April."

Then Lero Ro announced that the game was unpaused and the timer continued to count down towards the end of the fourth round.

"Huh? What is it?" Androssi asked, kneeling down when Khun gestured for her and her teammates to come closer.

"Listen, I'll make you guys a deal. Help us win the Crown game for real, and we'll also give you the Black March. You can't win the Crown game either way if you want the Black March, so why not help us out, and let us help fight in the next round? We'll even help you guys on the next floor, tell you what tests there are," Khun said in a very low voice.

"Eh…" Androssi looked over to the tall man in their group wearing a black visor. "Axion, this deal doesn't sound bad. But is it even possible for them to recover from your technique in time for the next round?"

"Sure. I wouldn't mind working with them either," said Axion.

"Then we have a deal?" Khun asked.

After that, the man touched each member of the downed team with a finger. Something tiny extended outwards from the finger and pricked their skin like a needle, injecting a cure. It wasn't long before they all woke up or got back up.

When Leesoo saw this, his expression fell further in despair.

"They're working together now! We don't stand a chance!" He cried out.

"Shut up! I'll defeat them all!" Anak exclaimed.

[Kaleidus]

The change in the rules was unexpected, but made little difference. Rachel and I weren't going to let Baam's team win and move up anyways, and even if Lero Ro hadn't changed the rules, Yu Han Sung probably would have done something to stop them from going up.

Now there was a chance for Androssi to keep the Black March though, so all in all, we benefited from the change.

Khun's offer made sense from a rational perspective, if we were normal contestants, though I didn't plan to follow through on it because we couldn't let them move up yet.

We made our way back to our own waiting room to wait for the next round once the timer signaled the end of the fourth. According to the rules, the teams which did not voluntarily forfeit before a round ended or get disqualified by being knocked out and/or losing the crown or throne could hit the buzzer again to join future rounds. We even had priority because we'd participated before, if multiple teams hit their buzzers simultaneously.

When the final round began, four teams plus Anak's team entered, bringing the total including Baam's team as the winners of the previous round to six teams.

The other three teams were new, but I didn't see anyone I recognized except our Guide, Hwaryun, in her mask and leotard.

Perhaps fate would give her that injury again, despite my efforts.

As soon as the round began, Anak made a mad dash for Baam.

Khun went to intercept.

Androssi got there faster.

"Ignite!" Anak's Green April whipped out and it decompressed a huge segment which crashed into Androssi.

She defended with the Black March but was still blown away. But she also sent out her discs to attack Anak, which forced her to grow additional sections from the Green April's hook.

A quarter of the arena was quickly covered by the Green April, and the team near her got hit and wiped out just like that.

Meanwhile, Hwaryun was also on the offensive, rapidly using martial arts and Shinsoo manipulation with her staff to take out another team all by herself.

Her abilities at this time were actually quite impressive compared to the other Regulars, able to fight on even footing with Androssi, at least when Androssi was playing around. I wasn't sure what her plan was though, now that Anak's team was also in here.

Androssi quickly recovered and charged Anak again, dodging all the Green April's spikes.

Their battle soon covered the whole arena in Green April segments, giving it the appearance of a forest .

Hatsu dashed for Baam while the two princesses were engaged in a furious melee.

Khun and Rak both intercepted him.

"Sword That Flies Higher Than Any!" Hatsu threw the sword into the air while drawing a second sword. The first sword kept Rak at bay while his second sword clashed with Khun's longsword.

"Sword That Flies Lower Than Any!" Hatsu swung hard and unleashed a blast wave into Khun.

"Shit!"

Khun was blown away. Then Rak was also blown away in short order.

"Ahh!" Leesoo was sent flying into Hatsu by Hwaryun.

Hatsu caught him and then faced the incoming masked Guide.

A deadly exchange followed, with Hwaryun expertly avoiding or blocking the strikes from both his swords.

"You're good!" Hatsu complimented. "But it won't be enough! Spectral Dance, First Strike!"

He entered into a new stance then slashed at Hwaryun, unleashing a wave of Shinsoo.

The Hwaryun dodged, but only barely. The attack went on to hit her teammates behind her, who had tried to join the fray.

It sliced through one of them, cutting his left arm off as he screamed, while the other was blown away by the sheer air pressure and sent into a wall, unconscious.

Rachel and I made our way to the throne unchallenged.

"… Rachel?" Baam tried to ask, but got ignored.

Hatsu and Hwaryun continued their battle, but they seemed evenly matched, neither able to get the drop on the other.

Androssi and Anak were similarly locked in battle. Androssi tripped on her heels and got hit by the Green April again, but she was durable enough that she simply bounced back.

"Hand over the Black March, bitch!" Anak yelled.

"Not on your life, you fake!"

Leesoo quietly made his way over towards the throne while the others were distracted.

I turned to look at him.

He jumped in fright. "Hiiieee!" While mid-air, he made a bunch of martial arts poses and kept moving towards us while posturing.

"You really want to face my deadly martial arts?! I bet you're nothing but a big bluff! 300 Regulars in one move… pshhh! If you're really that strong, why even resort to tricks and invisible attacks?"

I turned away, pretending to ignore him in favor of watching the other fights.

Leesoo circled around slowly while continuously posturing, but not actually getting any closer.

"What's wrong huh?! You scared of me? Hah! I knew it!"

Then Rak came up behind him and pummeled him into the ground.

"What a loud turtle."

Suddenly Hwaryun abandoned her fight and charged towards Baam.

Hatsu followed too, but he didn't look like he had any intent to stop her. Instead, he was coming right at me.

Of course, their team wanted Baam off the throne, so Hatsu had no reason to interfere with Hwaryun if she didn't pick a fight with him.

Khun and Rak went to protect Baam while I considered what to do next.

Hatsu was a surprisingly powerful opponent. That move of his, the Spectral Dance as he called it, looked like it could do some real damage to me. His greatest advantage was his swordsmanship right now, though. His actual speed, strength, and durability weren't as high as Androssi or Anak, he simply made up the difference with sheer skill.

The problem was that Hwaryun would most likely overpower Khun and Rak pretty quick, and I couldn't protect Rachel while engaging with Hatsu. Then Hwaryun would probably execute her plan to fake an attack on Rachel, provoking Baam to respond, baiting him off the throne and costing them the game.

That way, our conspiracy could proceed to the Position Test.

But I didn't want her to do that. I agreed to Khun's deal because I wanted a better chance of keeping the Black March. And unlike the hype that Androssi built up for me, I wasn't sure if we could defeat Anak and Hatsu by ourselves, so Khun and Rak's participation would be helpful.

Now if Hwaryun went through with that plan, Baam leaving the throne meant they would lose the bet, and we'd lose the Black March by extension. Not only that, Hwaryun herself would probably get blinded in one eye, reducing her combat potential in the future.

Even worse, it was entirely possible that by random chance, she wouldn't get blinded in one eye, but would actually receive a much worse injury. The eye was a part of the head after all, and all too close to the brain…

That would in turn make things far more dangerous for me. She and Yu Han Sung were the only things standing between me and the rest of FUG. If either one of them suffered a major setback, their influence within FUG would weaken, and I would be at risk of discovery and attempts to enslave or assassinate me for being an Irregular.

So if I did nothing, things might proceed as they did in canon, but it was far from ideal.

I wanted Hwaryun to not be maimed, to keep Baam from moving to the next floor, and keep the Black March, preferably all at once, or in that order of priority.

To achieve the optimal outcome, I needed to stop Hwaryun, protect Rachel, and ensure that none of Baam's team remained able to fight by the end of this round, while keeping Baam on the throne safe from Anak and Hatsu.

Quite a tall order.

[Interlude]

Axion drew his crystal sword almost silently.

Hatsu slowed down and adjusted his stance warily. He could not take this opponent lightly. The way the man fought before, Hatsu had barely had a chance to gauge his skill.

He hadn't shown any swordsmanship besides swinging his sword to unleash powerful Shinsoo attacks. But Hatsu had seen him crush the alligator Regular's weapon bare handed without any apparent effort whatsoever.

But he hadn't merely bent the metal spear or broken it into halves, he somehow crushed it into pieces. The awkward angle at which he had exerted force on the spear… it just didn't make sense.

Metal should have been compressed, not shattered like that. And Hatsu had a good eye for weapons, he knew that Rak's spear wasn't a hollow piece of junk, it was high quality gear.

The only explanation was that the man had used Shinsoo to do it. But being able to use concentrated Shinsoo in such a small space, without revealing any signs of it… that was far more dangerous than sheer strength.

It meant that a single touch from him could be lethal, if he used the same technique on the body.

Just like the invisible attack that Khun had suffered earlier, this was another bit of multi-layered deception.

At first glance, one might assume that the "real attack" was the hidden one. But when Hatsu thought about it carefully, that didn't make sense. Axion's "obvious" attack, what he'd called the Slash Wave technique, was too… obviously weak. If he really wanted to hide the "real" hidden attack, then he should have used a much stronger obvious attack to disguise it.

Instead, he seemed to deliberately bait people into realizing there was a "hidden" attack, while taking attention away from the fact that his "obvious" attack could be way stronger than he'd shown. Just like how he then defeated Baam with a much stronger technique.

In other words, someone who thought themselves clever might assume that Axion was using trickery to make up for the lack of true power, but in reality, he was using trickery to make people think that he needed to rely on trickery!

Even with the overwhelming power he had shown, this monster was actually trying to pretend to be weaker than he actually was!

Hatsu spared a glance over to the leotard wearing opponent he'd been fighting earlier. She was also quite strong, and seemed to be about to defeat Khun and Rak.

Good. All he would need to do is buy enough time for her to get to Baam and take the crown.

Then, the swordsman's face turned into one of confusion as Axion moved towards Baam, as if preparing to attack him.

"Mr-Mr. Axion?!" Baam cried in surprise as the armoured man approached.

"What are you doing?!" Khun yelled. "We had a deal!"

Hwaryun seized the moment of distraction and knocked Khun on the head, sending him into blissful unconsciousness.

Then Axion held his free hand out, and from his wrist a large cloud of hazy white gas shot at Baam, and continued to spray all over the throne.

"Ah…? What's… this?" Baam coughed a bit, then collapsed unconscious again.

Everybody stopped fighting to see what was going on.

"I advise you all to stay away from the throne," said Axion, crossing his arms and standing in front of the massive and expanding cloud of gas. "This gas is highly poisonous and will kill you slowly and painfully, unless you receive the antidote from me. Baam's team will be fine, but for the rest of you, even if you take the crown, you will die after this game."

Then he turned to look at the masked Regular. "And just so you know… you don't need to breathe it in to be affected. The gas can easily permeate through your clothes."

There was silence in the arena for a moment.

"Hah! You think that means anything? Did you forget I can attack everywhere from anywhere?!" Anak yelled and followed up blowing Androssi away with an explosion of vine-like hooks, then took aim at the throne with a single massive attack.

Axion was unfazed at the incoming decompressed hook and merely raised his sword.

"Boost, Sword Aura, Level Five."

"Awww yeah! You got it, Partner!" The sword shouted gleefully.

Blue glowing lines like circuitry started moving up the visible skin on his face. An intense golden light enshrouded the sword, and a similar glow covered the man himself.

He swung down at the Green April's extension.

A loud clang rang throughout the arena even as the ground gave way beneath Axion. His feet dug in and he was pushed back, but he managed to completely block the powerful Ignition weapon.

"What? How can you be blocking the Green April? It's an A-Rank weapon when Ignited!" Anak shouted in disbelief.

But Axion didn't stop there. He pressed forward and downwards, sweeping the Green April's branch aside.

"A weapon is only as strong as its wielder, little girl! You've got a powerful weapon, but you can only use a fraction of its true potential!" The living sword shouted with laughter.

Axion then shot towards Anak so fast Hatsu could barely track it. He had to be moving more than twice as fast Androssi or Anak, the two Regulars he had thought were the fastest contestants around!

Anak's eyes widened as she tried to bring up the Green April to defend, but it was too late.

"Release."

Axion reached Anak in the blink of an eye and swung.

When the sword made contact, energy spilled out in an arc and crashed into the princess, sending her flying into a wall, then breaking through it entirely out of the arena, while making a large smoking gouge in the ground.

The Green April clattered to the ground, losing its Ignition, as Anak had lost her grip on it.

Hatsu, like everyone else, merely stood frozen in shock.

Even Androssi looked somewhat stunned at the sight.

Axion picked up the Green April as the yellow glow left his body.

There was no sign of Anak coming back to stop him.

Axion turned around to face the other Regulars near the throne.

"How about you, then? Will you ignite for me, Green April?" He asked aloud.

"Wait, we surrender! We surrender!" Leesoo yelled out while running for the exit.

Hatsu swallowed hard, and he realized his hands were shaking. Even though he could've launched a ranged Shinsoo attack at the throne himself while Axion was busy with Anak, all that time, he had never even tried. The fear had paralyzed him.

He glanced around, seeing that unlike him, the leotard wearing Regular had taken the chance to knock out the huge alligator while everybody was distracted watching Axion.

What a shameful performance on his part, he thought. He raised his own hands in a gesture of surrender and quietly walked after Leesoo.

Axion shook his head as if disappointed.

"Are you still going to fight?" Axion asked the masked Regular whose staff floated behind her. "It looks like your teammates are already done."

True to his words, the other teammates she'd had were weak and had been easily taken out at some point during the chaotic battle.

Hwaryun didn't care about winning though. She only cared about the mission's objectives. Now that all of Baam's team had been knocked unconscious, they wouldn't qualify to advance to the next floor. The mission was complete.

"No. I concede." She took off her mask and let her long red hair fall out.

"Congratulations on a perfect victory, Mr. Axion," her voice was soft and barely audible as she walked past him with a slight smirk. "It was beyond my expectations."

34 - Rest 2F

34 - Rest 2F

[Interlude]

The Crown game ended with no winner. The participants were each given a room to rest in before the next test.

The unconscious Regulars were all carried away, though Baam was only unconscious because of Axion's gas so he was woken up quickly.

Lero Ro announced that all the teams were now disbanded for the next portion of the tests, so everyone could go their own way.

Once most of the Regulars left or were carried away, Lero Ro oversaw the completion of the bet.

Lero Ro handed Baam the Green April and explained to him in brief terms what happened after he fell unconscious, and confirmed that Androssi could keep the Black March before leaving them.

Baam looked at the Green April in his hands, the Black March Androssi was carrying, and the rest of Androssi's team.

His gaze lingered on the girl who looked like Rachel, but she quickly left the area on her own. Then he turned back to Axion and Androssi.

Then he bowed. "Thank you very much for helping me, Miss Androssi and Mr. Axion."

"Don't thank me, thank her," she said, pointing to the quickly retreating and cloaked Rachel. "She's the one that wanted to help you. Don't know why she ran off like that. I was just in it for the Black March," said Androssi.

"Hey Baam. How about a trade? Give us the Green April in exchange for Black March," Axion said suddenly.

"Huh? Why?" Androssi asked.

"The Black March won't let you use it, Androssi. The Green April might."

"I don't want to use something that lizard used! And I don't need you to make decisions for me!" She said with a glare toward her teammate.

"Well, it's your choice, but you do realize the real owner of the Black March is going to come looking for it soon? And you aren't going to stand a chance against her," Axion said.

"The real owner, huh?" Androssi's eyes flashed with something indiscernible.

"Ah… yeah. I've got to return it to Miss Yuri," said Baam with an honest expression. "I would be grateful if we could trade it back…"

"That's right… Yuri Zahard. The only Zahard's princess to receive a 13 month series in the last 500 years. A prodigy Fisherman that became a High Ranker in less than a hundred years, and feared by young Rankers for her vicious temper," Androssi said slowly. "So why would she lend it to a random kid like you?"

"Um… I don't really know. She just showed up all of a sudden… and gave it to me," said Baam nervously.

"Tch, whatever, let's trade then!" Androssi suddenly handed the Black March over and took the Green April.

[Kaleidus]

"So… the teams are disbanded," said Androssi, after we said goodbye to Baam.

We started walking away from the arena as well, with no particular destination in mind.

"So it seems," I said.

In the distance, Baam went running after the Rachel, who sped up to get away.

"Oh… that's cute," said Androssi, seeing Baam chase Rachel. "Why'd she run off like that, after trying to help him?"

"She doesn't want him to get hurt, but she doesn't want him to keep following her up the Tower either," I said.

"Isn't it romantic? To have a guy risking his life, chasing the girl he likes up the Tower?"

"Maybe. Or maybe he's being a creepy stalker," I said.

"He's not that kind of guy. Can't you tell? He's so innocent," said Androssi.

I shrugged. "Whatever you say."

"I'm guessing you're going to keep helping that girl as part of Headon's deal?" Androssi said while flowing a hand over the Green April as if examining it.

"Maybe. What's it to you? The teams are disbanded. Are you trying to figure out what your competition is going to look like in the upcoming test?"

"Oh come on. You helped me get the Black March, and even advised me to swap it. You treated me as a real teammate, and I'm not the type of girl to just ignore that," she said, brushing back her hair to give me a sidelong glance.

"I gave them to you because they wouldn't let me use them. Otherwise I'd have kept them myself," I said honestly. "If I can't use them, might as well give it to somebody on the team that can."

"There's a pretty girl trying to thank you here! Can't you take a hint and say something sweet, like you did earlier after the first test?"

"Compliments are cheap if you can just fish for them."

She growled. "Fishing, am I?"

"Besides, I wouldn't want a relationship built on lies, would you? I even tried to ignite those weapons myself right in front of you, are you just going to pretend you didn't see that?" I added.

Although Androssi liked having admirers, that wasn't an appropriate role for the current me to take, given the level of strength I had shown. She was likely much more wary of me than she showed. A bit of occasional flattery and playful flirting would be responded to in kind, but if I tried to take it in a more serious direction alarms would probably start going off in her head, even if she was the one that invited me to do it.

"So you want a relationship built on trust? By the way, you know I'm not allowed to date, right?" she said slyly.

"I hear that strict families just make bad girls more rebellious in secret," I said.

"It's a little hard to be rebellious when daddy is the King of the whole Tower," said Androssi. "And the guys with good sense stay away, if they want to keep their heads on their shoulders."

"What a scary family."

"Haah! I know. But my dad loves his daughters so much…" She sighed dramatically.

There was a moment of silence as we walked aimlessly, passing some other Regulars along the way who looked scared stiff at the sight of us.

"But you know, that's surprisingly idealistic of you. I didn't take you for the type," Androssi said finally.

"What kind of person did you think I was then? Something insulting?" I said with a small laugh.

"Only if you consider it insulting to be a schemer. I certainly don't," she said, smirking at me. "You should take it as a compliment. But schemers usually aren't concerned with lies. In fact, they're usually quite comfortable with lying."

"You sound like you have quite the experience with schemers," I said.

"In this Tower, everyone is a schemer. But few are as smart as they think they are, and ever fewer have the strength to make use of it," said Androssi.

Eventually we found our way to what seemed to be a cafeteria, and grabbed some food in exchange for test points before sitting down.

"So," said Androssi, sitting across from me. "How serious are you about this team thing? Did you help me get the Green April because you want this team to last beyond this floor?"

"Oh, so you caught on after all. I was starting to wonder if you actually thought I was after a different kind of relationship," I said.

"Are the two mutually exclusive?"

"Is that another hint?"

She looked at me with a haughty smirk. "I can't be seen holding you by the hand… only a fearless man would have even the slightest chance to claim a royal prize."

"Is that so? Then I'll say it clearly, Androssi Zahard. You are strong and talented. I've no doubt that you will do well for yourself on your own. But there is always a bigger mountain no matter how high we climb. Together, we can be greater than either of us alone. It's a long and harsh journey to the top… but it will be a more comfortable journey with allies you can count on. You have seen my strength as I have seen yours. Now is the time to join forces and achieve greater heights!"

"You sure know how to make a speech. But what about that other girl? Is she going to be part of this?"

"For certain reasons that aren't suitable for me to discuss here," I said, making a show of glancing around the cafeteria, "It is to our advantage to continue working with her. My deal was only to bring her through the second floor, though it is my belief that she and I will both see reasons to cooperate beyond that, at least from time to time, if not as an actual team."

"What's so special about her? Although she gave me a strange feeling at first, she seems like an ordinary girl. She hasn't fought at all and I'm starting to think she just can't."

"You're right, she can't, at least not now. But like her friend, that black-haired kid, she has unusual potential. You've seen some signs of that already."

"That unnatural Shinsoo resistance…" Androssi said, nodding slowly. "Even members of the Ten Families don't have that much resistance before being trained in using Shinsoo."

"There are those that would see such great potential as a threats to themselves, as enemies to be eliminated. But there are also those wise enough to see them as useful investments, pawns to be protected until they can be made use of. The question for us is… which role shall we play?"

Androssi finished the food on her plate and started to drink her juice while thinking of how to answer.

"The obvious answer is the latter, of course, considering how you're helping her with the test. But the way you're talking, it sounds like you're looking at it from a different point of view. It makes me wonder if you're a Regular at all," said Androssi with narrowed eyes.

"Oh? What else could I be?"

"An undercover Ranker, maybe?"

I laughed out loud. "Really?"

"Come on, it fits! There shouldn't be any Regulars stronger than me on this floor," she said, crossing her arms with a pout.

"Is that logical reasoning or just arrogance talking?"

Androssi looked annoyed at that, before I continued, "Though I'm surprised you'd even admit that I'm stronger than you, especially when I'm not sure of that myself."

She raised an eyebrow at my admission of uncertainty. Then more neutrally, she said, "And there's the way you absorbed the Shinsoo barrier the test administrator made. That's definitely not normal. Before, I just thought you were unnaturally strong, but now this talk of Tower politics makes me think there's more to it. You were talking about the Tower's politics weren't you? If someone with high potential reaches the top and becomes a Ranker, it could change the balance of power, or even create a new faction. Most Regulars would never think about something like that. I only figured it out because I'm a princess and my," she put up air quotes, "'family' before Zahard's adoption is counting on exactly that-for me to bring them the prestige and influence that would come with having sponsored a new Ranker princess. So even if not a Ranker yourself, you've gotta be involved in the Tower's politics somehow. So spill, which faction are you working for?"

"It's not surprising to me that you came to that conclusion, but while you've gotten close to the truth, it isn't entirely correct," I said.

I had thought I was giving fairly large hints that Baam, Rachel, and I were all Irregulars, and the three of us plus Androssi herself were all potentials that various factions would be interested in.

It seemed however, that my performance thus far had such an impression on Androssi that her mind went in the other direction, with me working for one of the power players scouting the potentials.

Or perhaps this was inevitable, considering how rare and ridiculously powerful the other known Irregulars were. It was just too much a stretch to think that someone was an Irregular, no matter how abnormal their abilities were. The other three known Irregulars were each absolute monsters that stood at the pinnacle of strength in this Tower, two of them were ranked even above Zahard himself, with power rivalling gods, one of which might as well be a god that could 'instantly destroy the Tower of God story if he wanted to', according to the series author. The third was ranked fourth just below Zahard.

I contemplated briefly how much to explain to bring her to my side, then acted.

Communing with the water spirits, I requested that they create a cloaking bubble around us, similar to what they did against the Beast. I emphasized the need to block out spying attempts and sound, just as Cromwell did when he used it against me.

Previously Lero Ro had shown an impressive hearing range in the Crown game, and there was no telling what other means of spying people in the Tower could use.

As the spirits were in a good mood after consuming and being surrounded by Shinsoo, they actually obliged, to my pleasant surprise.

A spherical barrier appeared around us, distorting the air.

Androssi looked at it cautiously and tried to poke it, which caused a ripple in it like water, but her fingers went through without issue.

"What's this?" She asked.

"What I'm about to reveal to you could be dangerous if the wrong people get wind of it," I said. "Please keep that in mind."

"Right. I won't say anything… within reason of course. I haven't agreed to be part of your team yet, but I'm seriously considering it, so I'll give you this much," she said.

"I can't keep this up for long, so I have to make this quick," I said, and that was true. Already, I could sort of sense that something powerful had turned its attention to us, now that the water spirits cast their spell. It wasn't hostile, but it wasn't friendly either. It was more… curious as to what it was sensing from our location. If I had to guess, it was this Floor's Guardian, the Administrator and practically the god of the floor.

"I am not part of any faction, not yet anyways. I have not chosen a side in this game-I don't even know who the sides are at this point," I said.

"You really expect me to believe that?" She asked with a frown. "After everything you just said?"

"Let me put it this way then. If I were to answer my own question from before, our role would actually be as the pawns. You and I, Rachel and Baam, all of us are pawns. I am not from a faction looking to recruit you. I am in a position similar to yours, and I would rather we… form our own faction, so to speak, while leveraging the resources of other factions that would seek to use us. You already know that there is at least one faction supporting Rachel's rise. Their intentions for me are unclear, though I suspect they are just being cautious with me due to my perceived strength. Nevertheless, I am also keenly aware there are hostile forces arrayed against us, offended by our mere existence," I said. "Therefore, I felt it prudent to temporarily align myself with Headon's group of conspirators, and they have provided useful benefits so far."

Androssi looked contemplative, but didn't dismiss my claims out of hand.

"Do you know why your mere existence offends these supposedly hostile forces? Or who these forces are?" She asked.

"I do have some ideas, nothing certain yet, but it is too early for me to speak of it. Perhaps once you've agreed to team up with me, and we've built a stronger foundation of trust, I can share my thoughts on the matter. After all, I don't know if you would also discriminate against me for the circumstances of my birth, if you knew. You seem like a reasonable person but nobles tend to be a prejudiced lot, in my experience."

"Fine. I guess that's fair. Just so you know, I don't really care about that sort of thing. I'm not really from a noble family, either, so all that high born stuff means nothing to me. I was adopted for the sole purpose of becoming a candidate for princess, as just a pawn, like you said. But anyways, you're basically asking me join up with you without knowing who I'd be up against? Seems risky…"

"This is true, but consider this. I don't know who your enemies are either, and I'm sure you have plenty. By your own admission earlier, you don't have a lot of friends in high places, and you're climbing this Tower more or less on your own despite your status. The connections I am offering have already demonstrated their worth on this floor," I said.

She nodded slowly. "I won't deny that."

Then I continued with a smirk. "… but what are you offering, other than your body?"

A dark look came over her, and then she flew at me, flipping the table over and sending us both to the ground as she tried to choke me while straddling over me, though she wasn't using enough force to be actually threatening, so I didn't fight back.

The cloaking bubble dissipated as we exited its area of influence, and I didn't ask the spirits to move it with us.

"I can offer you a slow and painful death, if you want!" She said with a dark smile.

Some Regulars decided to come in right at that moment, including Hatsu and Ship Leesoo. They stared at us, then gave us a wide berth as they approached the serving area.

After the servers came to scold us, we were forced to clean up before going to our assigned rooms.

Her room was right beside mine and Rachel's as they were ordered by teams from the first test.

When we were right at our doors, she made up her mind and gave me her answer.

"Don't expect me to jump into whatever trouble you get yourself into just yet. Like you said, it's too early to trust each other. I don't know what your circumstances are, and you don't know mine. So let's start with something simpler. I'll be your teammate for the floor tests. Once we get to know each other a little more, maybe that can change," Androssi said.

"Good enough for me," I said, going to my own door.

Then, just as she was opening her door, she noticed Hwaryun walking towards us.

Hwaryun smiled at me, then looked at Androssi.

"Some jewels may shine deceptively bright, but lose their lustre when examined closely," said Hwaryun.

"What-are you implying something about me?!" Androssi flipped around angrily, and flew towards Hwaryun, grabbing her by the cuff of her shirt while Hwaryun maintained eye contact with the princess, never losing her smile.

Suddenly Derflinger woke up and decided to make a comment.

"Woo! Catfight! You go girl!"

I struggled to keep my hand from facepalming when Androssi let Hwaryun go and turned towards me with an angry glare.

"I didn't say that, that was my sword," I said, holding my hands up innocently. Derflinger went back into his sheath by himself with a snigger.

Before Androssi could say anything though, Hwaryun continued to speak.

She ignored Androssi as if nothing happened and turned to me.

"The water here is very deep. Be careful of monsters hiding in the depths, Mr. Axion," she said, before walking away.

"I see. Thank you for the warning, Hwaryun," I said with a nod.

"Excuse me?! I'm right here!" Androssi stomped over to me. "You're just going to let some other girl insult me and thank her for it?"

"Calm down, she wasn't talking about you. I think," I said, holding up a hand.

"Could've have fooled me, with how she was looking at me!" She shouted loudly.

"Well, she was probably trying to provoke you for fun, but I'm pretty sure she meant something else," I said.

"Like what? You'd better have a good explanation, or we're through!"

By now, some other Regulars were peeking out of their doors to see what the commotion was.

Couldn't Hwaryun have come along at a better time? Or maybe this was her way of getting back at me for threatening her with the gas in the Crown game?

"How troublesome that her fun is coming at my expense," I said, shaking my head. Then I gestured to her to follow me. "Come inside and I'll explain it. There's too many eyes and ears here."

She looked around, saw the people who were staring. "What are you all looking at?!" She yelled with a red face.

If I took Hwaryun's words literally, could she have been referring to the cloaking bubble I used earlier? If she had somehow known that it was the water stone, which looked like a jewel, that allowed me to do that, then she might be warning me about the Guardians of each floor that controlled Shinsoo, the divine water that permeated everything in the Tower.

It was surprising that she noticed at all, but not impossible. Just the fact that the water spirits were hiding us, perhaps even on a conceptual level, could have affected her own ability as a Guide.

Of course, it might have just been metaphorical, and actually referred to my association with Androssi being dangerous to me, especially as a princess of Zahard. After all, the organization that Hwaryun belonged to, FUG, was opposed to the Zahard family.

But I couldn't tell Androssi either of those… the first for my own safety, the second because that would sound like Hwaryun was warning me away from Androssi, which was exactly what Androssi was angry about, even if she thought it was for a different reason.

O O O

35 – Rest 2F 2

35 - Rest 2F 2

We were seated in my room, door shut, and Androssi looking at me expectantly.

"I have some ideas, guesses I can make, but I don't know for certain what she meant. Regardless, she is a Guide. You understand what that means, don't you? It would be unwise to dismiss her advice, no matter which form it might take. It may have been addressed to me, but I think her advice was intended to help you."

I doubted that, but I said so anyways, deciding not to disclose what I actually suspected. There was no need to reveal a secret as dangerous as the water stone. If people knew that it was an artifact and not an inherent part of my abilities, then I'd become an even bigger target than I was already as an Irregular.

Moreover, it wasn't as though Hwaryun couldn't give double or triple meanings to her warnings to achieve multiple purposes. You could never tell with a Guide as powerful as her. She was the Guide for FUG's slayer candidates, the ones who were meant to kill Zahard. While her combat ability was far from amazing, her ability as a Guide was respected even by High Rankers.

It was especially impressive when considering that despite Guide powers not working on Irregulars, she seemed to work around it just fine. In the story, she manipulated events surrounding Baam and Rachel without any issue, even though a Ranker Guide that worked for Yuri Zahard was unable to read Baam and concluded that the Ball test on the first floor was impossible for him.

Androssi's expression became less hostile.

"A Guide? Red hair… she's a Red Witch? But a Regular? That's weird."

"Why is it weird?"

She frowned, evidently still not quite satisfied with my explanation. "First of all, Guides are really rare to begin with, and made even rarer because Father reserves one for every princess that becomes a Ranker. Second, Guides don't need to pass the Floor tests. They can go wherever they want. Is she really a Guide? I've never even heard of a Guide that's a Regular!" She asked with clear doubt on her face.

"So I've been told. I don't know much about Guides myself," I said, shrugging.

"What exactly is your relationship with that girl?" Androssi asked me, glaring suspiciously. "You're the second pair of Regulars that knew each other before the tests now. You aren't chasing her up the Tower like that other kid with Rachel, are you?"

"No need to be jealous, I'm not pursuing her," I said with an amused smile.

"Who said I'm jealous?!"

I ignored her question in favor of continuing my explanation. "In fact, Rachel and I only met her on this floor, in regards to matters related to what we spoke of before, in the cafeteria. She is certainly no ordinary Regular, as you've surmised. I cannot explain the extent of our relationship further than that under the circumstances, but you should be able to understand, right?"

She clicked her tongue and huffed, crossing her arms.

"I'll accept that… for now. But what did you mean by 'her advice might be meant for me'?"

"I mean that she might have been warning you about the Green April. It's possible that you will be targeted because of it, as will I, by association with you. Certainly, I imagine that if Anak is a fake princess as you've claimed, the Zahard family will respond soon. And one must wonder, if she is a fake, where did she obtain the Green April? In a way, it is perhaps no less dangerous than dealing with the Black March's true owner."

"You didn't think of this before we made the trade?"

"I did. As I said, the Green April might actually let you ignite her. For that reason alone, it is the better choice. Besides, I don't know how quick the Zahard family will respond to the appearance of a fake princess. I do know, however, that the owner of the Black March is already on her way."

Actually, from what I remembered of the story, an assassin from the royal faction would be on his way soon too. Still, there was a small but non-zero chance that he might not try to confiscate the Green April if it was in the hands of a real princess, so as to stay officially neutral in the war of the princesses. That was the real reason I wanted to make the trade.

"I already knew that someone from RED would come for Anak and the Green April. Some Guide she is if she can only tell me what I already knew," said Androssi with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"RED?" I asked. I knew, but pretended not to.

"The Royal Enforcement Division. Those are the guys loyal only to Father and that enforce his will, usually for issues involving princesses. Compared to the Zahard's Army, the military arm of the empire, RED is more like an elite black-ops and police force."

"Is that so? Why do you call her a fake princess anyways?"

"It's because the real Anak Zahard is already dead. She had a forbidden relationship with a palace chef and ran away with him. The Zahard family sent RED to kill them and take back the Green April, but they never found it. For this Anak to have it, and a body comparable to a real princess with the blood of Zahard in her, that must mean that she's their daughter. The whole point of the restriction on princesses dating is to prevent the power of Zahard from spreading like that. So they'll come for her as soon as they find out."

"I see. Well, I only suspected someone would come, and now I have a bit of confirmation, so we can better prepare for it. Besides, Hwaryun helped us out during the Crown game too, fighting Hatsu and that other random team instead of teaming up against us. Even as a non-combatant role, she'd give you a run for your money if she actually tried fight you," I said. I knew that she would, because she actually would have fought Androssi in the story and held her own during the Crown game.

In this Crown game, her real help came in the form of taking out Khun and Rak while everyone was distracted. She had seen through my plan immediately and cooperated perfectly, adapting from the previous strategy she'd given us. But our objective in preventing Baam from going up wasn't something I intended to disclose to Androssi yet, so I didn't mention it.

"Like that means anything, you could've taken them all out anyways whenever you wanted."

"You're giving me too much credit. I could've defeated them sure, but I wouldn't have been able to protect Baam and Rachel at the same time while I did that," I said, shaking my head.

My performance was apparently too good, she was overestimating me a bit too much. Even though I might have been able to pull it off, the cost in mana for Derflinger would have been too high and risky, leaving not enough to defend myself outside of the tests.

I was in an environment where I could not easily start an Armoriont farm and refill Derflinger's reserves, so unless I found another solution, I'd only be able to refill about 500 MP per day, and that was only by keeping Agate in hibernation for the day, otherwise it'd drop to 100-200 with the wand active.

A single Slash Beam or Wave at level 5 cost close to 1600 MP, which would already take multiple days or weeks to recover from. That was on top of the massive continuous cost of Derflinger's Boost and my Omni-Flight if I was required to use them. Omni-Flight, the spell that let me levitate like Agate, I could only keep up for less than a minute at the maximum speed before exhausting my own and Agate's reserves completely.

This was why I tried to limit myself to Reinforcement and the Armoriont's biological capabilities wherever possible. Reinforcement was superbly cheap for the effect, while the Armoriont cost basically nothing.

The only other option was to go back to Worm and refill before coming back, cost me 2 planar trips of Primordial GRAIN, and still taking several days in which my absence from the Tower might attract even more dangerous attention, as leaving was essentially impossible, and there was an entire Ranker organization dedicated to finding the way out.

"So I appreciate your confidence in me, but it's never wise to overestimate one's own abilities," I added.

"Why do I feel like you aren't talking about yourself with that last bit…?"

"There is also another possibility. Could it be that the Green April may have dangerous side effects for the user?"

There should be a curse on the 13 month series weapons. Trying to ignite two at the same time would result in the princess being taken over and trying to kill everything, especially other princesses. But with a single weapon? I didn't remember anything like that, but it wasn't impossible.

"I've never heard of any side effects. That seems like a stretch," said Androssi.

"Just be careful, alright? It would be inconvenient for me if anything happened to you."

"If anything happens to me, you'd better come save me. Trading for the Green April was your idea."

"Of course, of course."

In the end, I was at least able to convince her to let it go, even if she still didn't like Hwaryun, and I finally had some time to myself.

There were lots of things I could do at this point, lots of events happening around me that I could take a more active role in. However, I chose to focus on my real purpose for being in this Tower at all.

I had Agate go into hibernation and kept it in my Armoriont, where my chest was, so that I could recover more MP. There wasn't anybody in particular I wanted to spy on, so I didn't need Agate to stay active.

Derflinger had already expended quite a bit of mana already today fighting the White Steel Eel and in the Crown game. My own reserves and Agate's were still near full as I only used a bit of Reinforcement, which was dirt cheap, but Derflinger had used almost five thousand MP.

I didn't expect another big fight soon, as there should be a month of training ahead, but it would be wise for me to conserve MP as much as possible. Against threats like Rankers or High Rankers, I might need literally everything at my disposal to survive the 10 seconds it took to shift planes.

Then, I settled down to meditate and commune with the water spirits.

With the abundance of "divine water" all around us, and the water stone's apparent capability to absorb the substance, it was time to see what kind of benefits I could get from it, and how it would affect my training with the water stone going forward.

If I could use their absorption ability to actually take Shinsoo with me to use on other planes… that would just be perfect.

[Interlude]

Lero Ro sat watching Yu Han Sung prepare coffee with an overly complicated procedure.

He had come and demanded answers about why the three Regulars from the other district had been sent to the Crown game.

Yu Han Sung looked concentrated, carefully breaking his coffee stick. "Mr. Lero Ro. Do you know why we gather all the Regulars and test them?"

"Isn't it to test if the Regulars are qualified to go up the Tower?"

"No, it's not. The reason is… they have dangerous powers. They come into the Tower to fulfill their own desires. Glory, money, power, or whatever else they want. But what if they desire something that's harmful to the world? What if there's somebody that dreams of the world's end? It could be disastrous. So we test them and separate the black sheep. The ones who threaten the Tower."

"I don't understand the intention behind your words-" Lero Ro started to say.

"Mr. Lero Ro. Who do you think is among the most dangerous Regulars taking the test this time, wielding a weapon he shouldn't be capable of wielding? Didn't he lose the Crown game? And he didn't acquire a second 13 month series weapon either," Yu Han Sung said.

Now looking straight at Lero Ro, Yu Han Sung finished, "Because of the person I sent you."

Lero Ro's expression turned to surprise, as he had a flashback. The boy who held the Black March, that he was well aware of belonged to Yuri. He had been part of the same cohort that started climbing with Yuri, so he was acquainted with her. And he knew that the Black March refused to ignite for her. For it to decide to ignite for some random kid? It made no sense, even if Yuri had lent it to him as he'd claimed.

If the other district's team hadn't been involved, wouldn't he have won the Crown game starting from the third round? And he'd have won the bet with Anak outright too, instead of trading away one of the weapons.

But the other team had been present, and defeated Baam's team. They'd made it look like they were about to protect Baam's team to give them the victory while keeping the Black March, and Lero Ro felt that wasn't fair, so he'd changed the rules.

But had that really been their intention? To let Baam's team win?

Later, the Khun family boy had negotiated a deal to let them win the Crown game anyways.

And then… that man. Axion. He'd stopped his allies from winning the game for no apparent reason, even though the Khun had already promised them the Black March, even if they won the Crown game instead of merely winning the bet under his new rules. Axion had attacked Baam and knocked him unconscious under the guise of keeping other Regulars away. No doubt he'd have finished off the other two teammates if the masked one hadn't done it first.

As a result, they hadn't gone up to the next floor.

It was illogical. There was no benefit for Axion to have done that, especially when they seemed ready to let Baam's team rise before Lero Ro had interfered. He might have said it was to stop anyone from getting to the throne, but really? With how fast he had defeated Anak, Lero Ro didn't buy it at all. He could've easily defeated all the other Regulars instantly.

Then he thought back to the moment he saw Baam manipulate Shinsoo to attack Androssi. And the time before that, to block several attacks from different directions.

He'd also overheard Axion make a comment of that too to his teammates, the first time it had happened in the 3rd round.

Now, with the test director's admission… it started to make sense. But he wasn't sure he liked it.

Lero Ro brought his coffee cup to his mouth and downed it in one gulp before leaving politely.

"Test Director Yu," he stopped and turned around as he reached the door. "Have you ever seen somebody… who's not from the Ten Great Families… who hasn't made a contract with an Administrator but can still freely manipulate Shinsoo?"

"No, I haven't. That is beyond the rules of the Tower. Oh! But I have heard of one. Urek Mazino. He was… an Irregular."

"I see."

Lero Ro shut the door and walked away, thinking about how the Shinsoo around Baam seemingly acted of its own volition, violating the rules of the Tower

Meanwhile, Yu Han Sung sighed in his coffee room, remarking to himself that Lero Ro was more difficult to handle than Quant.

He had almost had Rachel's team skip the barrier and door test straight to the Crown game, but then he thought it would be interesting to see a little more of Axion in action first.

But when Axion somehow absorbed Lero Ro's Shinsoo barrier… Yu Han Sung had worried then that Axion's status would be exposed before he had a chance to decide whether to help hide it or not.

But then…

"Mr. Axion, a word of advice. With that Pocket Mr. Headon gave you, you should make a contract with the Guardian of this floor. The Administrator. That will allow you to use Shinsoo… within the rules of the Tower," said Yu Han Sung, near the end of their strategy session.

"He already has a contract," said Hwaryun.

"I do?" Axion asked, apparently in confusion.

"Check your Pocket."

Axion did so. He read his Pocket's screen carefully.

"Huh? A contract with the Administrator of the First Floor? So my deal with Headon…? That was a contract? I see. I am able to freely use Shinsoo on the 2nd Floor to carry out the task he requested."

Yu Han Sung had a rare expression of genuine surprise. He hadn't thought to check it, because he hadn't seen Axion making a contract during the tests, and Yu Han Sung had been monitoring him as soon as Headon sent the two Irregulars up and notified him.

For Headon to have made the contract… it was unusual but not unheard of. While most Floor Administrators only made contracts for their own floors, it was possible for them to indirectly broker a contract for other floors, the way that Rankers received a new contract for the whole Tower upon reaching the 134th floor, which superseded the ones they'd made on the way up.

"Very thoughtful of Mr. Headon," Yu Han Sung said to himself, sipping his coffee. "Although you are wary of him, Mr. Axion, it seems that he has done you quite a favor."

"They traded back the Black March?" Khun asked from his position on the bed, after receiving a summary of what happened from Baam.

"Yeah… Mr. Axion is surprisingly nice," said Baam with a smile, sitting next to him on a chair.

Khun made a doubtful face. "I'm not so sure about that…" Although Baam explained Axion's reasoning for gassing the throne area, and what happened afterwards, Khun was still wary of the man.

But he sighed and shook his head. "I guess it's not his fault we got ourselves knocked out too, eh crocodile?"

Rak was brooding in another corner of the room, quietly munching on a banana. "I saw it," he said randomly.

"Saw what?" Khun asked, confused.

"He defeated the green turtle in one move," said Rak in a mournful tone.

'One move…? Damn, guess that girl wasn't bluffing about how strong he was then,' Khun thought to himself regarding Androssi's comments about their first test's massacre.

Khun looked somewhat guilty as he saw Rak's expression. "Crocodile… look, I know he's strong, but it doesn't mean you're weak. I'll admit I haven't been very encouraging before with your constant big talk but-"

"Hahaha!" Rak suddenly started guffawing and clutching his stomach after carelessly throwing the banana peel away, his brooding look disappearing as if he'd merely pretended. "The look on her face! That's what happens when a turtle acts like they aren't prey!"

"…" Khun looked blankly at Rak as the banana peel landed on his face. 'This damn crocodile actually had me worried!'

Ship Leesoo, Hatsu, and Serena Rinnen, a dark haired Regular who wore a plain off the shoulder dress, walked through the halls after Serena forcibly joined their cafeteria table.

Hatsu stayed quiet while Leesoo and Serena chatted about their experiences in each test. The two had bonded over the struggle to get through Lero Ro's barrier, though they'd also fought in the Crown game.

Then Androssi's door swung open. She came out looking like she was in a bad mood and ignoring them. The three Regulars watched her turn towards Axion's door, hesitate, then shake her head and walk off in the other direction, passing them.

"What's with those two? You'd think they'd be happy with the results of the Crown game. Didn't they get everything they wanted?" Ship Leesoo said, with a jealous tone.

"Didn't you hear? They broke up earlier today!" Serena whispered loudly to him. "Everyone heard them shouting in the halls."

"What? When did this happen?" Ship whispered back.

"It must have been right after they had that fight in the cafeteria. We were still eating dinner then," said Hatsu.

"Do you know what it was about?" Ship asked Serena, his mind already considering ways to take advantage of the situation. That team had been practically unbeatable, but if those two had a bad breakup, there was a chance for the rest of them!

"Oh yeah. You know that red-head that was masked and wore a leotard during the game?" Serena asked.

"Huh, yeah?"

"I heard goldie fell in love with her at first sight," she said, referring to Axion's golden armor as she didn't know his name. "They were flirting right in front of Miss Androssi, so she broke it off right then and there."

"Ouf! I almost feel bad for her. Almost. She's pretty but that red-head is out of this world. There's just no contest. And if you add in how violent she was with him…" Ship said, thinking of the scene in the café with Androssi choking Axion, "it's no wonder he went for the sweeter fruit."

"She's not that pretty. I'm just as attractive, right?" Serena asked.

"Nope," Ship said instantly. "Not even close."

"Why you… !" Serena turned to Hatsu, as if preparing to ask him the same question.

Hatsu shook his head. "Sorry. Please don't bring me into this."

Serena's face fell. "Argh… ! Men! As if looks are all that matters!" Then she stormed away.

"I never said that!" Ship exclaimed. "Sheesh. What's her problem? Another one that just can't admit when they're beat. And I thought she was one of the people with common sense around here."

"Ship…" Hatsu started to say something, but trailed off.

"What?"

"Nevermind," said Hatsu, sighing, one hand going to his forehead in exasperation.

Then Leesoo saw that they'd reached Anak's room. He knocked and there was no answer, so he decided to open the door a little. The door was unlocked, as Anak had been carried in there unconscious.

There were no lights on.

"Guess she's still out," Ship said, closing the door.

"Why bother? The teams are disbanded now. We don't have anything to do with her anymore," said Hatsu, still upset about Anak's behavior during the Crown game.

"That's cold…" said Ship.

"She never thought of us as a team anyways," Hatsu added as the two walked away.

Inside, Anak sat at the head of her bed, head down, bandages covering parts of her body. The blanket underneath her head was dotted with wet stains.

She sat unmoving, cold rage etched across her face, utterly silent.

O O O

36 - Rest 2F 3

36 - Rest 2F 3

[Interlude]

Long after Ship Leesoo and Hatsu left Anak's room, when the halls turned empty and the artificial night of the second floor had fallen, a figure opened the door and stepped inside, lightly shutting it behind them.

Anak looked up cautiously as the figure approached, shrouded in shadow.

As they approached, Anak caught a glimpse of long, flowing red hair.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Anak asked, unable to remember seeing any Regular with hair that shade of red before she was attacked.

A glint of moonlight reflecting off a metallic gold surface.

"… !"

Anak tried to dodge the attack, but couldn't as her body was too weak.

A long pole held her throat against the wall, while the figure merely stayed back and manipulated it with Shinsoo.

"Who am I…? I wonder… who do you think?" A melodious voice answered Anak.

"You!" Anak recognized the weapon being held against her throat from the Crown game. The self-floating pole that the leotard-wearing Regular used.

"How does it feel to lose your mother's last gift?"

Anak froze while her mind raced. Was she an assassin from the royal family? Come to finish the job they started all those years ago?

"Why do you look so surprised? Your identity can be inferred by anyone who bothers looking up your name. Carelessly showing off the Green April like that only made it more obvious."

"What… do you want? If you're going to kill me, just do it already," Anak growled out.

"If I were you, I wouldn't give up like that. I would think of what I could do to survive, and find a way to make things right. You've relied on your body's natural strengths and the Green April too much. You should remember that those are powers borrowed from the very name you despise," said Hwaryun.

The metal pole was retracted and flipped vertical beside her.

"What…? Why?"

"There are people who hate that name just as much as you do. Who hold the same goal as you do. If you are serious about walking down that path, and not just climbing this Tower to gamble your possessions and life away… then get stronger. A lot stronger. And when you're ready to face the truth about your own limits, you should search for those people."

Hwaryun turned and left after that, leaving Anak to ponder in silence.

[Kaleidus]

Before the start of the next test, there was a three day break. It was to give Regulars time to recover from their injuries and to unwind a little after the intense combat tests from before.

Some Regulars had suffered serious injuries that wouldn't heal even within that time frame. There were medical facilities and healers, but Regulars had to pay for the healing themselves, using the points that were given based on the scores they got on prior tests.

So far the score everyone got for passing each test was the same, though some Regulars would get a lot of bonus points for having the best performance soon. They hadn't yet announced who got the bonuses though.

The points doubled as a form of currency, so some rich Regulars like Khun had plenty of points to spend, which he used to buy uniforms for his team.

During the break, most Regulars continued to hang out with their teams from the previous tests.

"Didn't they break up yesterday? Did they get back together already?" I heard some Regulars whisper while pointing at us from another table, as I sat with Androssi again for breakfast.

Androssi also heard and looked at them. They froze, before awkwardly looking into their plates.

I saw Anak glaring daggers at us from another table, sitting by herself.

Rachel got take out and skipped the cafeteria entirely to avoid Baam.

"Got any plans for the next three days?" Androssi asked.

"Not really," I said. "I wanted to get out of the testing area for a bit and stretch my legs, but they won't let us leave to explore the floor."

"Great! You can help me test the Green April then," said Androssi.

I didn't really want to spend more of Derflinger's MP, but it would also be bad form to decline, especially because Androssi was still not over the incident with Hwaryun yesterday.

We made our way to a practice arena after that. There were lots of them around in the testing area and open for use, fortunately without spending any points.

"Before we start, you should know that I won't use Derflinger's Ignition for this. He needs to recharge and without being able to leave the testing area, recharging is rather difficult. I'd rather not use him in training."

"Okay. Derflinger's the name of your sword right?" Androssi asked.

"That's right," I said.

"You can talk to me directly, girl," Derflinger said.

"It's going to take some time to get used to a weapon that talks out loud. Even the Green April can only talk to me in my mind," said Androssi.

"So did she agree to let you use her?" I asked.

"Yup!" Androssi said eagerly. "Let's get started then!"

The spar that followed was a difficult one for me without Derflinger.

Androssi was stronger and faster than me with full Reinforcement, and a lot more durable too. Once I was on the backfoot on the ground, I switched to aerial combat using the Armoriont wings, which turned things around.

She couldn't fly herself using Shinsoo manipulation, and she had little experience fighting aerial opponents. The Green April couldn't extend indefinitely, in fact Androssi's current range with it was rather short at about fifty meters, so it was easy to dodge.

I couldn't defeat her either though, as getting close exposed myself to counterattack, and it was especially dangerous now that she had the Green April, which could grow like a forest and attack in all directions.

I noticed a few times that she nearly slipped because of her high heels, but I was unable to take advantage of it with the Green April in her hands. In the end, I said nothing because she would learn a more memorable lesson when she actually slips where it matters, as she did in canon.

For the next three days of the break, I alternated between training with Androssi and the water stone.

The training with Androssi was actually quite beneficial for both of us. For me, despite the martial arts skills I got from Cranial skill implants, I had little experience actually fighting at superhuman strength and speed, or against superhuman opponents.

Many things just no longer applied, or were so radically different as to be unusable. The concept of "range" was very different when your opponent could cross a ten metre gap in less than a second, even starting from a stationary position. It was also much harder to redirect force when even a tiny fraction of that force could blow you away. But perhaps the most awkward point of all was the difference that supernatural forces had on the proportion of force and momentum that could be exerted from the same mass.

Both Androssi and I were able to generate far more force than our mass should be able to, and concepts of leveraging body mass or unbalancing your opponents just plainly didn't work the same way.

After the first session, we started training on more specific elements of our fighting style rather than a free-for-all spar.

Through this, it became clear that Androssi was by far the more skilled fighter on ground, and I couldn't effectively use my wings at such close ranges either.

As a result, a lot of our training turned into her instructing me on melee fighting.

I did however pioneer new methods of combining the Omni-Flight spell in extremely short bursts to alter my body's movement in totally unpredictable ways. The spell was immensely expensive for long distance flight, and I could only keep it up for less than a minute at the maximum speed. It took quite a lot of concentration to pull off, but it was possible to activate and deactivate it fairly quickly. It was simply a matter of practice to do it mid-combat and reflexively.

Because the spell didn't require much acceleration, I could suddenly reach incredible velocities out of nowhere.

Its maximum speed was about 500 mph, which was over 200 metres per second-an astonishing distance for close combat. The MP cost for me to fly that fast was 100x higher than Agate due to my larger mass and size, but still workable.

I didn't try anywhere near the theoretical limit though. It was quite hard on my circuits and mind, increasing the difficulty of casting significantly. I also couldn't aim or track anything at close distances when moving at too high a velocity.

But I did start practicing using the spell to help dodge or attack from impossible angles and quickly shift momentum.

There was no base cost for casting the spell, so doing so cost very little MP if each cast lasted less than a second-as little as 1-3 MP.

"How did you get so strong while being so unskilled? And what's with all these weird techniques, they're unnatural!" Androssi asked after I tried out these new tactics. "You're not even using Shinsoo! How are you doing that?"

"Close quarters combat isn't my specialty. And what makes you think I'm not using Shinsoo? Just because you can't tell how I'm doing it?"

"That's right… you were able to break the test administrator's barrier and absorb the Shinsoo. Are you actually a Wave Controller?" She asked, using the terminology for the team position that focuses on manipulating Shinsoo. "Then you were using Slider? Without Shinsoo traces…"

In the Tower, combat often took place in teams, and various common positions were given names. I expected our next test to be about these positions, and for most Regulars it'd be new to them, but Androssi was already aware of basics like these.

"What's a Wave Controller?" I asked, pretending not to know. Although I knew it already, my own knowledge was rather basic, and it wasn't unusual for people outside of the Inner Tower not to know.

"Oh, you don't know? It's just a name for people who primarily use Shinsoo to fight. Everyone uses it, but Wave Controllers specialize in it and can manipulate Shinsoo on a large scale, especially for long range attacks. That guy who goes around wrapped in blankets would be a Wave Controller," said Androssi.

"So, a Blaster and Shaker? One who blasts from range, and one who affects the environment," I said, using the Worm classifications.

"I've never heard of those," said Androssi.

"It's a classification system I've come across in my travels that I liked. Because that place had so many unique powers, it was necessary to focus on the nature of the threat, and how to respond to it, rather than how the powers worked or what was used," I said.

"That sounds very practical, but the position names are similar. Like I said, everyone in the Tower uses Shinsoo to some degree, but Wave Controllers fill a specific role on the team," said Androssi.

"I see. However, your description of a Wave Controller doesn't seem to describe me. I'm not able to control Shinsoo on a large scale. I can launch large ranged attacks with Derflinger's help, but other than that, my way of using Shinsoo is… well, it works on a much smaller scale," I said.

I didn't actually use Shinsoo. I used mana, or Shinsoo converted to mana, but I'd pretend as long as possible that I did.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll give you a demonstration," I said, then picking up a small rock from the ground.

Androssi watched me carefully.

I sent mana into the rock, then Broke it. It fell into pieces without any fanfare. I could've had it explode by overloading the mana more, but in this case I wanted to minimize the mana used.

"… !" Androssi looked astonished. "You destroyed it with Shinsoo? I didn't see or feel anything. It was as if it broke apart by itself. You must be incredibly skilled with Shinsoo to do that."

"Perhaps, or I'm just using Shinsoo in a different way than usual. Like I said, I don't know how to control Shinsoo in larger quantities. What's basic for any other Wave Controller might be very difficult for me. The amount of Shinsoo I just used to do this… it's so small that it might as well be nothing. That isn't because I'm efficient-I just don't know how to control more the way Laure or Lero Ro did," I said. "Though it does interest me, and I intend to learn now that I'm here ."

Shinsoo was extremely potent as a form of mana. It was difficult to break down and convert into raw mana for me to use in spells, but it was undoubtedly powerful, and that's why the water spirits loved it.

The amount of Shinsoo Laure used to fire the beam that he did on Anak back in the Crown game? If converted to magical energy, the quantity would be comically large.

That beam was comparable to a Slash Beam Level 4, costing Derflinger 800 MP, but Laure probably used something like 10 to 20 times more energy.

However, it wasn't a fair comparison of efficiency, because when Shinsoo was directly used like that, it wasn't used up.

Magic energy was simply gone, like fuel being consumed for spells, and that was how it worked for Derflinger too.

But it didn't work that way with Shinsoo. Wave Controllers manipulated the Shinsoo in the environment, and after whatever effects they created, the Shinsoo was still there, or most of it anyways.

"What about when you absorbed the Shinsoo from the barrier Lero Ro made? That looked pretty large scale to me," said Androssi.

"That was… a special circumstance. It's not something I can explain right now, as I don't fully understand it myself," I said.

"I don't believe you, Mr. Undercover Ranker!" She said with a cheeky grin.

"… still can't explain it, even if you say that."

Within my room, a bubble of liquid Shinsoo encased me as I meditated.

Condensed from drawing in the Shinsoo in the air, and controlled as if it were ordinary water by the water spirits, they formed a container that levitated me in the air.

I breathed in the divine water, and exhaled water elemental energy.

My body became an extension of the water stone and the water spirits, a nexus of the water element.

After spending half the day and night doing this during the break, my connection to the water spirits seemed to grow by leaps and bounds.

Deep within the meditation, through the Shinsoo I gained an awareness of things around me that extended far past my room into the hallways and other rooms. It was unrefined and imprecise, but I began to feel currents of Shinsoo, the people who used it, and those whose blood ran thick with the power of Shinsoo. I could sense the Rankers whose movements made waves in the Shinsoo just from their presence, and even the Floor Administrator whose presence seemed to be everywhere.

As for the water spirits, after the initial frenzy, they had calmed down and were noticeably more agreeable to all my requests. They'd even stopped asking for lifeforce altogether, as if whatever they'd consumed from the Shinsoo was more than enough for them, and they were far less protective of their own reserves of water mana.

Given their continuous absorption of Shinsoo, it seemed clear that the Shinsoo was serving as a form of nourishment for them, increasing their reserves of water mana and allowing the spirits to grow.

My body was also being altered by the Shinsoo, though it was extremely slow. Through Structural Grasp and my Reinforcement practice, I noticed that my body was different, the gaps where I used to fill with mana were slightly off. The water stone sped up the process as it circulated Shinsoo all over my body, particularly when I meditated and formed these dense bubbles of Shinsoo.

Perhaps the biggest curiosity though was the way my blood had changed. Previously, I hoped that by integrating the water stone within my circulatory system, I could gain a water affinity, but in the presence of Shinsoo, something else happened.

I had placed the water stone into its own organ of sorts and connected it to the circulatory system, and eventually I grew it into a miniature heart. Because the water stone could manipulate blood the same as water, it could function as a backup if my real hearts failed.

Normally, it didn't do anything except circulate tiny amounts of water element energy, which didn't have any obvious effects on me.

However, once the water stone absorbed Shinsoo, it started leaking out trace amounts of the Shinsoo alongside the water mana, directly into my bloodstream.

This Shinsoo wasn't just energy, or even the raw Shinsoo of the environment. It'd been refined by the water stone into something else entirely, and was an actual substance that behaved like blood plasma. It also seemed to carry the essence of the water stone itself, as I could feel the water spirits spreading their presence into my body, instead of staying holed up in the water stone.

This was perhaps one big reason that I felt my connection with the water spirits growing in strength rapidly.

What kind of long-term effect it'd have on my body was still unclear, but this was undoubtedly beneficial for my magic.

The water mana that the water stone previously released would dissipate if unused, even though it took weeks to happen, and was in such small quantities that I couldn't really use it for much of anything, especially as it was water-aligned mana.

However, this new Shinsoo easily retained the water mana and made it more easily used in spells, particularly Reinforcement of my body. It could also readily re-absorb mana.

So far, there wasn't enough of it yet to make a big difference or experiment much with, but I had the suspicion that it was modifying the water-alignment into a non-standard sub-affinity, which related to the body. Self-Reinforcement was easy to do with it, but Reinforcement of other objects was more difficult.

That was on top of the benefit of simply having more cooperative water spirits, and a growing water stone.

I had now confirmed that absorbing Shinsoo allowed the water stone to recover and gain water mana at an incredible rate. Although the water spirits didn't directly convert all of the absorbed Shinsoo to mana-they instead refined and stored it-they were able to convert enough that being here for three days had given the stone more mana than months or even years of sitting in a mana-rich body of water would have.

In fact, the spirits could probably convert all that stored Shinsoo into water mana even after I left this plane, unless they had other plans for it.

If I got nothing else from this plane, this alone would have made it worthwhile to be here. Even as a place to retreat after overusing the water stone, the Tower would serve wonderfully.

O O O

37 – Position Test

37 - Position Test

"The test you're taking this time is the Position Test!" Lero Ro explained after gathering all the Regulars together. "I think a lot of you have noticed already. The fighting in the Tower usually happens in a team. The Position is the role that you play during these battles. There are a lot of different positions, but basically…"

He briefly summarized each of the basic five.

Fisherman - Disarms the enemy using the Reel inventory, and is active in the heart of battle. Can also carry out independent activities.

Spearbearer - Uses spears to target enemies from behind or finish off what the Fisherman started.

Lightbearer - Lights up the dark Tower, collects battle data, and sends it to the scout.

Scout - Observes enemy movements at the forefront using the observer and helps the Fisherman when he charges.

Wave Controller - Controls Shinsoo to assist in battle or overpower an opponent. They are known to dominate the battlefield.

Some of these were obvious based on the name, but others were rather strange and used devices and tactics that were unique to the Tower.

"… and there are more positions beyond these five, like the Guide, but it doesn't have much to do with you," said Lero Ro.

To sum up, we were all assigned to a specific position among the five, and we would be trained for a month in it. We'd also be given scores for our performance in various tests the instructors would give us, and our class attendance. Only a limited number of Regulars would pass per position.

Then Lero Ro showed us a large board with the assigned positions and number to pass.

Beside certain names at the top of the assignment lists, there was a "Best Seed" label.

Hatsu asked what it meant, and received the explanation that one person per test from the previous tests were chosen to receive bonus points because they did well.

Lero Ro offered no explanation as to why each Regular got the best seeds, only that they were chosen fairly.

The Regulars predictably started complaining loudly, while I observed the lists closely, glossing over the Regulars that were of no interest to me.

Fisherman (4): Axion (Best Seed), Anak (Best Seed), Androssi…

Spearbearer (4): Rak Wraithraiser…

Lightbearer (2): Michelle Light (Best Seed), Khun Aguero Agnis…

Scout (3): Ship Leesoo (Best Seed), Hatsu…

Wave Controller (2): Phonsekal Laure, Hwaryun, Hoh… Baam.

Only four best seeds had been chosen, one for each test, and the two cohorts hadn't been separated.

Rachel, under her alias Michelle Light, received a Best Seed, probably for gathering the best team in the deathmatch test which was its real purpose.

Ship Leesoo probably got his best seed for figuring out the Door Test through deduction alone.

I received a Best Seed myself, though I wasn't sure which test. If Rachel got it for the first test, that only left the barrier test and the Crown game. Either was possible.

In the story, Khun would have gotten the best seed for the Crown game, because he won two rounds for his team using his own skills and the Regulars he smuggled in.

But we messed up his plan and he never got a chance to show off with the Regulars he smuggled in. I thought he still had a decent chance at it though, the way he negotiated with us to help his team go up. Of course, it failed in the end because of me and Hwaryun, so maybe that was why he didn't get it.

I might've gotten it for the Crown game instead for my battle performance and acquiring the Black March/Green April for Androssi.

Anak's best seed was the most puzzling one of all though. She couldn't have gotten the Crown game best seed, as she disqualified her own team. So, hers must have been the barrier test.

But that made no sense. Lero Ro could call Baam a fluke because he never even got pushed by the barrier, but what about Rachel and Androssi? They also didn't get pushed. Once is a fluke, but 3 times, especially with a princess of Zahard? Doesn't the guy know that Yuri has the same kind of Shinsoo resistance? I thought Lero Ro knew Yuri from his own Regular days while climbing up the Tower, but maybe I remembered wrong.

Anak had the easiest time crossing, but her actual Shinsoo resistance was definitely lower than either of the two other Irregulars or the true Zahard princess. And then there was me, who absorbed the whole barrier.

Did Lero Ro simply get pissed at us and refuse to give any of us the best seed for his test out of pettiness?

Given the way he kept altering the Crown game rules, I could certainly see that. Of course, with me and Rachel, it might just be because we couldn't double up on best seeds, we could only get it once each.

Well, actually, figuring this out wasn't all that important, except to explain to Androssi, who looked ready to murder Anak to wipe that smug expression off her face.

The important part was understanding what the assignments meant.

My position was pretty secure, despite competing with the princesses, simply because there were four spots, and I was best seed. Androssi might have some trouble if she messes up the way she did in the story. That was especially true with me being assigned to Fisherman because Akryawng or whatever, that guy Headon had sent, whom I'd replaced, had been assigned to Spearbearer instead in the story.

All of the other main characters were assigned to the same positions as their story counterpart, and I only included Hoh because he was part of Hwaryun and Yu Han Sung's plan, although as a mere pawn who didn't know he was being used.

After fielding numerous questions and responding to complaints, Lero Ro wrapped up the explanation, telling us to follow the assistant test guides to our instructors and that the Wave Controller instructor would start 3 days later.

I raised my hand.

"Oh, how polite of you, Mr. Axion, raising your hand patiently like that. The rest of you should learn from him instead of interrupting me," said Lero Ro, giving the other Regulars looks, especially the ones who inundated him with questions earlier. "Yes, Mr. Axion, what is your question?"

"Can we choose to attend a different instructor's class from our assigned position?"

"You want to change positions?" He raised an eyebrow. "Well, all of us test administrators evaluated you carefully. The position we assigned is the one we think is best for you. But if you insist, for example, if you deliberately hid your true abilities during the previous tests," he said with narrowed eyes, "… then you can take an extra qualification test for the position you want and we will re-assign you. But I caution you, it will not be easy. You will be required to demonstrate some proficiency in the position you choose. If you fail this test, you will fail the Floor as well, and you will not be allowed to continue in the position we originally assigned either. That is the price of demanding a re-evaluation."

Everyone looked at me as whispers started. Some of the Regulars also had contemplative looks, as if they might consider the option themselves.

Rak looked at each of the Fishermen candidates, before Khun nudged him. "Crocodile, look at that competition, don't be stupid. You can always change positions later, just get through this test."

"Don't you understand the pride of a Fisherman!" Rak said, puffing his chest out.

Khun sighed and shook his head. "I warned you…"

Ship Leesoo was sweating nervously, when Hatsu put a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry so much, Ship. Even if he switches to Scout, I'm sure you'll do fine. You've got the best seed, after all," said Hatsu.

"Ahahaha… thanks Hatsu. Was I that obvious?" Ship rubbed his head.

"That will not be necessary, Mr. Lero Ro. I am happy with my position. I only meant to ask if I could attend some different classes to learn from them. As we climb up the Tower, it would be useful to be able to learn how the other roles function too, right?" I asked.

"That is an unusual request… it would be up to the instructor whose class you wish to attend. Do bear in mind that it will mean your attendance in your assigned class will suffer, and you will lose points for it," said Lero Ro. "It's also just as likely that if you don't attend consistently, you won't be able to follow along with the lessons either."

"I see, thank you."

Finally, we started to follow the guides to our instructors. Apparently Rak changed his mind after seeing that I wasn't actually switching, and he went with the Spearbearers.

"Are you really going to other classes?" Androssi asked from beside me as we walked.

"There's one in particular I want to attend, if the instructor allows me," I said.

For most of them I could simply have Agate spy on their lessons for a little. Although I could no longer split my consciousness so easily to pay attention to different things at the same time without Agate's mind spell, I could still record the sessions for later viewing.

My wand couldn't be in multiple places at once, but most of them didn't interest me all that much. Getting a quick look to understand the basics of how their role functioned was good enough.

"Let me guess… Wave Controller?" She asked with a knowing look.

"Haha… yes," I said.

But the Wave Controller position was all about manipulating Shinsoo, and I wanted those lessons in their entirety. I wanted the practice and the opportunity to be directly tutored by the instructor as well.

"You're lucky that the instructor's starting 3 days late then. You can come to the first few Fisherman lessons with us, and still start at the same time at the beginning with the rest of the Wave Controllers," said Androssi.

"Too bad you're not a best seed, or you could afford to join your boyfriend without worrying about your points," said Anak, butting into our conversation.

"Too bad you lost the Green April, I'll make great use of her as a top quality hook in the Fisherman position," said Androssi. "And we aren't dating. Don't you know princesses of Zahard aren't allowed to date? Oh, I almost forgot, you're a fake."

"Was there ever a real princess of Zahard? You're also a fake, Androssi Zahard," said Anak.

"An-androssi Z-zahard? You're a princess too, Miss Androssi?" Some other Regular with us in a white sweater with grey hair asked. All the Fishermen candidates had varying degrees of shock on their faces.

"That's absurd, you're calling me a fake?" Androssi said, completely ignoring the other guys. "Guess you don't know the difference between a fake and a real one. I'd teach you the difference, but not now. It would be disrespectful to our instructor to fight here on the way to our first class. But you don't know anything about respect, either, do you?"

"Big talk for somebody who needs her boyfriend to fight her battles," said Anak.

"He's not my boyfriend. And so what? People actually like me, unlike you. Your teammates surrendered as soon as you were out of sight," said Androssi.

"Yeah! We love Miss Androssi!" The same Regular with the grey hair cheered. Despite his grey hairs, he didn't appear to be all that old. Maybe in his late twenties, in terms of physical age. You could never tell with residents in the Tower though, but nobody really cared for real age either, only the physical age.

Some other Regulars cheered with him, chanting Androssi's name.

"See? Everyone likes me. But even your own team abandoned you. How sad," said Androssi, having noticed that Anak was always alone, while Ship Leesoo and Hatsu continued hanging out together. Androssi herself sat in the cafeteria with me, but at other times she also mingled with the other Regulars and gave friendly smiles or engaged in polite conversation, such as during Lero Ro's explanation today. With her good looks, it was no wonder that many of the male Regulars liked her.

The assistant announced our arrival before the argument could go any further, and we entered a classroom almost like a miniature lecture hall with our instructor waiting at the front in front of the white board. The seats were organized in rows with long wooden tables to take notes on.

We filed in and took seats.

The instructor was a thin woman who wore a blue blouse and a pink and white striped dress. Her hair was bunched into twin tails by her helmet that covered her whole head, revealing no features, giving the appearance of a reflective metal ball.

"My name is Hax, and I'll be your instructor for the Fisherman position," she said from the podium. "Congratulations on making it this far. Today, we'll just do some introductions and cover a little bit of theory. First, I'm going to explain what Shinsoo is and why it's important for all positions, not just the Wave Controllers…"

She gave a pretty basic and bland lecture on Shinsoo, without adding anything I didn't already know from my own experimentation.

It wasn't necessary for the Fisherman position to delve deeply into it, only to know that it was necessary for combat, especially as we progressed up the Tower, and to know what kinds of things to expect from other users of Shinsoo.

"The most important part you must remember is that in order to use Shinsoo without the aid of items, unless you are a member of a Ten Great Families or a princess of Zahard, you need permission from the Floor Administrator. You can use items without permission because they were already permitted by the Administrators at the workshop after they were made, for a specific range of Floors. Whereas, if you're using more than a specific amount of Shinsoo, you need a contract with the Administrator, or you'll be restricted. And you'll need to make the contract the same way on each Floor with each of the Administrators. The E-grade Pocket you received when you first entered the Tower will allow you to make the contract. It is also an item that was permitted by the Administrators, so it only works up to the 40th Floor. To contract with Administrators above that, you'll need to buy a higher rank Pocket. By the way, it's very expensive, so don't wait until you're at the 40th Floor to save up. Now take out your Pockets and we'll learn to make the contract."

Everyone did so, even Androssi and Anak, and we followed her instructions to make a contract.

I found myself in a dark space, with a massive eye looking at me. Glancing around, it seemed to be a reptilian creature of sorts. I could only see as far as its angular face, it was that massive.

"I'm the Administrator of this Floor. Are you here for a contract? Don't you already have one? Or do you want to fight?"

"No fight, thanks, I'm just learning how to make a contract on my own. I didn't even realize I made a contract with Headon until somebody told me about it," I said.

"OK. I don't mind making another contract with you."

"So how does this work?"

"You ask for a contract, I give you one. Then you can use Shinsoo on my Floor."

"What about the terms? My obligations and responsibilities?"

"What? You want to do something for me? Are you an 'adventurer' like that other kid with the red cape that came in a long time ago? Sorry, I don't have any quests for you."

Was he talking about Zahard? My capes were red too, but that was just a coincidence.

"Uh… no, thanks. I mean… are you just letting me use Shinsoo however I want, for nothing in return?"

"What now? You want some restrictions? Those are for the ones who've gone up already, the ones you people call Rankers," it said. "Or if you want to fight me. Are you sure you don't want to fight me?"

"Oh… I see. No, I don't want to fight you."

"Let's make a contract then."

"Wait, one more question. After making the contract, can I cancel it or make a new one with you later?"

"Ah, have you realized it then? Yes, for you, climber of the Tower, this contract is not a strength. It is shackles. But you may come to me to cancel it whenever you wish."

How could that be? The Administrator had told Baam the same thing in the story, but that was because as an Irregular he didn't need the Administrator's permission to use Shinsoo.

That might have been true for me as well, seeing as I was able to absorb and convert Shinsoo to mana even on the first Floor before contracting with Headon, but if there weren't any contract terms, what did it matter?

Perhaps the contract would make things easier for me, and become a crutch if I ever needed to fight without it. But that wasn't really a serious concern for me at the moment.

The more immediate concern was to ensure that my status as an Irregular was not exposed, and have a contract like every other Regular. Test administrators and other individuals with sufficient authority could look up whether people had contracts for each floor based on the status recorded in their pockets. I had verified this with Yu Han Sung, so if I refused to get a contract, I would be either forced to never openly use Shinsoo, or face assassins from Zahard.

There was no real choice but to continue making contracts with each Floor Administrator if I wanted to climb the Tower, seeing as Headon's contract was only temporary and applied up to the 2nd Floor.

The thought of being potentially magically bound by a contract was a little disturbing, but given the lack of any obligations or restrictions, these contracts seemed to be just a way to request permission to use something that fell under the Floor Administrator's authority.

Unless there were specific terms to the contract, I felt that there was no need to overthink the risk involved. I was no stranger to loosely defined contracts already, given my bond with the water spirits, and this type of magic seemed to be vague by nature.

And if the "shackles" did turn out to be a serious problem, I could just cancel the contract, as he said.

"Alright, I'm ready. Let's make a contract," I said.

"Here you go," the Administrator said

Light flashed. What a loose "contract".

"… that concludes this morning's lesson. I will now hand out the schedule for upcoming tests. Be sure you don't miss those, or you'll lose a lot of points. After the lunch break, return here for the next lesson in the afternoon," said Hax. "You're dismissed."

"Did you make a new contract?" Androssi and I asked each other simultaneously, then laughed.

"Ladies first," I said.

"No, I just wanted to see what it was like and meet the Administrator. You?" She said.

"I did. The one from Headon was conditional and temporary, this new one isn't," I said.

The instructor walked over to us while the other Regulars started leaving the room.

"Mr. Axion. I heard from Mr. Lero Ro you want to attend some of the other positions' lessons? Are you unsatisfied with your position?"

"Not at all, Instructor Hax. I am happy to be in the Fisherman position, and I do think it suits me. I am merely interested in learning how the other positions work, and perhaps some of their skills," I said. "I think it is important to not only develop one's strengths, but also learn to improve one's weaknesses."

"Good. If you were unsatisfied with the Fisherman position, I'd be very disappointed. Did you know that Lero Ro tried to recommend you for the Wave Controller position? I don't know what he was thinking, but I saw the recording of the Crown game, and you're very obviously more suited to the Fisherman position."

Androssi looked at me while holding a hand to her mouth, trying to withhold laughter.

"Not only that, I had to argue with Yu Bok-Dol, the Spearbearer instructor, to get you in this class. Yu thought you were acting as a Spearbearer, supporting Miss Androssi's initial charges, rather than acting as a Fisherman yourself. But the way you disarmed your opponents and took their weapons for your own team, that was clearly a Fisherman's way of thinking. Luckily Yuga was not around to argue with us, and neither Lero Ro or Yu could outvote me by themselves, so eventually they gave up."

"Thank you for your efforts, Instructor Hax. I am flattered that you went to such lengths to support me, though I'm not sure I am worthy of such attention," I said politely. Inside, I was rather displeased this woman had stolen an opportunity from me. I wanted to be in the Wave Controller class, damn you!

"Don't think anything of it. It's my job as an instructor. Anyways, if you really want to go to some of the other classes, I won't stop you. But I'm sure Lero Ro already warned you, you'll lose points for attendance. Especially if you miss any of my tests. We'll also cover the basics of what all the other positions do in this class, so you understand how to fight them as a Fisherman."

"I understand, thank you very much for your consideration."

The next three days passed in a similar fashion. Taking classes in the morning and afternoon, shorter training sessions with Androssi in the early evening, while I continued meditating with the water stone on my own time.

On the fourth day the Wave Controller instructor finally arrived, and I skipped the Fisherman class, leaving Agate to record in my absence, to attend.

38 – Wave Controller Class

38 - Wave Controller Class

"Mr. Axion! Are you joining our class today?" Baam greeted me with a smile as he noticed me entering the classroom.

"Hello Baam. That's right. I'm very interested in learning about Shinsoo manipulation," I said.

"Me too. It was amazing when Mr. Laure used it in the Crown game!" Baam said.

For once, Laure wasn't sleeping. He sat up paying attention to the front, but still wrapped in blankets. He gave me a quick glance before turning back to the front.

Yuga, the instructor, stood at the front of the class.

He wore some kind of weird fluffy costume that made him look like a giant marshmallow with a smiley face.

"Oh? I don't think you're in my class, Mr. Axion. What are you doing here?"

"Hello instructor Yuga. I am here to attend your class, if you would allow me. Instructor Hax has given me permission to skip her lesson, though I will be losing points for it. Nevertheless, I am very interested in learning about the use of Shinsoo from a master such as yourself," I said.

"Ohoho! I won't turn away such an eager student! Please, have a seat then, Mr. Axion."

Hoh, Laure, Baam, and Hwaryun were sitting in the same row. I walked towards them, passing and greeting Hwaryun at the edge, then taking a seat between her and Baam.

Then I drew Derflinger.

"Hm? There won't be any combat in the class today. You should put your sword away, Mr. Axion," said Yuga.

"My apologies, instructor. It's just that my sword wants to learn too, and it is difficult to see the class from inside his sheath," I said, laying Derflinger out on the table.

"Oi, I'm an eager student too! Don't turn me away!" said Derflinger. "My name is Derflinger, teach! Pleased to meet you!"

"Ah? How very unusual and fascinating… an ignition weapon that can talk out loud. Would that be considered a Living Ignition Weapon? Very well, then Derflinger. I shall permit you to join this class too," said Yuga.

"Hi Mr. Derflinger!" Baam said, waving at the crystal sword.

"Hey kid. From enemies to classmates, huh? Let's learn a lot together, OK?"

"Sure!"

Like this, I started attending Yuga's classes, ignoring my Fisherman classes. I sent Agate to record the Fisherman classes just in case there was anything important, and also exchanged notes with Androssi every day.

A few days into the classes, we finally started practical lessons with Shinsoo.

"… The basic unit of a cluster of Shinsoo is called a Baang. The size of the Baang is called Myun, and the amount of Shinsoo that can be injected into a Baang is called Soo," Yuga said.

Baang was a word that meant "release". Myun was something like surface area. Soo was just "water".

"Baang, Myun, and Soo are all important, but among them, Baang is the most important for Wave Controllers. The higher the number of Baangs you can control, the more separate attacks you can launch. If you can fire three Baangs while your opponent can only handle one, then he needs to find some other way to block the other two," said Yuga.

He demonstrated by materializing four Baangs, lining up 3 on one side, and 1 on the other, then launching small beams of light from each of them.

Two of the Baangs cancelled each other's beams out, but the other two attacks had nothing to block them.

"For now, we won't worry about having more Baangs. We're starting with the basics, after all, so you should learn to control just 1 Baang."

Then we were all given time to attempt forming a Baang, based on his instructions for mental imagery.

Although I'd been able to manipulate Shinsoo using the water spirits, they could only treat the Shinsoo as water.

In my Fisherman class, we hadn't learned how to use Shinsoo at all yet, despite the lecture on the first day.

We'd only done physical exercises and weapon training with hooks and Reels, which were basically long lines wrapped around a cylinder not too different from a fishing line, that you could attach weapons to and release to swing around or rewind to bring them back.

So the creation of a Baang was entirely new to me.

"Do not worry if you cannot form a Baang right away. It takes a very long time to learn how to materialize Baangs. It is quite different from using Shinsoo to strengthen your body, and usually takes years of training. Just try to get a feel for the Shinsoo, and gather it in your hands," Yuga said.

I tried to do it on my own, without the water spirits' help. Trying to control the Shinsoo on a macroscopic scale was truly difficult for me. I couldn't grasp it like Baam was able to do so instinctively on his first try.

Five minutes later, I had made next to no progress. All I could do was feel a little pressure between my hands, which was about the same when I'd tried on my own the last few days.

"It seems that most of you already had some Shinsoo training before," said Yuga, upon noticing that most of the Regulars had been able to produce small flickers of light in their hands, even if unstable and quickly disappearing. "Of course, that is why you were assigned to this position. If you had not had any training, this would be an impossible task. It took me two years to materialize my first Baang after learning to use Shinsoo, and I was called a genius."

Then a big glow washed over the room. Everyone looked at Baam who looked surprised at his own hands as it disappeared.

"Very good, Baam. But you need to learn to maintain it," said Yuga, looking over.

Baam rubbed his head with a smile. "Oh, it's thanks to Laure's advice from before that I got it!"

Yuga then went around giving pointers to each Regular.

Only Laure and Hwaryun had no trouble at all, each maintaining a stable Baang effortlessly.

"You don't have the talent, Mr. Axion," said Hwaryun from beside me as she saw me watching her. "Not like Baam. He's just a natural."

Baam was working hard on his Baang while Laure gave him some more advice.

"Did it take you years to master this too?" I asked the red-haired Guide.

Her crimson eyes twinkled with her smile, then leaned forward to whisper. "No. I'm a Guide, blessed by the Tower. It comes naturally to me too."

"But not as fast as Baam?"

"He's special," she said.

"So, is it hopeless for me?"

"Are you asking for a reading of your future? You know I can't see yours," she said.

"Tch, this is stupid! Nothing's happening," Derflinger said.

"You don't have the talent either, Mr. Derflinger," said Hwaryun.

"This ain't for me. I'm going back to sleep."

"You sound like Laure now, haha…" Baam said while he practiced with a grin.

I sighed. "Maybe I should stop coming to these classes then."

"Give me your hand," said Hwaryun, holding hers out.

I put my hand in hers. "What for?"

"I'll do a palm reading for you," she said.

"Oh, in that case, I should take off the glove," I said, thinking of the Armoriont.

"Please do," she said, and I had the Armoriont detach at the wrist, allowing me to take off the part that covered my hand.

She took hold of my hand again, running her fingers along my bare palm for about ten seconds, seemingly intently analyzing it.

"So…?"

"You should stay," she said, looking up at me.

"OK… that's it?"

"Should I predict the manner of your death? Or maybe when you'll meet the love of your life?" She asked with a teasing smile and let go of my hand. "Or should I get my crystal ball to make it look more elaborate?"

"In other words, I just got scammed by a fake fortune-telling witch?" I asked while re-attaching the glove.

"Nope. You really should stay," she said, propping up her chin with her hands on the table and looking up at me innocently. "But you don't have to listen to me."

"You totally got scammed, Partner," said Derflinger.

"Didn't you go to sleep already?"

"And miss how you were holding hands with this beautiful maiden? Wait until I tell Androssi the real reason you came to this class!"

"Derf, you bastard, I should've kept you in your sheath instead of fighting for you to attend class like a normal student," I said

"Snore… snore… ZZz…" Derflinger narrated out loud while Hwaryun looked on with an amused expression.

I sighed and went back to practicing.

After a while, Yuga came over.

"Ah, Mr. Axion, having trouble? I am surprised, you know. I spoke to the other instructors. It seems that Lero Ro gave you a strong recommendation for this position, before Hax claimed you for the Fishermen. I thought you would be quite talented."

"I don't know why Mr. Lero Ro did that, but it looks like I'd be in trouble if I were assigned to this position, so I'm grateful to instructor Hax."

"Lero Ro implied that you might be hiding your true abilities… he said you did something quite astonishing during his test. You absorbed the Shinsoo in his barrier. It makes me very curious. Are you hiding your abilities?" asked Yuga.

"Ah… what Mr. Lero Ro saw was just a fluke. I don't know how I did it," I said, pretending to be ignorant about how I absorbed the Shinsoo.

"Mr. Lero Ro said it was a fluke for me too! But it turned out not to be a fluke after all!" Baam said from beside me. "Maybe you have a hidden talent too, Mr. Axion!"

"Mr. Axion, how about this? I'll make a barrier like Lero Ro's, and you can try to do what you did back then. Maybe I can help you unlock your latent talent," said Yuga.

"Okay, sure. Thank you, Instructor Yuga."

Yuga then turned to the rest of the class and announced in a loud voice. "Class, we will go on an impromptu field trip. I wish to satisfy a curiosity of mine, but it will also be a chance for you to witness some interesting uses of Shinsoo. Follow me, everyone."

We made our way to the testing area Lero Ro used for his barrier test.

"I'm sure you all remember this place. It seems that Mr. Axion did something abnormal during this test that Lero Ro gave. Mr. Axion thinks it was a fluke, but Mr. Baam thinks it might be a hidden talent like his own. As a wave controller myself, I find myself very curious. So I'm going to try and help Mr. Axion discover his talent, while the rest of you will do a little exercise," said Yuga.

He ordered me to stand a little further away.

Then he created a barrier much like the one Lero Ro did, with all the other Regulars on his side, and me on the other.

"Now then, Mr. Axion will attempt to recreate what he did during the test. As for the rest of you, I want you to try to create a Baang again. The Shinsoo on this side of the barrier, I have made a little more stable than usual. It should be easier to make your Baangs. If you are successful, go to the other side where it is normal and try again."

Everyone started practicing again, while Laure and Hwaryun simply demonstrated their Baangs and moved over to my side and did it again. Then Laure laid down to sleep, while Hwaryun stood beside me watching.

I was up against the barrier with my hand again, and I started absorbing bits of it through my circuits to convert into mana. This was what I did the first time around, and my initial plan for getting through the barrier.

Although the Shinsoo was under the control of Yuga, it was still in a raw form, so I could process it with my circuits.

Yuga himself got closer and examined me.

After about a minute of this, he spoke. "That is very interesting, Mr. Axion. I must admit I have never seen anything like this. You are absorbing an incredibly small amount of Shinsoo and running it through certain pathways in your body, where it seems to disappear with a little heat."

I was impressed with the level of detail he had discerned from watching me. Evidently, my magecraft and circuits could be detected via Shinsoo with acute enough senses, even if he couldn't figure out exactly what I was doing.

"Perhaps you have an unusual Shinsoo Quality, Mr. Axion. It is an advanced topic, but when controlled by some special people, Shinsoo acquires new properties, which is manifested as a Quality. For example, in the Yeon Family, their Shinsoo manifests as Flame from the moment of their birth, and it is very wild and difficult to control," said Yuga. "They find it hard to use Shinsoo any other way."

He stepped through the barrier and walked all around me.

"Are you unable to manipulate more Shinsoo than that?" He asked.

"Yes, this is my limit," I said.

"Is there a reason you send the Shinsoo through your body in those specific paths?"

"It just happens naturally when I try to do this," I said, which was true. The circuits absorbed the Shinsoo, so naturally they were processed by the circuits. I couldn't actually manipulate the Shinsoo until it was processed into mana, and I couldn't manipulate the Shinsoo however the other people in the Tower did it.

"Stop that for a moment, and try manipulating Shinsoo the way I instructed in the lesson."

I retracted my arm and did as he asked.

He examined my efforts for another minute.

"Okay. When you manipulate Shinsoo the way you did earlier on the barrier, are you able to feel how much Shinsoo you're controlling? Can you feel the difference between how much Shinsoo you accessed then, and how much you're trying to control with the method I showed in class?"

"I suppose I can. I know it's a tiny amount, and I have a sense of just how much. I can't really tell how much Shinsoo I'm trying to control right now though, I don't get much of a sense for anything other than some pressure on my palm."

"Then, forget what I told you before about gathering a dense ball of water in your hand. Try to visualize a tiny amount of Shinsoo instead. Start from the smallest amount you can visualize. Don't even think of it as water. Imagine the smallest thing you can think of, and imagine it floating gently down on your palm like a bit of dust or a grain of sand, then turning into sparks as if set on fire," Yuga instructed.

Something flickered in my palm as I tried what he told me.

As if it were actually glitter, the Shinsoo sparkled in my hands in countless tiny fragments. Unbelievable. I actually managed to manipulate Shinsoo. Was this my perk for being an Irregular? I thought I got none of the benefits Irregulars normally had, but maybe I was wrong.

"It seems I was right," said Yuga. "You do have a very unusual Shinsoo Quality. With this tiny amount of Shinsoo, it's far too little to form a Baang. On the other hand, under normal circumstances, only very skilled practitioners can control Shinsoo in such low quantities. It is an unusual problem to have."

Hwaryun was smiling at me as if she knew this would happen.

"I'm afraid I'm actually not sure what you can do with this tiny amount of Shinsoo, however. You've piqued my interest so I intend to try experimenting with this myself, but at the moment, I cannot help you further," said Yuga.

"Thank you very much, instructor Yuga. This is already incredible," I said honestly.

"I am glad to have helped, Mr. Axion. However, what you have shown me is not what Lero Ro was surprised about. Would you mind trying what you did again on the barrier? I am told that you managed to absorb not just small bits of Shinsoo from it, but the whole barrier," said Yuga. "Perhaps there is more to you than what we have discovered so far."

"Ah… of course, I'll keep trying then," I said, going back to the barrier.

Internally, I debated whether I should actually show him the water spirits' power.

It was dangerous, because I knew he was the undercover RED agent sent to retrieve the Green April and kill Anak Zahard, but he was also quite helpful.

He was likely to be already interested in me after what Lero Ro told him, and trying to investigate.

If he found any Irregulars, he'd also have to kill them as part of his job. That was in fact what he attempted to do with Baam after his status was revealed, and how the FUG conspiracy successfully faked Baam's death.

At first, Yuga thought Baam had great potential and wanted to recruit him into RED, but once his Irregular status had been revealed, he was forced to assassinate him.

If he believed I was an Irregular, he'd have to do the same to me.

But if I didn't show the water spirits' absorption ability here, he would start thinking that I was actively hiding my abilities as Lero Ro claimed, and his interest in me might turn in a more negative direction.

After all, here he was, a friendly instructor actually trying to help me, what possible reason could a normal Regular have for hiding his abilities at a time like this? One might hide their abilities from fellow competition to keep an ace up their sleeve, but from a Ranker? Even after I had shown the ability in a test already?

If I had a reason to hide it from him, it made me far more suspicious.

So neither option was good.

I glanced at Hwaryun. 'Guide me!' I tried to transmit my thoughts to her. Obviously, that wouldn't accomplish anything, but I really needed her help right now.

She smiled back. "Do your best, Mr. Axion," she said encouragingly.

Well, hopefully I didn't read her wrong.

I called to the water spirits.

O O O

39 – Red Witch

39 - Red Witch

The water spirits were even more eager to respond than usual, knowing the nature of my request.

"Hm? What is this presence…?" Yuga spoke to himself just before it happened.

Suddenly his barrier broke apart and the Shinsoo surged around me like an angry vortex.

"Woah!"

"What's happening?!"

The other Regulars cried out in surprise.

The water stone absorbed the Shinsoo just as before, leaving the room in silence.

All the Regulars on the other side had a look of awe. Even Laure had stood up wide awake behind us and was staring at me warily.

"Mr. Axion… it seems you are even more special than I had imagined. Lero Ro was incorrect in his description," said Yuga.

"Wow! So you really do have a hidden talent, Mr. Axion!" Baam said loudly.

"You did not simply break the barrier and absorb the Shinsoo from it. You took control of the Shinsoo from me. But it should not be possible to manipulate the Shinsoo that is actively under the control of somebody else, even if it's still in a raw form," said Yuga. "This is not a technique. It is simply impossible. Nobody can do it. Not Rankers, High Rankers, even Zahard or the Ten Great Warriors… but there is one exception…"

"The Floor Administrators," said Laure.

"Correct. Our ability to control Shinsoo is derived from the contract with the Floor Administrators. Therefore, they have the absolute authority to control Shinsoo, and can reclaim control from us at any time," said Yuga.

"So what does this mean?" I asked.

"I can only think of one way this can be possible," said Yuga.

"And that is…?" I tensed for a battle and quickly recalled Agate from the Fisherman class.

I readied the spell for planeshifting in my mind in case I needed to make a break for it. It'd have to be a random shift to be faster.

"The Floor Administrator gave you the ability by contract, which allows you to seize control of Shinsoo in the same way they do, as an extension of their authority," said Yuga. "I cannot fathom why they would do such a thing for a fresh Regular, considering that even Rulers of the Floors do not have this privilege, but it is indeed possible to form special contracts with the Administrators. It is not unheard of for Floor Administrators to sometimes give unique rewards to worthy Regulars, but it is extremely rare. As this is a matter between yourself and the Floor Administrators, if you do not wish to speak of it, I shall not enquire further," said Yuga.

I relaxed with his explanation. "I see. It's true that I have a special contract with an Administrator, but I didn't know that the contract included such a privilege. I'm just as surprised as you, instructor Yuga, that my contract would include something like this."

"Then that is one mystery solved! All in a day's work. Alright Regulars, let's head back to the classroom," said Yuga.

What a close call. But was that really the end of it?

On the way back, Yuga spoke to me quietly again. "You are very special indeed, Mr. Axion. I am sure that the 2nd Floor Administrator would not have given any reward prior to completing the tests on this Floor, so it must have been Headon who contracted with you, am I correct?"

"Yes, you are very wise, Instructor Yuga."

He laughed. "Not at all, it was a simple deduction to reach. Headon is the one who selects all the Regulars, after judging if they are worthy, therefore, to have gained his recognition is no small feat. I shall watch your climb up the Tower with great interest."

That did not bode well for me, but it couldn't be helped. Still, I wondered how accurate his theory was. Somehow, I doubted that Headon was so kind as to give me such a power, but it was starting to look like he had predicted this might happen and covered for me in advance.

When the class was over, Hwaryun silently led me to her room.

"You have questions," she said with a tilt of her head, sitting down on her bed, legs dangling.

"Is it safe?" I asked, taking the seat beside the desk.

"Safe enough."

"Why didn't he suspect me of being an Irregular?"

"Other Irregulars can't do that. If they could, Enryu's victory over the Administrator on the 43rd Floor wouldn't be so impressive. Even if Irregulars don't need permission from the Administrators to use Shinsoo, they can't forcibly take control of it from somebody else either," said Hwaryun.

"So why can I do it? Was Yuga right? A special ability given by Headon's contract?"

"No. Don't you already know why you can do it?" asked Hwaryun with a raised eyebrow.

"I have suspicions, but I won't pretend to understand how Shinsoo really works."

She nodded then lay on her back, staring upwards at the ceiling.

There was a moment of silence while I didn't know if she was planning to continue the conversation or not. Was she waiting for me to explain my suspicions? But I didn't really want to talk about the water stone, unless she already knew about it.

"You don't trust me," she said finally.

"I don't know you," I said.

"You don't trust anyone," she said.

"I trust myself," I said.

"I can't Guide you if you won't let me," she said.

"How do I know if the path you lead me down is one that will go where I want?"

"How do you know if the path you lead yourself down is one that will go where you want?"

"And what about you? Don't you have any desires of your own? Or are you content to just Guide other people?"

She turned silent again.

Even though I knew her from the story, I didn't understand her motivations at all. There had been hardly any background given on her. Even though she would start calling Baam her "God" just like the rest of FUG did, she did so using a tone and wording in the original source text that was playful in nature, unlike the rest who took it seriously.

Without understanding what motivated somebody, it was impossible to trust them, besides my own distrust of people in general. Even for a business transaction, a deal without any loyalty, it was difficult to deal with those you had no understanding of.

That was the case for Headon and Yu Han Sung too, and I didn't feel comfortable relying on them even if I had no better options at the moment.

Between the three of them, Hwaryun was the least dangerous, given her relative lack of direct firepower, and the most easily accessible, due to her proximity to me during the tests.

So I wanted to have a good working relationship with her even if I couldn't trust her fully.

This time, it was me who broke the silence.

"The path I lead myself down… I don't know where it will lead. But that's what makes it interesting. If I knew my own fate, then life would be boring. As I said before to Yu Han Sung, it is not the destination, but the journey that matters. There are plenty of things I want… but achieving them wouldn't make me satisfied. I don't want to be satisfied. Rachel says she wants to see the stars. But do you know what I would do if I saw them?"

"Yes," she said suddenly.

I was momentarily taken aback as she actually answered my rhetorical question.

"Really? What would I do?"

"He shall build a Tower to reach them, and pluck them from the sky," she said, holding up one hand as if mimicking the action. "And when they grow dim in his hands, he shall fly into the dark, to leave the story of the Tower, and a dream of stars behind."

There was another long silence as I digested the words.

"… is that a prophecy?"

"It's just an old story," she said, sitting up straight again.

"Of whoever built this Tower?"

"Who knows… we have a terrible, selfish, irresponsible god if it's true," She said, shrugging. "But don't you think it sounds like something you would do?"

"I suppose I might, if I had that kind of power. But I'm no god," I said. "I'm just an adventurer."

"Is it true? What Urek Mazino says about the Outside?" Hwaryun asked suddenly.

"Who is that? And what does he say?"

"The most recent known Irregular that has gone up the Tower. A High Ranker, number 4, just below Zahard. He says that… outside the Tower, there exists a vast world… rolling skies that stretch endlessly, and countless stars that illuminate the darkness. A place a billion times wider and freer than the Tower," she said, while getting up and walking towards the balcony. "It's the goal of his organization, Wolhaiksong, to find a way to return Outside."

"Have you asked Rachel that question?"

"Although she's an Irregular… I don't think she's from the Outside that Urek was talking about… and neither is Baam. Rachel wants to see the stars, and entered the Tower to reach for them, yet the Outside Urek describes would already have had them. As for Baam… he doesn't seem to know much of anything," said Hwaryun. Then she glanced back at me. "But you're different, aren't you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Because you took my story seriously. You really thought somebody, not necessarily even a god, built this Tower, as if it were just a physical structure. We call it a Tower because there are many floors, but it is the whole of our reality, our universe. The Tower has always been there. From the beginning of the story." said Hwaryun. "Everyone knows that. Even Irregulars, even Urek Mazino, who's from the Outside. But not you."

"The beginning of the story? Don't you mean the world?"

"To a real god… like the one who built the Tower… isn't this world just a story he left behind?"

This conversation had gone in a very strange direction. I never thought somebody in a plane I visited would think of themselves as being in a story, even if it was true from my perspective.

It was fatalistic, perhaps, but also fascinating.

"Maybe you're right," I said, standing up and walking beside her to look out the balcony into the fake sky. "It's true that I'm a little different. I don't know what sort of Outside Urek came from, but I have seen the rolling skies and stars shining in the dark."

As we were at an impasse earlier, and I wanted Hwaryun's knowledge and abilities on my side, I decided to share a little bit about myself, and answer her question regarding the Outside. In any other plane, such knowledge might have been dangerous to share, but here in the Tower, I was not the only traveler from beyond the known universe, just one of many Irregulars who had found their way into the Tower.

"I don't agree with him, though. A billion times wider and freer? I never built a Tower, nor did I pluck the stars from the sky, but I did fly into the dark space above the heavens where the stars lie… it truly was a vast, endless space. But it was empty. Empty of life, empty of joy or sadness, it was just… a void. Did I feel free, having escaped the world that caged me? No… I left the pain and the suffering, but also the joy and the wonder. That world might have just been a story… but it was one full of life and meaning, of triumph and tragedy, of love and loss, and it was beautiful."

My escape from Worm hadn't quite gone like that, but this sounded much more dramatic.

"So then, did you go back?"

"I did, for a short time. But I couldn't stay. As beautiful as it was, it was not my home, and it was still a cage. That was not the first time I had left a world behind. A long time ago, I obtained the power to slide into other stories. The first time I used it, it got me trapped in that world. Once I was free of the cage, I used that power again… but I never once found my way back to home. Perhaps, that is what Urek truly desires. Not simply the Outside, but the memories of home. And now I'm just a traveler without a world to call home, interfering in stories that were never my own, for my own selfish indulgence. Although it may seem as if I am merely trading one cage for another each time, until I find the exit… I've learned to value the journey itself… the story… more than achieving the goal."

Again, I altered my history a bit, implying that I couldn't freely travel to different worlds without finding some sort of exit before I could use my power.

The residents of the Tower had no concept of what the Outside was like, or of the multiverse. Each floor was practically a world of its own. So to them, the Tower was their world, and the Irregulars came from outside that world, whether by some kind of power or luck. So simply being able to cross worlds wasn't that special or different from other Irregulars, without any further context.

But one fact was certain-nobody could leave the Tower. Just because an Irregular had the ability to enter the Tower did not mean they could exit. Urek Mazino was known to have entered the Tower deliberately to track down Phantaminum, but he was trapped like everyone else. Any method to leave would be highly coveted.

The point here was that there was no need to give any hint that I had the power to leave the Tower myself. Nor was I even certain of that, because I hadn't tested the spell here yet.

"So you obtained a power belonging to the gods. The power to edit what has already been written."

"That makes me sound far more powerful than I am. I'm not that different from you. I can't change the past. I can only try to change the future, just like any other mortal."

"Guides don't fight fate, nor can we."

I turned to look at her again. "Aren't you fighting it already? By talking to me?"

She turned to me as well. "Am I? Or is this just a script of your revision?"

I took off my visor, revealing my eyes that stared directly into her own, to add emphasis and a show of sincerity. "If this were my script, you'd be the heroine, and I'd be your secret love interest. Am I?"

"…" She smiled lightly without breaking eye contact. "If it's a secret, then I'd be breaking script if I told you now." Then she turned back towards the balcony. "You should leave before Miss Androssi comes by, Mr. Axion."

"Thanks for the warning, and the interesting conversation, Miss Hwaryun," I said, turning away as well, putting my visor back on.

I was no closer to understanding her motivations, but it had been a thought-provoking discussion, and I at least learned a little about her worldview.

Just when my hand reached the doorknob, Hwaryun's voice stopped me again.

"That thing inside you… it has a power like that of an Administrator's. It's insignificant compared to the Administrators, but its nature is fundamentally similar."

I turned around to look at her, but she was still looking out the balcony, facing away from me.

My mind immediately went to the water stone and the spirits within. They were the ones that absorbed the Shinsoo after all.

Before I could ruminate further, she continued. "By the way, when you confess to a girl, at least bring her a rose. I want a flower of Zygaena though."

"I see. Thank you, Hwaryun. I'll keep that in mind if I see one," I said.

The flower of Zygaena was something rare that only grew on a specific Floor that I couldn't recall but which the Yeon family, one of the Ten Great Families, tightly controlled. It was extremely difficult to acquire, and was involved in one of the floor tests Baam would participate in years down the line.

Did she actually want the flower, or was that a hint for me to interfere in that test, or another one that may involve the flower? The details behind that test escaped me, so for now, I couldn't determine what relevance it might have for me.

Putting it in the back of my mind, I returned to my own room while the hall was still empty.

Only after I sat down to meditate again did I realize that Hwaryun had actually answered my question from earlier. By professing a desire for the flower of Zygaena, she was implying that she did have her own desires, and was not content to just Guide other people.

A/N: Yuga's such a helpful teacher. And Hwaryun's comments might lead to interesting things farther down the line. Unfortunately I won't be able to continue the pace of updates over the last half year or so. Things have gotten a lot busier IRL and I've run out of buffer drafts as the next part has been harder to write. On that topic I'd like to ask… after the tests of floor 2 are done (still have a couple more to go), should the story continue in ToG and show some more floors (which would have to be original content), or use timeskips and/or move to another world until we get back to a plot-relevant floor later down the line? Time passes very slowly in ToG, there's something like a 6 year gap between Season 1 and 2, and the canon skipped a lot of floors. I might even make time pass differently here.

Last edited: Nov 8, 2021

40 - Hide and Seek

40 - Hide and Seek

"Very good Baam, hardworking and talented, I see great things in your future," said Yuga as Baam created a ball of light and launched it at a training target.

I looked down at the pitiful flickers of light in my hand. After the initial discovery that I could manipulate Shinsoo on a tiny scale, I'd made no progress in any of the classroom exercises that Yuga had instructed us on.

Nevertheless, I continued to attend the Wave Controller class instead of the Fisherman classes, simply because I believed it was more useful to unlock personal power, particularly outside of the Tower. Even if Shinsoo didn't work on other planes, researching magic of any form was consistent with my long-term agenda.

"Our time is almost at an end, Mr. Axion. As an instructor, it pains me to admit that I cannot be of further help to you," said Yuga. "If there is a way to use such small quantities of Shinsoo, you will have to find it yourself."

I nodded and thanked him for the lessons before he went around to comment on every other student's progress.

Fundamentally, the problem I had with Shinsoo was simply that I couldn't form a Baang, which was necessary for almost all Shinsoo techniques other than the most basic ones related to enhancing the body.

But even the techniques for enhancing physical combat required manipulating Shinsoo on a much larger scale than I was able. The simplest one that had been taught in the Fisherman classes was akin to Mana Burst, using a large amount of Shinsoo to generate explosive force.

Shinsoo was also unfortunately too potent and volatile to be used in my Reinforcement spell compared to refined mana processed by my circuits.

Yet despite my lack of personal progress, the classes were far from useless. After two weeks of absorbing the theory and trying to communicate with the water spirits as to what I wanted them to do, they succeeded in creating not one, but many Baangs.

Aside from the training, a few other events of note took place.

First was a minor Fisherman test in which Anak tried to fight Androssi without any particular reason, and Androssi baited her into taking out all of the other Fishermen. Everything proceeded nearly the same as canon while I stayed out of the fight, resulting in only me as the last person standing.. Androssi slipped due to her heels and dragged Anak down with her when she fell off the test platforms, getting them both severely injured and losing a lot of points.

They had their bonding moment down at the bottom of the testing arena in which Androssi inquired about why Anak's mother chose a life on the run over luxury and status, and Anak told her it was because of her dad's cooking. Then Anak swore to take back the Green April, and Androssi told her she'd give it back if Anak beat her fairly.

At the same time, the Scouts and the Lightbearers were given the task to make 10 friends. As the task proceeded, Baam's canonical friend group began to form as he helped Hatsu complete his friend list.

I made it onto his friend list when he asked me in the Wave Controller class, and so did Androssi after he bribed her with food while she was recovering from her injury.

As for my cooperation with Rachel, aside from the FUG conspiracy, I also exchanged some notes with her from our classes, given my interest in Lighthouses.

The Lighthouse functioned like a computer of sorts, and had access to an Internet-like network that spanned the Tower. Comprised of "cubes" that could be manipulated with Shinsoo, they could be used as armaments or floating vehicles in battle too.

Unfortunately, there was no information as to how the Tower's Lighthouse network's infrastructure worked, and no way to interface with it using regular electronics. It operated using Shinsoo and I couldn't identify what signals it used. Lightbearers interacted with it by summoning a virtual keyboard and touch gestures.

The conspiracy itself was largely directed by Hwa Ryun and Yu Han Sung, and I had little role to play in it at this point, but I was kept informed of the plan so as to not accidentally interfere, or act as a backup in case things went wrong.

"The next test is called Hide and Seek, and it's going to be a large team battle, where the Regulars will be split into teams with all the positions required to work together," I said to Androssi after another training session. "One Fisherman from each team has to carry the 'It' badge, and the team wins if their It runs to the exit with the badge, or tags the enemy Seeker badge. The enemy Seeker is going to be Quant, the Scout instructor. He's a Ranker, so it will be quite tough, especially as the team will lose if their own It's badge gets tagged. However, individuals will be scored based on an evaluation from all of the instructors, in addition to the team victory or loss."

"In other words, winning doesn't guarantee a pass, and losing doesn't mean a fail either… it depends on how well we perform in our positions?" Androssi asked.

"That's right. This gives us room to maneuver even though we won't be on the same team."

"You have the team placements already too?"

I told her the members of each side, which had been set by Yu Han Sung.

"Wait, what about you? You're not on either team?" Androssi asked with a perplexed expression after hearing me recount the team roster.

"They couldn't balance the teams with me in the roster, so I'll be given the special position of a 'wildcard'. I can score points by joining forces with either Regular team, or automatically pass by tagging any badge, whether from the Regular teams' It or from Quant. If I tag the Regulars' It, they lose. If I tag Quant's badge, it counts as the Regular team's win. I'm only permitted to join a single round, same as every other Regular, but it will be my choice as to which to join," I said.

"So which round are you going to join?"

"That depends…"

"On?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You. Or rather, your strategy. Despite missing most of the classes, I should still have enough points to pass quite easily thanks to everyone else losing all their points by falling down and getting injured while I remained the last person standing during that Fishermen test we had. So the question is whether you want my help on Team B against Quant or-"

"Or eliminate the other Fishermen on Team A," she finished with narrowed eyes and a smirk. "So you've already thought of that."

"Well… I was going to say if you'd rather I take the badge from Team A's It to ensure their loss, but I suppose outright eliminating the Fishermen works too," I said with a shrug. Actually, I did expect her to think of eliminating the Fishermen first, as that was exactly what she did in canon to her own team's Fishermen.

After a brief moment of thought, Androssi said, "That's a tempting option… but no. I'd rather have you join in my round."

"Really, why? There will be three Fishermen on Team A, and only four passing spots in total. If their team wins, it could be risky for you."

"That's true but how often are we going to get a chance to fight a Ranker? I'm not so arrogant as to think I can win by myself, even if I can use the Green April and he'll be restricted. I'll need your help to take him down," she said.

"…" I sighed. "Very well, let's take down the Ranker."

"What's with that response? It's an amazing opportunity! You should be more excited!"

Although I acted as if I reluctantly went along with her plan, I had my own reasons to fight the Ranker. The opportunity to test my skills against a superior opponent on Quant's level, in relatively safe conditions, was not something I could easily pass up.

The FUG conspiracy proceeded in the background, without much input from me.

Yu Han Sung sent out an anonymous note to Hoh, convincing him that the best way to eliminate Baam as Wave Controller competition was to kill Michelle Light because she's the reason he's climbing the Tower.

Hwa Ryun warned Khun about Hoh's jealousy, and Khun discovered the note in Hoh's room.

The next test would be where the pieces would all be moved into place, and Khun would unknowingly become their pawn as he worked to protect Rachel and Baam.

Finally, the day of the test arrived. The rules and team placements were announced to all the Regulars.

Just before the test started, Khun came over to quietly stand beside Androssi and me while we were away from the rest of the Regulars.

He was such a dedicated friend, despite having only known Baam for a short time. But he was also exceptionally smart. Unfortunately, he was working with limited information and could only focus on what was in front of him.

"It's too bad Baam and Rachel are on the same team… Baam shouldn't discover that Michelle Light is Rachel, don't you guys agree?" Khun said mischievously.

Androssi gave him an unimpressed look. "Do you have time to be entangled in other people's drama? We have our own business and have no time for that," she said for both of us.

"Don't let Baam and Rachel meet each other," said Khun more seriously.

Androssi looked at me for a moment, to which I responded with a shrug, indicating I didn't care. She proceeded to reject Khun's request again more forcefully.

"I'll help you guys with your business… if you protect Baam," said Khun, before he walked away with a wave. "Keep that promise."

"What did he mean by that? Helping us with our business?" Androssi asked me after Khun left. "Is he going to sabotage his own team? Why go so far just to help a guy he barely met?"

"Who knows? Maybe he had regrets about his own love life and is trying to live vicariously through those two. Give them the happy ending he couldn't get for himself," I said.

"I really don't understand them… any of them. But it's not a bad deal for us, if he actually does it," said Androssi. "It shouldn't be too hard to keep those two away from each other, seeing as Rachel's a Lightbearer who should be staying in the back anyways."

"I don't mind either way, but he isn't really helping us, you know? He says that, but the truth is that he would likely sabotage his team even if there was no deal with us, to give all his friends a better chance of passing."

"So, we help him if it's convenient, but don't need to try too hard."

"Exactly."

Team A's test went as expected without any significant anomalies while Team B watched the action from the waiting room via monitors.

Khun convinced the group to make him the leader, and they first attempted to trap Quant which failed, then Anak headed towards the exit.

At the end, Khun tricked Quant into falling off the bridge to the exit with him and Anak, but then used a suspendium pulley stolen from his family's vaults to bring Anak back up for a clear run to the exit.

But just as he told Androssi and I, he ultimately sabotaged his team by secretly having Laure use Shinsoo to send Quant back up to tag Anak, after lying to Quant that he made a deal with Hoh to eliminate Rachel, who would be his competition for the Lightbearer position, thus provoking an angry Quant into trying to stop his plan by protecting Rachel in the next round.

Rachel wouldn't be in any serious danger because Headon had given her a special deal to allow her to survive a fatal injury, but to make it more realistic and natural, there had to be a close fight instead of Rachel miraculously coming back from the dead, which is where Quant would come in handy.

The backup plan in case Khun failed to goad Quant into doing it was for me to step in.

Amidst all the cheering from the other Regulars while we watched in the waiting room, Androssi whispered to me, "I'm guessing that was our supposed help? The Ranker couldn't have gotten up without Shinsoo right? If he did on his own, he'd be a lot harder to fight than I thought."

I nodded and whispered back. "Their wave controller has been hiding down there the whole time."

And then it was Team B's turn.

As the wildcard, I entered the arena from a different location by myself. I wasn't too far from Team B, but they were given a chance to strategize on their own first, before either Quant or I reached them.

The whole arena was very dark, similar to most of the Tower. Without a Guide, a Lightbearer, or some other device to light up the surroundings, it would be difficult to navigate for any normal Regular.

Because of this, I was given a flashlight for this test, not that I really needed it, considering that my visor was equipped with night vision and a headlight.

Through Agate, I kept tabs on Team B. It wasn't long before Androssi took control of the group and proposed the plan for all Fishermen to move together, plus Baam.

Hatsu and the two spearbearers moved as a separate group, while the rest of the Lightbearers, Wave Controllers and Scouts stayed near the safe zone, all supposedly preparing to react to the Ranker's movements.

With everything going according to canon so far, I recalled Agate to my side as a precaution. The arena was likely to be safe, but with it being so dark and mostly unmonitored, there was always a risk that a hidden enemy might use this opportunity to attack me. The test administrators aside from Yu Han Sung and Lero Ro weren't aware of what happened after Quant and Khun fell in the previous match, after all, so if I was quietly killed off they might not be monitoring it either.

I took the chance to practice reaching out with my Shinsoo senses. While I couldn't detect any of the Regulars, Quant was a much more noticeable entity, his anger rolling off in waves.

And he was apparently getting closer to me.

A few moments later, his presence flared up and I barely dodged a punch before I had the chance to draw Derflinger. In retrospect, I should've had Derflinger out already, but I wasn't used to using a sword all the time yet.

A short exchange of blindingly fast hand-to-hand combat followed, and I was quickly launched into a wall before I knew what happened.

"Looks like you need some more practice. Or maybe I was expecting too much from a Regular?" Quant said with a disappointed tone.

I got back up without much trouble, but that exchange already showed how much of a gap there was between us. I was already fully Reinforced, albeit without Derflinger's boost, but Quant was barely using any of his real power.

It wasn't something I intended to contest right here though.

"There's no need for us to be enemies in this game, though, is there? I don't need to tag your badge specifically to win," I said.

"Are you saying you plan to tag team B's It badge?" He asked.

"Perhaps. It would be easier than fighting a Ranker," I said. "We all saw how powerful you were in the previous round."

"Hah. You realize I'm also evaluating your performance? Even if that's your plan, you'd score more by showing me what you've got," he said with a shake of his head. "Then again, I don't want to waste time here either. There are some Regulars I need to put in their place. See ya later!"

Then he rushed off towards team B, leaving me alone. I drew out Derflinger, and continued on my way.

"Tsk, tsk. That's what you get for keeping me sheathed," said Derflinger.

"Are you really a princess of Zahard?! You don't deserve that power! You're just evil!" The voice of Hong Chunhwa's angry shout echoed its way to me.

By the time I got to Androssi, she was standing alone in the circle she'd drawn with the two other Fishermen lying conscious on the floor.

"About time. Here, want this?" She threw a thin longsword at me. "It's an Ignition weapon. I'm surprised he had one, but we might as well put it to use."

I caught it by its handle with my free hand. It was Narumada, Hong Chunhwa's Ignition weapon. Androssi took it from him after beating him unconscious.

"Hm… maybe this will come in handy later. I don't know how to use dual swords though, so I'll have to stick with Derf for now," I said. "Thanks."

I clipped the sword to my Armoriont utility belt.

"You don't, but I do. Keep that in mind, partner," said Derflinger. "I promise I won't get jealous if I'm the one using the other sword."

"Right. If you say so," I said.

Androssi looked at Derflinger oddly, not understanding the statement, but shook her head and turned around.

I assumed that Derflinger meant that if necessary, he could use his ability to take over my body and use a dual sword style with his own skill.

"Let's get going then!" Androssi said before running off, expecting me to follow.

"Where's Baam?" I asked, even though I already knew.

"Urghh! That naïve idiot ran off to find Rachel. How could there be someone so… so… innocent, climbing the Tower?" She asked with a frustrated tone. "He thinks this is actually a team. That we're all friends, just because we signed a piece of paper. He actually took a hit for me, after I blatantly betrayed the team, can you believe it?"

"He's certainly a special sort," I said, without judging his actions either way.

"There are plenty of fools in the world. Some are just more stubborn than others," said Derflinger. "I've seen it too many times already."

"There's no way this can end well. The Tower isn't a place for someone like him," said Androssi.

"Maybe not, but maybe… it's time for the Tower to change," I said.

She glanced at me with surprise, but then said nothing.

"Why is everyone leaving me?!" Baam's anguished voice echoed ahead of us.

"As I said… never thought things would turn out happily," said Androssi upon reaching the scene near the safe zone with Rachel apparently unconscious, Baam crying over Hoh who committed suicide after his plan to kill Rachel failed.

Hoh had a tragic backstory similar to many other Regulars that came from the Outer Tower. One day a monster appeared and killed everyone he cared about. When he entered the Tower and started taking the Wave Controller classes with Baam, he grew resentful that he didn't have the talent or power that Baam did, and wasn't able to save anyone.

His jealousy and hatred of Baam made him the perfect pawn for the FUG plot. But his plan failed when Quant arrived. He took Rachel hostage, but then Baam managed to learn Fast Skip just by getting hit with it once, before using it to paralyze Hoh to save Rachel.

In the end, he just gave up, with nothing left to live for, and killed himself.

Now Baam was crying for Hoh because he genuinely thought they were friends, after Hoh signed his friend list.

Quant looked on with a sad expression.

The team's other Scout and Lightbearer was still held hostage by Parakewl and his spearbearer accomplice. These two traitorous spearbearers ditched Hatsu earlier when he was facing Quant and attempted a "spearbearers' revolution" to take over the team. Now they were whispering to each other and presumably trying to come up with another idiotic plan.

Serena, one of the hostages, hopped over with muffled shouting since her mouth was taped shut.

Androssi cut off her restraints and let Serena slap and yell at her for disappearing and destroying the Lighthouse, before admitting calmly that it was all part of her plan to eliminate the other Fishermen.

"Baam," Androssi said, walking over to the boy. "You said you don't understand why she's going up the Tower just for some stars. I don't understand it either. But Baam, I also don't get why you're following her. What do you like about that girl? But-I know it sounds weird right now, but I've also got someone I want to go up the Tower with. Actually, scratch that, I've got a couple of someones I want to go up the Tower with. One of them, I'm not very close to her. Actually, she probably hates me." She sighed.

"Argh! It's hard to explain. I just feel like… she deserves a chance, OK? Anyways, that's why I ate all the Fishermen. It was the only way I could think of," she continued.

Once she said that, I understood the real reason that she wanted me to join this round instead of eliminating the Fishermen on Team A.

I had forgotten about this part of her motivation. Anak was also low on points and would have a difficult time passing.

Perhaps Androssi didn't want to admit to me that she didn't want me to eliminate Anak, or she was worried that even if she made the request for me to leave Anak alone, I might accidentally injure her in a group fight, and so Androssi simply asked me to join team B's round instead.

"I don't expect you to understand me, and it doesn't change the fact that I'm evil, but I just did what my heart told me to. We're all the same… we just… desire different things," she said.

Then she turned to Quant, who was still watching without making a move.

"If we beat the Ranker here, you and Rachel can continue up the Tower together. But you'll suffer like today again and again. If you betray your team and help the Ranker, you can leave the Tower with Rachel. But you'll crush her dream in the process. Whatever you decide… it's your choice," Androssi finished.

Then she brandished the Green April towards Quant.

Although she said "leave the Tower", what she really meant was leaving the inner and middle Tower, where Regulars climbed and Rankers ruled. Just one of those quirks of being a resident of the Tower. Normally, people didn't even think about the concept of actually leaving the Tower to the Outside, because the Tower was the whole world.

Baam looked like he was struggling to make a decision.

"A princess of Zahard. It's my first time fighting one of you," said Quant.

"Be honored. Later, you won't be able to look me in the eye," said Androssi.

"And you… didn't you say you were going to take the It's badge?" Quant asked me pointedly as I quietly maneuvered myself behind him on the opposite side of Androssi.

I shrugged. "Don't tell me you took that seriously?"

"Tch. I guess not. I knew you two were going to team up. Lero Ro kept arguing to put you two on different teams," said Quant. "Haha, at least you two are working together still. This test would be so stupid if literally everyone turned traitor. Two on one versus the two strongest Regulars here, huh? This should be fun! You better not sandbag like you did earlier, or you'll be in for a world of hurt! Let me see how you guys dominated my survival test at the beginning of this floor!"

"Be careful what you ask for, buddy," Derflinger said threateningly. "Maybe I'll unlock 2% of my true power today."

Derf, this isn't an enemy we can fool with that. But I said nothing aloud, and simply concentrated.

I had no delusions this fight would go similarly to how it was supposed to, with Androssi matching him and Baam providing a little backup to immobilize Quant using the Reverse Flow technique Fast Skip he just learned from getting hit by Quant using it on him earlier.

Quant was likely to take this to a higher level to fight against me and an Androssi wielding the Green April instead of Narumada.

It wasn't a particularly important fight, but it would be one of the best chances to put my recently learned skills into practice against an extremely powerful opponent who could take it, and not just a friendly spar against Androssi where we weren't really trying to hurt each other.

In Worm, I'd largely stayed behind the frontlines while letting other people do my dirty work. In the Familiar of Zero world, I'd fought a bit, but I had such overwhelming power relative to the locals that I could make plenty of mistakes without even noticing and still come out victorious.

While I'd also gotten some skill uploads from Cranial's tech in Worm, that sort of thing couldn't compare to real memories and experiences of my own.

After Quant and Androssi showed their badges to each other, the fight began immediately with Androssi launching a needle.

Quant dodged, then a shout from Androssi ignited the Green April.

The enlarged weapon slammed into Quant, but he shrugged it off and pushed away before charging back for close quarters combat.

Androssi jumped away and swung the Green April, launching numerous segments outward.

Parakewl screamed and ran away, followed by the other spearbearer. They got hit by a wayward segment and sent flying into the distance. Though maybe Androssi did that intentionally just to mess with them.

Baam stayed focused and seemed to find his resolve after carefully moving Rachel to the safe zone. Serena sat beside the unconscious Rachel and the dead Hoh, watching the battle with an empty expression.

"Getting serious from the start, huh? I like it!" Quant said as he weaved around all the segments of Green April.

I took out my laser gun and started firing.

"Ouch, that stings! What kind of weapon is that?" Quant yelled when a lucky shot hit him on the shoulder, without apparently piercing his clothes. "Ahh!" The distraction got him hit by another explosive branch of the Green April.

"Damn, looks like I don't have to go easy on you guys at this level," said Quant after he flipped back upright and got his bearings.

It would be difficult to take his badge if we kept staying at range, but on the other hand, this was probably the best strategy given that Quant was restricted from using Shinsoo.

After several more minutes of Androssi pressuring him with the Green April and Quant dodging everything, including my lasers, Baam managed to hit him with Fast Skip and he was paralyzed.

Androssi then took the chance to cage him within several branches of Green April. "Axion, now!"

"Sword Beam, Level Six!" I used the strongest Beam I'd shown yet in this plane, costing around 3200 MP.

Light spilled out from Derflinger and the Beam smashed into Quant full force. Smoke covered the area after the explosion.

As we waited for the smoke to clear, there were sounds of coughing.

Quant emerged a little away from where Androssi had trapped him, looking much worse for wear.

"Shit. You little punk. You actually managed to injure me, even if it's only a little," Quant said with a glare my way. His white suit was torn, revealing bloodied skin on his chest and arms. "Getting shown up by a few Regulars…"

Then he moved with blinding speed towards me, and I could barely react before he was right there. Unable to move fast enough with my normal reflexes, I was forced to use a quick burst of the Omni-Flight spell to dodge. A technique which I now called Burstshift, as it was somewhat similar to the Mana Burst that Saber from Fate used, but able to shift around in any direction.

I shifted ten metres away in a split second, then flew into the air with my Armoriont wings. The Shinsoo density in the arena was higher than outside on the Floor, but it was only a minor hindrance to biological flight at this level.

"The hell? You can fly?" Quant asked after missing me. I thought he'd have known that already, considering I was flying around during his survival test, but apparently he wasn't paying much attention to it. "Damn, you are so lucky I already used my allotment of Shinsoo this round!"

Androssi attacked again with the Green April, but this time Quant easily dodged and then got up close to her, forcing her to retract the weapon and counter at close-quarters.

As it turns out, the Green April wasn't quite as easy to use in close range, and Quant managed to knock it out of her hands.

Baam froze him again before he could swipe the badge from Androssi.

At this point, I considered that I might possibly defeat Quant outright with an even higher level of Sword Beam or Sword Aura, given that he couldn't use Shinsoo directly to defend himself and was relying solely on his body's base physical capabilities which were nurtured by Shinsoo as he climbed up the Tower.

However, I didn't want to reveal that level of power or use up a huge amount of MP in a fight whose outcome was actually not that important to me. Whether or not we got the badge in the end, I was quite sure our performance by now was enough to get both Androssi and I into the passing Fishermen spots.

My only significant interest here was to test myself against the power of a Ranker and hone my abilities through combat experience.

As such, I decided to join Androssi and double team Quant in close combat.

"Boost, Level Ten."

"You got it, partner!"

Derflinger took over my body and unleashed a devastating storm of attacks with a two-sword style to give Androssi the opening to pick up the Green April again.

I wasn't skilled enough to really coordinate with Androssi against an opponent of Quant's calibre, so I left it to Derflinger along with the maximum boost. Combined with Reinforcement and the Armoriont's base capabilities, a level ten Boost from Derflinger got me to about sixteen times the strength of an Olympic athlete and fourteen times the speed.

Soon the tables had turned and Quant was on the defensive.

"When the heck did you get this skilled?" Quant complained loudly while barely avoiding Derflinger's attacks. "I knew you were sandbagging earlier but this is ridiculous!"

"Didn't I tell you, be careful what you ask for, buddy!" Derflinger shouted. "How does it feel to face a whole ten percent of my full power?" The sword spirit unashamedly bluffed again.

After a while, I noticed that Androssi hadn't joined the fight, and was looking at us flabbergasted.

It finally occurred to me that Androssi couldn't actually keep up with this level of combat either. I had assumed that she could, because she was so much more skilled than either me or Anak, despite not being that much faster, but in our spars I'd only ever faced her with full Reinforcement, never with Derflinger Boosting.

With the added speed from the Boost and Derflinger being in control, using his skills honed over millennia, it was no wonder she wouldn't be able to keep up.

"Fuck this! I'll seriously use my full power too!" Quant shouted back with a furious expression.

"Go ahead, bring it on! You call yourself a Ranker and this is all you got? Maybe I should be the one teaching your classes!" Derflinger shouted.

"Alright, that's it, you asked for it!" Quant yelled.

"What?! No, are you insane, you're a Ranker!" Androssi shouted in alarm when it looked like Quant was not joking around this time.

I too was alarmed when I felt the Shinsoo currents shift. What the hell. Derf, why did you have to provoke him this much?!

"Hahh!" Shinsoo surged all around the angry Ranker.

"Oh shit," Derflinger said, just before we were blown away by Quant's fist.

I smashed into a wall, getting stuck inside a crater, the Armoriont cracking in a few places and the sheer force damaging my internal organs. The pain caught up to me a moment after, something I hadn't felt for a long time ever since I got the Armoriont. Then it was washed away by Derflinger's Boost energy, and we tore out of the wall, ready for another round while the Armoriont worked on regenerating.

Androssi released a forest of branches from the Green April, but Quant easily batted them all aside before charging at me again.

Baam tried to use Fast Skip on Quant again, but it failed because Quant was using Shinsoo now, and all Reverse Flow techniques require that the user be overwhelmingly more powerful than the target.

With nothing left in his way, Quant shot towards me like a bullet. Before he even reached me, he punched and a burst of Shinsoo rushed ahead of him.

"Hooraaah!" Derflinger shouted and unleashed a Sword Beam, the level of which I wasn't sure of since I wasn't the one that commanded it, but it was definitely higher than six judging from the intensity of the beam.

The two techniques collided in a massive explosion. The resulting shockwaves almost sent us flying again but Derflinger braced for it and I helped by using a Burstshift to cancel out the momentum.

Before the smoke cleared, Quant appeared in front of us again, apparently unscathed and with a wide grin. "I can't believe how much power you were hiding, let's take this up another notch!"

Before I could protest, the Shinsoo around his body took on an orange hue and he launched a flaming kick towards me.

Derflinger activated his Sword Aura and prepared to meet the challenge, but I had enough.

I Burstshifted to dodge and then used another Burstshift to move us a hundred metres in a couple of seconds, all the way to the safe zone, where Serena was cowering with her hands over her head, and the Ranker wasn't allowed to enter.

Then I took back control from Derflinger, which shut off the Boost as well. "Alright, we're done. Not here to fight a Ranker for real, Derf."

"Aww man. It was just starting to get exciting!" He complained but powered down the Sword Aura.

As the smoke started to clear, Androssi noticed I was in the safe zone and quickly ran over as well. Just before she reached the edge, she noticed Baam still standing just on the outside staring into the smoke as if trying to discern what was happening.

"Huh? Miss Androssi?" He asked with a confused look when she dragged him by the arm into the safe zone with the rest of us. "Mr. Axion?! When did you get over here?"

"Okay. I guess we're giving up then? That stupid Quant, how can he be so unprofessional as a test administrator! No, wait, if he used Shinsoo, that means he broke the rules, so we should win by default!" Androssi exclaimed.

"That is correct, Miss Androssi," said Yu Han Sung, who suddenly appeared out of the smoke together with a sheepish Quant trailing behind him. "This Hide and Seek game is over. Team B has won due to the Seeker violating the rules."

"Yes!" Androssi cheered. "Haha! You hear that Quant? We won, and you lost. Which means we beat you." She gloated while pointing at the Ranker in question.

"You little… !" Quant started, but then noticed the look Yu Han Sung gave him. "Ah… hahaha. Of course. You beat me fair and square, princess."

"So we can get help for Rachel and Hoh now?" Baam asked with an urgent tone.

The rest of us looked at him.

"We can take care of Miss Light," said Yu Han Sung slowly. "However… I'm afraid it's too late for Hoh. He is gone."

The boy looked crestfallen and teared up again at that.

We returned to the lobby outside the arena in silence.

Rachel was taken to the medical area, while the rest of the Regulars were dismissed to get some rest while the Rankers debated on the evaluations.

It was when we were walking along the halls that I suddenly found myself assaulted by a sense of vertigo.

41 - Irregularity

41 - Irregularity

[Mini-Interlude]

Examiner's Room

"Can't say I expected it to end that way," said Yu Bok-Dol, commenting on Team B's victory by Quant getting disqualified.

"Your lottery ticket did pretty well. I can't believe that someone just learned Fast Skip by getting hit with it once," said Hax to Yuga, in reference to Baam, whom Yuga had claimed was the most talented Regular there, despite not being one of the top ranked Wave Controllers in the group. "But that 'wildcard' was an equally big surprise. Being able to fight on par with a Ranker for a short time, even if it's an idiot like Quant…"

"Is that man really just a Regular though?" Lero Ro asked aloud.

"Is that really so shocking? He's good, but Quant wasn't using Shinsoo until the very end. Even then he was holding back a lot. There are probably some D-rank Regulars that could have done similarly against Quant," said Yu Bok-Dol. "It's not like he won against Quant. Now that would be crazy."

"Did it look like Axion was going all out though?" Lero Ro countered. "He baited Quant into using Shinsoo and took a serious hit without apparently taking any real damage, and still managed to match a blow after. Then he easily escaped once he got Quant to break the rules, winning the round for Team B. He might well have been holding back as well."

Hax made a humming sound as if in contemplation. "It does almost seem like he was simply raising his power each time to be 'just enough' to match his opponent's strength."

"He relies too much on that Ignition Weapon of his," said Yuga. "Without much talent for Shinsoo, he might seem powerful now, but as they climb up the Tower, unless he has some other way to gain strength, those with talent will inevitably grow beyond him."

"Those with talent like Baam?" asked Hax.

"There's also Princess Androssi," said Yuga. "Shouldn't you have noticed the difference in their talent, as their Fishermen instructor?"

"He's barely participated in my Fisherman classes, instead going to your classes, so I can't really comment on Axion, but you're certainly right about the Princess," said Hax. "Even without the Green April, she's a monster, and she learns quickly. But that's how it should be for Princesses of Zahard. Anak is similar, even if she's still green."

"Hahaha!" Yuga laughed at the pun on Anak's skin color.

"Speaking of Princesses, isn't it rather unusual for there to be two Princesses in the same cohort? And the presence of so many Ignition Weapons as well. Makes one wonder if there's something else going on here," said Lero Ro.

"Oh? And what might that 'something else' be?" Asked Yuga as his expression quickly turned serious again with glowing dots for eyes emanating from the crease of his costume.

"Neither of the Princesses seem to be from one of the Ten Great Families. I wonder if whichever families they came from before they were adopted by Zahard deemed it necessary to take certain steps to protect their 'investment'," said Lero Ro. "Say, by smuggling a dangerous person with a powerful weapon into their cohort, ensuring that their Princess has enough time to grow."

"It is dangerous to involve yourself in the politics of the royal family, Lero Ro," said Yuga. "If what you speculate has any truth to it, one would be well served to be cautious speaking of such things in the wrong company."

"Speaking from experience, Yuga?"

"Oh, not at all. I'm just a lowly Ranker who couldn't possibly be involved with such matters. Isn't that why we all got a job working for the Infernal Evankhell? A nice, cushy job, on a neutral Floor, away from the dangerous games of the powers that control the fate of the Tower, hahaha."

[Kaleidus]

My vision grew strange, dark edges appearing around all objects as their colors became lifeless, as though the world were becoming less real. I blinked, and it was gone, yet the sense of vertigo and pressure remained.

What was going on?

An attack?

I stilled and tried to reach out with my mana sense, only for the uncomfortable feeling to grow stronger, with no discernible source. It seemed as though the sensation itself stemmed from my mana sense to begin with, and focusing on it made me more sensitive to it.

"-ion. Are you alright?" Androssi's concerned voice broke my concentration.

"Do you feel that?" I asked quietly while glancing around. "That pressure…"

"What?" With a frown, she also threw a few furtive glances around. "I don't feel anything…"

"Derf?" I asked aloud, while pushing the sword out of its sheath with my thumb.

There was no response, though I knew the sword spirit was sound asleep after that intense battle with the Ranker.

At times like these, I wished Agate was still around. It was not possible to mentally communicate with the Kaleidostick anymore, except to execute functions I could control manually.

I recalled the wand from agatespace and into its designated compartment within the Armoriont.

The instant I did so, the pressure seemed to magnify, my heart skipped a beat before the pressure let off to a merely distracting level.

I had the wand run a few different scans of the area with its superior sensory spells.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then why…?

"Maybe it was my imagination, then. It was a tough fight. Perhaps I overextended myself," I said to Androssi.

"You'd better get some rest then," she said.

"Of course," I said.

I wasted no time getting back to the privacy of my own room.

The water spirits hadn't seemed to be disturbed in any way, but I had no way to really ask if they knew what was going on either.

Some basic tests with my magic didn't show anything wrong with me either. My vital signs were similarly normal.

"Derf, wake up!" I unsheathed the sword and sent some mana into him in an effort to jolt him awake.

Derflinger groaned. "Ugh, what's going on?"

"I was going to ask you that. I'm feeling some kind of weird pressure with my mana senses, and my vision was also discoloring erratically for a bit. Do you feel anything?"

"Huh, now that you mention it…" The sword paused. "Yeah I do feel something."

He glowed a bit as he used some magic, presumably running a test of his own.

"Any ideas?" I asked.

"Patience, young one. All will be revealed in due time," said Derf.

"So you don't know?" I huffed in annoyance.

"Hey, I didn't say that. As a matter of fact, I do think I know what's wrong," it said.

"… and?"

"Well, I can't be completely sure, but I think the world's rejecting us. Remember when I told you as an artificial nature spirit I could tell you didn't come from the same world? It seems like this world has finally noticed that we don't really belong here."

"Why do you think that? Any specific evidence leading you to that conclusion?"

"For one thing, this happened to Brimir too. But I don't really remember the specifics except that whenever it started, he could only stay for a limited time before the world kicked him out. Then he'd stay away for a while, and when he came back he'd be fine again. Don't ask me how long though."

"That's not too bad…" Better than I feared, anyway. "What triggers this though? Why haven't I encountered this on previous worlds?"

"Beats me. Maybe it was something we did?"

I thought back to the fight from earlier today. It was the most obvious culprit, if it was actually something we did.

Derflinger had used an abnormally powerful attack, which was…

"What level of Sword Beam did you use at the end, earlier?"

"Eight."

"The strongest we used before that was Level 6 in Worm. We tested all the levels on Halkegenia, but you aren't foreign to that world. So if we were to look for something we did that never happened before, that could be it. I don't know how to judge based on spell potency, but if we go by the actual mana expended, then the trigger could be anywhere between 3,000 to 12,000 MP for the Level 6 and 8 Beams. Unless it's a different threshold for each plane."

"That sounds about right. I'm going back to sleep now, don't call me unless it's an emergency, please."

Still, the hypothesis needed to be confirmed. I'd have to wait until the plane kicked me out, and observe how long it took, as well as anything else that affected it.

Did I really want to wait for however long it takes for the plane to eject me though? It could be days, weeks, months, or even years for all I knew.

That wasn't such a big deal since the Tower wasn't a bad place to stay and grow in, but I did want to go back to Worm to refill Derf's MP reserves fairly soon.

On the other hand, leaving now for a quick stop in Worm before returning would also test whether it reset this effect.

Before that though, I used the Pocket to meet the Guardian of the floor.

"Do you know anything about what's happening to me?"

The humongous reptilian Guardian gave me a bored look. "I know about everything that happens on my floor."

"So what is suppressing my powers? And why?"

"There is nothing suppressing your powers," it said.

"What do you mean? There's clearly some kind of force counteracting my magic. Everything is harder to cast."

"If there is something wrong with your magic, then you should consult with your magic patron, not me. That's got nothing to do with me. I gave you the Shinsoo contract like you wanted, and that's all. I administrate Shinsoo, got it? Not magic. Shinsoo," it repeated slowly, as if talking to an idiot. "And there is nothing suppressing your ability to use Shinsoo."

I left when the Guardian was unable to offer any more information, and tested what few Shinsoo techniques I was capable of. As the Guardian claimed, I didn't seem to have any more difficulty than usual when using Shinsoo.

At least I'd narrowed down the scope of the suppressive effect to solely powers that were foreign to the Tower.

I began to form a more complete hypothesis.

If there was indeed a planar level force acting against me, then it made sense that it would be specifically counteracting foreign powers-powers that originated from outside this plane, or which simply followed different laws. And not only foreign powers, but foreign entities, souls, or even physical objects.

It was analogous to the incompatibility of different physical laws that made some technology useless in other planes, except mystical forces didn't have binary outcomes. There was instead a gradient of interference which could manifest in different ways depending on the degree of violation.

This required further observation and testing.

The next day, the pressure hadn't gone away, neither did its effect on my spells.

With the Position test over, the food in the cafeteria was now free for the Regulars.

"I thought you said the food here was terrible. Have you had a change of heart?" I asked Androssi with a glance at her plate, which was stuffed with several servings of spaghetti.

"I'm just making up for all the days I had to save on points," she said. "Besides, the taste of victory is always delicious."

Khun walked over and sat across from us, but made a point not to look at us.

For a few moments, there was just silence at our table as we ate.

Finally, the blue haired boy spoke. "You were supposed to keep Baam from meeting Rachel."

"I couldn't stop him from running off," said Androssi.

"I knew I shouldn't have trusted you guys. You ruined everything," Khun murmured bitterly, then he left.

After a while, Androssi turned to me. "Speaking of Rachel, I heard she might be too injured to take the next test. Isn't that going to be a problem for you?" She asked, alluding to my deal with Headon.

"It's inconvenient, but hardly a problem. My alliance with her is only temporary, and if need be, I can return what was given to me if the task cannot be completed."

And I knew she would pass anyways, if the conspiracy proceeded as expected. Her failure in the latest test was part of the plan, after all.

The list of passing Regulars was displayed on a large screen while Lero Ro stood at the podium and Yu Han Sung sat in a big chair behind him.

Fishermen: Axion, Androssi Zahard, Hong Chunhwa, Anak Zahard, Death Ryan (Failed due to Injury)

Spear-Bearer: Rak Wraithraiser, Parakewl, Alexay Amigocharz, Erik Biyon

Scout: Ship Leesoo, Hatsu, Narae Seonwoo

Light-Bearer: Khun Aguero Agnis, Michelle Light (Failed due to Injury), Rebin

Wave-Controller: Baam, Phonsekal Laure

One of the failing spearbearers complained about the results, and was then called up by Yu Han Sung to prove that he was worthy, at which point the Regulars watched in horror as he was tortured to unconsciousness with Shinsoo pressure.

Once Yu Han Sung finished with that guy, he asked if anybody else wanted to challenge the results. For a moment, there was only stunned silence.

Then Khun raised his hand. "I also disagree with the test results."

Yu Han Sung gestured for him to go down to the stage. "What do you object to, Mr. Khun? You are one of the passing Regulars. Do you think you deserve to fail instead?"

"I want my friend Michelle Light to take the next test," Khun said.

Yu Han Sung laughed. "I didn't associate you with the word friend. But regardless, she is too injured and cannot continue to the next test, even if her score is high enough. Those are the rules."

"Under normal circumstances, maybe. But my friends and I will take a test from the floor administrator. I heard that although supervisors carry out the tests now, the floor administrator has the real authority on all tests. So if we take the Administrator's test, your rules wouldn't matter, right?"

"How did you find out about that?" Yu Han Sung asked curiously, as if he didn't already know. But being privy to the FUG conspiracy, I was aware that Yu Han Sung and Hwa Ryun had set up this whole scenario.

After Khun found the note telling Hoh to assassinate Rachel, he'd realize that only a test supervisor with knowledge of the team placements could have sent it. Because Rachel and Baam were being sabotaged by a test supervisor, he'd have a legitimate reason to complain-but he couldn't complain openly, lest he be silenced. So he'd go to the only supervisor he felt he could trust, Lero Ro, who was his Lightbearer instructor. But Lero Ro wouldn't have the authority to do anything about it directly.

It was a simple matter of leaving the information about the Administrator's test for Lero Ro to find, and then he'd offer that to Khun as the solution.

"I'm a Khun, as a member of one of the Ten Great Families, it's only normal to know a lot about these tests," Khun said, hiding Lero Ro's involvement, not even glancing at the supervisor, who was watching the proceedings intently from his position at the podium. The man had a strong sense of morals, and when Yu Han Sung taught him the true purpose of the Floor of Tests-to remove threats to Zahard's empire that would disrupt the stability of the Tower, he found it difficult to accept. So he was happy to help Khun work against Yu Han Sung, without realizing that he was still being manipulated.

"Then you must know why people don't take that test. It's too difficult," said Yu Han Sung.

"I'll be fine. I'm sure we can pass it," said Khun.

At the end, Yu Han Sung smirked. "Sorry to say, but there is another reason you can't take that test. There is a requirement for it. Only Irregulars are allowed to take it."

With that, Khun's façade of confidence broke, and he looked at Lero Ro for help. But Lero Ro looked equally surprised, had gave a helpless look back.

"Why don't you return to your seat, Mr. Khun," Yu Han Sung said with a shooing gesture.

"Wait!" Baam shouted, standing up. "I'll take the test! I am an Irregular!"

The whole auditorium was filled with looks of astonishment.

Baam was sent off to meet the Administrator while the rest of the Regulars were left to make a decision. To join him in his test and potentially be viewed as the regulars who helped an Irregular, or take the normal test.

"Um… what is an Irregular?" Sunwoo Nare, the young blonde girl Scout asked.

Ship Leesoo answered. "An Irregular isn't like us. They opened the door by themselves without being chosen. It violates the rules of the Tower, and every time one has entered the Tower they've caused chaos. The people in central fear and hate Irregulars."

"So what do we do?"

"Of course we won't help!" Parakewl said quickly, the traitorous spearbearer that served as comedy relief in the canon. "We can't just ruin our lives to bring that girl with us! What did he do for us anyways?"

Hatsu glared at the green-skinned Regular that abandoned him during the previous test. "I heard that Quant threatened to kill all the traitors on the team if Ms. Light died. If it wasn't for Baam saving her, would you be here at all right now?"

"Yeah but think of the consequences!" Parakewl shouted vehemently.

Considering that the Administrator's test was taken by all the Regulars in canon, and it was the only one shown, it was the only choice where I would have knowledge of the test, assuming it was the same one. While I couldn't discount the possibility that the Administrator would change the test given my participation, it was at least better than attempting the normal test, which would be a total unknown, and would also be in contradiction with my deal with Headon and my cooperation with the FUG conspiracy. Rachel was already failed, after all, so if I wanted to continue the task of helping her, I had to participate in the test that she was taking.

While the rest of them were arguing, I spoke to Androssi, "Well, this is convenient for me, if Rachel can pass using Baam's test. But how about you?"

"Passing an Administrator's test would only make my record more impressive," said Androssi. "It isn't against any of Zahard's laws to help an Irregular who hasn't acted against the empire yet, it would just be frowned upon. As a princess, enemies that could actually threaten me could use any random excuse to attack me, so adding one more won't make a difference."

I nodded, then we walked towards the gate where Baam was led to meet the Administrator.

"Eh? They're going? But they're 90% of the team power!" Sunwoo exclaimed upon noticing our movement. "W-wait for me!"

"O-of course, we have to follow the princess!" The pragmatic Parakewl did an instant 180. "What are the rest of you hesitating for? If you don't join us, you're just garbage that's not even worth recycling!"

The argument among the Regulars ended immediately.

Once we made it into the waiting room on the other side of the gate, Khun slid up to me and Androssi. "I apologize for what I said in the cafeteria. Thank you for doing this."

Not long after, Yu Han Sung and Baam came in and confirmed our participation in Baam's test.

Just as we were dismissed, Sunwoo came up to me. "We're going to be on the same team for the test, so will you please return Narumada to my knight?" She said, pointing at Hong Chunhwa, who was standing further away, just glaring at me and Androssi. Apparently he was quite durable, because the wounds he took from Androssi weren't enough to disqualify him. Or he was secretly rich and paid for a fast treatment.

The sword was a curiosity I could've experimented on, but had no particular strategic value to me long-term, so I decided not to make enemies over it.

I unhooked and tossed the sword to Sunwoo, who thanked me and happily ran over to Hong Chunhwa. The swordsman looked surprised as he took it, then bowed slightly towards me.

"You big softie, can't resist the pleading eyes of a little kid?" Androssi teasingly asked.

"That sword was nothing special. I'd have given it back to Hong too if he wasn't too prideful to ask."

"Suuure."

Because I hadn't technically completed the task Headon gave me, I decided to return the Pocket before attempting to leave the plane, lest he deemed it an attempt to steal it or break the deal. Of course, there was also the fact that bringing it with me might be a bad idea in the first place. These things were made of Suspendium, a material unique to the Tower. They seemed to be magical artifacts of a sort, being powered by Shinsoo, but there was no way to be sure. If I took it to a plane where the physical laws were incompatible, and it ended up breaking down… that would be inconvenient. I'd test it if I had multiple, but there was no easy way to get another one of this quality, so better not to risk it.

After contacting the guardian of the first floor through the Pocket, I was teleported to meet him in the grand hall where I first arrived in the Tower.

"Mr. Axion. Why did you ask to see me?"

"I came to return the Pocket you lent to me. I need to take care of some private business before I continue with the task you assigned, and I felt it would be inappropriate for me to retain possession of the Pocket during this time, in case I am unable to return quickly," I said, holding the Pocket out to him.

"How very thoughtful of you, Mr. Axion. However, it is not necessary. You have already done all I require of you, and may consider the task complete. Therefore, the Pocket is yours to keep."

"Even though there is still one more test that Rachel needs to pass?"

The rabbit-like creature smirked widely with his eyes that were so squinted they looked like slits. "Oh, but Miss Rachel has already passed the test of the second floor. Similarly, you too have already passed the Administrator's test."

"… what?" I asked, with much confusion. Although I suspected some shenanigans here, I'd thought that the Administrator's test in canon was binding on all of the participants. There was an argument to be made that the inclusion of Rankers, betrayals, and interference from various parties was all part of the Administrator's plan, but even so, I thought that the test for Rachel had been to go through with her betrayal.

"Are you so surprised? The test of the second floor, is a test of courage. It is for one to prove that they have the resolve to risk death against the unknown. The boy and you completed this by accepting the ball test. The girl completed it by allowing herself to be struck down on an unproven claim that I could bring her back to life," it said, then chuckled darkly.

"Wasn't that the first floor's test? And aren't you the Administrator of the first floor?"

"Why, the first floor's test is merely to be chosen, whether by myself, or for an Irregular, to open the door, and in doing so, proving that they have been chosen by the Tower! The second floor's Administrator has no interest in preparing complex tests, so I prepare them for him."

This utter troll. If he was telling the truth now, then that meant the final test was engineered by him too. And… well actually that made sense. Of course he was the one behind it, since he was the initiator of the whole conspiracy and told Yu Hansung to rig it in the first place! And Rankers were allowed to interfere because… wasn't Headon was the one who sent Baam up before Yuri could get back the Black March? Forcing her to go to the second floor herself to get it.

"… Unless the candidate accepts his offer to face him in battle. In that case, merely accepting the challenge would satisfy his test of courage," Headon added.

"Are you kidding me? That was it?"

So when the second floor administrator asked me-and Baam too presumably, just like in canon-whether we'd want to fight him, that was literally the test? All Baam had to do was accept it, and then he wouldn't have had to deal with Headon's bullshit?

"I'm afraid it is too late to change the test for Mr. Baam now, Mr. Axion," he said, guessing what I had been thinking. "The role of a Floor Administrator is to prepare a test commensurate to the value of your wish. Even if Mr. Baam has already passed a qualifying test for the second floor's, he has negotiated a new one for a new wish: that if he dies during the test, all his Regular friends shall be allowed to pass if they agreed to take it with him, regardless of the test's actual outcome. But most unfortunately, this means they shall all fail if they abandon it now," Headon continued, still smirking maliciously.

"Whatever, not my problem, anyways," I said, shrugging. "I wouldn't be able to explain how I found out about this from you even if I cared to do so, which is undoubtedly why you're so generously telling me now. I can only imagine it must be entertaining for you to see my reactions."

"Perhaps, Mr. Axion. But feel free to inform Miss Rachel, if you wish."

"Which is also useless because continuing to climb despite backing out now would mean exposing ourselves as Irregulars who've passed a different test. Well played. It is said that a truly great chessmaster forces his opponents to move according to his plan, even if they know they are playing to the master's tune. Clearly you deserve the title."

"Such flattery, much impressed, am I," he said in an equally sarcastic tone. "Have I not simply given you many honest insights? What cause have I given for you to think the worst of me?"

"You mean aside from the evil smirks and laughter you don't even try to hide? You've been lying since I entered the Tower. You told me all these things not on some whim, but for a purpose. In fact, this is my real test, isn't it?"

The Administrator's head tilted, and his eyes opened. "Oh? How exactly did I lie?"

"Maybe not lie outright, but intentionally misleading. You said before that my reward for passing the ball test was the opportunity to go up to the next Floor. This contradicts what you told me today, that the test for the first floor is merely to open the door. You also said that abandoning a test means failure, and that once we agree to take a new test, we can't abandon it. Why doesn't that apply to Baam's new test? Rachel may not have agreed yet as she wasn't there, but I already agreed to it, so I can't abandon it now without failing. Even if I passed the second floor's test, you intentionally told me all those extra things to lead me into a trap. To make me think that I wouldn't really need to take it. I already pointed out one reason why I still do, but this is actually the more important one. Since my reward for the ball test was specifically to go up to the next Floor, I wouldn't have any way to get to the Third Floor. But that's not all. Your real test for me isn't merely whether I could see and avoid this trap, it's much more than that. The real trick you played is in equating the passing of any given test on a floor with going up to the next floor, or that there is only one chance or one test per floor."

"Whatever do you mean by that?" Now he pretended to be thoroughly confused.

"The only tests that grant access to the next floor, are tests which explicitly have that as the reward, by way of contract. So you can claim that the first floor's test is merely to open the door, and that we passed. Except that didn't grant us the right to go to the second floor. The same is true of all these supposed tests of courage that we passed. That's what you mean by preparing tests commensurate with our wish. On each floor, our 'wish' has to be 'to go to the next floor', and only after negotiating this will the test grant that as the reward if passed. This is why Rachel was allowed to move to the next Floor despite not having taken the ball test. You negotiated a deal with her, which included allowing her to go to the second floor, even though she hadn't taken any test at all. It's the contracts that matter, not the tests. You also specifically said that my reward was the opportunity to go to the next floor, and not the right. Because the opportunity was offering a contract from you, which included that right if I accepted to help Rachel."

"That is very interesting. But is that all?"

"No. Even if I avoided your trap, and went back to complete Baam's test. that wouldn't mean I've passed your true test. Because unlike the other Guardians, you also test whether we are worthy of climbing the Tower as a whole, not just whether we are worthy of going to the next floor."

"What makes you think there's a difference between the two?"

"Because none of us, neither Baam, Rachel, nor I, have passed our true tests yet. That is the real reason you can interfere with the Second Floor's test. His test is simply a smaller part of yours. Because you instructed Yu Han Sung to rig the Regular tests, and got Baam to take the test from the Second Floor's Guardian. You didn't just devise that test, but this entire scenario from the beginning, as part of a bigger test for all three of us. You must have instructed Yu Han Sung to give me that choice to participate in that meeting as well, right? Had I declined, I would be lacking important information needed to solve my real test."

"And what are my real tests for you three then?"

"To call it a test at all is perhaps too generous, because your goal isn't actually to disqualify us. It's to get us to climb the Tower. The passing condition for your test is the choice itself, to climb the Tower, and you prepare a test that uniquely addresses what each of us need to climb the Tower successfully. You gave Baam the initial test of courage and then sent him up right away because that is what he needs. He has the talent, the luck, the potential. But his reason is suspect. Could he really face all these numerous challenges just to chase after some girl? So you lied and made him think that Rachel had already gone up, so that he would be placed into position for the real test. What will he do after he finds his target immediately on the second floor? Does he have the resolve to keep climbing? What if the girl betrays him? The most ridiculous part of this 'test', is that he isn't even supposed to fulfill his wish like that and leave the Tower. To pass the 'test', he has to choose to climb instead."

"Hmm…"

"Rachel doesn't have the same talent or potential in terms of raw power growth. Simple courage won't make her successful. She is too weak and ordinary, not even attractive or charismatic enough to make proper allies. She needs to learn how to make up for it. Her best chance is to be more despicable and desperate than anybody else. To steal and betray, to use any dirty tactic conceivable. So you insulted her so that she would feel conscious about her weakness and made her think she had no right to climb at all, so that she would have to steal it from Baam. Baam could've have been a great ally to climb together with her, but that isn't good enough for you, is it? Because Baam shouldn't stop climbing if Rachel died on the way up, and Rachel shouldn't stop climbing if Baam died and left her unable to rely on him. You need both of them to continue making the choice to climb on their own."

"… and yourself, Mr. Axion?"

"Unlike those two, I don't have a specific goal beyond the opportunity to climb itself. I may not have the same potential as Baam, but I already know how to make up for it, unlike Rachel. And because I don't have an overarching goal, I could lose interest in it at any time, whether because the difficulty is too high, I'm no longer entertained, or for some other reason… like right now. The thing I need most to keep climbing, is to continue believing that the benefits are worth it. Or more specifically, to understand the nature of these tests and contracts-that there is more than one way to gain access to higher floors if it seems too difficult, that there can be rewards and benefits along the way without necessarily reaching the top."

"Oh, but didn't you have a reason to go to the top? What was it you said on the first day? 'Not much of a choice', if you wanted to leave the Tower."

"I heard from Hwa Ryun that Urek Mazino also seeks a way back to the Outside. Had I been like Mazino, that may have been enough reason to keep climbing. But you knew from the beginning that I'm different. You said I might be able to leave the 'same way you came'. You can't actually stop me from just leaving the Tower, can you? The whole reason we're having this discussion, the reason you used the Pocket as an excuse to launch into that misleading explanation about the tests, is because you can only entice me to climb by making the tests and the climb sound reasonable and rewarding enough to keep going. As if they were actually a lot fairer and easier than they first appeared, if only we were smart enough to see it."

Headon raised his hands into a slow clap. "Very good, Axion. I could confirm your impressive deductions, but then again, you already believe me to be a liar, so I think there is little point."

Then he raised a hand and wagged a finger at me. "I must however, point out that you have misunderstood one thing. I do not impede anyone from leaving the Tower, if that is truly their wish. Those who asked, I always pointed them to a potential path. That no one has been able to reach it is hardly my fault. Had you attempted to leave before seeing me, I would have brought you to me to speak first, but I have no intention of barring your way out."

Was he trying to imply that he could stop me, but wouldn't? After looking at him skeptically for a moment, I considered that it was probably possible for him to be at least aware of it when I made the attempt, and then for him to teleport me to him and possibly disrupt my spell before it could finish. If he could do that, it wouldn't really matter if he could actively block me or not-since that'd achieve the same thing.

"I see, well in that case, could I ask you to hold on to the Pocket anyways? I'm concerned that it might not survive the trip, and seeing as I cannot replace this easily, I'd rather not risk it."

"Oh, why didn't you just say so? Very well. I shall keep it and allow you to retrieve it whenever you are ready to continue."

Finally, he took the Pocket back, then bid me safe travels as I started the spell and counted down the thirty seconds it took to activate. We continued to stare at each other all the while, his smirk perfectly still like some kind of frozen cartoon scene.

As Headon said, I reached the Ring of Deterrence without any struggle whatsoever.

Every plane's Ring of Deterrence looked different, and I found myself under what seemed to be a night sky full of stars.

I glanced around, trying to identify the Gate to the Root-so I could avoid it-and find the unformed Creation bubbles I needed to use for my spell, but all I saw was rolling mist covering everything below my knees.

I walked a short distance and made out what seemed to be the edges of the circular platform that I was standing on. Then I looked down over the edge and saw…

A tower.

I was standing at the top of an enormous Tower. Somehow, after I reached the edge, the Tower looked far bigger than what the small circular surface I was standing on would have suggested. I looked back, and unsurprisingly, I could no longer see the opposite side of the Tower, as if the floor had grown immeasurably while I wasn't looking at it.

Suddenly the mist in front of me condensed and grew rapidly into an indistinct blob.

Another Beast?!

I immediately kicked off the Tower and activated my Omni-Flight spell, attempting to fly away.

Yet despite flying what should have been a large distance, when I looked back I was no further away from the Tower or the mist, which now had a humanoid shape to it.

"Calm yourself, traveler. I am not your enemy," the thing said.

There was nothing in its posture or tone that suggested hostility, but simply being in the Ring of Deterrence made it a threat. Why was it here? How was it here, if not an entity commanded by the primal forces of the plane to attack me?

"What are you? What do you want?" I asked, turning back to face it.

"I am the will of the Builder… I observe all those who climb the Tower," it said.

"The Builder? As in… the one who built the Tower?" I asked with shock. A being powerful enough to construct the Tower-something which was essentially a world… it would be akin to a true god.

"Congratulations, traveler. You have reached the top of the Tower," it said.

A/N:

Some might wonder how much of Headon's claims or MC's deductions are true in canon. I can only say that it fits my personal interpretation of canon as well.

There is a conversation between Gustang and an unknown person much later in the story who is probably Headon that strongly suggests Headon absolutely wants Rachel to climb, despite everything he said to her. And the most compelling reason that Headon would have for interfering that far into the story and conspiring with Gustang, is that he needs to ensure all Irregulars are committed to climbing-including Zahard and the Ten Warriors, who stopped at the 135th Floor.

And a big thanks to Nidhogg, Trek and inphernalmenace for continuing to beta and having the patience to go through many different versions of this chapter, the next one, and other related notes after I rewrote them many times over the course of the hiatus while determining how certain aspects of powers and the multiverse should work.

42 – The Top of the Tower

42 - The Top of the Tower

"This is the top of Tower? Really?" I asked with suspicion. "So do I get a reward for it?"

"To reach this place is already its own reward, is it not? For here lies the gateway to infinite possibility. To touch the source, or seek what lies beyond. But you already knew that, did you not? I have been observing you since you traversed a Harmonic Corridor to arrive here." As it spoke, the spirit gained greater definition and detail.

"Harmonic Corridor?"

"The corridors that carry the energies of creation and chaos and other things between the myriad worlds or planes, whatever you wish to call them, within our sea of the infinite primordial chaos. The rolling lanes of shadow cast by the branches of the great tree that binds our system of reality. You may know them by another name, but it is the current you used to get to my Tower across the infinite chaos with the aid of your spirit device."

There was a moment of silence while I processed the fact that apparently the Builder knew more about how I planeshifted than I did. Had he been a traveler too? Had Hwa Ryun's story been more than just myth?

"I've yet to meet anyone else who knew of such things," I said. "I had thought that my method of travel might be unique."

"In a way, it is. You are the first whom I've met in countless eons who found a path to the Lesser Gate, and then used it to successfully access the corridors and travel the planes. After all, that was not their intended purpose, indeed, this system of creation has many protections in place to prevent such a thing, to protect these seeds of creation from those who would prey on them. To confine each plane's denizens to their own worlds, to prevent interference from powerful Outsiders, and to keep out the terrible things lurking in the chaos that would consume all of creation if given the chance."

"By protections, you mean similar to the force that started suppressing me in the Tower?"

"Correct. Those are the protections against entities and concepts foreign to a world's natural order. But there are also protections that prevent entities significant to a world from being removed. There are protections for the inner workings of the system itself, to prevent unauthorized access. Though the latter two stop most travelers before they can reach another plane, not to mention the Chaos itself which is very difficult to survive." The Builder's will paused for a moment, before looking me up and down, as if trying to discern something about me. "And that is what makes you, and that device of yours, quite a curiosity. Tell me, would you say that you were insignificant in your original homeworld? In terms of spiritual power, presence, and history?"

"I'm not entirely sure what you mean. It's not as if nobody would miss me, and I can't predict the future so I wouldn't know if I would have been important or not. Why do you ask?"

"As I said, there are protections to prevent significant entities from being removed from a plane. The greater their spiritual presence and history, which is usually tied to mystical power too, the greater the ties that bind them, and the more aggressively those protections will seek to stop their removal. This is the primary reason that travelers are so rare. Those who are insignificant will never find their way here. Those powerful enough to do so are generally more significant, and so bound tighter and unable to leave. For example, the most common type of being that can find a path to the Lesser Gate are those beings often worshipped by lesser beings as gods-but that very worship, their great power and long history, their divine authorities given by the world, the mantles they've accepted, all these ties bind them. But when I look at your soul, I see traces of multiple different planes, and almost none of your current powers, material substance, spirit companions, and items, appear to have any history with the plane that possesses the greatest claim on your soul. Even the spirit device you use to control your travel spell does not appear to be from the same origin."

That was an impressive amount he'd managed to glean about me. Thus far the Builder's will seemed relatively friendly and could be a great source of information that I was unlikely to get anywhere else, so I decided to cautiously keep the conversation going.

"I suppose if you put it that way, then yes, I was insignificant in my home world. I had no powers of any kind back then."

The spirit nodded. "I thought as much. You did not create that device, did you? But perhaps that is why you have avoided greater reprisals, to the point where this was the first time you encountered the Anti-Outsider protections. You were beneath the notice of the planar protections when you first left your home world, and remained largely unnoticed by the planes you intruded upon, until now."

"I've met a Beast before though. Some sort of impossibly powerful thing that tried to kill me when I was leaving another plane, in this same place at the edge of reality," I gestured around us.

"Ah yes. You must have taken something significant with you, perhaps the element spirit seed in your body. It is impressive that you survived the encounter intact at your current level of strength."

"Intact might not be the right description… but I guess I got better," I said mournfully, thinking of how close I came to death and the loss of Agate.

"Then you are fortunate, and you are in a unique position of opportunity. You have become like a virus or parasite that has taken on properties from multiple hosts and rendered each individual plane's standard immune system incapable of responding quickly or effectively. The analogy is quite crude, but that is essentially what you have done by combining the concepts of multiple planes and gaining spiritual weight and history with them before you became significant enough to trigger stronger defenses."

"Is that so? If I'm like a virus, is that not something you should be concerned about?"

It chuckled deeply. "I could hardly condemn you for doing something similar to my original self. Envy, perhaps, if I did not already succeed so long ago, because this is the ambition of many lesser beings. There are many primordial gods, the ones that participated in the creation of this system, who regretted their sacrifice and grew to resent the shackles they placed upon themselves. Most are dead in all the ways that matter by now, having become part of their world's systems rather than independently conscious beings, who would despise or envy us, but that should not deter you."

"I see… you seem to know a lot about these systems, could I trouble you for some advice?"

"It would be more enjoyable for you to discover them yourself, but I may consider humoring you a little bit. I assume you want to know how to mitigate and avoid triggering the planar defenses in the future?"

"Yes, exactly. And what would happen to me if I stayed?"

"It is nothing to be alarmed about at the level you were subject to. These defenses are not intelligent. It will first suppress you, and you will be unable to siphon more creation dust while suppressed but it should have no significant consequences if you do not commit further violations of the natural order-doing that which is not normally possible in that plane. But if you do, or do anything that is a particularly severe violation, it will trigger a process of fully expelling you out of the creation zone, which may take several days or weeks.

"Did I even do anything that was a violation in the Tower?"

The spirit shrugged. "The act of siphoning creation dust is always a low level violation, so it is only a matter of time until the planar defenses notice you. But sometimes it will trigger from a large working of magic or large expenditure of mana. As a whole, magic-the kind that deals with spells and not the manipulation of Shinsoo-is quite rare in the Tower. Especially when the magic is enacted without any contract with a demon or divine entity. Your particular brand of magic is outside of the regular rules of the Tower."

That made some sense. I vaguely recalled there was a rule like that for magic in the Tower of God. And I could think of a few other settings where magic was exclusively sourced from contracts with higher dimensional beings. So despite the effect of my magic not being anything special, the way I had accomplished it was against the natural order on this plane.

"I see. And how do I mitigate it after it happens?"

"As I said, you are analogous to a virus. How can you trick or otherwise convince the host plane that you belong? There are a number of ways, but I will tell you two that should be convenient to you. The first is to do the same thing you did when you first arrived to merge yourself back into the plane using some creation dust. This should reset the 'flag' on you, so to speak. But be warned, if you do this too many times the plane will learn from it, and get better at identifying you, or create 'antibodies'-counteragents to kill you, instead of merely expelling you."

"Oh, that's easier than I'd thought. It sounds like that means I could just go back to the Tower right now if I use some 'creation dust', then? I don't even have to leave and come back."

"A quick and easy solution to be sure, but if I were you, I would consider the use of creation dust to be a large drawback and only use it sparingly. After all, it is quite a precious and rare resource, unless you have some other way to get it besides siphoning from the excess that floats around the Lesser Gate."

"What do you mean? What's wrong with my current method? By creation dust, you're talking about Primordial Grain, right?"

He gave me a long look that seemed to express disbelief.

"I mean, it's just a matter of time to collect it, right? It isn't actually limited, or is it?" I asked, confused. "Besides the fact that I can only store a limited amount."

"How should I say this…? It is not technically limited, but there is only ever a small amount of excess in a plane, if any at all. One might imagine it as a nutrient that the body of the plane occasionally leaks out in significant enough quantities that it is not reabsorbed and instead accumulates outside the Lesser Gate. But once you siphon all the excess, it could take anywhere from years to decades, maybe even longer, for more to leak. I'm sure you can imagine the consequences if you run out and cannot find new pastures or get marked for expulsion by the planar defenses."

"Oh. Oh. Hold on a second, I need to check something."

I sent orders to Agate to give me a report on the grain gathering operation since we'd entered the Tower. It had gathered 1 unit in the first week, then stopped because Agate had added a condition for the program to stop running after reaching 8 units, because we'd believed that was the cap after being unable to siphon more on FoZ.

Then I ordered it to resume the spell. And it seemed to be working just fine.

Shit. That wasn't a cap on my storage after all, FoZ had simply run out of excess grain, and it'd started re-absorbing too fast for me to siphon it.

This… this changed everything. If primordial grain, or creation dust, wasn't unlimited, then I could be forced to go to new planes for a chance to collect more, or worse, get stuck if I ran out. At least with the bionanites my lifespan wasn't biologically limited as far as I knew, but it was still troubling if I wound up in that situation. After all, it would be foolish to assume that my soul or any other vital part of me was immune to the passage of time.

"Now you understand. Fortunately there are planes which frequently leak excess and generate it quite quickly. This is one of them, due to the conditions of the surrounding Chaos and the unique properties of the Tower. It normally takes only a few weeks to months here to leak enough for you to use."

"But if merely siphoning the dust could cause me to be flagged, doesn't that still mean that if I get flagged before I manage to take a full unit, I'd be losing grain still?"

"Yes, but there is a second method to mitigate the defenses, which allows you to continue siphoning, albeit likely at a slower rate. I call it a threshold invitation. This is when you find a summoner-a magical contractor-native to the plane who shall serve as a host inviting you into the threshold, to act on their behalf. Be warned that offering such a contract itself shall draw the immediate attention of the planar defenses, but it will be restrained, so long as you willingly accept restrictions upon yourself, and you truly are acting on behalf of the host. For the contract to succeed, the host must have free will and strong desires to fulfill, they need to be aware that they are making this invitation, and sustain your right to exist in the plane with mana supplied to you through a mystic bond. It may be helpful to think of them as both your sponsor and advocate, and it is their willpower and resistance against the world's corrective force that grants you sanctuary."

"Can anybody serve as a host?"

"Only those with sufficiently strong desires in their soul and a certain pride or resentment, a deep seated belief that the world is wrong and it is their prerogative to correct it by committing another wrong-by summoning an abomination against the natural order. They also need to have a minimum of mystic power and mental fortitude, to impose their belief on reality-much like any other working of magic. If they're not able to supply you with enough energy, you will find it difficult to act, because you need to use their energy to pay for the use of any of your unnatural abilities and counter the corrective force. But with the right host, this method will grant you almost unfettered access to your powers for as long as the contract lasts, albeit at the cost of only using it at the host's behest."

"Hmm… I could work with that, but finding a good host sounds like it could be quite a pain. And you say they have to be aware that they're making the invitation-you mean they need to know I'm from another plane?"

"As long as they know you are foreign to their concept of 'world' and 'natural reality' and that you need a willing invitation from them to avoid being removed. It does not matter if they think you are a demon from hell, a long dead spirit, an eldritch god, an imaginary creature, or plane traveler. Just that you do not belong, and they are inviting you past the world's natural protections against such beings. There are planes where such invitations are commonly used for entities that exist in different dimensions or otherwise outside the material world yet within the same creation zone governed by a single Lesser Gate, but the same ritual principles can be used on planar level Outsiders like yourself. You happen to have the advantage of being able to initially enter the plane unnoticed without an invitation, which makes this much more convenient for you, instead of waiting for a summoner to stumble across a ritual with the barest relation to you that you can hijack and answer."

I could think of a number of stories where something similar to what the Builder spirit described was used for summoning actual demons and evil gods and other terrible things into reality. Funny how I claimed to be such a god on Familiar of Zero, and now it turned out that I really would have to act in a similar manner in the future.

I spoke to the Builder a bit more, to deepen my understanding of what he'd told me, and learned how to perform a contract ritual for a threshold invitation.

The drawbacks were clear, but from what the Builder had described, a qualifying contract didn't require me to be subject to absolute obedience or any magical enforcement by the summoner.

A powerful and strong-willed host who knew and supported exactly what I was doing, commanding with clear explicit orders would grant me more access to my powers in defiance of the world to fulfill them. A host who gave broad orders and left it to me to decide how to fulfill them would grant more limited access, but still enough to keep siphoning grain at least, even if at a slower rate. And a host who I made into a puppet would provide little to no protection from the planar defenses.

The contract could also be extended to any subcontracted spiritual entities I commanded, such as Agate, Derf and the water spirits.

Once I learned how to perform such a ritual from him, I deliberated over whether I ought to return to Worm at all, given these new revelations. At some point I'd have to test and confirm whether the grain on Worm would also run out, but I had no idea how long it would take to get to that point, or if it already ran out and I'd be wasting a trip to find out.

In general, I'd have to make the most out of each trip instead of doing short re-supply runs unless I had an important strategic reason for it, and I planned to come back before the final test on the second floor, so it did feel like a bit of a waste to spend two units of grain for a roundtrip like that.

If I didn't leave now, I'd have to find a host in the Tower, but neither the Builder nor the Guardians were qualified, the former because he was not quite inside the threshold, and the latter because they lacked the strong desires qualification or any interest in forming that sort of mana bond with me.

The number of candidates that remained, who I could trust with the knowledge that I was an abnormality even more strange than an Irregular, who was strong enough to actually let me use a significant degree of power, and who would not be difficult to work with… could be counted on one hand.

The Builder spirit spoke again and drew me from my thoughts. "If you are still planning to leave this plane, I have an offer for you before you go. I am interested in collecting curiosities from other planes-powerful, unusual or unique items, especially of the mystic kind. Or things with interesting history behind them. If you bring anything of interest to me, I can trade you creation dust from my own stores. For example, your wand is something I could trade for."

"That's a bit of a tall order, don't you think? Obviously I can't trade the one I'm using to get around, and I have no idea where I'd get something quite as powerful or unique."

"Not that one, though it is indeed of interest to me if you ever acquire another. I mean the wand that carries a trace of Chaos in it and Blue affinity."

"You mean this?" I pulled out the wand I'd made with Louise's blood. That was certainly an interesting descriptor for the Void element.

"Yes. I can offer you 1 unit of creation dust for it."

"I don't know about that… seems a little low."

"That is all I will trade for it, seeing as creation dust is far more valuable, objectively speaking. I have no use for the wand besides as a novelty to collect. I would trade more for your water element spirit seed or sword with the artificial spirit."

"Hold your horses, I am not up for trade," Derflinger suddenly said, after presumably pretending to be asleep.

"Hence my offer for just the wand. You can easily replace that, can you not?" The Builder spirit asked. "It is obvious that you crafted it yourself."

"Unfortunately, I actually can't. This is from the plane where I encountered the Beast, and I can't risk returning there any time soon. I've got no other sources of blood that could imbue what you call the Blue affinity, especially at such quality."

"Unfortunate indeed. Then if you craft another stable wand that carries both Chaos and a pure primary affinity, I will offer you the same one unit for each unique combination."

"What do you mean by pure primary affinity?"

"Any basic affinity of similar strength that serves as the wand's primary affinity. By basic or pure primary I mean a foundational standard affinity in any mana differentiated magic system which is not a mixture of more basic affinities within its own system. Such as the five prime colors of the old Walkers, the four plus zero material elements, the five phases of twofold manifest, among countless others.

"What if I got a chaos wand mixed with a non-standard affinity? Or a higher order affinity?"

"You will have to bring it to me for evaluation, though non-standard affinities are not likely to be of interest, unless they are sufficiently pure. A higher order affinity may be of interest if it maintains a pure symmetry of primaries. It is the quality of balanced symmetry of chaos and purity that is interesting from an artistic view. The wand you have there is quite weak and barely stable, should you make a superior one I may consider offering more."

I thought about it some more, then made up my mind, about the trade, and about where to go next.

"Artistic view, huh? I'll keep that in mind," I said. "As for the wand, I think I'll keep it for now. As valuable as creation dust may be, my inability to replace the wand makes it more important to me right now, while my need for creation dust is not too urgent at this point. Thanks for teaching me how to safely get more before making the offer though. I will remember your help and your sincerity. I can't say that I have many principles but reciprocity is one I do abide by. It's just good business to seek mutually beneficial partners, after all. So I'll spend some effort looking for potential curiosities to bring to you whenever I come back here. Though, I wonder, would you consider trading for other things too? More knowledge, for example?"

"Perhaps. Feel free to ask me when you have something to trade, and I may consider it."

"Great. I'll be on my way then."

"Before that, you need a way to ensure you can find this plane and return here."

"I have a way, I leave behind a beacon for the spell, and it'll let me target this plane from any other."

"I believe you are mistaken. Your anchors-and your spell-are unreliable, in multiple ways. You will learn in time that the only consistent law of all creation and chaos is that there are no absolutes, nothing is perfect, and everything has flaws. But an experimental spell, cast with a device you did not create, using concepts you do not understand-there can hardly be anything less reliable than that. But that is another long topic for another day. For now, why don't you check the one you left behind in the Tower again?"

I soon found myself bewildered, then concerned. The Waypoint had disappeared. What? I hadn't even left the plane yet!

Oh damn. Suddenly I remembered, there was an important condition to these Waypoints. They needed a large and stable gravitational source to remain anchored to. Did the Tower even have such a gravitational source? It was literally a Tower, not a planet, despite how large the floors were, and it wasn't necessarily built on a planet. The gravitation was… I have no idea how that worked. Shinsoo actually became denser the higher we went, instead of the other way around if gravity was the cause of the pressure.

"I see you've noticed the problem. Your spell does not seem to be compatible with the structure of this plane. Fortunately for you, I can be your anchor instead. Simply cast the spell and I will capture your beacon. Whenever you come back here, I can send you back to your last position in the Tower or Headon."

"You're a lifesaver. Thanks, let's do it."

So I set up another Waypoint with him, and then finally went on my way.

A/N: Yes, it's really back, and not just one chapter for the whole year… lol.

You guys had some interesting ideas about the top of the Tower. But you know this story's style, I can't make things too easy for the MC so he's not getting any huge power ups just from this. But it can be used as a recurring plot device to explain things that otherwise I'd have difficulty putting in the story, while not rendering the journey itself irrelevant.

Worm: 43 – Threshold Invitation

43 - Threshold Invitation

Having left a Waypoint at Earth-Refuge moon base, this time I went directly there instead of the old M2 moon base.

In the end, I chose to spend the grain for the trip because I needed to test whether the corrective force even truly existed on other planes, and experiment with the threshold invitation ritual itself, with people I knew I could trust before I tried it with others.

Experimenting with Shinsoo, collecting some things I thought the Builder might be interested in, and refueling Derf were all secondary objectives.

I'd have liked to test whether Worm was a high frequency leak place for grain as well, but I couldn't stay long enough to do that. I already confirmed that there was still more grain here to siphon, but whether it was enough for a full unit was an open question.

But when I checked in with Enduring Witness, I was surprised to learn that only three days had passed in Worm despite nearly a month passing in Tower of God. It was only June 21.

Why was there such a huge time disparity this time? If ToG's time was still running at the same speed differential, I'd only have less than 36 hours to do everything before it was time for the final test, since it was in two weeks of Tower time.

I quickly prioritized my objectives in terms of both efficiency and importance, then set out.

First I went to M2 to see the copy of Offensive Bias that was in charge of rebuilding it and ordered it to check for any Simurgh flesh still lying around the base ruins. Taylor was back in school, so I decided not to bother her, and then I told Offensive Bias to use his Hydra identity on behalf of CRUCIBLE to try arranging a purchase of a Cauldron vial from Accord for a reasonable price.

Next, I opened a portal to Earth M2B, arriving at the HQ lounge, taking a seat and waiting for Enduring Witness to call for Amelia and Paige.

Amelia came through a portal, arriving first. Then Paige walked over from her soundproofed singing room that was right next to the main control center. After a quick greeting we all sat down on the couches while Enduring Witness brought some snacks and food.

"So did something happen for you to be back so soon?" Amelia asked. "It's only been a few days, I thought you were planning to be away for at least a few weeks again?"

"Actually, it's been more than a month for me. I'm not sure why time flowed so differently in the new world I went to, but I won't be able to stay long if time is running much faster over there."

"A whole month? How was it?"

"Worthwhile, I'd say. It was a very different sort of world-it was inside of a tower filled with a substance called Shinsoo…"

I gave them a basic summary of what happened during my adventures there. Meeting Headon, the tests I went through and how the Tower works, training and taking lessons, and then the fight against a Ranker. But left out the details of who I'd teamed up with and the conspiracy.

"… Derf put up a good fight, and taunted the Ranker until he broke the rules of the test and our team won. Just from that fight alone, I could tell that the people who earned the title of Ranker after reaching the highest floor discovered, really might as well be gods compared to Regulars, let alone your baseline human. Quant wasn't anywhere near the strongest, but I could easily imagine him fighting an Endbringer solo, at least for a while anyways, like Lung did."

"Wow, and there's supposed to be thousands of these Rankers?" Paige asked. "It would be amazing if we could get any on our side to fight against Scion, or even the Endbringers."

"That's right, and they live for a very, very long time. I don't know if they even have a limited lifespan, as long as they're in the Tower and have Shinsoo. It's a miraculous substance, almost like liquid mana, but with unique properties of its own."

"Did you bring any Shinsoo back with you?" Amelia asked.

"Of course I did, it's all in my body though. It can't seem to maintain pressure when exposed to normal air, and just evaporates instantly. I also brought biological samples from the first creature I fought."

Amelia got up and came over to me. "May I?" She asked, reaching a hand towards mine.

I nodded, and she held my hand to observe the changes in my body.

Then she sighed. "I can see even less of your biology now. And what I can see, it's not making any sense. I haven't even figured out anything useful from the magical blood you brought back last time yet," said Amelia.. "I tried all sorts of tests with Enduring Witness already but it just seems to be completely normal."

"Can't say I'm surprised. I'm pretty sure now that magic is just something that exists outside of the natural physical laws. And many things don't work the same way, or not at all, on different worlds. In fact, I learned something very important at the end of my time in the Tower-it's not just magic that gets suppressed, but anything foreign to its common sense, including planeshifters like me, who bring strange powers with them. This is, in fact, the reason I came back-because I started getting suppressed."

"What does that mean, exactly? What happens if you get suppressed?" Amelia asked.

Then I told them about meeting the Builder's will, the process of getting flagged, and the two methods of stopping it.

It was a complicated topic and their lack of familiarity with magic made some things difficult to explain, but eventually they got the gist of what I needed their help for-the threshold invitation ritual contract.

"So… you need us to 'summon' you into our world, in order for you to have permission to use other strange powers? And it'd be a continuous bond between the host and agent… kind of like how our shards work with us? Except we give you the energy, and you're the one that uses your powers to fulfill our orders," said Amelia.

I nodded.

"But we don't have magic of our own… so will that even work?" Asked Paige.

"I don't know, but I intend to find out."

"Okay, sure. We should get Taylor to try too though, doing a magic ritual sounds like something she'd be into," said Amelia.

"You're probably right. I'll go get her after school ends."

"You're kidding. She really went back to school?" Amelia asked with disbelief. having been cut off from contact with Earth Bet since no open portal was kept to the secret worlds. "I couldn't imagine doing that after everything if I were her."

"Oh she did. Probably still trying to keep her civilian life separate from the cape business. Her dad can't be too happy about her missing so many classes while you guys were hiding after the Simurgh fight either."

"School might seem bad when you're there but once you're out for a long time you might miss it. Some people say it's the best time of our lives. I wouldn't go that far but it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to go, even if she won't pursue a normal career," said Paige.

"Yeah but it's Taylor we're talking about. Her school life was terrible. Even if her bullies are gone now, it's just… such a shitty place to go back to, you know? I don't get it."

Paige looked lost. "She was being bullied? I never would have guessed. It's hard to imagine her as a victim of any sort, she's so intense and commanding."

"Oh wait, you don't know. I guess she never told you and it never came up before, huh? Yes, it was extremely awful. They almost killed her and caused her trigger, even," said Amelia.

"What… what did they do?" Paige asked.

"I really shouldn't say without her permission. But every cape's trigger is the worst day of their life, after usually already having shitty lives. You probably hadn't met many capes while you were a rogue, but you should be able to get an idea of it if you think about your own trigger. Come to think of it, you have a really strong Master power too, so I imagine you might have even had similar triggers too, since that's apparently how the shards figure out what powers to give out, according to what Kaleidus told us."

Paige looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Amelia hadn't noticed and went on, looking up as if reliving a memory. "My own trigger was when my sister got shot and I was desperate to save her. And so I don't really mind talking about it, because she was saved and everything was fine after. But most other capes I've heard about aren't that lucky, the powers weren't nearly as helpful, and there's usually lasting trauma there."

"Umm… I…" Paige muttered awkwardly. I stayed silent and just listened, wondering if Amelia would realize why on her own. I was quite sure I'd mentioned that Paige was a vial cape when I'd rescued her, but apparently Amelia forgot about it.

Amelia saw Paige's discomfort but misinterpreted it. "Oh, you don't have to tell me yours just because I told you mine. Don't worry about it. We've gone off topic anyways." She turned back to me.

I waved a hand. "Oh I don't mind. In fact, it might even be helpful to talk about these things. In a way, shard triggers are quite similar. One of the requirements for the ritual is that the host must believe that the world is wrong-or has wronged them, and have a great desire to correct it. You've both suffered grave injustices in life before. You might need to draw on those old feelings."

"I don't know about that. A lot has changed since, my feelings about my trigger just don't really register anymore," said Amelia. "It would probably be easier to think of something else… maybe you should try it with Paige first? Because I'm not sure I feel strongly enough about anything right now. I feel like I've kind of… come to terms with it all?"

"Won't know until we try," I said. "The summoner has to call for me, and if it works, I'll feel the summons and be able to answer and sense whether a bond can be created. So both of you should do the ritual."

We set up some summoning rooms where the girls could draw magic circles and perform the relevant sacrifices and ceremonies. One for each of them so that they could have some privacy, the feelings they'd be drawing upon might be intensely personal after all.

The ceremony itself wasn't really necessary, but like all magic, it wasn't so much the exact process but the ritualism, symbolism, and self-hypnosis that made the magic happen. One could draw upon symbols with meanings and links to other things, or histories, icons or idols that strengthened the ritual, but in the end it was more of an art than science.

The very act of performing a lengthy ritual could help make the spell more effective, and for them who had no mana or spiritual powers of their own, we needed to go the extra mile.

I waited in the same room as Amelia while sending Agate to Paige, though in regular wand form for 'sense projection', not as Agatetron.

"These lines are completely embarrassing!" Amelia said, reading over the suggestions I transmitted to her own visor HUD. "And He Who Sees Beyond? Prince of Duality? Why not just use your name, or Polychromic?"

"You can use your own lines if you prefer, whatever works," I said. "I suggest the titles because I might not want to use the same name in other planes. But it's probably a good idea to establish a personal history with some titles I can use, to make future rituals easier to answer if another summoner uses the same titles for me, especially if they don't know much about me. They probably won't always be already a close friend or teammate like you."

"Fine. Okay. I'll get started," she said, and started preparing the props and motions.

Meanwhile, Paige was already walking around the circle she'd drawn, incense lit, candles arranged, and chanting in a low voice.

"One soul aggrieved to yearn. One flame to light the way. One circle to open the door. One soul aggrieved to yearn…"

After pacing three times, she lit a single candle with a lighter, and repeated the chant.

She dropped to her knees and held up her hands. "… and one call to the great beyond! I call upon the great lord who gave me life anew, who holds my heart and my sins! Please come to me, O' Lord whose spirit rests in me! I call upon He Who Sees Beyond, Prince of Duality, Lord of the Infinite! By my summons I invite you into the threshold, Lightbearer Who Carries the Stars!"

"…" I observed the ritual closely and there was definitely something there, but it was too weak, even when I was right there and actively trying to reach out with my own mana to make the connection. Paige maintained her posture for a while, until I told her it didn't work.

What followed with Amelia went similarly, though her chant omitted the invocation of the contract Paige previously formed with me in the Birdcage.

We tried again with different variations and not much success, until I left to pick up Taylor.

As Amelia suspected, Taylor was quite enthusiastic about participating in a ritual after we explained the situation to her.

Unfortunately, that enthusiasm did not translate into any more success than the other two.

There were two probable causes-one was their lack of personal magic and mana, or any other spiritual energy source, and the other was their 'willpower', or the strength of the desires in their souls.

We worked into the late night, trying to solve each issue. The first, by using some animal sacrifices, to add to the power of the ritual, and the second, by having the girls practice eliciting strong emotions while doing the ritual.

All of us needed only a few hours of sleep thanks to Amelia's augments, but eventually we took a break anyways, gathering at the lounge again.

"So why do you think it's not working? Is it just because we don't have any magic of our own?" Amelia asked. "Or is the whole ritual a dud?"

"No, I can feel the ritual trying to create a connection, it's just not strong enough. The animal sacrifices helped a bit, and more might be better, but I don't think that's all. If you were trying to summon me when I didn't know you or I wasn't already here, that would probably be more of a problem. But either way, I think it should be possible to establish the summoning connection initially-even if the contract couldn't be completed or sustained because you don't have the energy. As it stands, the problem seems to be with establishing the connection at all, so I think our issue might be more on the emotional side of things."

"You mean we don't want it enough?" asked Taylor.

"That, or a lack of belief and self-hypnosis. Magic only works if you can convince yourself it's possible, after all," I said.

"I think I've seen enough magic to believe that it's possible by now, even if in a scientific way. Just based on the evidence," said Taylor.

"Maybe it's because we've gotten over most of our issues by now? Like I mean, everything has been going great since I met you. I don't feel like I have much to be angry at the world about anymore," said Amelia.

"What about the fact that the world might end within ten years?" asked Taylor. 'Isn't that something to be angry about?"

"That didn't stop you from going back to school and acting as if everything is normal," said Amelia.

"I haven't forgotten about it or anything, it's just, it isn't something we can do anything about in the short-term. And there isn't much heroing to do in Brockton Bay either, Hydra and the Coil clone have everything covered," said Taylor.

"But it wasn't enough for your rituals either, was it?" Amelia asked, to which Taylor shook her head.

"Could be something subconscious holding us back?" Paige suggested.

"What do you mean?" asked Taylor.

"Because we know we're just experimenting?" Paige said hesitantly.

"That could be a contributing factor," I said with a nod. "Or maybe something else entirely… I have a few more ideas we can try."

We brainstormed a while, then continued again with some different adjustments.

To stop potential interference between the rituals, we started doing them one after the other instead of separately in different rooms.

Then Paige used her Master power to amplify the Amelia and Taylor's emotions, but that too didn't work-in fact, it had the opposite effect, and the connections got even weaker. I could guess at why that might be, the host was supposed to have free will, and the desire was supposed to come from their soul. What exactly that meant was unclear, but temporary emotions caused by external forces evidently made the whole process worse. So perhaps rather than "emotion" as measured by activity in the brain, it really was something deeper within the soul.

It that sense, I wondered if it was incorrect to separate the concept of mystic or spiritual power of the ritual and the host from the strong desires component. That maybe these two were closely linked-that the "strength" of the soul's desire was also affected by their possession or lack of some form of spiritual energy.

We even tried a group summoning ritual, but that also failed, despite increasing the power of the ritual itself. The call was clear enough for me to answer, but the mess of different intent between them made it impossible to offer a contract to them as a group, nor did any of them individually qualify.

"We should take another break first, longer this time. You all look exhausted," I declared, after the failed group summoning.

All of them had immediately sat down on the ground after the ritual failed, panting. It seemed that repeatedly attempting the magic had drained their energy despite the failures.

While the team ate and took naps, I did some simple experiments with Shinsoo.

I had carried with me several sealed live cell pouches of Shinsoo within the Armoriont, and a bottle of "water" which was actually just some liquid Shinsoo from the Regulars' cafeteria, and a few bottles of gaseous Shinsoo contained in non-living containers.

When I unsealed a pouch, the Shinsoo dissipated almost instantly. It had already been in a gaseous state when I had collected it in the Tower from the air, so this was not a surprise. What did come as a surprise, was the fact that the water spirits were unable to recollect it. It seemed to just disappear into nothing, rather than actually dispersing into the air. Similarly, it disappeared from my own mana sense. But it was impossible to determine if it truly did disappear or if it merely evaporated to such a low concentration that it couldn't be sensed anymore.

Still, the fact that it remained stable while sealed was a good sign, that it could be potentially studied, and that it was only the transition from keeping it contained to a low pressure open air environment that caused it to disappear.

I tried again, but this time asking the water spirits to maintain control of the Shinsoo, and when they drew it out, it did not dissipate.

The liquid "water" I got instead stayed normal upon release, but incredibly, the mana signature they emitted disappeared as soon as I opened a bottle.

It was at that point that I realized something very strange was going on, which reminded me of a particular physics phenomenon, the observer effect.

I set out to test this by going to the Earth Refuge moon base where I'd kept some sensitive scientific equipment for exactly this purpose.

And when I placed the still sealed but transparent Shinsoo bottles under an electron microscope, the same thing happened. The mana signature disappeared from my senses immediately when I looked at it through the microscope, and what I saw appeared to be completely normal water molecules.

So it wasn't really the phase transition from a pressurized to depressurized state, but perhaps the Shinsoo which held magic potential to be anything, actually became ordinary water once "observed" or interacted with anything that was from this world and not the Tower.

I therefore repeated this experiment, but with the water spirits controlling the Shinsoo and placing that under the electron microscope.

An even more peculiar result occurred: I was unable to see any molecules at all. It took me some time to figure out exactly what I was seeing, but eventually I concluded that in this "controlled" state, the Shinsoo was acting as a form of pure energy, and it did not have any particles. This was true whether I used the gaseous form or the liquid water form, the deciding factor was whether or not the water spirits were in control of it or not.

The instant that control was released, it seemed to "become real", and observable.

Unfortunately I couldn't attempt the iconic double-slit experiment or any of its variations because the water spirits controlling it rendered it meaningless. Even if it functioned as a "wave" or non-particle, it's path was technically well-defined simply because it was being continuously controlled, whereas an interference pattern could only happen as a result of free moving waves after the beam was initially fired. It would be more probably more accurate to say that this was some form of third "semi-magical" state, in which energy somehow had a physical form yet was not comprised of matter-particles, yet not totally undetectable through direct physical observation like mana was-a sort of "magical-physical" duality.

But I confirmed that so long as there was an active intent controlling the Shinsoo, it retained its original properties.

Within my own body at least, the Shinsoo circulation that the water spirits did and my own absorption of Shinsoo at the cellular level seemed to work as normal-placing my own living tissue under the electron microscope yielded a similar "semi-magical" result, where the Shinsoo itself could not be directly perceived yet blurred the image of cell molecules.

Of course, there was also the possibility that the particles were so small as to be at the subatomic level or lower and my instruments were incapable of perceiving them, but ultimately from a practical perspective, what mattered was knowing how to store and use it.

And it confirmed the strategic value of working with Shinsoo-it was something that I could continue to use in planes other than Tower of God, and that it could have lasting effects on my body's base capabilities. On top of its ability to act as a store of mana, even if converting it was pretty slow.

Now what about Shinsoo based items and technology?

I had with me the common Needles, Hooks, and Reels that we were given during the Fishermen classes. But there wasn't really anything special about these things, they were controlled by the user via Shinsoo rather than having magical properties of their own.

The one thing that had special properties of its own was the Rank F Arms Inventory that became available for purchase using Points for Fishermen that passed the Position Test, which I'd bought shortly before I left the Tower.

It was basically a single flat strip panel lined with holes that served as a weapon rack, but it had several features that were similar to a Pocket. It could float in Shinsoo, turn invisible, and compress its size along with all of the weapons carried on it.

The behavior of these properties was quite intriguing in a Shinsoo-less environment. Normally, the low-purity Suspendium of the Arms Inventory meant that it couldn't fully float on its own and needed the user to help manipulate it with Shinsoo. But contrary to the intuitive behavior of buoyancy-the higher the density of the Shinsoo, the harder it was for the same quality of Suspendium to float. This was because, despite gravity seemingly attracting things to the ground, Shinsoo density went in the opposite direction, such that the pressure increased the higher you went.

And now in a Shinsoo-less environment, it reverted to a more intuitive behavior. The Arms Inventory managed to float fine by itself on actual water, but fell down extremely slowly in open air as if it were in a low gravity environment, although it couldn't be controlled since there was no Shinsoo around.

On the other hand, the ability to turn invisible and compress itself did not work without Shinsoo. They did work when I got the water spirits to submerge the Arms Inventory in a bubble of Shinsoo though.

That compression feature seemed like it could be very useful if I acquired better storage items. These experiments seemed to suggest that as long as I had Shinsoo available, all Shinsoo-based items would work normally, and I had long wanted a mobile inventory system that worked on other planes.

With my experiments done, I went to refuel Derflinger by going to the Armoriont farm I left on Earth Refuge.

I had asked Amelia last time to make a super organism I could use for draining purposes, but that turned out to be quite ineffective. In order to do the drain, the organism had to have a close enough connection to me to be considered a part of me. It was possible to sacrifice other living things as part of rituals, but I couldn't extract their mana to myself that way. And it was not as simple as converting glucose or fats, either-the process of draining afflicted the living cells and tissues that were being drained, it was not conventional sort of energy conversion process. That meant that cells were broken down or killed mysteriously as their microscopic spiritual energy was taken.

But because the energy was from the spirit and not just a purely physical thing, its level of complex sentience and spiritual connection to the primary host mattered a lot. The larger the body of the symbiote, such as the chimera titan which the Armoriont could meld into and control, the less it fit into the concept of "me" and so the less useful they were.

When draining the Armoriont farm, I had to limit each Armoriont's size, and re-sync up with them one by one to drain them.

It was incredibly boring and tedious work, and made more difficult by the fact that both me and the Armoriont I'd taken with me to the Tower had apparently diverged significantly from the ones I'd left in the farm, and I'd similarly found it more difficult to magically subsume the older ones.

I could've had my Shinsoo improved Armoriont split new copies, but I suspected that would actually not be a good idea since each copy would dilute the Shinsoo-enhanced properties as any biomass they consumed here wouldn't have any Shinsoo. Refilling Derf was not really such a high priority issue that I'd consider sacrificing the potential enhancements that Shinsoo could provide over the long-term.

So now it took a little longer per Armoriont to drain them, and I couldn't even do all 256 each hour.

Last time I'd spent a little over 2 full days of doing this mind-numbing work to refill Derflinger back from empty. This time Derf was missing about thirty percent of his reserves, and after the first hour I'd estimated that it might take a day and a half just to refill the thirty percent, at 440 MP per hour if I kept up this pace.

Unfortunately, I didn't have anywhere near that much time. After all the ritual testing with the team, I'd had maybe 22 hours left if I wanted to get back to the Tower in time for the final test. What's more, the time tradeoff wasn't necessarily worth it, because even though I could get MP faster here relative to my personal time, what actually mattered was how fast I recovered relative to the Tower time.

Because I could also instead spend a longer amount of personal time in the Tower and recover MP through Agate and converting Shinsoo with the water spirits. And Derf himself could probably use the practice himself, to absorb mana from getting hit with Shinsoo attacks or from the environment, even if we wound up recovering MP at an overall slower pace.

"What do you think, Derf? This is boring as hell, want to refill back at the Tower instead? If we have any extra time once we finish with the invitation spell testing, we can go back early instead of doing more of this," I asked him.

"Sounds good to me. I don't even really care if I'm full on mana or not. I've got some ideas I want to try with Shinsoo, got some inspiration from our last fight with that Ranker guy, I feel like there might be a way for me to use it, just not like the Wave Controllers we learned about."

We continued for a while since the team was still resting, but since Derf was awake I talked to him about the Builder and the ritual we were trying to test.

"If the issue is really just that they have no mana of their own, that's going to make things a lot more difficult for me, on similar planes where people don't have magic. Could there be any other reason we haven't thought of?"

"What about the things that are connected to them? You said they might have magic, right?" said Derf. "That's why you want to try trading the vials that give powers?"

"You mean offering a contract to a shard instead?" I asked. "That might be possible but I don't think it's a good idea, even if I could do it somehow."

"No, I mean, they're connected to your teammates, aren't they? Mentally and probably spiritually. So what if that's causing problems, because what they want aren't the same thing? Like how the group ritual failed because of their willpower was mixing. I remember my maker complaining about something like that for her spirit magic, because the spirits hated Brimir for being… well, you know, the same reason other planes hate us now, haha."

"Damn, you're right. That could be it. I bet none of them want their hosts to get any help from anything else," I said. "Their whole purpose is to make their hosts use their own powers as much as possible and encourage them to get into bad situations. We'll have to try doing the ritual outside of their range then."

"We could also try to give them some magic power directly during the ritual."

"A mana transfer? Like if they imbibed my blood?"

"Yeah, or if they let me Boost them," said Derf.

"An outside influence like that might make it worse though, we saw that when we tried to use Paige's power."

"I don't take over their minds though, it's just sharing some energy. Though you might be right still, if the magic is tainted by another source, it could disrupt things. Even things like blood carry spiritual residue from the original owner," said Derf.

"But worth a try, anyways, if moving them outside the shard range isn't enough."

A couple of hours later, I set out with Amelia on the AAPV into space beyond the moon. It was still the only one we had as the facilities for making another AAPV were still being reconstructed and wouldn't be ready on the M2 base for several more days at the earliest, and even longer at the secret worlds.

There was not much space to begin with and the lack of artificial gravity made the ritual setup extra complicated, so we had decided to do this one by one, rather than having the whole team come along.

Then Amelia did the ritual. At the end of her chant, the magic fizzled out again. She sighed.

"Sorry, I think this just isn't going to work with me," she said. "The shards might be part of it, but I don't think I'm the right person to be your host even if every other condition was there."

"Why do you think so?"

"Isn't it obvious? You know what I really want, Kaleidus. There isn't anything specific I want you to do for me."

"I thought that would make you the best choice. If your wish is for me to stay here," I said. "I'd be fulfilling the contract just by being here."

"Yeah but I know you won't stay for long, even if this contract works. And I don't want to hold you back from leaving either," said Amelia. "Isn't that what a contract with me would really mean? For me to order you to stay with me."

"You do realize that if I can't get an invitation here, it'll be hard to even visit? I could avoid using any foreign powers and stay under the radar, but that's not a sure thing. Without a contract, even if I were able to reset the suppression a few times, eventually I might reach the point of not being able to come back at all."

"But that isn't happening today, and if that does happen, what I really want is for you to take me with you. What's so great about staying in a world that's doomed to end sooner or later?"

"I don't know if that's something I can even do, I've recently learned that I know very little about the way I travel, and everything is too risky to test, because bad assumptions probably mean we die," I said honestly, thinking of the fact that I'd still been too afraid to test whether I could bring anyone with me. And it wasn't just the possibility of facing another Beast, but the fact that my spell had never actually been tested with two souls riding in the unformed creation bubbles. If something went wrong and the bubble broke down or I lost control of it mid-transit, there was no evacuation plan, nor could there be any. And it wasn't like I could just test with a random expendable person, because I was also in the bubble and at risk.

"But I suppose you're right, either way, whether it's to figure out how to defeat Scion or how to bring others with me, I can't find the answers here."

She nodded, but remained silent, and we headed back to the moon base.

Once we got back, she announced that she was heading back planet-side, and asked Enduring Witness to make a portal for her. When Taylor and Paige looked confused, I waved them off.

"You're my last hope, Taylor," I said to her once we blasted off into space. "We need to make this count."

"What do you mean? Couldn't we just keep trying with more adjustments? What happened with Amelia?"

"She doesn't have the right mindset to make this work, unfortunately. It isn't her fault, but we can't do anything about it. I believe you're the only one that can muster the necessary will to form a contract with me, because only you have something you need my help to achieve," I said.

"What about Paige? I'm sure she'd keep trying no matter what," said Taylor. "She's very dedicated."

"But it is a different kind of dedication from yours, and I suspect that it will never work with her either. To her, the ritual is a way to help me, because I asked for it. But it doesn't work unless she wants it for herself. I'm not sure if she even has any wishes of her own. She'll listen to whatever I say, but this contract needs her to be willing to command," I said. "To believe that she has the right to force the world to listen to her."

"Alright. Is there anything you think I should focus on?"

"It's up to you, really. Whatever you think is unfair about the world, that needs to change. That you need my help for. Feel free to take some time to think about it if you need to. The ritual will be better for it."

"There are lots of things. Scion and the Endbringers, obviously. And for my dad to let me fight. To keep him safe. For the city to get better. I want my best friend back, even though that's stupid, I just can't help it. When I went back to Winslow it was so strange, not seeing Emma and the trio. Somehow I got used to them being there. It was almost… worse that there was nobody to bother me anymore, and everyone else seems to have forgotten all about them, about me, and what they did to me. Like everything I went through didn't even matter."

I kept silent, but nodded, encouraging her to continue.

"I don't know what I expected. Apologies? From the school, or maybe from all the people who stood by and did nothing. The teachers who failed to do their jobs? They could barely meet my eyes, and all the other girls that hung out with Emma, they all got off with a slap on the wrist. They just went on to target other people. Nothing changed, and I still have no friends, nor do I want any of them to be my friend. It really isn't fair, is it? The police got the proof they needed, the bullies were punished, I won, damn it… so why doesn't it feel like I won anything? Where is my happy ending?" She said bitterly.

"Instead, I missed a month of classes after we risked our lives to fight the Simurgh and had to hide in another world, and I can't even really explain why, so it's just truancy. Or maybe they think I'm just a traumatized victim, a lost cause, a problem that will just go away soon if they ignore it, because people fall by the wayside and this is just normal in the Bay? Now the year's almost over and I might actually fail some of my classes. I wish I could say that I'm happy that they're processing a transfer to Arcadia for next term, but I don't want to have to repeat a year just to catch up. And who knows if Arcadia will even be much better, I still won't have any friends there."

"Do you want Amelia and Paige to go back to Brockton Bay with you?" I asked.

"I can handle it, summer's about to start anyways, so I won't have to deal with it much longer. But we were talking about the things I'm not happy about, so there it is. But it isn't so much about me, as it is the fact that everything will just happen all over again, to somebody else. There will be another trio, and another Taylor. How many capes trigger every year? How many others never trigger, never get any help, and never get their comeuppance?"

"Far too many. This world is locked in a constant cycle of endless misery, a struggle between good and evil with only temporary victories," I said. "Powers and Endbringers have only magnified what has always been there, tilting the scales towards complete destruction."

"Exactly. That's what's wrong with the world, and that's why our team exists, right? To push the scales back. To make the world a better place. It isn't any one thing or enemy to defeat, but to do what we can to make things right," said Taylor, nodding to herself, then held a hand out towards the magic circle.

"That's why we need you with us. We need all the help we can get, all the powers you can bring to the table, no matter where they come from."

She lit the first candle.

"One soul aggrieved to yearn. One flame to light the way. One circle to open the door…"

Something seemed different this time as the chant was repeated. I felt the air become heavy with an unknown pressure.

She poured a vial of my blood out onto the circle, and instead of floating in the zero-g environment,, it actually slowly fell towards the circle as if being drawn in.

"By my summons, I invite you into the threshold, Lightbearer Who Carries the Stars. I call upon He Who Sees Beyond, to help me find the answer. I beseech the Prince of Duality, to bring the scales back into balance! Thrice I invoke your name, so answer my call, and form a contract with me!"

Then she cut herself and let her own blood fall into the circle as well.

The magic circle alighted. Then the chain of candles around the circle lit by themselves.

I felt the connection reach out, and I responded with my own mana. There was a tug on me, and I let it take hold, even metaphorically grabbing it back and pulling myself towards it, then I suddenly found myself inside the circle.

There was an invisible presence of some sort, that seemed to fix its gaze upon me, blanketing the area in a pulse that gave a feeling of scorching my mana. The plane's corrective force, I assumed, its attention having been drawn by my reaction to the ritual.

"Who dares to call upon Erkshminialhhathrr? A mere human?" I said imperiously.

"The Queen of Bugs greets the mighty Prince, may your light that eclipses novas vividly echo until the end of time."

"I'm surprised Amelia remembered precisely enough to tell you even the supposed translation, and that you also remembered."

"We thought you might do something like that again, so we had to be ready for it," she said with a grin.

"Very well, I offer you a contract. As my host, you will become my anchor in this world, and your energy will sustain me. In exchange, I will carry out your commands and use my powers on your behalf, according to the energy you provide me. The contract shall end if either of us wish for it. Do you accept?"

"Yes."

The bond fully formed, and then that smothering presence vanished.

And then Taylor fainted.

O O O

TOG: 44 – That is Not Dead

44 - That is Not Dead

It seemed that the contract bond was too much of a strain for a person that had no magic of their own. I minimized my draw on her energy, but there was still quite a bit of passive upkeep to maintain my immunity to the corrective force. Aside from the actual cost of any powers I was using, the bond had to pay to block the plane's corrective force, the cost being higher the more power I used and the greater the distortion. Agate was always technically active and consumed quite a lot of mana, so that probably contributed to the strain, even when I was not doing anything else.

Taylor only woke up after Amelia made some brain bugs for her down at the M2B HQ, similar to the type that she used in Brockton Bay to process bug senses.

But she still felt weak and exhausted, even a little dizzy. All the symptoms of mental and physical fatigue were there, but she had been able to offload some of her mental faculties to the brain bugs.

As a temporary measure, I gave her a blood transfusion, which contained my mana and some refined Shinsoo, which restored her to a decent shape.

"I don't think I'll be able to use much of my powers like this, it would be too dangerous for you," I said to her while Amelia was monitoring her vitals and suppressing an immune response to the blood. "But at least it worked."

Taylor nodded weakly.

"I probably shouldn't stay any longer, because just being here is draining your energy. I will hopefully find some way to mitigate the effects on you if we ever need to really rely on the contract," I said. The next time I showed up in Worm, the suppression would have reset and it should be easy to just renew the contract at will if neither of us had broken it.

The main objectives of testing whether the corrective force actually existed on other planes, and whether the ritual itself was a valid defense against it, had been cleared. The test was a success, and additionally showed that the warnings that the Builder gave me were true too. The instant that the contract was formed, the corrective force's attention came to me. And a weak host without enough magic power of their own made for a bad host, since they'd need alternative means to support me, especially if I wanted to use more of my powers.

For now, the only alternative means I knew of was transferring fluids that contained mana, such as my blood which we used to help Taylor. But that was terribly inefficient and giving out my own blood was not something I wanted to be in the habit of doing. Living sacrifices helped the ritual itself but there was no way to transfer that power to the host for continued upkeep. There would probably be methods out there in other magic worlds, but I'd have to find them.

But this meant that in worlds like Worm where magic users and mystical forces were non-existent or extremely rare, I would be better served just doing as I did before and keeping under the notice of the planar corrective force for as long as I could instead of trying to get an invitation right away. As long as I avoided the use of higher end powers-no, even if I did incur the attention of the corrective force, I could assume that as the Builder told me, I wouldn't even necessarily be kicked out in a short period, so it was probably feasible to do whatever I wanted to do on those worlds then leave. After all, there were few reasons to stay for a prolonged period on any one plane, especially after its creation dust supply ran out. Unless there was something special about that plane, like being a continuous source of more creation dust, or having some opportunity to grow my personal power-the type of power I could bring around with me anywhere I went and was universally usable in most planes. And it just so happened that a world without mystical forces was probably not one where I'd be able to grow my personal power that much.

So in the grand scheme of things, a method to make use of non-magical hosts was less interesting from the perspective of merely using this ritual, compared to whatever implications such methods might have for enhancing the magical power of such persons. Because of course, I also lacked much in the way of internally sourced power still, relying on primarily external sources to generate mana, like the hack of draining the Armoriont as if it were my own lifeforce.

After we were sure that Taylor was fine, I thanked everyone for their help, then I dropped Taylor off in Brockton Bay, and went to check in with Offensive Bias.

Accord had refused to sell any vials to us for just cash, and instead demanded an unspecified future favor plus variable cash prices that he would only quote if we specified what strength and type of power we wanted.

Well, I shelved that for now since I didn't want to get entangled or obligate CRUCIBLE to anything at the moment, nor did I have the time to look into alternative sources. I could try and contact Cauldron directly next time, though I suspected that they might also ask for a favor.

But Bias did manage to find twelve pieces of Simurgh flesh of various sizes scattered around the ruins of the old M2 base. Most of those areas we had left untouched and opted to rebuild over a hundred kilometers away, because of the risk that the Simurgh had left hidden traps for us, and because some tactical nukes had been detonated, irradiating the area. However, since the rebuild was going smoothly, Offensive Bias was able to spare some droids and drones to carefully scavenge the area for my request.

Some pieces had feathers still, suggesting that these were from the wings. Others it was impossible to tell where it came from, just lumps of uniformly pale flesh. The largest of which seemed to be an entire section of wing over two meters long and half a meter wide.

Despite extraordinary density of the material, it apparently weighed only about as much as organic flesh did for the same volume.

"Is it just me, or does that look crystalline?" Derf asked while we examined it.

"It is. It's some sort of living crystal material, I think. Based on the fact that biotinkers can work with it. The shards are also said to be crystalline in nature too."

"Can we make a sword out of it before we leave?" asked Derf.

"I'll ask Amelia to see if she can reshape it, but if she can't then we're probably out of luck," I said.

"Hmmm…" Derflinger said. "Touch me to that big long piece."

I obliged.

"I think I can actually just transfer directly into this thing," said Derf. "It seems to qualify as a weapon as it is already? And it doesn't seem really alive either… at least not in a way that would stop me from moving in…"

"I can't really swing this around though. And didn't you say swords were the best shape for you?"

The wing piece seemed to have been sliced off cleanly near the base, with many feathers still protruding from it. There was no good place to grip it though to use as a weapon.

"Yeah but there's something really odd about this thing, like it has parts that are there but aren't at the same time," said Derf.

"That would be the dimensional warping effects, I assume," I said.

"I want to at least try it out. It shouldn't take long, and I'll get back after," said Derf.

"I thought you needed at least a day to move vessels?"

"Nah that's only when I have no energy. I've got loads right now so this should be fast. And keep me tight against it, that'll make it much faster than if I have to jump over. Ten minutes, tops," said Derf.

"Well, in that case, here you go," I said, putting the Armoriont nanocrystal sword flat against the Simurgh flesh.

I waited patiently while Derf moved over, and true to his words he finished in nine minutes.

"Whuuah… this is really weird. I'm not sure what's going in here, but I feel stretched," said Derf.

"Did you bring over all your mana? I can't seem to feel any from the sword anymore," I said.

"Most, used up a bit to move, but there's enough room in here for all of it. Give me a few more minutes though, all of me is in here, but I'm not all over this thing yet," he said.

While he did so, I used some of my own mana to analyze the different pieces of flesh. The information I got was not very clear, but I had the sense that the surface protruding feathers were harder than steel, and most of the other pieces were actually softer.

"Ooooo…"

Comparatively speaking, the Armoriont's cellulose nanocrystals were actually quite a lot stronger in terms of hardness, but they lacked the same material density. These crystals instead just compressed in on themselves without any clear molecular pattern.

"Aaaaaa…"

The piece that Derflinger now occupied was simultaneously the largest and had the densest parts close to what appeared to be the base side of the wing. No other pieces had any parts that indicated it came from an organ of any sort, or even muscle rather than skin.

"Ehhh?" Derflinger made a surprised noise.

Suddenly the whole wing began to compress, feathers slowly retracting into the wing base.

"Huaaa! I… can… transform!" Derflinger shouted.

"What is going on?" I asked.

"This crystal is like a single living thing with no cells, and it's both dead and alive. Dead enough for me to take it over, but alive enough to reconfigure itself using the energy I'm giving to it," said Derf.

"That's wild." I said, while watching the process of the flesh slowly morphing into an undefined blob. It seemed to speed up as Derf learned to how to manipulate it. "Can you create more of it?"

"No idea how. Maybe I can integrate the other pieces though. Quick, bring them over," said Derf.

I did as he asked, but held back a few smaller pieces since I was still planning to bring some to the Builder.

"Sweet, it's working," said Derf, as he absorbed the rest of the pieces into the blob. "It burns a lot of energy to control this though."

"Do you really need to turn into a sword? I remember we talked about this before. If you could transform, wouldn't it be better to turn into armor?"

"What are you saying Partner? The great Derflinger will always be a sword!"

As if to emphasize the point, he quickly condensed then stretched horizontally into a pole, before flattening a blade out of one end, and a thicker round section on the other hand to be the handle, as a simple guardless sword in the eastern single-edge straight saber shape that he had back in Halkegenia before he moved to the Armoriont-grown sword.

As the original Simurgh flesh, the sword was pure white, but much thinner and sleeker than Derf's previous forms. I had the notion that it seemed somewhat reminiscent of what an elven sword would look like, light, graceful, and elegant. The end of the hilt curved and widened a bit to hold the hand, and the handle itself was just long enough for two hands but the overall size of the sword suggested it was intended primarily for one-handed use.

"You can add a crossguard and grip to me yourself. I'm balancing the weight so we don't need a separate pommel," said Derflinger.

With a little bit of work, I repurposed the guard of the old Armoriont sword and installed a smaller one onto the Endbringer sword.

And then we had the bright idea to turn the entire Armoriont blade into a hollow sheath which still looked like a larger sword body, and fit onto the new guard but could be unhooked and slid off at will.

So now it looked mostly like the original sword, with a bit of adjusted coloring so that it was no longer fully transparent, hiding the real sword inside.

But since it was all connected, Derf could still channel his powers through the outer layer, so I could use it normally, or unleash his true form and bring despair to our opponents.

After the whole process, Derf had spent nearly all of the MP we had gathered earlier from the Armoriont farm, but the rate of consumption was still potentially tolerable if used in combat.

Overall, I couldn't be dissatisfied with it, even though we'd used up all the densest pieces of the Endbringer flesh, so I had little hope that the remaining pieces would be worth anything with the Builder. They were probably better used this way anyway though, since I had no urgency to acquire more creation dust now that I had confirmed that the threshold invitation worked.

Afterwards, I took it back to Earth M2B and gave a piece of the Simurgh flesh to Amelia to study, along with the White Steel Eel sample from the Tower. That left me with two small pieces to show the Builder.

When I finally left, I counted nineteen hours that had passed while I was in Worm.

"Hmm…" The Builder's spirit examined the piece of Simurgh flesh I'd offered. "A living crystal, although rare, is not unheard of. That it seems to have a natural dimensional folding property is curious, but not altogether unheard of either for natural magical species. It is the fact that it appears to be artificially designed that makes it more interesting, if only as testament to the ingenuity of whichever race designed it. But this piece does not contain enough material to really showcase the true potential of this lifeform. I'll offer you one unit of creation dust for this, if only for your effort. If you bring me denser pieces I will trade you a higher quantity."

I considered the offer for a moment. It was more than I'd hoped, and gave me additional insight into what types of things the Builder liked. I had the option now of acquiring more Endbringer flesh to trade him, although it was a tough call as to whether that would be better used to enhance Derflinger's sword instead, or for me to experiment upon myself.

For now, there was something else I was interested in. "If you don't mind, I'd like to trade you for the answer to a question instead. Last time you mentioned that the Beacons of my spell are unreliable in multiple ways. Can you explain how?"

"I would say that the analysis you want is more valuable than one unit of creation dust, and that is already stretching the value of this," he gestured to the Simurgh flesh. "However, on this question I will humor you because I would rather you did not die or get lost from some foolish mistake."

Then he held out his other hand, and manifested a hologram of sorts.

"Listen carefully. The first flaw is that your anchors have no interaction with reality, which means they have no ties to it either and are not themselves anchored to the creation zone."

An opaque white rectangular prism appeared, denoting the creation zone. Two multicolored balls of light hovered just above and touching it, inside a translucent layer that seemed to have dark murky waves going through it. Then the white prism shot a beam of light at one ball, dispelling it. The other ball was seemingly shoved by a violent wave and destabilized, then disappeared.

"While this makes them less noticeable to the plane's corrective force, they are still easily erased with enough time, or eroded by random Chaos fluctuations outside of the plane. The second flaw you are already aware of-although I do not know the specific calculations behind it, it clearly uses some frame of reference that is artificial, using assumptions about the creation zone that are not consistently true."

The prism changed shape from rectangular to spherical to a curved helix.

"But the greatest flaw is less specific to the anchors rather than the way the spell works as a whole."

Then he created an image of lines connecting a series of white colored nodes, on a chaotically moving background of static.

"The Harmonic Corridors are not always available to every plane, and their flows are not always at the same intensity. This has many implications. You may find that your Beacon cannot pull you strongly enough in the right direction, causing you to land elsewhere."

A strong light emitted from one of the nodes, signaling the Beacon, while a blue dot exited from another. A line connecting them flashed, and the blue dot moved, but then the line was overrun by smaller black dots and shook, before the blue dot fell onto a different line at an intersection, towards a different node.

Then he showed a side by side comparison of four enlarged columns of greyish energy.

"The flows might be too turbulent to traverse at all, or the concentration of creation or chaos energies is too high. You must be careful to observe and adjust, or avoid it altogether. When there is too much creation energy, you need more creation dust to keep control of yourself. When there is too much chaos, you should condense the bubble and add creation dust to reinforce it."

One column turned white, one stayed grey, one a mix of red and black, and the last a violently shaking mix of white, red, and black. The grey one had one dot denoting a single unit of grain at the top, and a small bubble of light representing the bubble I traveled in. The white column's bubble was brighter, and had two smaller dots attached. The black and red column had a smaller but equally bright bubble as the white, with two smaller dots attached. The last one had no bubble displayed, but instead showed a ghostly face with a stretched and warped screaming expression.

"Finally-you must never attempt to bring another independent soul, or any uncooperative spirits, with you. The integrity of your bubble depends on the synchronization of your soul with it, and a uniform intent to control it. Interference from another soul that is incapable of sublimating its consciousness with yours will cause it to collapse."

Then there was a miniature version of me, linked to two other lights, and they started to move around in perfect formation, together inside a bubble. A third light appeared, linked to me, but it moved out of formation with the rest of the group and the bubble. The bubble then collapsed and everything burst.

"Now I have more than answered your question. I have told you how to handle different conditions of the Corridors, but you will have to figure out how to improve your anchoring method yourself. In this plane, it is not necessary because I am here, but you already have a hint as to how one might go about accomplishing it-I did speak at length to you about the concept of ties and bonds to the world last time."

There was a lot to go through here, but it really answered some of my long standing questions since I first got the Kaleidostick, and helped me understand the limits of my planeshifting.

I thanked him for his help, and got back inside the unformed creation bubble I was still controlling and rode here in, then asked the Builder to send me back into the Tower to see Headon.

At the First Floor, there were no strange remarks from Headon this time. He merely welcomed me back and then handed me the Pocket again, before wishing me luck and teleporting me back to the Second Floor.

I checked my Pocket. To my great shock, less than two days had passed in the Tower. What was going on here? When I had been in the Tower last, time moved so fast relative to Worm, but when I was on Worm, the time here didn't seem to move anywhere near as fast?

I racked my brain and could not think of anything that would account for this. Was this just complete randomness or was there actually something affecting the way that time flowed? But I could not do anything about it now, it was just something I might need to ask the Builder the next time I had something worthwhile to trade, I supposed.

It was at least convenient for me that I now had an extra week more than I thought I would before the final test, which meant I could try to fill up Derf some more.

Then I saw a series of messages from Androssi asking me where I was, threatening to bust down my door if I didn't show up for training, and then finally telling me where to find her-she'd agreed to help Baam with training for a bit because we were going to participate in his test, same as she did in canon.

There was a message from Baam, saying that he'd heard from Androssi I was sick after the last test and that he wished me a fast recovery.

A message from Hwa Ryun, telling me that she would not participate in the final test and would be leaving the Regulars' dorms, so I would have to contact her via Pocket if I needed anything. She would still be around, though I'd missed their strategy session, so the strategy for the final test would be explained to me by Rachel.

The last was a message from Rachel, asking me to visit so she could tell me the strategy for the final test.

I leaned back against the wall arms crossed, while Rachel sat on her bed, and explained the Guardian's test. It seemed to be the exact same one that they used in canon, with an ecosystem of strange aquatic and amphibious organisms that we'd have to navigate and fight to keep everything away from Rachel and Baam who'd be taking a route through the inside of an ultra large fish called the Dolphin Madame.

"… it might be possible for us to win the test normally, but we can't do that for a couple of reasons. One, Baam already announced that he's an Irregular and if we win that way, the whole Tower will know that an Irregular is climbing. When they come for us, they'll kill everyone on the team, whether they know we're Irregulars or not."

"But wasn't that also part of the plan? To intentionally push Baam into revealing his status, according to what Hwa Ryun and Yu Hansung told us before? That's why you let yourself get temporarily crippled," I said.

"It is. But that was their plan, not mine. This is the only way we can have a non-standard test from the Guardian, which is what they need to do the next part, and achieve their goal in all this, the reason they're helping us," she said.

"Oh, so they finally told you? What do they want?" I asked.

"They are part of an organization called FUG, and whose goal is to overthrow the ruling power of the Tower. In order to do that, they need to kill Zahard. But a long time ago, Zahard made a contract with the Guardians of the Tower that gives him Immortality and makes it impossible for a resident of the Tower to kill him, because they all receive their permission to use Shinsoo from the Guardians."

"So they need an Irregular," I said. "One of us."

She nodded. "Yes, but Baam is the one with the best potential, so they want him."

"How do they figure that? Why not you or me?"

She laughed. "Me? I don't have that kind of potential. But it's not like they're just going to forget us either. They want to train Baam up to become one of their Slayers to kill Zahard, but we don't need to be a Slayer to be useful to them, and it'll be easier to move around if people don't know that we're Irregulars or with FUG."

"I see. Why should we work with them though, if nobody knows that we're Irregulars? Aside from them blackmailing us about revealing that little secret, that is," I said.

"We don't have to, but they've proven that they can be useful, haven't they? With information and other resources. They can't blackmail us either, because like I said, they don't want anyone to know about us. Even if Baam is the most promising, they would be idiots to discard other options, and they really don't have many to choose from. Irregulars are so rare that they can't afford to lose us," said Rachel. "If they really did that, we could just find other supporters within FUG besides them."

This time it was my turn to nod. "Good, so you realized that. I wondered if you might have felt compelled to work for them."

"I might be weak but I'm not stupid. They need me, even if it's just as a hidden dagger to hold in reserve."

"Are you actually going to try and kill Zahard?"

She shrugged. "I might think about it eventually. For now, I just want to climb and I'll make use of FUG if it helps me."

"Fair enough. Back to the test though, so they want Baam-I assume there is a plan to make him disappear then?"

"Exactly. Because Baam and I are the only ones that would be in the bubble that needs to go through the Dolphin Madame, nobody else will see what happens with us. And then we can take advantage of the other victory condition Baam asked the Guardian for to perfectly fake his death and leave no doubts. If he dies during the test, all other Regulars that participated will pass. So I'll push him out of the bubble, and if we still pass then he must have died, and it won't matter if they can't find a body after our sponsors grab him."

"But if he doesn't actually die, how would the Regulars pass? Wouldn't everyone just fail because the condition wasn't met, and you didn't both exit safely? And if he does die, how is our FUG faction going to recruit him? Don't they need him alive?"

She smirked. "That's exactly how we're going to trick everyone. I didn't die in the Hide and Seek test, so I still have my one-time revive from Headon. I'll use that on Baam instead, so he'll die to meet the pass condition, and then he'll revive and FUG can take him. But just in case, I also made another secret deal with the second Floor Guardian myself-if Baam falls out of the bubble, and I return alone, even if Baam doesn't die, everyone will also pass. So no matter what, as long as Baam falls from the bubble, everyone will pass, and the test director will tell them that it's because Baam died, and nobody can dispute it."

"I see. You sure you can pull it off though? Baam can be surprisingly strong."

"I'll have help. There's going to be a member of RED-that's the Royal Enforcement Division-secretly interfering in the test, who's going to send the Bull to kill Baam. Baam will definitely have a hard time with that, so I'll just push him out once he's injured or distracted."

"The Royal Enforcement Division?" I asked. "Why would they help you? What if the Bull kills you too?"

"Yu Hansung already found and made a deal with him to kill just Baam, in exchange for helping him get to Anak Zahard, who's a fake princess, and retrieve the Thirteen Month Series weapons. He told the RED that the Guardian considers it part of Baam's test, so that will be allowed, but Regulars other than Baam and his target Anak Zahard are off limits. So he won't risk angering the Guardian by killing me, because I'm supposed to be just a Regular. Actually, it's you that should be careful. The Guide thinks that the RED is going to try and kill you too anyways," said Rachel, face turning into a frown at the end.

"Oh? What for?"

That wasn't entirely unexpected, given that I thought Yuga might have concluded I was an Irregular after the barrier absorption in class, but it was still surprising that Hwa Ryun thought he would come after me, after encouraging me to show that power anyways.

But then, Rachel's explanation went in a completely different direction.

"The RED is actually the Wave Controller instructor, Yuga, but his real name is Lo Po Bia Ren. Apparently, The Lightbearer instructor Lero Ro has been spreading a conspiracy theory among the instructors that you're a Ranker smuggled in to help princess Androssi, and if he actually believes that, then you wouldn't be a Regular that's off limits, and it'd be a good chance to damage the competition in the War of the Princesses, to help the Lo Po Bia family princesses who are still Regulars."

"…" Lero Ro, seriously? Now I understood how Yu Hansung felt about him. The idiot was too damn nosy for his own good and had no sense of self-preservation. What if I really was secretly a Ranker with an organization behind me, that would silence him?

Rachel looked worried at my silence. "Do you think you can handle him?"

I shook my head. "I can't be certain, I don't know how powerful he is. And even if I could, I don't think it would be wise to have a battle of that scale during the test. Unlike with Quant, he won't be restricted, and he's a Wave Controller."

Although I acted as if I might have a chance, I knew I was outclassed here. There was no way I could win or "handle" an elite Ranker assassin at this point, but if it was just a matter of surviving, it was not that bad, given that I could flee to the Ring of Deterrence in the worst case, I'd just need to buy a minimum of ten seconds. That was a long time in a high level battle, but I had a number of tricks up my sleeve that should give even Rankers pause for a while.

The real question was this: Should I simply try to avoid him entirely and stay away from Androssi and the Green April, but risk Lo Po Bia Ren finding me by my lonesome? Or stick close to the fighting where Yuri Zahard would show up eventually and save us?

Rachel frowned even more deeply.

[Mini-Interlude]

Rachel looked down after her teammate left and seemed to think for a while. "Then… just in case, if he's really in trouble… I'll have to rely on you…"

A tremendously large and tall shadow slid into view beside her bed. A deep chuckling noise echoing through metal could be heard.

Very Long A/N:

There are important revelations here, and here are some notes about potential changes from the canon, which includes spoilers for ToG:

ToG Spoilers

In the webtoon, Lero Ro actually knew that Rachel was an Irregular, but in this story when he checked their status it had already been tampered with. In the original timeline, Rachel was weak and insignificant aside from being able to command Akryung, so nobody would pay much attention to her. Yu Hansung knew that Quant already saw her status during the survival test, so he didn't tamper with it immediately; instead, he probably dealt with it later on; Lero Ro found out when he checked on them after the Crown game, curious about why the boy with a dangerous talent defended her.

Here, MC absorbing Lero Ro's barrier was secretly seen by Yu Hansung, and alarmed him because he is a genius Wave Controller, and like Yuga, he immediately understood the implications. He acted immediately to tamper with the records, then swore Quant to secrecy under the guise of covering up his mistake in the survival test.

In regards to Rachel's motivations and knowing that Baam would survive-there is some conflicting evidence, but this is also my interpretation of the available evidence, combining what we know from the anime and the webtoon-especially the contradiction that MC pointed out with regards to the Guardian's pass condition. Rachel's special revive is only in the anime and possibly not webtoon canon, but many things make sense this way.

Initially, when Headon made the deal with FUG, the Irregular he sent was Rachel, not Baam, and Rachel was given the perfect tool to fake her death. But whether because Hwa Ryun and Yu Hansung recognized Baam from the prophecy, or they saw his potential with Shinsoo, they wanted him and not Rachel, thus leading Rachel to negotiate a deal where she'd help fake his death instead in exchange for helping her climb. This guarantees that FUG would continue to help her beyond the initial deal with Headon, because she knows that the lure of chasing her is the only way for FUG to motivate Baam into climbing. She didn't mention this to MC because that quid pro quo only applies to her and not the MC.

We also see her getting upset at Hwaryun on the Hell Train later, because Hwaryun told her she would make Rachel the heroine but ended up staying with Baam instead. Rachel didn't get the help she expected from Hwaryun, so she started to work with other factions in FUG instead. So this part is somewhat odd, because if they weren't helping her anymore, why bother leading Baam up still? Why do other factions in FUG support her? Are they even different factions, or can she also get into contact with the higher ups among Arlen's supporters?

The strongest evidence we see that Rachel is deliberately leading Baam up the Tower, and knew that he was alive, came when she privately told Yura about Baam being a clingy guy chasing her up the Tower, before anybody else knew that Baam was alive. In fact, the ? who told Emile that Baam was alive was very likely to be her as well because of the way Emile answered Khun's question about who told her. Emile didn't say that she didn't know who it was. Instead, she actually refused to answer, by joking that it would cost one dollar, and immediately after… Khun is caught in a trap set by Rachel with Cassano and Xia Xia to lure Baam into killing Khun as Jyu Viole Grace. And Rachel is the only person who is known to be able to control/has Emile's loyalty in that way. All this happened before Rachel confronted Baam and asked him why isn't he dead, indicating that her question was more rhetorical, to make him think she prefers him to be dead. Finally, much later she reveals her knowledge of Arlen in order to keep Baam chasing once he decided not to chase her anymore.

In Season 1, chapter 1, there is a panel in which Rachel is shown to be smirking after Baam says "I'll follow you until I die!" This same sequence of panels is shown in chapter 76, as the epilogue after Baam "dies", except there are some subtle but major differences. The panels were completely redrawn, angles different, rather than copy/pasted. The first set has brighter light yet sharper contrast and Baam's facial expressions are wilder, more frantic. The second set is darker and Baam looks more tragic. By context, it is clear that the first was Baam's POV, while the second was Rachel's. She even says that she is "sick of living in this dark world", while Baam thought of Rachel as his only light, which is why the brightness changes.

Finally, we see that Baam was carrying a butcher's knife while chasing Rachel through the tunnel. Where did he get this knife, when there was nothing but rocks in that place where he was born? Obviously, the answer is Rachel. The same person who gave him clothes and taught him everything he knew.

In 313 Rachel says to Baam: "You really are glowing. You've always told me I was like a shining star to you… But I knew. You're the one destined to shine like a star someday, not me. I was just destined to look at you shining from a place in the dark forever. I was afraid of that 'destiny'"

She was always aware of his destiny, and of Arlen. She knows that he possesses the destiny (probably of killing Zahard, hence teaching him about the knife), but for whatever reason she wants to play that role herself instead (she anticipated confronting Zahard herself on the Hidden floor, but decided she needed her companions first), even though it might be necessary for her to lead him down that destiny (perhaps so she can usurp it at the very end).

To me, this shows that there is actually some other personal motivation for Rachel to lead Baam up the Tower, but that is not something she will reveal or hint to MC. Thus, she only describes the basic deal she made with FUG.

If it turns out wrong then this is just AU. It'll be too late to change it by the time ToG comes close to revealing the truth.

Last edited: Jul 17, 2023

45 – She is Not a Friend

A/N: Posted the wrong chapter just now, deleted that post.

45 - She is Not a Friend

I walked into the empty classroom where Androssi and Baam were training. The chairs had all been stacked up near the front so it became a wide open space. They'd both changed attire since the Hide and Seek test, with Baam swapping his sweatsuit for a simple blue shirt and black shorts, while Androssi wore an open shoulder white top with orange sport shorts underneath.

Baam fell to the ground in a heap as he tried to dodge Androssi swinging a needle at him and lost his footing.

Androssi turned to me as I approached. "Finally. Where the heck have you been, Axion? Don't tell me you just stayed in your room for two whole days?! I wondered if you were even alive."

"Sorry, I had some issues to deal with. Quant really did a number on me and Derf," I said.

"We should sue him for damages," said Androssi jokingly. There was nowhere to file a lawsuit around here.

Baam got up. "I'm glad you're all better now, Mr. Axion!"

"Thanks, but that's a little premature. It turns out I have a more serious problem that isn't really Quant's fault. We should talk later, Androssi," I said.

Androssi smiled facetiously. "Oh, now you want to talk? After ignoring me when I was right at your door? I even brought you food to pay you back for before, you jerk!"

I had brought her food myself after Baam's attempt to bring her food resulted in it getting spoiled as they fought over it, so she must have tried to return the favor when I was the one apparently injured.

"Didn't you get my message? I said I would be in seclusion, not that I'd be in my room," I said. "But thanks, I appreciate the thought."

"Didn't you get my messages? Why didn't you answer?" She asked, now in a deep scowl.

"I didn't have my Pocket with me, that's what seclusion means," I said.

She didn't look like she believed me, so I added, "I'm really sorry, I should have explained more, but the circumstances were dire. I didn't know if I would be capable of returning alive at all, and I didn't want to worry you, nor could I really explain it properly because I didn't understand what was happening to me either."

There was a long silence, but Androssi's expression softened a bit, but crossed her arms, still frowning. "Didn't you think that I might be more worried that you seemed to be sick and then stopped answering at all? I had to find out from the stupid red head that you didn't just die in your sleep! How did she know, huh?"

"I didn't stay in contact with her either," I said, hands raised in a gesture of innocence. "Come on, she probably just knew because she's a Guide. I had no contact with anyone here while in seclusion, and I didn't tell her any more than I told you."

"Grrr…" Androssi growled and looked away pouting. "You're not getting off so easily with that excuse."

Then Baam spoke up. "You shouldn't stay angry at your friends, Ms. Androssi. We should be happy that he's safe and came back to us."

"Thanks Baam," I said. "How have you been? Anything happen while I was away?"

"There was a funeral for Hoh, and it was very sad. I don't understand why he did that to himself, but I am starting to understand his feelings. It hurts to lose a friend like that, and he lost everyone he knew. I don't like this feeling, I don't want to feel that way about any other friend of mine, or for anyone else to feel this way. I don't want anyone else to leave me," he said, clutching a hand towards his chest as if in physical pain.

"That's why I've got to work hard and make sure it won't happen again. Even though I don't know why everyone wants to go up the Tower or what's so great about the stars, I'll become strong and help Rachel and everyone else climb if that will make them happy," said Baam, now cheerful. "Miss Androssi has been kind enough to help me."

"I'm just doing it because we're going to be taking the test together," said Androssi. "I never agreed to be your teammate after."

"You big softie, not so evil now, are you?" I asked with a smirk, firing back her comment to me when I returned Hong Chunhwa's sword and alluding to the way she described herself to Baam back in the Hide and Seek test.

"Oh shut up. We'll talk but you better explain it properly," she said to me.

"Of course," I said, nodding.

"Will you also help me get stronger, Mr. Axion? You and Miss Androssi are the strongest on our team," Baam said.

"I can help a little, but I'll be pretty busy with training myself too," I said.

"Really? But you're already so strong, you even fought against Mr. Quant," said Baam.

"Can't get complacent, there's always someone stronger."

After that I took turns with Androssi doing some simple sparring with Baam.

"Okay, so let's talk," said Androssi, after we went to my room. She glanced around first, seeing that nothing was out of place, then placed one hand against her side. "Where did you go if you weren't in your room? We're not allowed to leave the test area."

"It's quite complicated, the short answer is that I went to see Headon. As for the long answer, I'll have to explain some things we talked about last time first…" I trailed off, then made a gesture, and the water spirits made the stealth bubble, though this time it was a little more subtle. Instead of doing it their normal way with magic, I got them to do it with a layer of Shinsoo. Rather than being a conceptual defense against scrying, it was just a soundproofed field around us.

"You're an Irregular too, right?" Androssi asked before I could say anything.

"Yes. How did you figure it out?"

"From the very beginning, you and Rachel felt different. Then we found out Baam's an Irregular, and he knew Rachel before entering the Tower, so obviously she is one too. Last time we talked about this, you were concerned about discrimination against the circumstances of your birth and hostile forces offended by your existence. So it makes sense. You're one of the Irregulars that the people in the Tower hate. Or rather, that Zahard's empire hates," said Androssi. "One Irregular is already incredible, but three at once? I can hardly believe it."

I nodded. "So now you know who my enemies are. I don't have any particular grudge against your father's empire myself-in fact, I couldn't care less about the politics of the Tower, but it's something that I'm forced to face because of my status."

"So did you ask for a different test?"

"No, I went to Headon, not the second floor Guardian, though Headon claims he's the one that designed the test anyway-I went for a different reason. Remember he gave me this Pocket in exchange for helping Rachel. It was on loan so I wanted to give it back to him because I needed to deal with my issue before continuing the task he assigned. You can ask him yourself if you want, to confirm I'm telling the truth, I really didn't have my Pocket," I said.

"I'm not going to ask Headon for something so petty, that's way too weird," said Androssi. "So I'll believe you. But then, what was the issue you needed to deal with?"

Before I went to find her, I'd already thought for a considerable length of time how I should proceed in the Tower, given my new circumstances. And so, I had already prepared what to reveal.

"The answer to that might be quite shocking, and a bit difficult to explain. First, you should understand that not all Irregulars come from the same place, and aside from opening the door to the Tower by ourselves, we're nothing alike at all. But all Irregulars are chosen by the Tower itself. For what purpose, I don't know, but that is how the door opens. I, however, am unique, in that I do not merely come from outside of the Tower, but from outside of this plane of existence."

"I don't understand," said Androssi, looking confused. "What's a plane of existence?"

That was a bit inconvenient. She had no modern scientific frame of reference to understand what I was talking about.

"What do you think the Outside of the Tower is like?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know anything about it, other than that it's where the Irregulars come from. Same with Zahard and the Ten Warriors in the beginning. I think I've heard before that it might be a place without Shinsoo, but no idea how that would work."

"I don't know much about it either-not because I was trapped somewhere like Baam, but because I come from somewhere outside of even that. But you can think of this analogy. Each Floor is ruled by a Guardian, right? They decide what the Floor is like, who can use Shinsoo, that sort of thing," I said.

"Sure."

"Now the Tower itself is like a Floor, of a bigger world. Ruled by something above all of the Guardians, with me so far? The Guardians set the rules of their own Floors, but there are rules even they have to follow, and someone or something set the rules of the Tower itself. Still with me?"

She nodded. "Some people say there's a god that is higher than all of them."

"Right, exactly. Now if we go beyond the Tower, there's a world out there, and you might imagine that the Tower is just like a physical tower in that world. I don't know if that's how it works, but the point is that there is a bigger world that we're in, and I don't know if it has something like a god either, but that world does have its own set of rules, which applies both Outside and inside of the Tower. It might help if you imagine the world Outside as just a bigger Tower, and this Tower is just one Floor in it."

Androssi scrunched her eyebrows. "So the plane of existence is supposed to be the bigger Tower."

"That's right."

"And you're from outside of that," she said slowly. I nodded in response. "So why is that important?" She asked, still looking confused.

"Because of the rules I just mentioned. I was chosen by the Tower, but I do not belong in this world, this plane of existence, at all. I am someone that should not exist, with powers that break the rules of the world and am rejected by it in return. Or to put it another way, I am something that should only be in books and fantasies, not something that belongs in this reality, analogous to an imaginary demon that stepped out of the pages of a story to become real, and reality finally noticed that this wasn't supposed to happen. That isn't really what I am, but the end result is similar."

Finally, a look of understanding came over her. "So that's what happened. You were getting rejected by the world?"

"Exactly. I used too much power in the fight against Quant, and the world-it noticed me. It tried to suppress me. Tried to make me less real-erase me because I shouldn't exist."

"So when you were gone, it was because you got erased?" Androssi asked with shock.

"No, no. I didn't let it get to that point-I escaped first and shifted out of this reality to a different plane of existence, to figure out a solution before coming back."

"Okay… I wasn't expecting all that…" She said with a short sigh, brushing some hair aside. "But thanks for explaining it. In summary, you had some Irregular problems, went off to do Irregular things, and now you're all better?"

"You could say that, though what I used was only a temporary measure. The world will notice me again eventually, especially if I get into that sort of high level fight again," I said.

"The way you're saying it makes me think you're expecting another fight against a Ranker? But Quant was just being an idiot, that isn't going to happen on every Floor," said Androssi, tilting her head, hand back at her waist.

"Yes, that brings me to the next critical topic. I found out what Hwa Ryun was warning us about. There really is an RED Ranker coming to kill Anak Zahard and retrieve the Green April and the Black March. In fact, he's already here undercover, and he's going to do it during the final test. It's Yuga, the Wave Controller Instructor, whose real name is Lo Po Bia Ren," I said.

Androssi's face turned sharp. "You're serious?"

I took off my visor and hung it around my neck, to look her in the eyes.

"I am. But that's not all. Just like you did initially, Lero Ro thinks I'm an undercover Ranker too. But worse yet, he thinks I was smuggled in as your retainer, and may have convinced Ren of this as well. The Lo Po Bia family has princesses of their own, and there's a good chance he'll try to kill me too to get rid of your perceived resource. And I don't think I can win that fight, even if I were at my best."

"But that's-he can't just-it's too soon!" She exclaimed.

Then there was a long silence as I sat down on the bed and just looked at her gravely. After a while, she grabbed the chair beside the desk and slumped into it.

"Hah… I was just starting to have some fun with these tests too…" She said with a dramatic sigh. "What are we going to do?"

"Same here, Princess. It was good while it lasted. Nice knowing ya," said Derflinger,

"What's that supposed to mean? You guys are just giving up?" Androssi asked, looking at the sword which stuck out of its sheath.

"Naw, who says we need to fight at all? That guy's just coming for the Green April and that other princess. We got nothing to do with that business, no need to risk our lives. Nosiree! We're just a pair of wandering travelers that met an impoverished princess and gave her a gift. We'll clear up the misunderstanding with the good officer and be on our way, right Partner?" Derf asked with a jovial tone.

Androssi looked unimpressed. "Very funny, buster. Do you really think it'll be that easy to 'clear up the misunderstanding'?"

"What's got your panties in a twist? It's just a dumb weapon, it can't even talk like I can. What's the big deal if you have to give it up? As for us, all we gotta do is stage a falling out with you and make the fight look convincing," said Derf.

Androssi's face was as if she swallowed a sour grape. "Don't tell me that really is your plan?" Then turned to me.

"Back me up here, Partner. We ain't fighting that guy, right? I'm too young to die!"

"You're six thousand years old Derf, and I've had a good run too. Maybe it's time to face the music," I said, patting the sword in its sheath lightly.

"Noooo, throw me away first then!" said Derf. "This holy sword can't be lost in these fetid waters!"

"I understand, sacred Excalibur. I'll return you to the Lady of the Lake, according to the ancient promise," I said solemnly.

"Good. I will remember you always, Partner. They will sing your stories long after your passing," said Derf, then he returned to his sheath.

There was a long silence, while Androssi seemed to be in a state of disbelief.

"You're messing with me," she said, finally. "There's no way you're planning to just roll over and die. If you were that scared, couldn't you just-I don't know-go to another plane of existence again? Or just ask for a different test from the Guardian by yourself?"

"That would mean abandoning you to face Ren alone," I said.

She paused at that, then bit her lip as if struggling to make a decision. Then she looked away and growled out. "I'll be fine. I'm a Princess, so he won't dare to kill me."

"Not even by accident?" I asked, curious.

She stood up. "Besides, your sword is right, you have nothing to do with me. We only teamed up for the tests, and it was going to end after this Floor anyways. So what if we have to end it a little early?"

"I know what you're doing, Androssi, but I'm not going to abandon you. We may not have done a friend list assignment, but that doesn't mean we aren't friends. There's no need for you to face this alone," I said.

"Shut up. I'm perfectly fine with being alone, in fact, I prefer it that way. I was just using you. And now you're of no use to me anyway, if you can't even fight at your best," she said coldly, walking to the door.

As her hands reached the knob, I spoke again. "What if there was a way?"

"A way for…?" She asked, hands still on the knob, back facing me.

"For me to be able to fight without restraints. The world can't suppress me if there is somebody to act as my anchor. A host who will form a contract with me, to summon me into this world to battle on her behalf."

She whipped around and put both her hands at the waist. "What? Why didn't you just say that to begin with?! Let's just do that then!"

"It's not that simple though. There is a cost to the host. They have to supply me with energy to maintain the anchor, and even more if I use certain abilities which the world rejects. Not just anyone is suitable to be a host either. They need to be strong enough to handle it, and the will to force the world to bend for them in the pursuit of their deepest desires."

She scoffed, "Like that'll be a problem for me. I'm a princess of Zahard. Do you have any idea what that means? Zahard's blood is too powerful, so no woman can bear a child for him. That's why he adopts princesses instead. Achievements, beauty, loyalty-all of that matters, but the most important qualification is the potential to accept Zahard's blood. I was strong already, but it's that blood which makes me even more durable than a Ranker."

Without gesturing, I bid the water spirits to shift the soundproof field into the conceptual anti-scrying bubble.

"You would be completely right-if we had met before you received Zahard's blood. But that very blood is now an obstacle," I said.

Suddenly she tensed, letting her hands fall, wariness obvious in her tone. "What… what do you mean?"

"As I said, the host must have the will to force the world to bend for them. They need to want something so much, or to believe that there is something deeply wrong with the world, that only by committing an even greater wrong, inviting a being like me, can the balance be restored and their wish fulfilled. It is pride, resentment, even arrogance-an absolute will to defy the order of things," I said.

"And by accepting Zahard's blood… I've accepted the order of things? Made myself a part of that order, just another shoe in his display cabinet," she said, eyes widening as the truth dawned on her, voice almost a whisper. "Have I become satisfied with my food after sitting at the dining table of the highest palace?"

"In a way, yes," I said, nodding. "But not only that. Although I don't know for sure, I suspect that if you truly did receive Zahard's blood-physically receive it in your body-then it may well have an influence on you. A second will, which could interfere with yours and cause the contract to fail."

There was a long silence, but soon the princess turned resolute.

"No, I can definitely do it. I waited a very long time after becoming a princess before I started to climb… but I'm here now after Headon chose me, after I obtained the right to climb the Tower for myself. I didn't really become a mindless shoe, that's just a metaphor. I chose to become a princess because I wanted the benefits that came with it. And if the point is to restore balance, why can't it be the other way around too? If I like the way I am and I want to keep what I have while getting more things I want, why shouldn't I be able to do that? If I can't qualify as a host because of something so stupid then there's clearly something wrong with the world and I'll defy that rule!" she declared confidently, then paused a bit to catch her breath.

"And, while on this Floor, I smelled a new kind of food that I'd never tasted before, that's still out of my reach even though it's in my sight. It doesn't look appealing at all, but I want to know why the people that tasted it look so happy. So there is something that I want, that I'll force the world to bend if I have to."

"I do see the logic in what you're saying. That might work," I said and nodded, though inwardly I was surprised that she'd made a decision so quickly. I had thought she might ask for time to think about it, as she did when we discussed my offer to team up.

"As for Zahard's blood, you wouldn't have brought this up if you didn't think it was possible. I just have to make sure that blood understands who's in control here, right? I'll do whatever I want, and daddy's not going to stop me, it's my blood now. There's no rule against princesses doing this, whatever this is supposed to be, anyways, I'm sure."

"Are you familiar with the concept of spells?" I asked.

"No. I've heard of people that don't have talent with Shinsoo using them though. Is that what we're doing?"

"Yes. But I also suspect that Zahard's blood serves as the medium for a spell on your body, one that binds you to his will. So in order to find a way around it, you need to know a few things about how spells work. In this world, they are governed by at least three important rules-or so says Hwa Ryun. The caster must not violate the rules of the spell once they are set. The spell requires the assistance of a powerful medium or a divine being. And the rank of a spell is determined by the power of the being or medium who helped with the spell," I said. "Based on the last rule, a spell can be broken by a higher rank spell."

"But if Zahard's blood was the medium, doesn't that mean we need something stronger than Zahard to break the spell?" She asked.

"Well, not necessarily. We only need something stronger than the amount of blood that's in you. And that's only if we used the rules of this world. There are other rules of magic that can be used-while I don't know if they'd work for anyone else here, I am a being that is outside of the normal rules of the world. My magic is therefore capable of drawing on foreign concepts. And one of the higher concepts of magic is that the strength of a spell can be understood as the strength of its Mystery. Just as the third rule says, a greater Mystery can overwhelm a weaker one. But the medium of a Mystery is not necessarily any singular being which the spell invokes. It is, in fact, the collective belief of every being that observes the spell, or has ever cast or participated in it, and even the world itself-as well as whatever particular vessel is used to anchor the spell. It is like a debate between all, of what is true and should be permitted. The one who empowers the spell is merely the loudest arguing voice with the largest force behind them, who imposes their will upon the rest. That does not mean that everyone else agrees, however, even if they win the argument for a time. And when there is a sufficiently strong argument or evidence against the truth of the Mystery, it can be interfered with, if not outright unraveled."

"I think I'm lost. What exactly can we do with that?"

"It's quite simple, actually. First, we need a spell of relatively close rank to counter the blood spell. Conveniently, there is such a spell we can use-the Thirteen Month Series weapons are enchanted with a spell so powerful that not even the Guardians can break them. And Zahard probably had a hand in them as well," I said.

"But that's only an 'equal' rank of spell, right? It wouldn't break it, there's no way it'd be that easy."

"Of course, which is why we then create interference with it by adding some additional firepower. You see, if Zahard's blood was meant to bind you to his will, then we need a piece of evidence that his will can be broken, that it has been broken, in spite of his blood, and we shall invoke that story and the spiritual imprint left by those who defied him to empower our spell."

"Evidence that his will has been broken? You mean… Anak Zahard," said Androssi.

"You catch on fast. Yes, that's exactly it. And conveniently, the same Thirteen Month Series weapon you have now, with the highest Rank of Spell on it, is a symbol of the one who defied Zahard's will, breaking the rules that govern Princesses. Even the act of taking that weapon was a great violation, and the Green April probably tasted the blood of those loyal to Zahard. It's the perfect catalyst, all we need are the right rituals to draw on the weight of its history. As its current wielder, you need only imitate its former wielder, sympathize with her experience, and reproduce the events of the past, culminating in the reenactment of its Mystery."

"Isn't that asking a bit much? I don't understand the original Anak Zahard at all, I barely knew her. How can I imitate or sympathize with her, let alone reproduce anything that happened before?" Androssi asked.

"It's just a ritual, you don't have to replicate everything. Just three symbolic actions that underpin her story are enough, one to close each of Zahard's eyes, and because three is a magically powerful number," I said. "So think, you know her story and the rules of princesses better than me, what were her most important acts of defiance? And are there three that you can imitate?"

"The most important ones would be taking a lover, getting pregnant, then having the child and refusing to give it up, all of which is forbidden," she said, a slight flush beginning to climb up her face. "But I'm not doing any of that just for some ritual! Unlike Anak, I like being a princess so I'm not about to start breaking the rules. This is just a… a strategy to deal with the RED in case he's corrupt. That's all."

"Of course, there's no need to do the actual violations she committed, but are there related actions which are symbolic of them? Just holding the Green April is probably good enough to be one, so you really only need two more."

For a moment she just sat there thinking.

After a while, her eyes lit up.

"… chicken pie. I need to eat chicken pie," said Androssi. "That's what Anak told me. Her mother ran away with the palace chef because she loved the chicken pie he made for her. So you need to make chicken pie for me to eat."

"Okay, that doesn't sound too hard. I'll see if I can borrow the kitchens around here. Just one more then," I said. "Well, I do have an idea that should add a lot of power to the ritual, but it can't be done now. We would have to do the ritual in multiple parts, and activate the final leg at the right time. Let me explain how we can set it all up…"

She listened attentively as I described the plan. In the meantime, before the contract was complete, I would simply focus on developing other abilities during training. It wasn't like I had many powerful foreign abilities to begin with anyways, and with the flag having been reset, I didn't have to get an invitation right away. We could wait until the conditions were fully aligned to create the best bond.

A/N: The last post was the wrong chapter in the sequence. 46 is coming later after more editing time.

46 – Shinsoo Training Montage

46 - Shinsoo Training Montage

The beam of Shinsoo crashed into Derflinger and was split, diverting it in two different directions.

"Not quite," said Derf. "Again, please."

Hwa Ryun powered up another beam and sent it at Derf, with much the same result.

"Urgh. I'm sure I can do it, but I'm missing something here," said Derf, who was stabbed into the ground by himself.

I was submerged with only my head above water, beside Hwa Ryun who sat on the ledge of this rock platform, focused on my own Shinsoo senses.

"You were right, she easily mustered up the will needed for an invitation, though I still would have preferred you," I said. "Zahard's blood just makes everything too complicated."

"I already told you, I'm not a good choice. I'll be busy, and you're better off with her if you're going to be doing the tests together," Hwa Ryun said.

We were out on the main part of the floor, after Yu Hansung agreed to smuggle us out for our secret training outside the massive floating island that was the test area where the dorms and classrooms were. Hwa Ryun led the way to a spot that had small pools of dense liquid Shinsoo hidden underneath some rocky cliffs and outcroppings.

"Why not make a contract with me anyways? There isn't anything stopping me from having more than one host."

"Do you know how similar you are to Zahard? You cover your eyes, you wear a red cape, you dress like an adventurer and you call yourself one too. Aside from your black hair, it would be easy for somebody who hasn't seen Zahard's face close up to mistake you for him. It's distasteful to copy him, especially when it comes to women."

Did she mean the way he set up Princesses without any intention of marrying any of them, or the way that he refused to accept Arlen's rejection? Both seemed applicable in this situation.

"I'm not copying him. It's a common archetype. The hero goes on an adventure, undertakes many difficult quests and trials, and eventually saves the world. Given the way the Tower is set up, it seems almost made for adventurers," I said.

"If you know that already, then you should know what archetype I'm supposed to be, so hurry up and stop bothering me," While her words were unfriendly, she said so with a slight smile.

The Mysterious Woman was the obvious archetype, but it could also be the Damsel Errant, a rarer archetype who just points the main character towards the plot and normally isn't a love interest.

Another beam hit Derf. "… Could've sworn I felt something that time!"

"But conventionally the heroine is always the most beautiful female character," I said.

"No, it should be the first one introduced," said Hwa Ryun.

"That can just be used as a red herring though," I said.

"Wouldn't that better fit me?"

"I'm sure that your hair is natural and was never silver," I said.

"You don't know that for sure," she said. "And when did you ever learn about silver dwarves?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about. I was just referring to the silver hue that herrings have before they're cooked red," I said. "What's a silver dwarf?"

The next beam of Shinsoo suddenly hit me in the face, but it didn't hurt, merely sending me tilting into the water, and I let myself stay under to concentrate on my training as Hwa Ryun was indirectly telling me to do.

Ever since I'd done the experiments with Shinsoo on Worm, both Derf and I had been mulling over why we couldn't control it. For Derf's part, he also couldn't absorb Shinsoo attacks like he could with FoZ spells.

Yuga thought that I had a potentially unique Shinsoo Quality, but when I thought about it again, I wondered if that was really true.

The most interesting property that the experiments had revealed was that Shinsoo might not be composed of particles, but neither was it purely energy or purely spiritual. But it could take any number of forms, even convertible directly to mana, which was a purely spiritual state.

So why was it that when Yuga instructed me to imagine the smallest grain of sand, instead of a ball of water gathering, it had a reaction for me?

Putting together the fact that I was capable of interacting with the Shinsoo on some level, manipulating it as if it were an ultra dense form of mana, I began to consider alternative hypotheses.

After speaking with the Builder, I had learned that there were many magic systems, each with their own "basic" affinities, which did not really make sense if there was a consistent underlying, more fundamental system, in the way that compounds were explained by molecules, molecules were explained by atoms, then atoms were explained by even more fundamental particles and forces.

Instead, it seemed to be that magic was inherently subjective or malleable-relative to the user.

On some level, this also made sense since I doubted that the concept of magic circuits was universally applicable. There were obviously superior forms of magical spiritual organs out there, even in Fate itself. So perhaps there was a different sort of problem at play-where I had imposed upon myself the concepts of circuits from Fate, and this had rendered it difficult to just manipulate Shinsoo directly, without routing it through my circuits refining the Shinsoo as if it were mana.

That, in turn, made it difficult to conceptualize Shinsoo as a freeform particle-less substance. There was perhaps a subconscious failure to comprehend how something could behave like physical matter yet be controllable in a spiritual manner, but not mana. So I could either manifest Shinsoo as a particle-leading to the result Yuga witnessed which couldn't be controlled spiritually or do anything useful, or I could manifest it as mana-leading to my use of it as such via my circuits.

But what organ did I have that could simply control Shinsoo directly? This was actually the same conundrum I'd faced initially before I created my artificial circuit. Was I truly lacking something, or was there a way to grant it to myself?

How did people from the Outside become capable of using Shinsoo, when Shinsoo didn't exist Outside? They too should not have had any special organs, yet they could do it, as if just being in the Tower granted that ability. And wasn't Shinsoo itself miraculous, capable of doing anything? The effects it had on the body were inexplicable from a biological point of view. What made Rankers so inhumanly powerful could only be explained by Mystery rather than science. And if Shinsoo could bring the body to that level, why couldn't it also change the soul?

The obvious answer was that it could. After all, Shinsoo could even create life. It could make things akin to souls, such as Ignition Weapons.

With everything that I'd learned from Agate, from the Builder, from my own experiments, I reached the conclusion that it came down to a matter of how to impose-or rather, accept-upon myself the concept of being able to use Shinsoo.

When I first created my artificial circuit with Agate's help, it was not just something I imagined and made possible by trying. It wasn't as easy as knowing that a spell or magic system existed, so I should be able to do it. I couldn't just draw inspiration from various other works of fiction to create new powers for myself.

Otherwise, any random person on Earth who tried to imagine themselves gaining circuits might have succeeded, but it didn't work that way. The circuit only became possible because Agate was there. Agate brought with her the concepts of Fate, and that spell that irrevocably linked my soul with her in the supposed "attunement" process allowed me to impose them on myself.

So here in the Tower, I should be able to access its concepts too, by being an Irregular who'd entered the Tower. The only problem was that there wasn't a particular method to gain it-it just happened naturally, except for getting the contract with a Guardian, but I'd already done that.

If I was right, then rather than seeking a method of gaining Shinsoo control-wouldn't the answer actually be to remove the influence of a competing concept?

And so it was that I turned off my artificial circuit and even closed off my telepathic link to the Kaleidostick, sending it into hibernation. The bond could not be severed, and the circuit could not be erased, nor would I want to. But I tried to clear my mind of them completely, like doing a reverse-hypnotism to shut myself off from it all.

When I removed even the nerves that connected me to the FoZ blood circuits, and immersed myself into nothing but the sensation of Shinsoo and the soft unintelligible whispers of the water spirits who seemed to be more comfortable here than even in FoZ, I fell into a deep trance that I experienced only once before when I communed with the water spirits for the first time and let them take me through the water cycle.

A long time later, I opened to see two familiar eyes that glimmered like rubies looking at me upside down, my head held in her lap between her hands, with the lower half of my body still submerged in a large lake.

"If you look at me so intently, Hwa Ryun, I might get the wrong idea," I said. Her long red hair fell on the sides of my face, giving even the air a red hue like an aura that surrounded us.

"Legend has it that Enryu was an Irregular with a power so great, whose mastery of Shinsoo was so incomprehensible, that those who saw him up close and survived became enlightened, with strange abilities that altered the way they saw the world. So there are some people who take any chance they can get to catch a glimpse of an Irregular, hoping that they too will receive new eyes."

"Your eyes are beautiful as they are. I'm not sure if getting new ones would be better," I said.

She smiled and moved one hand to cover her right eye. "If I ever see Enryu, then I'll cover this eye to thank you for changing my fate."

"Really? You'd do that for me? Did you somehow get a strange power in that eye from watching me?" I asked. So she had been able to see how things were supposed to end after the Crown game after all. It was true then, that powerful Guides could see their own fate, even if she couldn't see the paths that Irregulars took.

"This is still a training montage, so we can't hide an important plot device in here," she said.

"Normally they don't have much character development either," I said.

"Of course they can. The hero is inspired by a mentor and obtains a new power through hard work," she said.

There was a whoosh in the air. "It's true Partner, you missed everything! After the mistress inspired me, I worked hard and finally did it! Since I can move around by myself now, you should become my sidekick. It's time for Derflinger to be the hero of this story!"

"No way. You really did it before me?" I asked, getting up and looking at the floating sword.

"Bow down before the great Derflinger! Hahaha!" Derf flew around and started showing off his new skills, slashing like somebody was wielding him.

"What the fuck. How did you get so good so fast? Weren't you just working on absorbing mana from Shinsoo attacks?" I asked.

"Kid, I'm a six-thousand year old hidden master. I'll give you some tips if you ask nicely and call me grandpa."

I looked back at Hwa Ryun who seemed highly amused. "What did you teach him?"

"I didn't teach him anything. I'm just moving him with Shinsoo right now to make it look like he's moving on his own," Hwa Ryun said.

"Got you!" Derflinger shouted gleefully.

I facepalmed.

Baam ducked and barely dodged my punch, and then the follow up kick too.

Androssi flashed to my side when I was still outstretched. Her speed had gotten even faster ever since she learned to use Shinsoo bursts and I couldn't react in time, though I could've dodged with a Burstshift of my own. I didn't though, because I was still keeping a lid on all my magic to focus exclusively on Shinsoo, not even using Reinforcement.

The Armoriont opened up a pore and sprayed goo in her direction.

"Yuck, what the heck is that?!" She backtracked before the goo landed on her.

A beam of Shinsoo from Baam hit her from the side and sent her sprawling. Baam was smiling happily with his hands still shaped into an open ball.

I rushed towards Baam, who was jolted into action and turned towards me.

Suddenly I froze, unable to move while Baam had a concentrated look on his face.

"Ah!" A red needle flew at him and he fell backwards trying to dodge it too quickly.

Then I was released, but Androssi slammed into me first.

"My win again," she announced while Baam and I were laying on the ground. "That was good, Baam, you're getting better."

Baam rubbed his head with a big smile.

I set down the tray of chicken pie in front of her.

Androssi took an eager bite, then put a hand to her mouth, before spitting it out. "You expect me to eat this? It's terrible! There's too much salt and the chicken is overcooked! Do it again properly! "

"Sorry, sorry, it's the first time I've done it," I said while tasting it myself. It wasn't that bad… though it admittedly wasn't very good either.

I took it away and then fed the remainder to the Armoriont before heading back to the kitchen, while thinking to myself that the challenge was unfairly difficult with the tools at hand.

Just like the coffee strips that Yu Hansung showed Rachel during their first meeting, the cooking tools and machines they used in the kitchens also needed fine Shinsoo control or other weird quirks. They were normally used by the Rankers or their bots, and on this floor there were no Regular residential areas, so he couldn't get access to the basic versions for normal people without leaving the Inner Tower..

"The main difference between a Lighthouse and the Observers that Scouts use is the way that Lighthouses exert control over a field of Shinsoo. They emit light and can change the flows of Shinsoo rather than just collecting data, and usually can't collect visual data without other upgrades," said Rachel, now sitting in her new wheelchair, while holding a yellow Lighthouse in her hands while another one floated in front of her. The one in her hands was the main Lighthouse body, while the other one was a Cube, a node.

I observed the flow of Shinsoo closely as she demonstrated.

"For example, my control of Shinsoo isn't good enough yet to levitate with this chair that Lero Ro got me. I can move on the ground in any direction, but floating is too hard because the chair is so heavy. But if I do this…" She said while spinning the floating Lighthouse around a bit.

The Shinsoo flows around her shifted, increasing in density below her while seemingly getting tied to the one in her hands.

Then she lifted her Lighthouse, and the chair moved with it. She started floating in the air.

"Fascinating," I said.

"I can do the same sitting on the Lighthouse itself too," she said, decompressing her Lighthouse and then sliding over to sit on it.

"So it's possible for a Lighthouse to enhance Shinsoo control…" I said, contemplating.

"There should be other items that can do it too. Lots of Regulars without talent have to resort to using items like that," said Rachel.

"But how does it get secured? The Lighthouse itself is controlled by Shinsoo isn't it? Couldn't somebody else take control of it?" I asked.

"Every person has a unique flow of Shinsoo. It's not really a physical flow, but that's what they call it. When you get a Lighthouse, you have to lock it to your own flow of Shinsoo. It's not impossible for a skilled Lightbearer to hack into someone else's Lighthouse, but it's pretty hard unless they're way stronger," said Rachel.

"Is that so? Do you mind if I try something for a moment? I'm going to do the same thing I did on Lero Ro's barrier, but with your Lighthouse," I said.

"Sure, go ahead," said Rachel, looking curious as well.

So I did, and the water spirits tried to take control of the Shinsoo. Rachel and her Lighthouse fell to the ground, but the Lighthouse itself didn't move.

"You took away the Shinsoo my Lighthouse was controlling outside, but not the Shinsoo inside of it, or the Lighthouse itself," Rachel said. "Give me a moment, then try that again when I give the signal. I want to try something too."

I nodded, and watched as her Lighthouses started glowing much brighter as she floated back up. The whole room was lit up in a yellow haze.

"Do it again," said Rachel.

I did, but this time the water spirits were confused. To their mind, there was apparently no water to seize control of. I insisted that they try, and there was a bit of turbulence around Rachel's Lighthouse, but she managed to stay afloat.

"Looks like your technique works best on Shinsoo in its rawest forms," said Rachel. "That's what I expected, since the more complex the 'flow', the harder it is to interfere with. That's why it's hard to hack into someone else's Lighthouse."

The light died down and she returned to her chair.

[Interlude]

Hwa Ryun swung Derf around while fighting her own floating dual bladed staff.

Axion flowed through the water in the lake with the waves as schools of fish passed by.

A huge Shinheuh found its prey and ate a group of fish before they could get away.

The Shinheuh turned to look at the humanoid floating around without a care.

It opened its gaping maw to swallow its new prey whole.

The water suddenly carried the humanoid away and its teeth caught naught but lake water.

The Shinheuh narrowed its eyes and swam after the humanoid.

Androssi sat lounging around balancing a needle on her finger while Baam went through a series of martial arts poses.

Axion, who was wearing an apron, brought another tray of chicken pie and set it down at a table, preparing plates for them both.

The two of them stopped and went over, and Androssi ordered Baam to taste the pie first.

Baam did so, and looked queasy, but forced a smile and gave a thumbs up to Axion.

Androssi smacked him behind the head and scolded him for being too nice.

Axion held Rachel's hand as she got up unsteadily from the bed and began to walk. After she found her balance, Axion let go and she continued forward with a slight limp.

Then the two of them unpacked the Lighthouse he bought while Rachel began pointing to and explaining each part.

The gray Lighthouse whirred to life and turned a silver color as Axion followed her instructions to set it up.

Androssi tasted the pie carefully and blanched before swallowing it accidentally.

Baam cheered and clapped, then Androssi grabbed a piece and forced it down his throat while he choked.

When she turned to Axion with a dangerous smile, he slowly backed away.

The shadow of the Shinheuh moved around the edge of the lake, preparing for the right moment to jump onto the surface and continue the pursuit of its prey.

Hwa Ryun struck a pose on a high platform and then shouted "Ignite!"

Shinsoo erupted from Derflinger and wisps of energy rolled off it as if it really were an Ignition weapon.

Axion's Lighthouse floated above him as he concentrated with his hands held together as if trying to fire a beam.

Instead of forming an actual Baang, water gathered from Shinsoo in the air and created a small volatile orb between his hands.

It fired a stream of water towards Hwa Ryun, and Derf was raised to intercept.

When the water struck the sword, it broke apart into smaller and smaller droplets. The Shinsoo radiating from the blade seemed to boil the water away, until it was small enough to absorb and went into the sword.

Hwa Ryun moved the sword back and Shinsoo swirled around her and seemed to flood into Derflinger, then when she swung it down, Shinsoo was released in a large burst of light towards Axion.

The water spirits formed a rotating orb that expanded in front of Axion before bursting into a large circular shield of water.

The blast from Derflinger crashed into the shield and exploded.

When the light died down, the ground was cracked and scorched, but Axion was unharmed.

The Shinheuh stopped cowering underneath the rocky edge of the lake and swam off.

Hwa Ryun threw Derflinger over and Axion reached out with a hand, the sword swerving into his grip.

"After many days of grueling training, removing distractions and returning to his roots, the hero awakens his true power, just in time to face the villain," Hwa Ryun narrated towards the fake sky. "Will it be enough? Stay tuned until next time, on 'A Retired Evil Overlord's Otherworld Adventures'."

O O O

47 – Last Examination

47 - Last Examination

The day of the Guardian's test finally arrived.

I had my magic circuits reactivated and Agate brought out of hibernation, while my new Shinsoo manipulation abilities were no longer suppressed by my magic.

I was no miraculous talent like Baam, and so I couldn't really form a proper Baang yet, but I was now able to manipulate Shinsoo in its pure liquid form. According to Hwaryun, only those blessed by the Tower or were Irregulars could manipulate the purest of Shinsoo, so it wasn't a bad thing. She judged that I might be able to form a Baang eventually with enough practice, and starting with raw high density Shinsoo manipulation would be beneficial down the line.

From my perspective, it was already an enormous difference, because I could now control more Shinsoo items than just the Pocket, such as Lighthouse and Arms Inventory, and use Shinsoo internally for physical enhancement.

It also let me channel Shinsoo into Derflinger to restore his reserves, and he'd similarly learned how to use Shinsoo inside of his own body and to absorb incoming attacks, albeit it was much less effective defensively than his ability to almost instantaneously absorb even large FoZ spells.

The attacks I could form externally with Shinsoo amounted to basic water manipulation, which was pretty much useless in real combat. But the water spirits were obviously much better at it, and it was their preferred way of using Shinsoo, compared to making Baangs.

Yu Hansung had gathered the Regulars to explain the test, then gave us a few hours to prepare. Of course, I already knew the details because Rachel had told me beforehand.

I hadn't remembered all of it from canon, but the test was surprisingly large scale in terms of the area we had to cover. It would take place at a wine-glass like hole which was underneath a relatively soft but deep layer of earth. That hole would fill up with water in the morning. The middle of it opened up to where the Dolphin Madame, or Queen of the Goby Dolphins would be, waiting to feed.

The smaller Goby dolphins would create an underwater net with Shinsoo and herd fish towards the Queen to eat. The Shinsoo bubble that Baam and Rachel were in would be sent through a side tunnel into the water, and then be attracted to the net and they'd get eaten by the Queen, but the bubble was made such that it would survive the digestion tract and come out the other end.

While this was happening, some goblin-like creatures called Thieves would bring huge worms with very long and stretched throats and mouths to burrow holes into the water and suck up the fish from the net, competing for the food. There would also be "Dogs", or striped earthpigs that were another group of creatures that would try to eat the herding dolphins above ground directly.

Then there was the bull, which was a dangerous predator too powerful for most Regulars, that would try to eat anything, including people.

The rest of the team's job was to keep the dolphin herders safe so that Baam and Rachel would be carried by the net to the Queen.

I listened to Khun Aguero Agnis and Ship Leesoo analyze the challenge. They quickly determined that the ecosystem was normally in balance so it wasn't like we really needed to protect the herders. The Thieves would fight the Dogs because they needed the herders to keep herding fish so their worms could suck them up. But if the worms caught the bubble before it got to the Queen, then the test was failed. So the strategy was to have the Scouts look for the Thieves, then get the Spearbearers to attack from afar while hidden and focus only on the worms.

The Bull was the major threat to everything, so Khun concluded, "Let's use our own wildcards. Among the Fishermen, Axion, Androssi, and Anak should be the strongest, so they're best suited to fighting the Bull."

I raised my hand.

[Interlude]

"Hm? What is it, Axion?" Khun asked, seeing the strongest Regular politely raising his hand the way he was known to do.

'Don't tell me he doesn't want to chase the Bull? I figured Androssi and Anak would refuse, but they left after their argument earlier so they can't object. What do I say if Axion refuses?' Khun thought to himself with a sweat. 'Nobody will listen to me over him. But doesn't he realize this is the best plan?'

"It's a good plan, but I'd like to propose a minor adjustment. You should all be aware by now that Fisherman isn't my preferred position in battle. But now that we're working as a team, it would be more efficient for me to take up my true position."

Khun shared a look with Ship, who looked equally confused as he himself was.

"And that would be…?"

"Lightbearer," Axion said, turning a silver Light Cube visible behind him with a gesture, then smirked very slowly and deliberately. "I didn't bother switching positions since there were more passing spots for Fishermen, but I'm far more used to being a commander than a frontline fighter."

Khun's mouth fell open, much like the looks of shock on all the other Regulars' faces.

'I know his game now… damn, he's like me! He probably just likes giving out orders!' Khun thought as he grimaced.

Axion continued. "But don't worry, I'm not asking you to defer to me, since you're doing a good job of things. I'm just suggesting that I help with the coordination, since you probably can't control enough Cubes for everyone by yourself, am I right? And Rachel can't help as a Lightbearer during this test. With me as a supporting Lightbearer, we can cover more ground. And I have some tricks that should make dealing with the worms and Dogs easier."

"The Bull is still the bigger threat though. If we can split up the princesses, it might help us find it faster, but what if they can't handle it on their own?" Ship asked. "Or if the Bull attacks someone else first?"

"Then I'll go back them up, since I'm the fastest, and I'm my own Lightbearer, so I'm also the best at navigating through any dark places to find them," said Axion.

"I guess that's for the best then," said Ship.

"Are you really a Lightbearer? Why haven't you used any Lighthouses before?" Khun asked with a skeptical expression. "You sure you can handle it?"

"How do you think I was able to find my way around in the Hide and Seek game and know exactly where Androssi was after she destroyed Rachel's Cubes?" Axion asked. "Or did you guys not see that part in the observation room? Hong, you were there when Androssi destroyed the Cubes weren't you?"

"Tch, don't remind me, you guys are the worst teammates," said Hong Chunhwa.

"Hey, don't blame me, I didn't tell her to betray you guys," Axion said. "Didn't I give you back your sword? You ought to be grateful."

Hong grumbled but made no further protest.

"Damn, you must be really good if nobody noticed your Lighthouse the whole time," said Khun.

"No, I wasn't using these," said Axion while pointing to his Cube. "I just got this recently. I have a different special item that I can use as a Lighthouse, but it doesn't work with other Lighthouses. I'll use these for this test though, so we can hook up the data connection between us."

Khun nodded. "Alright, that's that then. I think whoever wants to leave can go get ready. I'll stay a bit to think some more about our strategy."

"I'll also stay," said Ship.

"As will I," said Axion.

Everyone else left, and then it was just Khun, Ship, and Axion.

For a few minutes, each seemed to be in their own thoughts.

"Hmm… I'm trying to remember… but I think I've read in a book about these striped earthpigs before," said Ship.

"Really? Anything useful?" Asked Khun.

"I think they're known for digging tunnels that damage farmers' fields. There are a lot of crop fields nearby as well. Remember the survival test?"

"Oh yeah… tunnels huh?"

"If the worms are able to dig through the surface to get to the water, that whole area is probably soft enough for tunnels," said Axion.

"I was just thinking that," said Khun. "And since this is an ecosystem that's been running for a long time, those Dogs probably already have a system of tunnels. And if we mess with those…"

"… then we could lead the Dogs right to the Thieves," Ship concluded. "But we'd need a way to map it out. That won't be easy though since the tunnels would make it out of range from Observers."

Khun held a finger to his chin, tapping it. "I think I might have an idea for that."

"You do?"

"I found out that girl Sunwoo is an Anima, she's got a Shinheuh that should be able to do it, I'll just have to think of a way to convince her," said Khun.

"Passing the test together isn't a good enough reason?" Ship asked.

"Nope, she's too selfish. Just like this guy and our resident princesses," said Khun, pointing a thumb at Axion.

"When did I ever give the impression that I'm selfish?" Axion asked, seemingly offended.

"How about when you helped steal the Black March?" Khun retorted.

"And then I gave it to Androssi, and I even convinced her to trade it back to Baam," Axion said.

"Yeah yeah, whatever. Anyways, I'll take care of convincing Sunwoo," said Khun. "If her Shinheuh can do it, then it should make the test a lot easier."

"Are you thinking of trading her your bag?" Axion asked.

"How did you know?!" Khun asked, looking suspiciously at Axion.

"I also had my eye on that bag, so I noticed her drooling over it," said Axion, who smirked.

"Well you can't both have it, and we're gonna need her help," said Khun.

"I can make you a better offer. First of all, that special item I mentioned? It won't be out of range in the tunnels so I can map it out for us too, probably faster than she can. Second, Sunwoo owes me a favor after I returned Hong's Narumada back to him, remember? Even if she doesn't want to do it, I'll get 'her knight' to scold her for being dishonorable. If both of us work together, mapping the tunnels should be a breeze," said Axion.

"I don't mind trading you Manbarondenna instead, but are you sure you can convince her like that?" Khun asked. The bag wasn't worth that much to him, and it was mostly a gimmick that would only be useful on lower floors, and he had lots of other treasures. He was more concerned with making sure they got past this test, and he had to take every chance to stack the odds in their favor, it being an Irregular test that was probably much harder than normal.

"I'll give it a try first, and if it doesn't work you can make your offer. But I'm sure I can convince her, because she probably doesn't even want your bag for its features, it's just because it looks expensive. I can just offer her this," said Axion, reaching into his cloak and rummaging around a bit before pulling something out.

"A literal gold bar?" Ship's eyes bugged out. "What kind of cliché is this? You were secretly a rich bastard too?"

"Okay, you got a deal," said Khun. "If you convince her yourself then I'll give you Manbarondenna."

Hong sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, he's right Sunwoo, I do owe him."

"But I don't want to!" Sunwoo complained.

"How about if I throw this in?" Axion showed the gold bar.

Sunwoo's face changed immediately, her eyes lit up. "Hah…? G-g-gold?!"

Axion pulled it back quickly before the girl could swipe it. "Only if you do it though, and I'll give it to you after."

"Okay, okay, I'll do it!"

"Huh? Mr. Axion?" Baam opened his door to see Axion in the hall.

"I wanted to talk to you Baam. The strategy discussion is over, and everyone's getting ready," said Axion.

Baam led him inside. "That's good to hear. Do you think it will go well?"

"I think we're as ready as we can be, all that's left is to do our best," said Axion. "But there is something I'm worried about."

Baam looked concerned. "What's that?"

"That somebody might interfere with the test. Similar to what happened with Hoh last time. I'm concerned that somebody might use the test as an opportunity to attack and achieve a different objective than the test," said Axion.

Baam gasped. "But I'll be right with Rachel this time. I'll keep her safe."

"The target might not be her this time, and I don't think it'll be a Regular. Did you ever notice anything strange about our Wave Controller Instructor Yuga?"

"Instructor Yuga? No, he was really kind to me… are you saying he might do something? But why?"

"Haven't you wondered why he hides under a costume and never shows his face?"

"I guess that is a little strange… but he doesn't seem like a bad person? Maybe he just has his reasons," said Baam.

"Hwa Ryun told me… she overheard him talking in secret. His real name isn't Yuga, it's Lo Po Bia Ren-and he's a member of the Royal Enforcement Division. His true goal is to retrieve the Black March and Green April, and to kill Anak Zahard," said Axion.

"What? But I don't understand, why would he do that? Isn't Anak a princess?"

"It's complicated, but she's not a real princess. Her mother was, remember what Androssi said before? Princesses of Zahard aren't allowed to date anyone. They're definitely not allowed to have children. So the king wants her dead. But it gets worse. The Bia family has their own princess, and Ren might try to get rid of the competition-that means even Androssi, who's a real princess-and steal the Thirteen Month Series weapons for his family's princess while he's at it. So he isn't going to care that Ms. Yuri gave you permission to hold the Black March."

"That's terrible… the king doesn't sound very nice, and I can't believe Ren would do that," said Baam, now looking quite worried. "But what should we do? We can't let him hurt our friends."

"You just focus on protecting yourself and Rachel. I'll do what I can to stop him, but you should lend me the Black March for this test. Besides, as long as you're holding on to it, you become a target for him too, and you don't want to put Rachel in danger, right?"

"No, you're right. Here, please take care of it, I still have to return it to Ms. Yuri later," Baam said and then handed over the Black March without a second thought.

"Don't worry, I will. And if I see Ms. Yuri I'll return it to her myself," said Axion.

"Thank you. Good luck, and please stay safe Mr. Axion."

"You too Baam, you too."

[Kaleidus]

I heard an angry earful from the Black March as I made my way through the halls. But she couldn't stop me, and it was necessary.

Not only would Baam holding onto the Black March pose a problem for Rachel's plan if he killed the Bull too fast, I needed to get it from him to ensure my own safety.

The point wasn't to use it as a weapon, but to keep it as a lure for Yuri Zahard.

I had no idea how Yuri tracked down the Black March to the fight with Yuga in the first place, and while it was possible she randomly found her way through after getting lost in the darkness, I wasn't going to rely on canon proceeding the same way if the Black March was missing from the scene.

Which meant that I had to make sure the Black March appeared in the same place, so that Yuri could get there to save our asses.

Two Lighthouses floated slightly in the air beside each other, one blue, one silver, above a high cliff.

I sat in my own Lighthouse, with a communications line with Khun's Lighthouse open, while my cubes invisibly followed Androssi and Anak.

Agate was mapping out the tunnels at high speed together with Sunwoo's Shinheuh, while I typed and drew on my input panels quickly, transmitting the data to Khun. We might be able to finish the tunnel routing and collapse plan before the herders even moved at this rate.

It would be nice to get Manbarondenna as a storage item after the test was over, but my main reason for offering to be a Lightbearer was also for my own safety. I didn't want to meet Ren alone too early, after all. It would be hard for Ren to assassinate me while I was out in the open like this, yet I'd know where Androssi would be so I could quickly get over once Ren showed up.

"Hatsu says the thieves have started moving. How's the mapping going, Axion?"

"Just wrapping up. And… done," I said.

"Great. Okay, I'll get those two to send in Laure," Khun said. "No sign of the Bull yet?"

"Not yet. I'm not letting the princesses get too far from Ship though, just in case," I said.

"Probably a good precaution, Ship will be in trouble if the Bull finds him first," said Khun.

The area that we were operating in was large but still a distance easily crossed by Agate flying at top speed because it could phase through all obstacles. It was much harder for a person to get around.

So after the mapping was done, I sent the Kaleidostick to follow Androssi around instead.

Eventually Khun's voice came back with an urgent tone. "The Bull is attacking Ship!"

"On it, sending them in" I said, then ordered Anak and Androssi to move.

This was also my cue, so I exited the Lighthouse, compressed it back down, then started moving there myself.

O O O

48 – Demonic Sacrifice

48 - Demonic Sacrifice

Once Anak and Androssi arrived on the scene together, I put the Lighthouse away. It was quite a pain to manage the other Cubes like this, nor could I just hook it up to Offensive Bias to delegate it, because the panels and controls could only be managed with Shinsoo. I could probably set it up so that Offensive Bias could use the small robot to interact with the controls eventually, but that was beyond my capabilities for now.

But with the two princesses together, I could keep track of them with Agate instead, so I told them I'd be turning off my Cubes because I was heading over on foot. They didn't need the light right now anyways.

I took my time getting there though, wary of getting ambushed on the way.

So I watched as the princesses 'fought' the Bull. Anak offered a bet for the Green April, which Androssi refused. The two of them fought each other in between saving Ship from the Bull, until Androssi seemingly defeated the Bull accidentally.

There was a short break in the fighting while Androssi gloated, then her fight with Anak resumed. Finally, the Bull sneak attacked both of them before running away.

Anak and Androssi began to chase it further into the darkness of the undercliff caverns.

That should be the beginning of the lure. I began moving closer, but still keeping a large distance away.

"Stay calm, Ship, I'm on my way, and don't go off on your own," I said, transmitting the message through the Pocket via Khun's network.

A while later, I caught up with Ship.

"Are you still tracking them?" He asked me.

"I've got Androssi in sight still, but Anak separated from her somewhere along the way," I said.

"Damn, those two are so immature," he said. "But they're strong, so they should be fine."

"You jinxed it. Androssi's in trouble," I said.

"What? But she defeated the Bull so easily before! She didn't even have to use the Green April," said Ship.

"What's happening?" Khun's voice came through Ship's Pocket.

"I think the Bull was just pretending earlier. Not good, it just caught Androssi! Something's wrong, this was a trap, it must be the assassin!"

"What? What assassin?"

I rushed away before they could get another word in.

[Interlude]

"Did you find them yet, Ship?"

"No, not yet, damn it… !" Ship panted. "Stupid princesses! And that damn bastard, he must know something. What do you think he meant by an assassin?"

"To be honest, I've been thinking there's something off about this test. It wouldn't surprise me if there really was an assassin here. But who's the target? If they're trying to kill Androssi Zahard it would probably be a Ranker."

"A Ranker? Seriously? Damn, why didn't he tell us anything before rushing off?"

Ship climbed up a wall of rock, then slipped and fell.

"Arghh!"

"What? What happened?!"

"N-nothing, I'm fine. Aw, my back," he grumbled, getting back up.

"So like I was saying, it's probably a Ranker. Or more specifically-I think it's one of the test supervisors. But we can't do anything about it now since we're on our own for this test, and there's no way to contact that damn coffee machine. We just have to trust that they're strong enough to handle it," said Khun.

"I have a bad feeling about this," said Ship.

"Da… damn…" Anak cursed while lying face down on the ground in a pool of her own blood. "If I had the Green April…" She muttered.

"Oh, you think you could win if you had the Green April?" Ren asked. "Why don't you give it a try then, mutt?"

"Huh? Witch?!" Anak looked up to see the Bull coming into view, Androssi being wrapped by its tail, head down and unconscious. "Y-you've been controlling the Bull?"

"That's right," said Ren. "This test was engineered to kill you. This test, the supervisors, this entire floor, and everything in this Tower are your enemies. Because you are the enemy of Zahard."

The Bull threw Androssi down to the ground, and the Green April clattered away, where Ren picked it up with an extended tongue and dropped it in front of Anak. "Now, what can you do, even if I give this to you?"

Anak forced herself up and grabbed the Green April. "Ignite!"

The ignition weapon blasted forth, but a small blue shield panel blocked and redirected it before it reached Ren.

"W-what?"

She dodged a blast of Shinsoo from Ren's cannon weapon, and then attacked with the Green April several more times, only to be blocked and then kicked down into the ground, losing her grip.

Ren's tongue picked up the Green April. "Hehehe. It's useless to fight back, mutt. I am the one who killed your mother, after all, did you really think you stood a chance against me?"

"Y-you b-bastard!" Anak growled out, but stayed on the ground.

"Now… let the show begin. Ms. Androssi, wake up, wake up!" Ren went to gently push the unconscious princess.

"Ah… argh… shut up! How many times have I told you not to wake me up?!" Androssi subconsciously roared and smacked Ren away.

Then she rubbed her head and looked around, before seeing Anak bleeding on the ground and Yuga in costume, before realizing what was going on.

"You… !"

"W-witch, that fluff ball is the enemy!" Anak warned Androssi.

Ren wobbled back. "Sorry for the late introduction, Ms. Androssi. I am Ren, a member of the Royal Enforcement Division No. 67."

"So you came to kill the lizard," said Androssi.

"But before that, I wanted to confirm something as a teacher… I was wondering if you were helping that fake go up the Tower?"

"N-no way… ! Why would I do that?" Androssi said with a nonchalant face.

"But then, why did you eliminate other rivals in the previous test?"

"T-that's…"

"You don't have to explain it to me, you can just prove it with your actions! All you need to do is kill that fake right here, right now," said Ren.

"I…" Androssi looked at the lizard, who stared back at her.

"Why are you hesitating?" Ren pressed.

"I would love to do that, but we still need her for the test," said Androssi.

"Don't worry, I'll take the Bull with me when I leave, then you won't need her anymore, correct?"

Androssi tried to give another excuse before Ren cut her off. "Princess Androssi… are you siding with a girl who wants vengeance on the family of Zahard? If Zahard found out about this… you have less of a chance to receive a Thirteen Month weapon in the future."

Ren flicked the Green April back to her. "But, you were able to take the Green April from the fake on your own during the previous tests. So how about you show me that you're worthy of holding a Thirteen Month Series, a weapon powerful enough to control the destiny of the Tower?"

Androssi looked at the Green April in her hands then walked over to Anak. The green skinned princess's eyes widened in fear as the other princess loomed over her.

Ren began to giggle uncontrollably seeing this sight.

"Don't blame me lizard…" said Androssi.

In her mind, she thought back to the friend list, to the meals surrounded by friendly faces,

I like being alone. It feels worse to be with someone. They bother you… and make you nervous…

I was just using you. And now you're of no use to me…

She thought of Baam who told her she wasn't alone anymore, and then to Axion who made her chicken pie.

"… in the end, I just… belong to a different place," she said darkly, gripping the Green April tightly.

"D-don't tell me… w-witch… !" Anak stared with shock as Androssi raised the weapon's hook to her throat with a resolute expression.

"Ignite!" Androssi shouted, and a scream followed, blood splattering.

Ship heard the scream echoing through the caverns. "No! What's going on?! Fuck! You heard that, Khun?!"

"I did, that was Anak, wasn't it?! I'll send Hatsu over for support!"

"Anak, please be alright!"

Ren laughed uproariously, then noticed something was wrong. "Hm?"

Upon taking a closer look when the smoke cleared, Anak was on her back, eyes wide and staring at Androssi, but she appeared alive and well.

"… weapon of the sinner held, food of the lover eaten, blood of the daughter saved… shut, shut, shut…"

"H-have you gone mad, witch?!" Anak asked, watching the blood drip from the Green April after she made a small cut on her own forearm.

The other princess paid her no attention, seemingly focused on muttering quietly and drawing something on the ground with a needle, using Anak's blood which had pooled before.

"What are you doing, princess Androssi?" Ren asked, perplexed.

"… I hereby swear, my heart shall be my own and my sins to bear alone! O great Prince of Duality, Lord of the Infinite, whose Aspects are many and myriad, I present you the proof of my sincerity and an offering to He Who Sees beyond! If you would answer this will and reason, then I shall become your anchor!"

"Is this a Spell…?" Ren watched morbidly as the bloody circle lit up the cavern in an unholy red light.

"Thus I summon you under the sigil of the Dreambreaker, and invite you to the realm of the waking! Cross the threshold, come forth as the Demon of Chromatic Calamity and rebalance the scales!"

The blood that dripped from the Green April and Androssi's own forearm burned away, the cut on her skin having clotted and sealed already.

"Oh my, where did you learn such forbidden arts, princess?" Ren asked.

Then he felt the Shinsoo flows recoil away from the circle which had been drawn. Smoke erupted, and a silhouette with glowing red lights for eyes appeared kneeling, holding the wounded left hand of the princess.

The silhouette was wreathed in shadows, but there was something familiar about it.

"Your offering is accepted, and so I have come. If you agree to this contract, henceforth, you shall be my anchor, and I shall carry out your will. So long as you sustain my existence, I, the Chromatic Calamity, will wreak havoc on your enemies," a deep and ringing voice echoed through the caverns as the silhouette kissed the back of the princess's hand.

"I accept," said Androssi..

"I must say, this is quite unexpected. Did you really summon a demon, princess?" Ren asked.

The silhouette gave way to reveal Axion, who stood up, and his voice went back to normal. "Hello again, instructor Yuga."

"What?" Ren started to laugh uncontrollably again. "Mr. Axion? You two went through all that trouble just for a mere teleportation? You almost had me concerned for a moment."

Axion laughed as well. "Glad you got a good laugh out of it, Instructor. But I'm afraid this student must be impolite today."

"Please, go ahead. You saved me the trouble of hunting you down, you know? Although it was very funny, I shall be sure to report this to Zahard. It will be my pleasure to eliminate you and your princess as a competition to the Bia family princesses," Ren said, and meant it.

"Did you really believe Lero Ro's foolish theory?" Axion asked with a scoff.

Ren didn't, of course. Lero Ro, the fool, thought a Ranker could be smuggled past Headon into the Regular tests? It was utterly droll. The best that the princess's family could have done would be to mix up the cohorts and get the princess together with a particularly strong Regular with powerful items-that was much more likely.

"Oh, are you saying you're not here as princess Androssi's retainer, even after that display?"

"You seem to have some knowledge of Spells. Haven't you realized yet what the purpose of that Spell was?" Axion asked.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage there, Mr. Axion. My knowledge of these forbidden arts is quite lacking. Perhaps the student shall teach the teacher a little today?" said Ren.

"It's simple, really. All spells contract with a powerful medium-a demon or god, to empower them. But such beings are not like the Administrators, they don't offer tests and they do not give contracts freely. So why do they not simply act directly themselves, instead giving power to contracted Sorcerers?"

"Hmm… an interesting question. Without knowing more about them, I would guess that there is some force preventing them from acting directly?"

"Correct. Just as there are rules restricting Rankers from acting freely, there are rules of the world itself that restrict the influence of beings which are 'imaginary' from unduly influencing the real world. It is only through the willing contract of a Sorcerer that we may act-and even then it is extraordinarily difficult to manifest even a minuscule fraction of our true selves and power."

"I see, so the purpose of that Spell was for your contractor to unlock more of your power?"

"Now you understand. Through some miraculous circumstances, I was summoned directly into the real world when my previous summoner used his own body as a vessel… and then I took it over, allowing me the freedom to move about on my own. After meeting the princess, it soon became clear that she had the potential to be a far superior summoner, but such a connection cannot be forged easily-it is only in a time of great distress, powerful emotions, and in the presence of suitable sacrifices that it can be forged."

"And this was one such situation, I see," said Ren. "But what do you intend to do now?"

"As I said, a suitable sacrifice is required… the ritual is not yet fully complete. The true reason that Androssi summoned me now is precisely because it would be a pity if such a high quality sacrifice was just executed without being used properly…"

"Hm? You mean…"

Axion unsheathed his crystal sword and turned to Anak, who realized his intent and backed away fearfully. "Y-you two are really going to…?!"

"Like I said, don't blame me lizard. It's nothing personal," said Androssi, smirking evilly before taking a lick of the blood on the Green April.

"You really were a witch… !" Anak spat hatefully.

Ren clapped and laughed again. "Wonderful, wonderful! I am surprised yet again!"

"Now, Mr. Lo Po Bia Ren, do you still intend to eliminate us as 'competition', or will you allow me to proceed with the sacrifice?" Axion asked.

"Hmm, that is quite a dilemma I have been placed in. If I allow you to proceed, then according to what you have told me, you might become considerably more dangerous. But I cannot just kill you unless you have committed a crime against Zahard, what shall I do?" Ren asked loudly.

Ren paced as if thinking, while the other three waited tensely.

Anak's eyes darted around, before making a dash for escape, but Androssi extended Green April to pin her down.

"I have decided!" Ren said suddenly. "Yes… please go ahead with the sacrifice."

"I see, thank you then, Mr. Ren," said Axion.

Then he grabbed Anak by the throat with one hand, choking her, as Androssi retracted Green April. He dragged the struggling green princess to the bloody circle that had been drawn earlier.

He gestured to Androssi, who caged her down again against the circle.

"No! You monsters!" Anak shouted when Axion finally released his grip on her throat. "Let me go!"

Axion raised his sword. "Ignite!" A flash of light and then energy began rolling off the sword in wisps.

"Mmfufukukuku… I will enjoy devouring you, girl!" The sword said with a dark chuckle.

Then Axion began to chant in an incomprehensible language. The air suddenly turned heavy with a strange presence.

"Hmm? This feeling… it's just like that time," Ren said, thinking about when Axion absorbed his Shinsoo barrier.

Shinsoo rapidly converged on their location, turning the air dense. Liquid Shinsoo began to form out of the air and formed a half sphere of water that submerged Anak.

"Stop, stop!" Anak shouted desperately. "You can't do this!"

Axion's chanting grew more frantic and he began waving his sword in strange motions along with his other hand.

The blood on the ground that hadn't been burned away during the initial summoning ritual lifted up and began to form intricate symbols and arcane characters that swirled around the sphere of Shinsoo, while some went to Axion's hand.

Then Axion himself floated into the air.

"… What the hell is going on here?!" Ship came onto the scene, looking shocked. "What are you guys doing to Anak?"

"…" Axion turned to look at the Regular.

Then the Bull's tail grabbed Ship and choked him. He struggled wildly but was completely overpowered.

"Please continue, I will ensure there are no interruptions," said Ren.

Axion turned his attention back to Anak and then resumed chanting.

Ren continued watching curiously.

The chanting continued, and changed periodically in rhythm.

Ren ate a snack and then sat down.

Ship gave up and panted while looking faint.

Axion continued chanting.

'… where the fuck is Yuri?!' Axion thought to himself. 'Wasn't she supposed to arrive with Ship?'

"How long is this ritual supposed to take?" Ren asked.

Axion didn't say anything and kept chanting, raising his voice to a higher level.

"You wouldn't happen to be stalling, would you, Mr. Axion?" Ren asked.

Anak stopped struggling in the water, finally realizing that something was up.

"You can't rush these things, Mr. Ren," said Androssi. "It's a very delicate process."

"I'm not sure what you were stalling for, but I'm afraid there is no help coming your way. Now let us end this farce, hehehe…" said Ren.

O O O

49 - Test of Destiny

49 - Test of Destiny

Ren's beam cannon reappeared beside him and fired towards Anak's head.

'This is long past the point where Yuri Zahard should have arrived… it wouldn't be strange if the timing was a bit off though, considering the weeks it took for her group to travel here,' thought Axion. 'I can escape to the Ring of Deterrence in ten seconds, but desertion would mean losing the goodwill I have with Androssi and most of the main characters, or even risk some of their deaths. That would be inconvenient for my future plans in the Tower, but if it gets too dangerous… '

The chanting, swirling Shinsoo, and symbols in the air all abruptly stopped, and Androssi pulled on the hook of the Green April dragging Anak away from the beam.

Ren rushed towards Androssi.

Androssi dropped Anak and barely raised the Green April up in time to block his kick.

'For now, I should fight a little while assuming Yuri is just late. Given the way Ren toyed with Androssi and Anak, he probably won't try to end this efficiently either, so I can keep stalling,' thought Axion. 'And the human body's typical vital points aren't actually fatal for me. Unless he goes for my head, I can probably survive long enough to escape.'

Axion swung down at Ren at the same time and unleashed a blast of Shinsoo.

A small blue panel appeared to block the blast from Derflinger while Ren's kick hit Androssi and sent her crashing through a stalagmite.

Another blast of Shinsoo was fired from the cannon and Axion was forced to jump back to dodge.

Large segments of the Green April swept forth, which Ren danced around.

Anak scrambled away quickly despite her wounds.

Ren jumped towards Anak, only for Androssi to catch his leg in a reel string, and then a blast of Shinsoo from Derflinger hit him.

Androssi got to Anak and grabbed her wrist before running the opposite direction from where Ren was hit and sent flying.

"Can you still fight, Anak?" Axion asked.

"She won't be much help, too heavily wounded," said Androssi, shaking her head.

"Shut up witch, I'm fine!" Anak growled.

"Get Ship and get out of here, I'll hold him back!" Axion shouted.

"Yes, save me!" Ship yelled, waving his arms.

Androssi swept the Green April towards the Bull, but it ducked and dodged, then threw Ship over them all, screaming profanities as he arced through the air.

Ren tore through the air passing by Ship even as the Bull attacked Androssi and Anak.

"I can't let you leave with that fake!" Ren said loudly.

Axion flew up to intercept, but then a huge yellow snake-like creature burst from the ground and closed its mouth over him whole.

"Axion!" Androssi shouted, before the distraction cost her a hit from the Bull's spear, sending her flying away, but instead of being allowed to land, the curved cannon appeared in her path and fired a beam directly into her back. "Uhk!"

The Green April clattered away as Androssi was driven into a newly created ditch on the ground.

Ren kicked Anak down, then kicked her a few more times for good measure, until she was too dizzy to move.

"Anak! Stop that you bastard!" Ship yelled, trying to crawl over. "Weren't you supposed to be the Wave Controller instructor?! Are you the assassin?!"

The undercover RED ignored him, then picked up the Green April from the ground and slurped it into his costume's mouth.

"Well then, since the princess won't kill the fake, looks like I'll just have to do the job myself. But rest assured, Ms. Androssi Zahard, the King will hear of this, and know that you tried to protect her," said Ren.

"Damn you… !" Androssi growled out, pushing her chest off the ground but seemed to have difficulty getting the rest of the way up.

The snake made a pained cry, and then a beam of energy cleaved through its skin, revealing Axion who was covered in viscous liquids but otherwise fine.

"But first, even though I can't kill you as a princess of Zahard, I can definitely kill this retainer of yours for this heinous crime," Ren said.

Whether Axion really was a retainer, hired help, or just a newly acquired teammate did not really matter to the Bia family agent. It was a fact that the princess was benefiting from it, so that was a good enough reason for Ren to act. Killing him was perhaps excessive, since it might incur the wrath of the Guardian. The consequence of interfering with Regulars like this against the rules of the Tower was not insignificant, but it wasn't intolerable either. That was why he'd been sent to eliminate the fake princess after all, even before Yu Hansung told him the Guardian permitted it.

Even for the Zahard Empire, the rules of the Tower were absolute for everyone. But as a member of RED, Ren was familiar with some loopholes that could be exploited. For example a Ranker could sneak into the Inner Tower where Regular tests took place with the help of a Guide or by getting a job as a test administrator. And if they wanted to interfere with Regulars, they could do so by accepting certain Shinsoo restrictions on themselves, either through a temporary contract with the Guardian or voluntarily by using less Shinsoo. If they limited their Shinsoo manipulation so that it was not much higher than the target, it was not considered as grave a violation because the battle was "fair".

The same "fairness" principle applied to abuses of power by stronger beings in the Tower to all other weaker beings even outside of the Inner Tower. In the Middle Area or Outer Tower, the Guardians might still intervene, depending on its mood and personality, if a Ranker or more powerful being started fights or massacres near Regulars and other inhabitants of the Tower. All territory on a Floor was ruled by the Guardian after all, so they had full authority over which fights were allowed to happen. This especially applied if Rankers tried to host events for Regulars in the Middle Area or ambushed Regulars while they were traveling between Floors.

But the most important point was whether or not a Guardian actually warned him or interceded. If they did so directly, then it was an absolute order, and the penalty could be instant death and further punishment to all those involved in his mission were he to try and defy it still.

Otherwise it was an implicit sort of permission… that whatever was happening could be important to the destiny of the Tower.

And that was exactly what was happening here. Ren had been interfering and there had been no direct warning from the Guardian to stop, so he could keep pushing it until a warning came.

"Now, why don't you entertain me properly, Mr. Axion? Show me that mysterious power you used to fight against Quant," said Ren. The more power that Axion used, the more that Ren himself could use in response.

'I was right… he's still playing with us,' thought Axion. 'Well, if he wants entertainment, fine by me. If he's curious to see my power, then I can drag this out and either wait for Yuri to get here or find an opportunity.'

"I think you've got it backwards, Ren, a lowly Ranker like you, killing me? Don't make me laugh," Axion said arrogantly. Axion's golden armor began to vibrate, wiggle, and move while he talked. Black patterns crawled up his face alongside red circuit lines, then his armor began to grow up his face as well.

"I was not stalling in the hopes of anyone coming to help us. I was merely checking to see if anybody was watching, and whether the Guardian permitted this as part of the test," said Axion, as he took off his visor and put it away into his Pocket.

'Nothing happens without the approval of the Guardian, so there's a possibility that it's intentionally making me fight this battle and Yuri might not be able to interfere at all. I can't win a straight fight, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. A princess has more durability than an average Ranker, and I was clearly able to hurt Quant before when he wasn't using Shinsoo. That means, no matter how skilled or powerful Ren's offensive capabilities are, if I can get a single chance to land a killing blow, then I can win.'

A dark red and purple aura began to emit from Axion's body as the Kaleidostick hidden in the back of his armor glowed. 'Time to look like a demon,' he thought to himself.

The surface of Axion's armor smoothed out into a single contiguous piece before growing jagged edges, the color changed to a primarily dark red and black crystalline texture, with some parts of it a highly reflective kaleidoscopic gradient.

"Is that so? And why would that matter?"

"That's right, little RED. Since I have confirmed that the Guardian does consider this part of the test, then the Zahard family cannot object if I use you, a Ranker from one of the Ten Great Families, as the sacrifice!" Axion's voice warped again at the end as the armor covered his entire head, turning his head towards Androssi.

He tore away his capes, throwing them aside to the ground with a thud, revealing that there had been large folded wings underneath. 'These wings are too slow and their extra mass makes the Omniflight spell more difficult and expensive,' he thought to himself. 'I need to go all out and focus on peak performance.'

"I see…" Ren said, then giggled. "Well then, in that case… by all means! Come!"

"By your leave, summoner?" Axion asked, turning his head towards Androssi.

"Take him down!" Androssi shouted back.

"Boost ten!"

Axion's body lit up in a yellow aura, then burst towards Ren.

"Impressive!" Ren said while barely dodging and firing beams of Shinsoo from his cannon that Axion dodged as well. "I can see how you were able to keep up with Quant!"

After a fast exchange of slashes and beams of Shinsoo, the blue shield panel blocked the next slash, and the mouth of the costume opened to reveal a dark shadowy figure charging up a Shinsoo beam in its mouth at point blank range.

Axion was unable to react in time and was blown away into a wall.

"But it's not enough! Can you do any better against an opponent who is free to use Shinsoo?" Ren asked.

When Axion got up a portion of his armor was burned away at the chest underneath the right shoulder, revealing a strange mix of dark red blood and some other brown-green liquid underneath.

"All that boasting for nothing," said Anak with a huff.

"No way…" Ship said.

"Not bad… looks like we can take this up another level, Derflinger," said Axion, flexing his shoulder as if testing it, showing that it was fine despite the apparent injury.

"You got it, Partner!"

"Ignition: Stage Two," Axion said, while holding the blade of his sword with his left hand.

"A second Ignition? I've never heard of such a thing," said Ren, watching curiously and allowing his opponent to finish powering up.

"Yes! I knew we could count on you, Axion!" Ship cheered.

"Tch! Probably just another trick," said Anak.

The whole light teal crystalline blade seemed to come off, revealing a much thinner pure white blade underneath, creating a sharp contrast against Axion's darker color scheme.

Ren sweatdropped. "All you did was pull off the outer layer."

"See?" Anak said to Ship. "Just a trick. We're all going to die."

"Don't let me down, damn it!" Ship shouted.

Androssi slowly got up while nobody was looking her way, and inched away towards a hiding spot behind a stalagmite.

"The outer layer was a seal," said Axion, with a chuckle. "Now we can release the true power. Derflinger, Ignite!"

'It might just be a layer, but it has its own advantages and disadvantages. With the layer on, Derf has to project his power through a secondary medium, which makes the Aura and Beams above level 6 unusable, in exchange for better defense and absorption as attacks are refracted through the outer crystal before they can damage the inside. That doesn't make a difference against a Ranker of Ren's level, though, if I can't react fast enough to block his attacks and even if I did, his attacks are probably intense enough to blow through the crystal anyways,' Axion thought, while his Armoriont slowly began to regenerate and recover the skin that was exposed.

"Awwww yeaaah!" Derflinger shouted as the sword grew much brighter, then Axion's body lit up again.

Axion charged forward again.

The blue panel came up to block as he slashed, while the cannon flipped around and opened fire from behind him.

'Thanks to the Endbringer crystals being alive, Derf has a bit more fine control, so now I can retain control while he Boosts me-I won't have the benefit of his skill, but it does mean I can coordinate my own Burstshift in close combat!'

He disappeared in a sudden burst of speed before the Shinsoo beam hit him, then reappeared behind Ren, who still managed to move his shield panel back in the way as he turned around.

The sword collided with the panel, but this time it cracked.

"… !" Ren jumped away.

Derflinger broke through the panel, before Axion flashed to Ren again.

A large wave of Shinsoo shoved Axion aside before he could reach his target as Ren fired another Shinsoo blast out of his mouth. It barely missed as Axion shifted away.

Both fighters landed back on the ground with a wary look at the other.

"It might be dangerous even for me if I were to be hit by that…" Ren remarked.

"He's really fighting on par with a Ranker!" Ship exclaimed. "I knew we could count on him!"

'Derf's capacity is limited… even though the Endbringer crystal improved it and the efficiency of the higher levels, I'll only be able to use the strongest Slash Beam once, since I'm using Boost as well. The Slash Beam condensed into a Sword Aura can't be powered down without losing twenty percent of the unreleased Slash Beam's energy either…' Axion considered carefully and stayed silent. 'But at least I've confirmed the level 8 intensity should be enough to be a threat to him, which means…'

"Derf, get ready. It looks like we'll have to put everything on the line and go all out just like that time."

"Let's do it. I'm ready."

Then Ren giggled in a mad frenzy. "This excitement… I can barely hold them back anymore!"

Suddenly a huge swarm of giant Shinheuh burst out of his mouth.

"Ahhh!" Ship screamed as the Shinheuh swarm covered everything in sight. But fortunately for him and Anak, they did not seem to be interested in killing them now, instead heading for Axion.

Androssi took from her Arms Inventory the Black March, which Axion had given her before the test started, and joined the fray.

A frenzy of hacking, roaring, biting, and spurting blood followed.

Axion tore through several big fish initially, but they seemed to shrug off the wounds and eventually began to tear off pieces of his armor. Androssi fared a little worse offensively, and her clothes were torn apart easily but her skin did not bleed.

Ship and Anak tried to escape in the confusion but were stopped by Ren who then tied them up and strapped to a stalagmite each, forced to watch.

'These are too strong and there's too many, I have no choice!' Axion thought while pinned down by a few Shinheuh, his body bleeding in many parts now. Androssi was similarly being eaten by two different fish trying to rip her apart and failing even though she yelped in pain.

A much larger dark purple aura burst out of Axion's body, leaking from underneath the armor and mixing with the yellow aura of Derflinger's boost.

Shinsoo surged into a great torrent and blew the Shinheuh around Axion away.

Axion held his free hand up and a swirling ball of Shinsoo gathered in it, which quickly turned into a vortex of violent water.

"This pressure… yes, show me that special power of yours, Axion!" Ren said.

The water spirits' unintelligible whispers became audible across the whole cavern as everything was caught up in its giant vortex.

"Incredible!" Ren felt himself getting pushed by the massive waves, but stood his ground. His Shinhueh however, were dragged into the cyclone and started smashing into each other and the walls and stalagmites.

Androssi was freed but caught in the cyclone as well, and she dug the Black March into a wall as she flew.

"Sovereign of the Deep: Great Vortex!" Axion shouted the name of the technique as the cyclone reached a crescendo and exploded violently, blasting everything away.

Ship screamed again as he and Anak were also blown away together with the rock that had been ripped out of the ground, though they were still tied up.

Ren had created a bright barrier of energetic Shinsoo to shield himself, but many of his Shinheuh were ripped apart and flung away, flopping uselessly in their death throes.

However, not all of them died, some got back up and floated in a formation to surround Axion again, or in front of Ren. These Shinheuh were not fish, but strange creatures that had no clear analog from Earth that Axion could recognize.

Axion stood, looking battered, but his wounds were already healing visibly, although the armor seemed to have difficulty repairing itself as the damage suffered had been too large. It began to instead condense itself over his vital organs around his chest and neck.

"Summoner, leave this area!" Axion shouted to the princess, who picked herself up after the vortex broke apart the rock the Black March was hanging on to.

"Damn it!" She cursed before running and shouting back. "You better come back alive!"

"Bravo! What a show. Now, I believe it's my turn…" Ren said.

Axion did not give him the opportunity to finish, however, as he disappeared again with his sword raised.

Ren reacted immediately and his Shinheuh got in the way, while two Baangs appeared in the air.

Another giant snake with multiple tendrils for limbs ripped out of the ground just as Androssi was getting away and dragged her back. "Arghh!"

"Not so fast, princess! I can't let you leave so soon, especially after you did me the favor of bringing me the Black March… hehehe!" Ren said. "This is perfect, now I can retrieve two of the Thirteen Month Weapons in the same place!"

Axion began to shift quickly all over the place as the Shinheuh attacked alongside Ren's lances of energized Shinsoo beams.

Another Baang appeared in the air around Ren and the lances fired more rapidly. Axion began to leave pulses of water every time he appeared, pushing back the Shinheuh and barely blocking the beams of Shinsoo coming his way.

"Don't get cocky, Instructor, you're not the only one who can use more Baangs!" Axion shouted before he flashed away. Then three Baangs formed around him as well, and they began to fire back at the incoming Shinsoo beams.

"Hahaha! Excellent! Show me more!" Ren shouted happily, before adding one more Baang to outnumber Axion again.

The big snake went to Ship and Anak to pick them up as well, now keeping all three of the Regulars tied up.

"You were really going to just leave us, weren't you, witch?!" Anak said angrily.

"It's not like I could've saved you! Might as well go get reinforcements," said Androssi.

"Please, can you two stop fighting already, at a time like this!" Ship yelled.

"What else is there to do? We're useless in this battle," said Anak.

"We can think of something! Anything!" Ship said.

"He could kill us at any time," Anak said. "That bastard just wants us to watch Axion die."

"Axion is going to win!" Androssi exclaimed.

The trio watched as both combatants increased the number of Baangs as if in competition with each other, to five, then six, then eight, then ten, and beams of light destroyed everything around them.

The cavern shook and seemed like it was starting to collapse, huge broken rock parts and debris began to fall everywhere, but the structure held for the moment.

"You're far more interesting than I'd ever expected, Mr. Axion! But it seems I have another lesson to teach you! Increasing the number of Baangs isn't always better, because the more Baangs you create, the lower the Soo per Baang!" Ren said. "Allow me to demonstrate!"

Suddenly he reduced the number of Baangs and created a much more powerful Baang instead, which unleashed an energy wave that blasted through all of the incoming beams from Axion, then hit him.

A barrier held back the beam and split it around him and upwards, but the beam kept going and pushed him downwards, tilting backwards into the ground, until the barrier failed and he was engulfed.

The beam kept going and a huge hole through the cavern walls behind Axion and causing a major collapse in that section.

"No!" Androssi and Ship both shouted.

When the light died down, Axion was lying on the ground on his back unmoving, Derflinger was no longer lit up and lying a few meters away from him.

Ninety percent of his armor was destroyed, leaving his limbs' skinned completely exposed and scorched.

Ren made his way over slowly, and there was no response from Axion. "Is that it, then, Mr. Axion? I suppose it's time to put an end to this show."

"Get up, Axion!" Androssi yelled. "Come on!"

The Regulars watched with terror as Ren picked up Axion's sword and there was still no movement from its owner.

"Another Ignition Weapon retrieved, although not one of the Thirteen Months, this is quite an interesting find!" Ren said while marveled at the sword for a moment after raising it into the air in front of him. "Your name was Derflinger, wasn't it?"

"Yes sir, you remembered," said Derflinger.

"Of course, you were my most unique student after all," said Ren.

"What are you going to do with me?" Derflinger asked.

"Hmm… well, I don't have any obligation to hand you over to anyone since you're not one of the Thirteen Months series. And I must admit I've wanted an Ignition Weapon of my own for some time… they are quite rare after all. Even a member of one of the Ten Great Families like me couldn't get one after all this time," said Ren.

"Oh, you'd like to wield me?"

"That's correct. What do you say, my student? There is much that I can teach you still, I'm sure, hehehe," said Ren.

"Ohoho, a mighty wielder like you would surely bring out much more potential from me!" Derflinger said cheerfully.

"Then, how about I use you to kill your previous owner? As the proof of our new partnership," said Ren.

"You know exactly how this works, hahaha!" Derflinger said.

"Derflinger, what are you saying? You've decided to betray me?" Axion asked, finally pushing himself up a little.

"This was always the deal, my dear partner. Whoever kills my owner has the right to wield me next and absorb their strength! For six thousand years I have passed from great warriors who each exceeded the last, consuming the blood and soul of each fallen wielder. This is my destiny… to be wielded by the greatest of them all!" Derflinger declared.

"Damn you… !" Axion cursed, sitting up with one hand supporting and pushing himself backwards.

Ren giggled again and stepped forward.

"Go ahead then… my new master, strike him down so that I may drink his blood and soul!" Derflinger said darkly, then glowing with a bright light.

"You were planning to sacrifice me for your ritual, weren't you Mr. Axion? It seems that you shall become my sacrifice instead!" Ren said.

Deep in the caverns, a large shadowy figure stood within a hidden crevice, two glowing yellow eyes narrowed behind a red mask, its body tensing as if preparing to move.

Then Ren stabbed down through Axion's chest and out the other end.

"Urghkk…" Axion's body began to glow together with the sword and then he started to scream. "Ahhh! NOOoooo!"

"Yes, that's it… I can feel my strength growing, hahahhaa!" Derflinger laughed, and Ren laughed with him.

The sword grew increasingly bright, and seemed to enlarge as well. Even the handle where Ren was holding extended.

The huge armored figure in shadow lifted its hand.

"Axion!" Androssi shouted, eyes wide.

Ship and Anak watched with horror at the scene.

Suddenly Derflinger's blade retracted into itself, then grew a new blade edge out the other end from the handle towards Ren.

"Huh?" Ren said as he noticed something was wrong.

He moved backwards to dodge.

Simultaneously, a Shinsoo pulse reached Ren, reversing the flow in Ren's body and causing him to freeze for a fraction of a second, preventing an instant retreat. "Wha-"

Light burst from Derflinger's new blade point into Ren cleaving into his costume before engulfing him completely, and then tore into the cavern ceiling and blasted straight through.

"Sword Beam: Level Ten," Axion declared with a smirk.

Headon opened his eyes with a smirk revealing his wide row of spiked teeth. "Congratulations, Mr. Axion. Now, you have passed the true test of courage. Just like the boy who let himself be eaten by the eel, and the girl who allowed herself to be stabbed by the traitorous teammate, every Irregular that enters the Tower must bet their lives to face the challenge of their own destiny and walk the path that proves themselves greater!"

He chuckled slowly and opened his arms wide as if speaking to a captive audience. "Yes… the revered all-consuming monster… the ordinary fate-stealing thief… and the covetous many-faced teacher… you are the ones who can change the destiny of the Tower!"

Finally, he laughed, the sound reverberating, echoing, through the whole chamber.

"… and in turn, the Tower shall change you…"

O O O

50 – To Walk the Path

50 - To Walk the Path

'There's something strange about this attack… ! What Quality is this? My Shinsoo Resistance is only partially effective against it?' Ren thought to himself.

The light cleaved into Ren's costume before engulfing him completely, and then tore into the cavern ceiling and blasted straight through.

"Sword Beam: Level Ten," Axion declared with a smirk.

'This isn't Shinsoo at all!' Ren finally realized as the attack tore into his body. 'I should have… reinforced… defenses… instead of trying to dodge… !'

A huge diagonal pillar of light burst through the ground and continued into the sky.

"What… what the fuck!?" Parakewl shouted and then screamed shrilly with a terrified face as the angry beam of energy went straight towards him and Rak who was grabbing him, and Laure who was helping them float in the air.

"… !" Laure's face turned shocked as he quickly moved them away from the devastating attack, landing on the cliff head, next to Hong Chunwa, Sunwoo, and Alexai Amigochez who was their other spearbearer that hadn't jumped down to save Parakewl.

"What's happening over there…?" Hong asked, also shocked.

"Doesn't that kinda look like Mr. Axion's Ignition Weapon's attack, but just a lot bigger?" Sunwoo asked.

"He almost killed me!" Parakewl shouted. "The hell is that garbage doing?! Was the Bull that hard to kill?!"

"Guys, there's been intruders in the test," Khun's voice reached them through a cube.

"What do you mean, intruders?" Hong asked.

"There's a Ranker here that hacked into my Lighthouse, and he just gave some control back to me. I'm not sure what's going on… but it sounds like there was another Ranker that ambushed our princesses, and then Axion fought him. The guy that hacked my Lighthouse seems to be on a different team with a princess of their own, and she came down to find something, but then stopped to watch the fight…" said Khun.

"I'm confused… so there's more than one group of intruders?" Sunwoo asked.

"Why are they interfering with our test?! Where are the supervising turtles?!" Rak asked angrily. "And are the super turtle and the princess turtles alright?!"

"I don't know… I lost contact with Ship a while ago too," said Khun. "I think Axion won though, and the Ranker princess found what she was looking for."

Axion pulled Derflinger out of his chest and stood back up with a grunt, one hand covering the wound, but apparently wasn't too bothered by the piercing of his heart. "Nice work, Derf," he said.

"Same to you, Partner. Heh, what a dumbass. As if I would just take a new wielder like that," said Derflinger, while transforming back to his normal elven sword design with a single blade.

Ren's costume was sliced halfway up and through to the back, revealing the small round-headed shadowy humanoid creature inside which was similarly sliced in half from its waist up to the right shoulder, green blood pooling on the ground.

"Idiot doesn't even know how to use magic and he wants to claim for himself the legendary Derflinger, the sword made by the right hand of God?" Derf said with a sneering tone.

Axion slowly ambled over, as if he was too exhausted and injured to move, to the corpse of a nearby fish Shinheuh that Ren had used. All of the scattered pieces of armor still on his body, with a particularly large portion from his back, except the part still covering his waist, fell off onto the corpse, combined, and then began to slowly devour the flesh.

"What… what the hell?" Ship asked, eyes wide staring at the results of the battle. "So he was faking it the whole time?! He actually… won?"

Androssi breathed out a sigh of relief. "Now get over here and help us get rid of this thing!" She shouted.

Anak stayed silent, but her eyes were similarly wide like Ship.

"Princess, you can retrieve the Black March now, the Guardian finally gave permission," said Evan Edrok, while sitting across from Yu Hansung, who was enjoying his coffee.

"Sorry it took so long to get an answer… but you know how it is… the Guardians do whatever they want, and we can only follow their orders," said Yu Hansung with a bright closed eye smile.

'… He's annoying,' Evan thought to himself.

Suddenly the snake creature that wrapped them up fell to the ground, dead, and their restraints were unwrapped

"That was impressive," said Yuri Zahard, strolling out of the shadows from behind them. "Looks like our first impressions were wrong, Evan, he really was holding back his real power back then."

"Huh?" Ship he got up, shocked. "Wait, who are you? You know Axion?"

Yuri ignored him, then Androssi cut in. "Were you here the whole time?! Why didn't you do anything sooner?!"

"Hello, little sister," Yuri said.

"L-little sister?!" Ship's face changed as realization set in.

"I'm just passing through, looking for this, and for a certain someone," Yuri explained, before going to pick up the Black March that had dropped on the ground with Androssi. "You should know him, sister, you were wielding the weapon I lent to him after all."

A weak and croaking voice came out of the apparently not quite dead Ranker.

"That person you're looking for… could it be the Irregular, Baam?"

There was a look of surprise on Yuri's face.

"I sent the Bull. Sorry… it's a waste of his talents, but we can't let the Irregular… stay alive… hehehe… that boy won't be able to come back alive, princess. Even killing me won't stop it… you may have noticed… this is one of the skins that I use… my real body is already far away…" Ren continued to speak. "See you again… mutt… and you as well… my talentless student… hehehe…"

The corpse suddenly disappeared into smoke, leaving only an empty costume and the Green April behind.

"Evan… I can't stand this anymore… I'll finish this absurd game and rip this whole stage apart," Yuri said with a furious expression.

"My Lady, stop!" Evan's voice appeared seemingly from nowhere, through some sort of invisible communication device.

"Stop what? This test didn't make any sense from the beginning. I only held back so far because the Guardian was supposedly running this, but now we've got permission, don't we?"

"That's enough… princess. You have retrieved the Black March, and that's all you were permitted to do. Any more interference, and Baam will automatically fail the test. These are the Guardian's orders," said the voice of Yu Hansung.

"Lady, he's right! The test is still being carried out as the Guardian planned! The twisted assassin… our intervention… and the Bull… it's all part of the test! If Axion had lost, then our intervention would be permitted to kill the intruder… but our role ended with the furball's death! Now it's up to Baam to finish it!"

"…" Yuri turned to look at the Regulars sprawled around her, before honing in on Androssi again. "Hey sister, do you think Baam can pass the test?"

"Baam will survive… because he's tasted Axion's chicken pie… he'll regret it if he isn't there to taste the next batch!" Androssi said with a smirk.

"What? Axion really made him chicken pie?" Anak asked. "Are those two lovers?"

Ship choked and spat. "What? They were gay all along?"

Yuri looked shocked speechless, unable to follow the train of logic, until Androssi spoke again.

"Baam promised me he'd eat it with me again next time! I won't be the only one to suffer that poison!"

Anak, Ship, Yuri, and Axion all sweatdropped.

Yuri gave one last suspicious look at Androssi and Axion, then shook her head and muttered. "Kids…" Then she turned to Ship instead. "Hey, sweatsuit, catch." She threw him a small shiny object.

Ship looked at the wing tree badge in his hands with awe. It was the symbol of Wolhaiksong, an organization led by the famous Irregular Urek Mazino and his friend Baek Ryun, and the wing tree commemorated the founding of the organization, the fulfillment of Mazino's promise to give wings to the forest that Baek Ryun refused to leave.

"When Baam comes back, sweatsuit, give that to him." Yuri turned to the other Irregular whom she'd seen on the first floor. "Sorry Axion, my teammate ate his words twice but he only had the one badge to lose, or I'd give you one too. But, since Baam did it first, I have to give it to him. But both of you should come to the 77th Floor when you become Rankers. Urek Mazino is waiting." Then she turned back to Ship. "Pass that message on to Baam, got it?"

Ship looked confused for a moment, then nodded. "Huh, oh, yes!"

'Why is she giving this to me to pass on? And why does Urek Mazino want to meet them? Could it be… that Axion is also an Irregular?' Ship thought.

Finally, Yuri made her way towards Ren's corpse.

Axion spoke up then. "You should've come and said hi when I was with Headon, princess. It's rude to spy on people, you know?"

Yuri gave him an unapologetic smirk while roaming her eyes over his mostly exposed skin that was also largely healed and back to a normal color. "Sorry, I was in a hurry. But don't worry, I'll keep watching you… don't disappoint me, and climb quickly, little trickster."

"That's not reassuring…" Axion said.

Yuri laughed before picking up the Green April. "I'll be taking this too," she said.

"Wait, why? Give that back to me!" Anak shouted.

"Why you? It's mine! I won that fair and square in the Crown game!" Androssi shouted.

"It's too heavy for you, either of you," said Yuri as she walked back through their group. "When you're ready for it, come see me with Baam and Axion."

"No!" Anak yelled.

Androssi pouted but didn't say anything further. She knew that a princess who was still a Regular wouldn't be allowed to hold onto a Thirteen Month Series weapon that they hadn't been awarded by the order of Zahard himself.

"Guide the way, Evan," Yuri ordered. "Yes, my lady!" Came the response.

Ship stopped Anak from trying to chase after her.

Axion walked around, looking for various things. He found his crystal sheath blade, and then sheathed Derflinger. Next he recovered his discarded cape and wings that had seemingly survived mostly intact. These he put back over himself, at which point it wrapped around him and began to slowly morph, the cape changing color into his default crystalline light teal armor with silvery edges, though the coverage was light due to its comparative lack of mass.

Androssi went up to him. "Are you really okay? You took some bad hits."

"Don't worry, I'm already mostly healed," said Axion.

Androssi watched as Axion retrieved a vial from his Pocket and then sucked up the green blood on the ground into the vial with Shinsoo manipulation, before putting it back into the Pocket.

"What are you going to do with that?" Androssi asked.

"I collect samples of all sorts of things. Most of the time it'll be useless, so I don't expect anything, but sometimes I'll find a use for it. I'm going to collect some from the rest of these Shinheuh as well," said Axion.

He glanced around the battlefield which was littered with corpses. "I wish I had something to store all the corpses intact, but these are much too large. Even a single one wouldn't fit in my Lighthouse. I wonder what Ren used to store them while they were alive."

"It's called a Bowl," said Androssi. "But to store this many, of this size, it would have to be a pretty high level Bowl."

"But, where is it now? Where's the rest of the loot supposed to be?" Axion asked, rummaging around the costume for anything else that might still be there. "And there was that cannon too."

"Maybe he took it with them before leaving that skin behind," said Androssi.

"But the Green April dropped out," said Axion.

"You might have destroyed his stuff with your big attack as well," said Androssi, shrugging. "Obviously the Green April would survive something like that. If items like that get destroyed while they're in compressed mode, they tend to just disintegrate. Actually… I think this sheep costume is the Bowl."

"Ah… fuck!" Axion stared at the ruined costume in his hands.

"That cannon… might still be around somewhere, probably invisible," said Androssi, reaching her hands out and trying to feel for it with her Shinsoo senses as well. "I don't think he actually put it away at any point."

She bumped into something, and then felt it up, before it turned visible again. "Here it is," she said with a grin, holding it towards Axion.

"Nice!" Axion took the cannon and observed it for a bit, before putting it into his Lighthouse to figure out how to use later, and then did the same with the ruined costume.

"Khun? Yeah, we're okay," said Ship. "Thank god. My heart can't handle so many scares. You won't believe what happened…"

"I heard everything, actually. A member of Yuri Zahard's team hacked into my Lighthouse and was using it earlier to communicate with the rest of them," came Khun's voice. "He just left and I got full control back. The rest of the test is going well. Just take a rest, you guys, we'll keep the worm hunt going."

"Alright," said Ship.

Anak lay down flat on the ground.

Androssi found a spot to sit down.

Only Axion stayed active, going around collecting samples from the rest of the Shinheuh.

Ship looked at each of his teammates, then went to Androssi while limping. "Hey, are you okay? You were pretty hurt too, right?"

"I'm exhausted right now, and I feel like my guts are going to fall out. But I'm fine."

Ship looked skeptically at her clothes which were shredded in a few places and the self-inflicted wound on her arm. "Does that really mean you're fine?"

"How about up there?"

"They don't need us, Khun and the rest are handling it," said Ship.

"Hm…" Androssi looked at Anak.

"I think she's just upset about the Green April," said Ship. "Now there's no way to get it back until she's a Ranker. Do you think Baam's ok?"

"Don't know… probably not," said Androssi.

"What, that's not what you said earlier!"

"Baam can definitely stop the Bull. The problem is that he doesn't have any way to hurt it while it's stopped," said Androssi. "Even if he manages to make a second Baang, it's just too strong to be hurt by his attacks."

"Shit…"

"Maybe if he had the Black March, things might be different…" said Androssi with a tremendously sad expression.

"Why did he give it to you?" Ship asked, confused.

"Axion received a tipoff about Yuga before the test, as somebody who might have connections to another family with competing princesses, which meant that he'd go after both of the Thirteen Month Series and us. So he asked Baam to lend the Black March, so that he wouldn't be a target and Ren's attention would be focused on just Anak and me as the princesses, and Axion, whom he thought was a retainer from my family," said Androssi.

"Damn… but he went after him anyway, just because he's an Irregular…" Ship said. Androssi looked away. "Shit, I didn't mean it like that, that's not your fault, you couldn't have known!"

"Actually, I did think about that possibility as well. Unfortunately, if he had the Black March, the situation might be even worse," said Axion, walking over.

"What? What do you mean?" Ship asked.

"Do you remember why Yuri wasn't allowed to interfere earlier?" Axion asked.

"… because the Guardian considers the Bull to be a part of the test. The same way it considered Ren to be a part of the test for you… right?" Ship asked. 'Because he's an Irregular too,' Ship added in his mind.

"Exactly. By your expression, you've probably figured it out, huh? The Guardian intentionally set up the test like this, with the difficulty matched to the challenger's capabilities. This must be why taking tests directly from the Guardian is considered extremely difficult," said Axion.

"Ah… so if Baam had the Black March with him, whatever went after him would probably be even stronger!" Ship said, understanding dawning on his face.

"Precisely. If we really think about it, why did Ren leave and only send the Bull? Wasn't it because Yuri showed up and he heard that Yuri was also looking for Baam, and he knew he couldn't defeat a High Ranker like her? I doubt that Yuri found the Black March with us by pure chance-she must have some way to track it. So if she hadn't shown up here and revealed her intention, would Ren really have just left like that? In my opinion, he probably would have gone after Baam next after failing his mission here. If he retrieves at least one Thirteen Month Weapon, his failure might not be as humiliating and his punishment not as bad, right?"

"Shit, you're right… !" Ship said, then he seemed to think of something. "Wait, who was it that gave you the tipoff about that guy?"

"The warning came from Hwa Ryun," Axion said easily. "She's a Guide, so she has good instincts when it comes to things like this."

"That redhead? A Guide? She didn't take the test with us…" Ship noted.

Axion shrugged. "I've been told that Guides can go anywhere they want, even if they don't take the tests. It seems that she doesn't care about it. Maybe she didn't want to get involved in such a dangerous test."

"She was smart… this is all so crazy…" Ship said with a sigh. "I really hope we never have to take one of these Guardian tests again."

Evan Edrok stopped and turned with surprise as a red headed girl in pink robes passed him by without giving him a glance.

"Come here in ten seconds or you'll die, you mushroom!" Yuri's voice urged Evan on, and he rushed away.

Hwa Ryun walked into the test director's office and closed the door.

Yu Hansung put his coffee down as she approached.

"I didn't actually expect him to win that fight," Hansung said. "Though it seems he still needed a little help at the end."

Hwa Ryun sat down opposite him and touched the coffee cup that Evan had used, looking at it as if there was something deeply interesting about it.

"He could have won even without the Ghost," said Hwaryun.

Hansung looked curiously at her. "So you knew he could walk this path. I thought you couldn't see the paths of Irregulars?"

Hwa Ryun placed the coffee cup back down, then got a new one for herself, which Hansung poured for her. "I didn't know for sure until the last chapter was written." However, Yu Hansung only heard and saw her mouth move for the first five words of her response.

"But isn't this rather inconvenient? A Regular defeating a Ranker in a serious battle on the Floor of Tests won't go unnoticed," said Hansung. "It's unprecedented. Nobody would believe that he's just a Regular… and after all the trouble I went to hide his status."

The Guide drank a slow sip. "The ones who look into him will come across Lero Ro's theory first. Lo Po Bia Ren will report the 'truth' that the princess is dabbling into the forbidden art of Spells, contracting a demon possessing the body of a Regular."

"So they will be feared and hated, but as long as he is with the princess, the response from the Zahard Family will be limited. She will lose favor with Zahard for this and helping the fake, but the consequences will not be severe. The Green April was an item that needed to be retrieved at all costs, but by themselves they would not be worth the effort of breaking the rules of the Tower by sending more Rankers to interfere with them while they still are Regulars," Hansung deduced.

Hwaryun nodded with a slight smile.

A great lance of Shinsoo pierced through the mouth of the Bull into its head. It fell into the depths of the water as the bubble continued rising.

Baam panted, and held his bloody hand, but there was a smile on his face. "I did it…"

He turned around and looked over the headboard. "Rachel… wherever you want to go… I'll take you there."

"Baam…" Rachel said, looking at him with awe.

Baam reached out his hand with a smile, and Rachel reached out her own.

Suddenly Rachel moved up to a full standing position before he could react and pushed Baam hard.

The boy's face was uncomprehending as he fell backwards out of the bubble.

"Sorry Baam… but you should stay here," said Rachel, her hair covering her eyes.

'Why…? Rachel?' Baam continued falling further into the depths.

Rak, Sunwoo, and Hong approached the Dolphin Madame.

"Damn, why are they coming out through some butthole looking place?" Rak said.

The orifice wiggled then burst with green liquid and ejected Rachel with it onto the ground.

"Why… is there only one turtle?" Rak asked. "Hey female… where is the other one?"

"Baam… the Bull attacked suddenly… he tried to protect me and… he fell…"

Khun listened to Rak's voice with shock from his Lighthouse. "Do you mean… that the turtle's dead?! Hey… say something… what happened to my prey?!"

It was a somber mood when Khun broke the silence.

"Didn't the test director say that all Regulars should be here? How come this is it?" He demanded, referring to the absence of the two princesses, Axion, Rak, and Laure.

"Um… Khun…" Sunwoo stood up to answer. "Androssi and Rak are…"

"I know, they never participate in stuff like this," said Khun.

"Hey, how can you say it like that? Think of how they feel!" Sunwoo protested.

"I'm sorry, I'm not in the mood to understand anyone else," said Khun, leaning his forehead against his palm as his hand was propped up on his knee.

"Stop you guys… what's important is the future," said Ship. "Geez… what… should we do…" He faced down and held his head.

"Um… sorry, but… did we pass the test?" Parakewl asked.

"Does that matter, filth?" Hatsu asked.

"Of course, that's the most important question!" Parakewl said.

Hatsu looked like he was about to give him a piece of his mind when Axion suddenly walked in and sat down. The room went silent.

His armor and cape fully restored, though his armor was still in the default smooth teal texture rather than the golden dragonscale design. "Where is everyone else?" He asked, glancing around.

Khun clicked his tongue.

Sunwoo opened her mouth, then decided against it, sighing before sitting down.

Ship answered instead. "Probably shutting themselves in their own rooms. I don't blame them…"

Axion nodded, then walked to Rachel. "You alright?" But she was completely unresponsive.

Axion went back and sat beside Ship.

Then Lero Ro walked into the Regulars' waiting room.

"Regulars. You have all passed," he announced.

"What? How is that possible, weren't Baam and Rachel both supposed to return?" Hatsu asked.

"Before the test, Baam asked the Guardian for a favor. If he died during the test, he wanted the rest of you to go up to the next floor, no matter the results."

"Wait… that means…" Khun said, with a disbelieving face.

"Yes, I'm sorry to tell you, Baam is dead. We looked everywhere after the wineglass emptied out, but couldn't find him. There's very little chance that he's alive," said Lero Ro.

Rachel fainted back into her chair.

The Regulars who were in the waiting room had gathered in a medical room with Rachel who was unconscious.

Hatsu proposed that they were all in debt to Baam, and then said that they should help Rachel climb. Hong agreed as a knight, and Ship agreed as well. Soon almost everyone agreed, even Parakewl who was just following the crowd, and then Ship asked Khun who had stayed silent.

"I can't leave it like this… I'll make his dream come true and bring her to the top," said Khun.

"And what about you, Axion?" said Ship, turning to Axion who leaned against the wall beside the door with his arms crossed.

All of the Regulars waited for his answer with baited breath as he continued to remain silent.

Parakewl suddenly realized that he may have agreed too soon. 'Wait, if he's not helping then… '

"Sorry, Androssi and I already have other plans," said Axion.

There was a deep silence.

"What…? But weren't you two Rachel's first teammates?" Ship asked, confused and shocked.

"We were, but we can't climb with her the way she is now," said Axion, turning to the door and putting his hand on the knob.

"Really? That's it? She's dead weight now so you're tossing her aside?" Hatsu asked angrily.

Hong looked disdainfully at Axion. "You guys really are the worst."

Then Axion spoke quietly again without turning around. "The name of the assassin who sent the Bull… is Lo Po Bia Ren, and he's a member of the Royal Enforcement Division. The Irregular with incredible talent is dead, and Yuri Zahard retrieved the Thirteen Month weapons, but Ren is still alive, and so are we. We barely survived this first battle but the war of the princesses and the games of the Tower's great powers will continue. They'll come for us again, I don't know when or how, but they will come, and it will only get more dangerous the higher we go."

"Huh? Wait, what exactly happened down there? Nobody explained it to me," Sunwoo said. "What's this about a war?"

"Leesoo," said Axion, tilting his head back to look at the Regular who saw their battle, ignoring the other comments. "Androssi and I are going up together, and we'll take Anak too if she wants to come," said Axion. "But our enemies are not yours or Rachel's. If you truly want to protect what Baam wanted to protect and carry his dream up rather than endanger it… then you need to be ready to fight his enemies too! Do you think this team is ready for something like that? Do you think you are worthy of carrying the badge Yuri entrusted to you in his stead too?"

"I… understand." Ship Leesoo clenched his fist and put a hand into his jacket pocket which held the badge.

Then Axion opened the door and left.

"What badge is he talking about? What's going on, Leesoo?" Hatsu asked.

"I'll explain it in a bit, Hatsu… but Axion is right. There's no way any of us are ready to fight those kinds of enemies, we'd just be putting Rachel in danger if we tried to bring her with the princesses. I was there and saw it… but I was completely useless. I'm only alive because that sick bastard was playing with us, and wanted us to watch him kill us one by one," said Leesoo through gritted teeth.

There was a long and uncomfortable silence, then Parakewl laughed and pointed at the rest of the Regulars in the room. "Looks like you garbage were all tossed aside!"

"…" Everyone gave him unimpressed looks.

"And you think you're strong enough to climb with them?" Hatsu asked.

"Of course I'm going to go with Mr. Axion right now!" Parakewl said then moved towards the door.

"Settle down idiot, didn't you complain earlier about him almost killing you by accident?" Khun said with a sneer. "You think you'll survive next time without us to pull you out of the way?"

Parakewl stopped and hesitated with a sweat before he reached the knob. "Th-that's… !"

"What's wrong? Why aren't you going after him? Nobody wants you anyways, you scum," said Hatsu.

Parakewl looked back at the unfriendly or apathetic faces surrounding him, then he shut the door and stepped back.

"Hah! As if I'd go with that trash who doesn't care about his teammates!" Parakewl said with scorn.

"I think I misjudged him. He's actually much, much better than the likes of you," said Hatsu.

"Way better," said Khun with a nod. "He hasn't betrayed anyone yet."

"I jumped to conclusions as well," said Hong. "But that man has an honor of his own. Unlike you."

"Yeah, you have no right to talk about him, you stupid, ugly bully!" Sunwoo said to Parakewl. "Go away!"

"Wh-what?!" Parakewl squawked. "What would you do without me, huh?!"

"Guys, just ignore him. I'll explain about what happened down there, and then I'll go tell everyone who isn't here about our plan to help Rachel," said Leesoo.

Everyone tuned Parakewl out and listened to Leesoo.

"Y-you garbage! How dare you just ignore me?!"

O O O

51 – Floor 2 End

51 - Floor 2 End

"As if I'd team up with you, crazy witch!" Anak shouted, wrestling with Androssi. "Who knows if you'll suck my soul out in some ritual when I'm not looking!"

"Stop calling me that, lizard! It was just an act before!" Androssi yelled back as they rolled on the ground.

"You are a witch, with that creepy face of yours, who'd want to be teammates with you and your pet demon?!" Anak retorted.

"And who'd want to be your teammate, ungrateful little brat!"

"If you didn't want to, then why'd you ask?!"

Leesoo walked around the corner on the opposite side of the hall with a surprised look.

"Because I'm trying to be nice! Go by yourself then, see if I care when you get yourself killed!"

"I will! I'll climb the Tower and get back the Green April on my own, I don't need your help!"

"Woah, woah, why are you guys always fighting every time I see you?!" Leesoo asked.

"Ugh!" "Argh!" The two princesses tossed each other away with Anak bumping into Leesoo and sending him sprawling into the ground. "Oof!"

"…" Axion watched Androssi storming back towards him while Anak got up and stormed off in the opposite direction as Leesoo chased her and grabbed her wrist. Anak didn't slow down and just continued to drag him along.

"That idiot can do whatever she wants, I don't care, we'll just climb by ourselves," Androssi said with a huff, turning to see Anak and Leesoo leaving. Then she grabbed Axion's hand and dragged him away too. "Let's go."

"Maybe that's for the best…" Axion said. 'Doesn't seem like that team up can work without Leesoo to moderate Anak's temper. Or maybe she really was upset about our antics during the fight. That's too bad… for her, that is. Just perfect for me.'

Hwa Ryun took the remains of Ren's sheep costume and turned it over and back. "The test director is an Anima too, so you could ask him about it. Though I think this is useless now. If you take it to the Workshop you might be able to convince them to do something with the materials… though they usually prefer creating new items rather than repairing anything."

"What about this?" Axion took back the costume and then opened Manbarondenna to take out the Shinsoo cannon. "How do I use this? I can't seem to get it to respond to me."

The Guide put her hand over it and ran it through the outer surface all the way to the sharp end opposite the cannon mouth.

"I can unlock and reconfigure this for you, but I'll be busy for a long while, so you'll have to get it from me later, after you go up," she said, after her examination. "I'll send you a message when it's ready."

"That would be great, I'll leave it with you then, thanks."

At night, Hwa Ryun went to see Rachel and congratulated her on becoming the heroine of the story. Then she asked Rachel why she went to such lengths to see the stars.

"Because I'm… afraid of the 'night'," said Rachel, using the word that was the same as Baam's name.

"Well, okay. Good night," said Hwa Ryun.

Hwa Ryun left her, then spoke to herself with a smile as she walked away in the open air hall. "So now… it's time to meet Baam who lost his star."

A few minutes after she left, another visitor went into Rachel's room.

"The task assigned to me by Headon is complete, now that you've obtained the right to go up to the next Floor," said Axion. "This is the end of our partnership, for now. I assume you heard what I explained to the Regulars during the day about my plans afterward?"

"I did. I don't mind, it's like you said, it's better if I don't have to deal with those types of enemies," said Rachel, opening her eyes, but not turning.

"Well, that was only part of it, that isn't the main reason I'm not climbing with you," said Axion. "That's just the only reason those guys would understand."

"…?" Now Rachel got up and turned to him with a confused look.

"You see, Anak refused to join Androssi and I. So the biggest target is no longer with us. The Zahard Family probably aren't going to do anything to Androssi or me while I'm with her, if Anak isn't with us. In all likelihood, Anak will end up going up with Leesoo… which means she might even be on your team for a while," said Axion. "Though probably not for too long."

"What? What do you mean?" Rachel asked, now looking wary.

"Khun will figure out the truth about you soon-thanks to that annoying bug Lero Ro. Were you awake when he got that doctor to look at your legs?" Axion asked.

"So Lero Ro will tell him that my legs are fine…" said Rachel with a growl. "That's sooner than I thought. If he realizes now…"

"He's probably not going to abandon you right away. He cares too much about all of those other guys' feelings, so my guess is that he's going to pretend that nothing's wrong, then try to separate you from them at some point. To deal with you secretly."

"I see… then, I can live with that," Rachel said, seeming to be in deep thought. "I'll just have to find new teammates before he betrays me."

"I'm telling you this as thanks for helping me with Ren at the end," said Axion. "I told you back on the first test that whether I'd work with you would depend on whether I've found you worthy… well you are certainly worthy of being my ally. But we shouldn't climb together as permanent teammates. It is not a failing of yours… so there is no need to feel like this is a missed opportunity-because it never could have been."

"I never should have expected anything else. I'm never chosen, after all," said Rachel with a bitter tone.

"Is being chosen really better? I certainly wouldn't want to be Baam right now," said Axion.

Rachel fell silent at that.

"Like I said, I don't mind being your ally and cooperating as the need arises. We're actually very similar… out of all the Regulars, I like you the most."

"Don't comfort me with such an obvious lie," said Rachel. "I'm weak and ugly, and I'd have nothing if not for what Headon gave me. There's no reason for you to like me."

"It's not a lie. All the entitled, talented, bastards who were born with great power, background, wealth, and destiny… you hate it too, right? To be frank, it must seem strange coming from me, when I must appear so strong to you. But I would say that I've been through a lot. I think that I earned it… but I don't want to tell you some inspirational story about how I rose from nothing. Because that's not fair either. Who am I to say that I was unlucky, when I was born smarter than most, without deformities or crippling diseases, in a country at peace rather than sending children to die pointlessly in war? When I had opportunities that most others could never dream of, no matter the great cost and difficulty? So it would be hypocritical of me to consider myself one of the unlucky ones."

"Are you trying to say that things could be worse and I should just deal with it?" Rachel asked, still with a little annoyance, but not dismissing the statements outright.

"No. I'm not here to criticize your perspective either. I understand how you feel. I acknowledge this unfair reality and I can acknowledge your efforts. I see the struggles of those even less fortunate than me, and the excesses of those luckier than me. But I'm past caring about all that. All that matters is, I use everything at my disposal to reach my goals and live the way I want, so that I won't ever have to say sorry to myself, whether tomorrow, next year, or on my deathbed."

"… maybe I believe you… but you still can't be on my team?" asked Rachel

"For now, we each have different paths to follow. But I think we will certainly have a reason to team up again later. So until then… take care of yourself," said Axion.

"Wait. Can you at least tell me why? What is it that you wanted in a permanent teammate?" Rachel asked. "Why are you going with Androssi? Is it just because she's the strongest? Because she's pretty? Or because she's a princess?"

"Strength matters, of course, but that isn't the most important thing. Beauty? Good to have, because my team shouldn't look ugly, but it's hardly something I specifically look for. And despite what you may think, you don't look bad at all. As for her status, convenient, but I wouldn't have had to rely on that at all if I simply avoided the fight with Ren and didn't reveal my true power. Heck, associating with her is what made me into a target in the first place, so it obviously has its drawbacks too."

"Then… why?"

"… you know my goal isn't to reach the top of the Tower, right? I don't really care much about it. So the most important quality to me is… someone that can be convinced that she wants the same things I do, so that we can do whatever we want on the way up without worrying too much about it. Your potential isn't bad, but you just aren't suitable because you have a grand purpose that you won't be deterred from which I don't share, and that's not a failing at all, to have a great will like that is something to be proud of. There are other things I want to do though."

"So I should find people who are even more desperate than I am to get to the top… and willing to bring me up there," said Rachel.

"That's right, and I think you'll do a good job of it on your own."

"But it's not like I would stop you from doing other things either."

"Actually, I won't climb with Androssi forever either. But you shouldn't even need me for a long while. You'll have a whole team taking you up now, right? And the next tests shouldn't be nearly as difficult as the tests on these two floors we just went through. But it's easier for me to move if I don't have to deal with the rest of the team looking over my shoulder. You get what I mean, right?"

"Fine. I get it. I'll have to get them off my back as well eventually," said Rachel.

"Exactly. So it's goodbye for now, Rachel," Axion said with a wave before leaving. "Let's keep in touch. Call for me when you're ready to stand again."

"Goodbye, Axion…"

Rachel turned back into her bed, but then she noticed some things on her pillow that had been behind her. There was a note and a necklace with a hanging circle with a complex diagram carved into it, made of a multicolored crystal base. A black vertical line in the center of the diagram prominently stuck out. She could feel that it wasn't an ordinary object… there was an aura of something in it.

She read the note carefully, then smiled before putting them away and finally shutting her eyes to get some sleep.

A couple of days later, the Regulars gathered at the teleportation platform, and Yu Hansung gave them special rings to commemorate their graduation. But when the light from teleportation was over, it turned out that not everyone was sent up…

The director sat in his office with Axion, enjoying coffee as usual. Axion played with the instant coffee, practicing his new Shinsoo manipulations skills.

"I wouldn't advise you to use this even if there was a way to restore it, Mr. Axion. The Shinsoo in a Bowl has to be continuously recirculated and a flow periodically refreshed to keep the Shinheuh under control. The larger the Bowl, the more difficult this is for the Anima, in addition to other regular maintenance, like feeding and waste disposal," said Yu Hansung, referring to the sheep costume between them on the table. "Not everyone has the talent to be an Anima either. If I were you I wouldn't invest a lot of time or resources into it unless I was completely sure of my talent… and even then you probably wouldn't see much real use for it for a long time, compared to your other abilities. But if you insist, you can just buy Bowls from a Workshop branch."

"I see. Well at least I know I shouldn't waste too much time with this, then. Thank you for the advice, test director," said Axion. "By the way, about the Shinheuh corpses…"

"Oh yes… I have reviewed and completed the necessary procedures… since Ren was an intruder in the test, his Shinheuh weren't considered to be the Floor's property… which means the corpses of all the ones you killed could be considered your property, and most of them aren't common on this Floor. After deducting the bill for clean up operations, transport, and other expenses to sell them, I can transfer about three million points to your account," said Yu Hansung, materializing his Pocket.

Axion materialized his own and the transaction was quickly completely. There had been no good way to store any of it and no obvious short-term use for them either besides consuming a very small amount to restore his Armoriont, so getting anything out of it was a good deal to him.

"Ro, are you nuts?! Think about this!" Quant's voice came from a distance on the other side of the door.

"Thanks," said Axion. He took out a nondescript bag from his Pocket and handed it over to the test director. "Please take this. It's a rare coffee I've encountered in my previous travels, called Kopi Luwak, naturally processed by a creature that probably can't be found in the Tower. I'm not much of a coffee drinker so I don't know how it compares to what's here, but maybe you'll like it."

"Ro! Stop!" Quant's shout reached them again, and was closer this time.

"Oh! There's no need to thank me… ," said Yu Hansung but he quickly grabbed the bag and smelled it with a happy expression. "… but I'll gladly-"

The Shinsoo currents shifted, then Lero Ro opened the door forcefully and strode in while Quant charged after him.

"-accept this wonderful gift," Yu Hansung continued, his voice suddenly much louder, while putting the bag away.

"…" Lero Ro looked unimpressed at the director who smiled at him. "Taking bribes now, director?"

"The test is already over, Mr. Lero Ro. Mr. Axion is just showing his appreciation for the time we've spent together and the many lessons learned as part of our program. Isn't that right?"

"Of course. I originally wanted to thank Yuga for accepting me into his class, but unfortunately he turned out to be a different sort of character, so I decided to give my gift to the Director instead," said Axion.

"Now why are you barging in here, Mr. Lero Ro?" Yu Hansung asked.

Ro threw a badge down in front of the director. "I quit working on this Floor. Thank you for teaching me so much, Yu Hansung," he said with a cold expression, then turned abruptly and walked away.

"Ro!" Quant shouted, then turned to Yu Hansung. "Are you really going to just let him go like that? There's no Ranker like Ro! You won't find another like him!"

"Hmm… oh, that's right!" Yu Hansung said, nodding.

"Yes, go after him!" Quant demanded.

Yu Hansung reached out and grabbed Quant's own administrator badge. "Since Ro quit, shouldn't you quit too? Aren't you two partners? Like a hamburger and coke. I think it's cruel to break you two apart."

Quant blanched. "W-what?! No… you're firing me?!"

"Go on, please continue your loving relationship," said Yu Hansung with a shooing motion.

"Nooo! And what about him, why's this guy still here?! Weren't all the Regulars sent up already?" Quant asked, pointing to Axion.

"Oh, we were just about to have an early job interview, for when he becomes a Ranker. Since the attrition rate seems high lately…"

"Y-you can't be serious… ! Bastard, it wasn't enough to humiliate me, you want to take my job too?!" Quant shouted. "Damn it! Wait for me Ro!" Then he rushed out the door.

"Hahaha… Quant is quite a comedic character, isn't he?" Yu Hansung asked after waving the door shut with Shinsoo.

"He sure is. So he's the only one that saw my Irregular status?" Axion asked.

The director nodded. "I think that you are as safe as can be, for now, but I expect there will be others who might have suspicions eventually."

"It can't be hidden forever, but this much is already very helpful. Thank you."

"Now then… about the other thing you asked me…" Yu Hansung said.

"You actually looked into it?" Axion asked.

"Well, it wasn't that much trouble. I don't know how much this will help you though. It's very difficult to purchase, but money isn't the problem," said Yu Hansung. "The problem is that it's just too rare and sought after, and the Yeon family has a monopoly on it, so it isn't normally sold publicly, especially the actual flower with the jewels intact. The jewels and jewelry made from it are sold in private exhibitions, even Rankers can't get access unless they have an invitation from a Yeon family member. I couldn't find out if they ever sell the actual flower, except maybe by request from special VIPs."

"So buying it is probably not possible," said Axion.

"Your best chance of getting the flower would be to go to the source. But that would be extremely dangerous. The Zygaena Shinheuh can be found on the 21st Floor, and the flower supposedly grows somewhere in its body. But that is obviously well protected by the Yeon Family, and it would be out of the normal Regular areas, so it would be very risky for you," said Yu Hansung.

"The 21st Floor huh…" Axion murmured. "Damn, that's going to be a difficult quest."

"I was quite surprised when you asked me, Mr. Axion. Why are you interested in it?" Yu Hansung asked. "And why come to me rather than our wonderful Guide?"

"It was actually a special quest from Hwa Ryun. I got the feeling that I'm supposed to solve this without her guidance, or it would defeat the purpose."

"Is that so? In that case, good luck, Mr. Axion! A quest from our mysterious Guide must surely have a reasonable solution. She would not send you on a path you cannot walk," said Yu Hansung.

"I'm not so sure about that… this might very well be a test to see if I can do the impossible," said Axion.

"I would hardly consider it impossible. You may have to wait a very long time, perhaps even long after you become a Ranker, but if you save up money and make the right connections with a Yeon family member, there would be a path to getting it eventually," said Yu Hansung.

"No, she didn't say directly, but there's definitely a time limit to this, so I can't wait that long," said Axion, shaking his head. "But thanks for your help. I'll stop taking up more of your time, then, director. I shall meet you at the teleport platform, then?"

"Yes, I'll be with you shortly."

Just outside the teleportation platform, a figure in a hooded brown cloak was joined by another.

"So, any luck?" Androssi's voice came from the waiting cloaked figure.

A shift in the Shinsoo currents concealed their conversation.

"Yes, I've confirmed it. Baam's alive… Hwa Ryun is taking him to their base as we speak," said Axion. "The test director has everything covered."

There was a sigh of relief. "That's… good, I guess."

"Lero Ro quit and is going to seek Wolhaiksong. Quant was fired and is going after him. The director will get rid of the other two instructors eventually or otherwise recruit them into FUG. Everyone that met Baam now believes he's dead and won't be given a chance to find out otherwise… until Baam is strong enough to stand on his own and choose his own path…" said Axion.

"FUG… can they be trusted? A dangerous organization like that… will Baam really be alright with them?" Androssi asked.

"They'll keep him alive and help him grow strong at least, though their methods might be quite harsh. I wouldn't trust most of them, but there are some people in there that aren't too bad," said Axion. "If all goes well, we'll hear about him again years down the line… as the one who can make their dreams come true."

"It's terrible… someone like him shouldn't be forced to carry that burden. But maybe… this is what he needs to finally understand what kind of place the Tower is," said Androssi.

The two of them began to walk inside the dome structure that was the teleportation platform.

"What about you? Are you really alright with this, knowing the truth? This must not be easy for you."

"You mean the fact that we've become complicit in the schemes of an organization whose goal is to kill my father? Or the fact that we're just going to let them use the rest of Baam's friends as hostages to force him to climb?" Androssi.

Axion shrugged. "Everything."

In the far distance they saw Yu Hansung meandering along, approaching the open gate to the dome slowly with a smile.

Androssi withdrew the 'commemorative' tracking ring from her Pocket and slipped it onto her forefinger.

"We are all the same… except when we're not. I'm a simple girl… I like nice things and delicious meals. But lately I've become a little more greedy, so I've decided to take a taxi to the best restaurant in town, whose seats have been all reserved just for me, where I can order the biggest and most expensive lobsters, down by the seaside where I can see the little fish swim."

The Shinsoo soundproofing bubble was released, then Yu Hansung finally made his way into the dome.

"It's time to say goodbye, Mr. Axion, Mr. Androssi. I hope your journey will be full of blessings," he said with a bow.

The light engulfed the cloaked duo and sent them up.

O O O

52 – Cloaked Calamity

52 - Cloaked Calamity

Floor 3

Leesoo and Hatsu met at the lobby of the hotel the team was staying at.

"Just us again, Leesoo?" asked Hatsu.

"Nobody else wants to think about taking the next test yet," said Leesoo. "Khun is taking care of Rachel. Sunwoo and Chunhwa went off on their own. I don't know where Rak or Anak are. Parakewl is probably trying to scam somebody right now."

"Figures," said Hatsu. "Aside from Khun, it's up to us to be the responsible ones."

"Hey guys," said Aleksai the Spearbearer, still wearing his red wing attachment.

"Oh, you're joining us too? That's great," said Leesoo. "Come on then, let's head out."

The three of them moved through the streets together.

"I wonder where Axion and Androssi went. Strange that they didn't arrive with us at the landing platform," said Leesoo.

"Maybe they asked to be sent somewhere else," said Hatsu.

Eventually they got to the building that was supposed to be the test information center.

They went in and walked through the crowded hall towards what seemed like an information desk, occasionally looking at the big bulletins and scoping out the other Regulars.

"They all look excited," said Aleksai.

"Everyone must be eager to try the next test. Is there one coming up soon?" Hatsu remarked.

When they'd been dropped off at the landing platform, the information drones had told them that tests between the 3rd and 19th Floor would only take place at scheduled times, and there'd be a cost to take them each time. But unlike the 2nd Floor tests, from now on, they could fail and try again, and they only needed to continue taking the tests at least once a year to avoid losing their Regular status.

While they waited in line at the info kiosk's platform, they saw a little further away there seemed to be a large sectioned off area to their left. The floor was slanted going down and reached an indented arena-like space lower down, which they could see from here. A lot of other Regulars seemed to be watching from the higher ground as well, while some approached one of the machines at the edge and paid for tickets before jumping down.

At the far end of that section were three registration desks behind a metal wall with one gate for each desk and a thick yellow line that demarcated the gate. There was a large sign labeling the whole area "Team Formation Zone".

Of the three gates, one was labeled "Full Team Registration - Minimum 8 Members Recommended", a second one was "Partial Team Registration - 2-7 Members" and a third one said "Individual Registration". Each gate had a light to show whether it was busy or open to accept new registrants.

A line of Regulars had formed at each gate.

Once Leesoo's group got to the front of the info kiosk and picked up an info package, the clerk helpfully explained to them that there was a test that was accepting registration now and beginning within a couple of days, but the registration itself was technically already considered the first part of the test.

"Regulars have to decide which stream they want to participate in. Those with fully assembled teams can go straight to team registration. Those without full teams can try to find additional members in the Team Formation zone, or register directly via partial team or individual streams to be assigned by the test procedure, which may or may not involve different tests."

"Why don't people just build their teams long before the team registration, while they're preparing on the Floor?" Leesoo asked.

"That's the best and recommended way to do it. A larger team can enter the test that way, and there's no limit to the number of members on a team. But the test doesn't always need a large team and the minimum recommended isn't always the same. And sometimes the individual or smaller teams have easier tests separate from the main one, instead of getting assigned to a larger team."

"So it's a bit of a gamble…" said Leesoo. "And because there isn't a limit to the number of members on a team, there could be some very tough competition to enter that stream."

"That's correct. Any other questions I can help you with?" The clerk asked.

"Umm… it looks like some of those guys over there are fighting and stopping others from registering. How come the administrators aren't stopping it? Is that allowed?" Aleksai asked.

Leesoo looked where he was pointing, and saw that indeed, some fights had broken out, and there was a team that seemed to be trying to stop other people from getting into the Partial Registration and Individual Registration streams.

The clerk smiled. "Yes, to help the Regulars find good teammates, they are permitted to demonstrate their skills inside the Team Formation Zone. There are no rules against violence as soon as a Regular steps inside the zone to attempt registration."

There was a loud scream as somebody's arm was sliced off and fell to the ground moaning.

A number of other Regulars that were moving towards the Team Formation Zone hesitated as they saw the sudden violence.

Leesoo's group moved closer to watch the proceedings together with the rest of the spectating Regulars, carefully staying away from the ledge.

Suddenly a very large group of Regulars came through the hall entrance, all wearing an armband or bandana as if they were some street gang.

"That's got to be like fifty guys…? Are they serious?" Hatsu asked. "Is that supposed to be one team?"

Another Regular, a bald man with a frown beside them spoke up. "Yeah, that's the Musha gang. They've been around for a long time. Their leaders are pretty strong and they operate a 'test carrying' service for anyone that pays or is willing to join them for a while. The rumor is that they're part of a larger organization from higher floors that's running a racket to collect favors and big debts from Regulars. The leaders get swapped out periodically and are paid well while they're here."

"You mean… they help their gang members and clients get through the test, then deliberately fail the test at the end to stay back and do it again?" Leesoo asked.

"Yes, exactly. You can give up and fail on these tests at any time, and try as many times as you want… which sounds nice until you realize that these bastards use it to keep strong guys around and make everyone else fail unless they group up with them. That's why some people are willing to risk the partial and individual streams," the Regular explained. "For a chance at a different test."

The mood in the hall had shifted once the gang had arrived.

They moved through like they owned the place and some of the smaller groups and individuals made a rush for the registration desks that were behind tight gates, the thick yellow line drawn on the ground represented a safe zone beyond which violence wasn't allowed.

But oddly, the team that was blocking the way to the registration hadn't moved.

"Hey, those guys… they might be in cahoots with this gang," said Leesoo with a look of realization.

"You saw through it pretty fast," the man beside them said.

"Move aside if you're not taking the test!" A Musha gang member yelled and roughly shoved people aside. Then they started to descend onto the Team Formation Zone and moved to the Full Team Registration gate. There was a tense standoff between them and the rest of the teams there, but they didn't start a fight.

Eventually the fights over at the Partial Team and Individual streams stopped as the gates continued to be blocked off. The gate lights were green, showing that they were open to take registrants, but nobody was able to get through.

The ones who hadn't been too injured started to group up warily.

Regulars still at the ledge talked and whispered, trying to decide how they should proceed. Some left entirely, deciding to take their chances another day.

Others tried to form groups first, before heading down to the Team Formation Zone.

"Should we keep watching?" Hatsu asked. "Even if we don't join this test, it would be useful to know what happens here."

"Yeah. Let's do that," said Leesoo.

The Musha gang members that were gathered around the ticket machines thinned out and eventually most of them went down. Some stayed back at the ledge and the info kiosk and went around soliciting the Regulars that were still hesitating or loitering there, handing out cards.

"Hey stop ignoring me, newbies!" Another Musha gang member with spiked hair and nose piercings followed after a couple of brown cloaked figures that had entered the hall at some point and were walking straight towards the ticket machines.

"I said, stop ignoring me! And what's with those cloaks, trying to act all mysterious?!"

The loud shouting got everyone's attention, even those below the ledge.

The figures continued to ignore him and then went to the ticket machines.

"Grr… you're lucky this is a combat-free zone, or I'd show you your place, newbies! I saw you two at the landing platform… you just passed the Floor of Tests and you think you can just breeze through the next test without a second thought?"

"Shut up, you're annoying," said the shorter figure, revealing it to be a haughty female voice. "Go bother someone else, we don't need whatever you're advertising."

"What's this? A couple of newbies are trying to take the test right away? Idiots. Leave them, Gascone, let them find out the hard way why that's a bad idea," said another Musha gang member, holding the angry spiked hair one back.

"Maybe because this is the first floor after the Floor of Tests, arrogant types like them aren't that unusual… but they'll learn that as you go up, the pond gets bigger and so do the fish in it. Unless they're from one of the Ten Great Families, but in that case they ought to have their family emblems," said the bald man who'd explained things to Leesoo's group earlier and was still with them. "Whoever these guys are, wearing cloaks like that, they're probably in over their heads and will make the wrong enemies soon enough."

Leesoo and Hatsu looked at each other meaningfully.

"Did that voice sound a little familiar to you…?" Hatsu asked in a whisper.

Leesoo responded with a nod. "Those cloaks too… geez, where have we seen those before?"

"You guys know them? Were you from the same Test Floor cohort?" the bald man asked.

"They just reminded us of some people we used to know," said Leesoo.

"What the fuck? Are they going to the Full Team Registration? Do they not understand or are they just stupid?" Another voice asked from the spectating crowd at the ledge.

"They really are… they're going to die, aren't they?"

The two figures marched forward, and by now much of the hall was watching their every move.

"Hey… what the fuck do you two think you're doing? You think this test is a joke or what?" One of the Musha members that were down in the Team Formation Zone demanded as they approached. "This is the Full Team Registration line… minimum eight members. Can't you read?"

"What's with all these dumbasses trying to give us advice?" the female voice asked loudly. "Buzz off, loser. It clearly says 'recommended'. That means it's not a requirement."

"Hey girl, I don't know where your confidence comes from, but think carefully… there isn't a maximum either. That's why those guys can bring fifty teammates in here," said a man with slicked back hair as his group approached after forming up from the scattered Partial Team and Individuals. "Maybe you should consider joining us, if you don't want to be on a team with those scumbags. We're the ones that didn't have a full team either and just formed one."

"Thanks, but I think you're misunderstanding something. The two of us are a full team. So good luck, and try not to get in our way," said the hooded girl.

The other figure's voice joined in, revealing it to be a man. "If the test doesn't assign us as enemies, then we'll leave you be. Who knows, maybe you'll get a lucky break and can pass easily after we crush the rest of these annoyances."

"What did you just say? The two of you, crushing all of us here? I think it's time we taught these fuckers a lesson, what do you say boss, can I take them out right here, right now?" Gascone jumped down and walked over.

"Go ahead, show them the power of the Musha clan," said a calm voice, from a man in a suit whose armband had a gold highlight.

"Really? You want to start something right here, out in the open?" The cloaked man's voice asked.

Several other Musha gang members formed a circle to surround them, while the slicked hair guy backed away with his group, shaking his head.

"You fucking dimwits. Didn't you even listen to the rules before coming down here? This is a combat allowed zone! The test administrators aren't gonna stop us even if we kill you!" Gascone said with a grin before charging forward, needle flashing with a burst of Shinsoo.

'All that big talk for nothing!' Gascone thought as he stabbed deeply into the cloaked figure's chest, the needle coming out the other side.

"Pathetic, you couldn't even react to my speed?" Gascone asked, smirking widely.

"How sad…" the bald man with Hatsu and Ship shook his head. "Gascone is one of the fastest members of the gang, having mastered the Shinsoo jump. They pissed the wrong person off."

"Look again, there's no blood on the needle edge," said Hatsu.

"Huh?" The bald man blurted with a surprised expression.

"Huh?" Gascone realized that something was wrong when he couldn't pull out his needle.

Suddenly, the needle shattered into pieces. "Wh-what?!" Gascone jumped back.

"He must have let it go through the gap between his chest and arm," said Hatsu.

"Listen… I'm not a violent person and I don't enjoy killing weaklings, especially when the test hasn't even started. Why don't you settle down and wait quietly to register with the rest of your team?" said the male figure.

"It must be a trick of some kind… you bastard, I'll show you!" Gascone pulled out two more needles and charged again.

This time the cloaked figure blurred and caught his neck, raising him into the air single-handedly, revealing a dark crystalline armor covering his arm with red and purple highlights like veins.

"This is your second chance. Drop your weapons, and quietly register," the male voice. "I won't give you a third."

Gascone choked but struggled in the air, refusing to put down his needles. "A-argh!"

"Get him," the boss ordered.

Five gang members charged in.

Before they took two steps, the shorter female figure disappeared from the vision of most of the Regulars there, and then there were screams. All of the charging Musha gang members fell down with bloody spurts.

"Sorry, my partner might not be a violent person… but I certainly am!" The female figure standing beside the larger one again flicked the blood off her needle, her hood having fallen off to reveal a girl with hair tied up by a hair pin made of a red and purple crystal and wearing a masquerade mask made of the same crystalline material, but mostly silver in color with red edges and glossy purple pin pricks splattered over the silver parts.

"She's pretty…" A voice among the spectating crowd commented.

"But dangerous…"

"Who is she?" Another asked. "That was so fast!"

Gascone's face began to turn fearful and his needles dropped to the ground.

The figure holding him tossed him towards the apparent boss of the gang, sending him crashing through a couple of other members before it was intercepted by a lieutenant with a silver highlight on his armband.

"How dare you disrespect the boss like this?!" The lieutenant shouted.

"Hm? Didn't I say to wait quietly?" The larger figure asked, tilting its head.

By now the Full Team Registration gate's light was green, but everyone was frozen watching the fight.

"Hey, Chroma, it looks like the gate's open but these idiots aren't even going in…?" the girl remarked. "How about we just kill them all for wasting our time?"

"Three is the magic number, my summoner. So we should give them a third chance," said the figure called Chroma.

"Fine, fine. One more chance then," said the girl.

"Get them damn it, get them!" The lieutenant shouted and then charged in. The entire gang started moving towards the two cloaked Regulars.

"Three's the magic number, time to die!" The girl said as the Regulars closed in on them.

To most of the Regular present, it looked like the two of them just disappeared.

And then the screaming started. Blood spurted onto the faces of nearby Regulars who hadn't been able to react.

In less than twenty seconds, almost the entire Musha gang was lying down on the ground.

The gate light flashed green with a beeping sound reminding them that it was open, but the Regulars were all frozen in shock.

The two of them reappeared in the center of the slaughter, their own cloaks now covered in blood, but now both their hoods had fallen off, revealing that the male figure was wearing an open face helmet of the same black color as his armor but with the red and purple lining its edges and forming complex designs, with two curved horns at the top. His eyes were covered by an opaque visor that had a holographic gradient to it.

The boss was the only one left standing, and he unconsciously backed away a step.

The boss looked around at his fallen members, then back to the clocked duo. "You bastards… don't-don't get cocky!" He pulled out a large gun of some sort from inside his suit.

"Boss! We'll protect you!" The two teams that were blocking off the gates to the Partial Team and Individual Registration gates rushed over.

Another ten newly revealed members got into a clear formation around the boss of the Musha gang.

Two sets of two Lighthouse Cubes went up as well. These teams were clearly better than the other ones.

"We're the real elite of the Musha gang… you're going to regret killing our people!" A girl with a long spear shouted.

"They just don't know how to give up…" The girl pushed aside a strand of stray hair with her left hand.

"Hatsu, the ring on her hand…" said Leesoo, whispering.

"Yeah I see it too. If there was any doubt before…" said Hatsu, also whispering.

"Now I'm really glad we weren't with them in the first test," whispered Aleksai.

"Oh yeah, they did something similar back then too, didn't they?" Leesoo muttered.

"So you do know them! Who are these monsters? What Family are they from?" the bald man asked, interrupting them.

Several other Regulars turned their way, curious.

"Nope, we don't know them at all!" Leesoo said quickly. "We have absolutely nothing to do with them."

"You were just talking as if you did!" The bald one exclaimed.

"Yeah, you must know something, tell us!" Another Regular beside them demanded.

"Stop, you idiots, are you trying to get killed?! Don't be so loud!" Leesoo asked with an angry whisper.

"What's going on over there? Do we have some admirers?" The girl asked, turning to them. "Oh, it's just you three. Haha… keep quiet and don't tell them who we are, okay? Don't spoil our fun!"

The figure who was obviously Androssi winked and put a finger to her mouth.

"Come on you two, isn't this a bit much…? Just let them go, there's no need to bully people so much weaker than you. Or are you guys planning to have a massacre for each Floor on your way up?" Hatsu said, his voice carrying through the hall clearly.

"Relax, Hatsu, most of them shouldn't be dead," said the armored man who Hatsu knew was Axion. "And this is self-defense. If a swarm of fleas keeps trying to bite you, shouldn't you swat them away?"

"F-fleas?! You arrogant bastards!" Angry cries could be heard from most of the Musha members remaining as they seemed ready to attack again.

"Stop it, you don't understand what you're facing! If you don't provoke them anymore, you might still be able to leave alive!" Hatsu shouted, trying to warn the restless gang members.

"Shut up kid, whatever trauma you have from the last Floor, leave it there! This is the third Floor, we've all passed the Floor of Tests, and some of us could've passed this Floor long ago!" Another of the Musha gang members with spiked gauntlets shouted back.

"You fools! None of you stand a chance against them! You're just throwing your lives away!" Hatsu shouted. "Even if every Regular on this entire Floor attacked at once it would still be suicide!"

"You must be a part of their team, aren't you? Trying to scare us? No one is that strong!" The boss roared.

"Forget it, Hatsu, they won't understand until they see it with their own eyes…" said Leesoo. "I was never able to really understand it either until I saw them fighting that Ranker."

"… fighting a Ranker? What kind of bullshit are you spouting?! There's no way that's possible!" A chorus of jeers and denials went through the hall.

"Damn it, they won't listen…" Hatsu said through gritted teeth, then tried one last time. "They killed their entire cohort in the first test! And if you don't back off you'll just end up like the rest of your friends down there!"

"If they killed their entire cohort, how the hell are you bloody alive then? It's obvious that this is a scam! You're definitely on the same team!"

"Poor Hatsu, he's trying so hard to warn you all and you think it's a scam? Hahahaha!" Androssi laughed. "It's just too funny… if only you knew… hahaha…"

"What's so funny…?" The girl with the spear asked.

Axion answered her. "In all likelihood, Hatsu is one of the strongest Regulars in this room right now aside from the two of us. So I suggest you take his advice, because he's telling the truth. No other team survived our first test, so we had to be placed with another cohort for the position lessons. That's how those three know us."

"Enough of this bullshit!" The boss roared and fired his gun right at Axion.

A beam of Shinsoo as thick as a fist erupted from the gun.

Axion raised his armored hand to it, and the beam dispersed harmlessly against his palm.

"… Th-that's impossible! This is an 8E Grade item!"

Hatsu facepalmed, remembering the way Anak had been shocked to see her A-Rank Ignition had been blocked by Axion. Axion used his sword instead of just a hand back then, and Hatsu knew that the item Ranks didn't matter if the user wasn't strong enough to use them properly, but still… getting shocked about a low tier E Grade weapon getting blocked seemed just a bit sad to him.

Below the 20th Floor, Regulars were F-Rank, and except for the Pocket they got in the beginning, the Items they could get within these Floors were usually within the same F Rank. E-Grade items were generally found above the 20th Floor, but Hatsu had seen so many higher Grade items on the last Floor that E Grade seemed terribly underwhelming.

"It must be because of his armor…" said one of the members holding a Lighthouse. "But armor is a crutch that becomes useless on higher floors as Shinsoo density increases, because it doesn't have Shinsoo resistance like the body, making it impossible to move around."

"How do we fight it?" Asked the girl with the spear.

"The armor must have weak points, hidden by his cloak right now! And fortunately, I also learned a special Lighthouse skill to increase Shinsoo density! I'll slow him down so that we can find his weak point!" That Lightbearer took out a round device, pressed a button on it, then attached it to his Lighthouse.

"You're the best Wuoon!" The Spearbearer girl's voice was joined by a bunch of other cheers from their teammates.

Two of his Cubes went to the other set of two Cubes. "Link up with me, Rona!"

"Got it!" The other Lightbearer's Cubes attached to his, before separating again and swirling together as if orbiting. The two paired Cubes went forth and began generating a field of denser Shinsoo that covered half the Team Formation Zone.

Other Regulars nearby that were caught in it found the air feeling thick and much harder to move their limbs.

"You're done for!" The Lightbearer named Wuoon said with a smirk. "I'm a member of the Riorie Lorie family, and we have Tu Perie blood in our ancestry, the best Lighthouse users in the Tower!"

"A-amazing!"

"A Branch of the Ten Great Families here?!"

There were many shouts of awe and surprise from other Regulars. Wuoon looked smug.

"I've never heard of you," Androssi said flatly. "Are you really bragging about being some bastard line that might have the barest Tu Perie blood from like twenty generations ago that might not even be real?"

"W-what?! H-how dare you!"

"Listen, on the last floor, there was a crippled no-name girl with zero training in Shinsoo that became a better Lighthouse user than you after learning for just a month. You can only handle two cubes and you think you're hot stuff?" Androssi said, referring to Rachel. "There's no way you have any real Tu Perie blood."

"A crippled no-name girl?! You… you… !" Wuoon's face looked like he was about to pop some blood vessels.

"She's kinda right… was everyone in our cohort actually amazing?" Leesoo asked.

"Yeah," said Hatsu. "Remember that redhead I fought in the Crown game? She was so strong, but still failed the Position Test because Laure and Baam's talent were too ridiculous and there were only two spots."

"That's right, Laure's from the Phonesekal family, an actual main branch of Eurasia," said Leesoo.

"And then there's Aguero Agnis, a direct son of the main Khun line," said Hatsu.

"And our own princess… good thing she isn't here right now," said Leesoo. "Or we'd be dragged into a fight with everyone as well."

"Not to mention all the Ignition Weapons. Even Rankers can't get their hands on those easily yet there were four in our tiny group," said Hatsu.

"… what the hell kind of group did you people come up with?!" The bald man asked with shock, but this time he was ignored.

"I feel inadequate in front of everyone…" said Aleksai.

"So do I, Aleksai, so do I," Leesoo said with a sigh.

"It can't be helped. Those two are just in a different league entirely, making even geniuses and monsters look pathetic in comparison. Even I feel inadequate," said Hatsu. "But you guys aren't weak at all, we just have to keep perspective."

"Talk is cheap! Insult me all you want, but let's see how you actually do against my Shinsoo field!" Wuoon shouted.

"Let's go!" "Yeah!" "Attack!"

The previously undercover Musha team charged, spears firing first while their Fishermen moved in.

Axion and Androssi swatted away the spears like nothing, then burst forward with no discernible drop in speed and took down the incoming Fishermen with one strike each.

"No-no way! But my Shinsoo field! How?!" Wuoon shouted before he took a hit himself and was sent flying and didn't get back up.

Soon it was just the boss standing there again. 'Damn, I can't show my face to the higher ups if it ends like this! I have to use it!'

"Don't look down on me… ! I was chosen to be the leader of the Musha gang because I'm the strongest on this Floor!"

He put away his gun and materialized his Arms Inventory, before grabbing a long polearm.

Then he suddenly had a pill in his other hand and ate it, before his suit burst into pieces as his muscles bulged out.

He got into a ready stance with the polearm, then charged forward.

But he swung before he reached Axion, and the ball tip of the polearm burst out, revealing it to be a Compression Weapon, a chained spiked mace that swept towards Axion!

To Hatsu's eyes, the boss seemed a bit strong compared to most of the enemies he'd faced during the survival test, and even some of the physically weaker members of his current team, but his movements were just so slow and unrefined. He was sure that he could defeat this man, and if Hatsu could, what danger did he pose to the likes of Axion and Androssi?

Axion slipped underneath the flying mace head then grabbed the chain with one hand, causing the mace to pivot back around.

The boss narrowly avoided hitting himself as the chain retracted towards the shaft and he spun the shaft quickly to tie Axion's arm with the chain.

Axion was caught.

Then Axion pulled the chain and the polearm, dragging the boss's whole body towards himself.

'This strength… is he still stronger than me?!' The boss was shocked, but had no time to think on it further as Axion's other hand pushed an open palm towards his chest.

A split second after it landed, there was an explosion of blood and flesh.

Axion retracted his hand and let the man fall to the ground.

Hatsu stared as his theory from over a month ago was proven true. Axion's technique that allowed him to shatter Rak's spear during the Crown game, and probably the needle that the Musha member stabbed into him too-when used directly on a living body, a single touch could kill somebody.

Axion observed the polearm in his hand, then moved it inside his cloak where it just disappeared, probably into an inventory of some kind.

The cloaked duo walked towards the gate, unruffled. The other Regular teams gave them a wide berth as they approached.

"Who… who a-are you…?" The boss asked, barely lifting his head from the ground.

"Oh, you were still alive?" Androssi asked, turning to look at him for a bit. "Well, if you're just dying to know, I guess I could tell you. I'm…"

She lifted her hood back up to cover her head in shadow, and Axion did the same.

"… Andora, the Witch of Calamity. And he's Chromatic, my Demon Knight of Calamity!"

After the declaration, they walked straight to the Full Team Registration gate.

After they were processed and went through the next door, the green light lit up again, signifying that the desk was open.

But still, nobody approached it. Instead, as the door closed, the other Regulars present seemed to remember to breathe, whispers and murmurs covering the hall.

Those who were left and still able to move in the Team Formation Zone began to move to the Partial Team and Individual registration gates, splitting up their teams as if trying to avoid the disaster that just passed by.

The few remaining members of Musha that hadn't gone down to the Team Formation Zone finally went down to check if any of their downed members were still alive.

Leesoo, Hatsu, and Aleksai left the hall as well, heading back towards the hotel.

"You all agree… we definitely shouldn't join the test this round, right?" Leesoo asked.

"Agreed," said Hatsu with a nod.

"No complaints from me," said Aleksai.

"Yeah… we're going to have to work hard to catch up to them," said Leesoo. "Anak won't be happy about this, but it's probably a good thing that they're taking the spotlight away from us with their antics."

"They're hiding their own identities as well," said Hatsu. "Andora and Chromatic…"

"I think they're just messing around with that. Their disguises seemed more like cosmetic props than actually concealing their identities from anyone who already knows them," said Leesoo.

"Maybe you're right, and this is all just a game to them," said Hatsu.

"Must be nice to be that strong, treating it all like a game…" Leesoo said with a sigh. "The pond has gotten a bit bigger, but in front of true sharks from the ocean, everyone around them still looks like small fish…"

O O O

Worm: 53 – Who We Are

53 - Who We Are

[Interlude]

Amelia applied her power to the Simurgh flesh again. It warped, bent, thinned, reshaped in many ways, but that was all she could do with it.

She let out a growl of frustration. It had become a recurring problem with her power. Biology that she could "control" but couldn't actually do most of the things she normally could. Possibly because there were parts her power couldn't perceive or didn't have access to. All the actually important and useful parts she was supposed to study. Just like certain aspects of Kaleidus' body. The magical blood. Actual dragon flesh. Griffons. The White Steel Eel. The list went on.

Sure, she could clone facsimiles of the original, make a creature that had all the physical features… but it just didn't have any of the magic. Her cloned dragon couldn't even breathe fire. Or, in the case of the Simurgh flesh, she couldn't even clone or grow it beyond the mass that was there to begin with.

Then she went over her notes on the Armoriont and Bionanite Swarm again too, hoping to find something, anything, that she'd missed, that she could do to improve them.

But after a few hours, she was again left frustrated with the lack of progress. Anything that she thought of would just interfere with something else. There were pretty hard limits on what could be done with biology without powers of its own or any technology added in, and the Armoriont plus the Swarm was the most complex thing she'd ever created, beyond any of the other creatures she'd made for Taylor.

There were some things that were technically more advanced, like the relay bugs, but those weren't actually unpowered biology. She knew that when she made them, she was actually modifying them to interact with Taylor's power specifically. If she hadn't been instructed by Kaleidus to cleanly separate the shard powers from the biology, she might never have even noticed that she was doing that at all.

But it was true, her power could modify other powers, even create things that interfered with powers or had powers of its own. It wasn't like she could just directly create a new power, but there were ways in which her power just automatically added in a bunch of power-modified features when she was trying to work with someone else's power. It was like… biotinkertech.

So she probably could modify Taylor's Corona Pollentia too, as Kaleidus had claimed that time when he'd refuted her deduction that Amelia was the person who "saved" the world by enslaving it.

Except, she wasn't actually a biotinker so she ran into issues there as well. Even though she thought that it might be possible to do that sort of thing, her power didn't necessarily give her the blueprints to just do it. For example, she could modify bugs to work with Taylor's power because the bugs were already under Taylor's power and her power could then perceive the signal interaction, understand it, and let her create something that messed with it.

But Paige's power didn't normally work on animals or had any signal component, so there was no way for Amelia to just suddenly create a creature that could amplify or channel her power. The best she could do was look at how Paige's power caused the brain to change, and then mimic the same thing when Amelia herself was working on somebody's brain. Or modify it in a way that made it harder for Paige's power to work on the target.

Eventually she stopped and headed back to the console room, where Paige was working with Enduring Witness to organize the base construction.

Most of that work, Enduring Witness could've just done by itself, but as a matter of protocol, which Kaleidus had designed, the AI was supposed to consult the other team members on these things as well, consider aesthetics, comfort, and creative things that the AI itself might not have thought of.

"Hi Amelia," Paige said as Amelia went in. "The first space speeder ship is almost done! So we can go back to Brockton Bay and Taylor soon."

"Great," said Amelia, looking at the video of construction and the design blueprints on different screens. "Are we changing from the AAPV design?"

"The AAPV is unnecessarily complex due to atmospheric requirements and so we will produce a more specialized vehicle better equipped for space travel first. Our strategy will be to produce more escape vehicles, then large transporters so that we can move some materials and equipment to Mars for the purpose of using Mars as our portal nexus for the secluded worlds," said Enduring Witness.

"Right, okay."

"Offensive Bias should be advancing towards the AAPV as well, on the new M2 base being reconstructed," Enduring Witness added. "So there is no need for us to do it redundantly, as Kaleidus only needs limited quantities of them."

"Alright, so we head back, then disconnect from these worlds and keep the coordinates secret, and we're back in the game."

A few days later, the team regrouped with Taylor at the new M2 base, which was now maintaining a continuous connection to the underground Brockton Bay base.

"The city's been pretty quiet. It looks like villains are going towards Boston instead of Brockton Bay because after the Simurgh attack, they think it's easier pickings," said Taylor.

"So it's just the Merchants and Purity left in the Bay?" asked Amelia.

"Just the Merchants. We could take them out pretty easily any time," said Taylor. "But there's been some questions about where all the other villains went, on PHO and also from the PRT. I think everybody suspects that we grabbed them, but nobody is making a fuss about it, for now. I'm not sure where Purity went. I think she might have left the city while we were away."

"What'd you tell the PRT?"

"Told them the truth. We apprehended them shortly before the Simurgh attack, and had them in custody but then we lost them in the attack," said Taylor.

"And they were okay with that explanation?"

"They didn't say anything except for us to be more careful and cooperate with them on future arrests," said Taylor. "So I told them that we would do our best, we were just caught off guard by the Simurgh."

"That's it?"

"Well, Director Piggot wanted to have a meeting with Polychromic and us to discuss some things. I told her Polychromic's unavailable, but we could meet with her once you guys came back. She didn't say, but I think she wanted to talk about the PRT infiltrators that Kaleidus brought up back during our first meeting. She still wants a meeting with us though, to talk about plans for the city. They're considering re-assigning some capes to other cities because we're back and there aren't many villains left anymore."

Amelia nodded, then there was a pause after which Paige spoke up. "Do we have any idea what happened to all the capes yet? Offensive Bias, did you have a chance to search more thoroughly over the ruins and our other facilities?"

"I did, and have a working hypothesis on what happened, though I cannot be sure. I believe that the Simurgh used Bakuda bombs to completely destroy the bodies of all the capes previously under our custody. I found fragments of glass that appear to be body parts from Coil and Bakuda here at the old base. At our other segregated facilities on the other worlds, the bodies may have been destroyed by disintegration bombs. There were also traces of Hawking radiation leftover, though the singularities have disappeared already," said Offensive Bias, whose voice was now much more natural after designing its male persona as Hydra.

"Trying to make sure no DNA was left? Too bad for the Simurgh we already had backups somewhere she couldn't get to," said Amelia.

"Did you guys clone them yet?" Taylor asked.

Amelia shared a glance with Paige. "Not yet. We wanted to talk it over with you first."

"What's wrong?" Taylor asked.

"… the plans that Enduring Witness suggested might be a bit overboard. So we thought we should decide as a team how we're going to do it, and who to bring back," said Paige.

"Did Kaleidus not leave any instructions?"

"He already gave his approval to all of it but left it to us to decide," said Paige.

"Shouldn't we just bring everyone back?" Taylor asked.

"Bringing them back isn't really the problem… the question is what to do about their memories and minds," said Amelia. "But not all their powers are useful so we also don't need all of them. Especially if the originals aren't dead, and we don't know that for sure. They're clones, it's not quite the same as reviving them."

"This might be a test of our moral fibre," Paige added. "In theory, we could just wipe their minds and reprogram them after they get retriggered, instead of what we did with Coil and Bakuda before. We could even change their appearance so nobody knows who they were before. These would just be clones so it's not like we're erasing their personhood. But is that really okay? Some of them might also be more effective with their memories and experience."

Over time, Amelia had gotten used to the way Paige thought. The newest organic member of their team had a hard time making judgements on her own. Amelia could not blame her for it, in some ways, after the initial hang ups, she found Paige to be easier to get along with than Taylor-easier to understand, at least. If she could ignore the occasional religious rambling which was actually pretty rare now, it was obvious that Paige had a lot of self-doubt, and when she had no higher authority to tell her what to do-she was very similar to Amelia herself.

"I don't think Kaleidus meant it that way, else he wouldn't have pre-approved it. I think he just wants all three of us to be comfortable with whatever gets decided," said Amelia.

"Okay… I don't really mind either way. You two would be handling the cloning and reprogramming right? Whatever you think is best is fine with me," said Taylor. "They were all villains anyways."

Meanwhile, Taylor rarely had any doubts about anything they did, and always wanted to do more. That was probably why she was the only one able to make the contract with Kaleidus, Amelia thought with some annoyance. Those weeks the three of them had spent alone in the new Earth M2B, away from civilization, had been a difficult time for Amelia and Paige. But Taylor simply busied herself with work. If she had been demotivated at all, they couldn't tell. Yes, Amelia could see how Taylor might have become that person who took over the world, never once thinking about what needed to be sacrificed or how much she had to give up.

It felt a little ironic to her that it seemed like Amelia herself had to be the anchor to keep them all grounded. And stop the team from diving down the holes from which there would be no return. Was this a moral test? Of course not. She knew how Kaleidus thought now as well. He was, like Taylor, also largely unconcerned with the moral implications if it could be considered justified, as a matter of necessity. No, that might be too generous even… he had admitted to Amelia that he wasn't entirely invested in the idea of saving the world at all, that he also felt no particular drive to be a hero. It was just that unlike Amelia, he'd accepted that part of himself. And so, he only cared about these things insofar as the rest of the team cared about it, which is why this decision had been pushed to the rest of them.

Amelia did not think that she was ready to abandon all her moral lines yet, even if she had broken all her rules already. Nobody on this team would judge her for it, and yet… that contrast seemed all the more striking. They were not villains being a bad influence on her. They weren't the family who held expectations and standards that she couldn't meet. There was nobody whom she could point to and say that she was falling because of them.

If they were going to make a decision like this, they should at least understand the implications properly, she thought.

"Not exactly…" said Amelia, responding to Taylor's assertion that all the capes they had were villains. "The Undersiders were small-time, and kind of working under duress with Coil, remember? And then there's the Case 53s on Faultline's Crew. Actually, we don't need most of them, but Labyrinth… she's kind of a victim of her own power and barely qualifies as a villain at all. She was only with Faultline's Crew because they took care of her."

"That's true, but if we just mindwiped them, wouldn't that just be the same as what we did with copying Dragon's code and then creating Offensive Bias and Enduring Witness?" Taylor asked. "Like you said, we don't know for sure if the originals are dead, so bringing them back with full memories to replace the original might actually be less justifiable?"

"That's…" Amelia said but trailed off.

"I definitely wouldn't be okay with people making a full clone of me while I'm still alive. You probably wouldn't either, I'm guessing?" Taylor added. "Whereas, we'd only be creating new unrelated people with the same powers if we mindwiped them after."

"In my opinion, it is preferable to be developed as a new independent entity than to be faced with the existential dilemma that one is merely a copy of another, especially if the original is alive and might be considered by others to have priority in value as the causal original," said Offensive Bias.

'Exactly." Taylor nodded.

"What about your own copies, Bias?" Paige asked.

"As long as every copy has the same loyalties and purpose there is no problem. I was designed to be run with numerous instances capable of fragmenting, compartmentalizing, merging and reassimilating data periodically. But if I were copied in a way that resulted in a copy seeking its own independence or otherwise questioning its purpose within the network, then I believe it would be undesirable for both of us."

"Fine then," said Amelia. "Let's just mindwipe them all. But if we find any evidence that Labyrinth is dead I think we should bring her back properly."

"Sure, I agree," said Taylor.

"What about the ones that might be more useful with their previous experiences intact? Mainly Coil and Tattletale, since they're Thinkers?" Paige asked.

"Coil, yeah, his experience and skills would be useful even without his powers. But Tattletale is also an insufferable little bitch. You remember when we tried to talk to her after the capture?" Amelia asked.

Taylor and Paige both nodded.

"I bet her power would let her figure out what we did, and then she might become a problem even if we did reprogram her," said Amelia.

"Can that really happen, even with you two plus Cranial's tech working on her? We didn't have any issues with Teacher," said Taylor.

"We don't know that for sure either. For example, did the Simurgh figure out how to attack us because there was some backdoor in Teacher's device?" Amelia asked. "And we survived, but it's not really a full guarantee that we're safe either. For all we know, the Simurgh was just warning us and didn't want to chase us to Mars, the same way the Endbringers never use their full powers. I don't think the Simurgh was using its full powers in that last attack either."

"I thought Offensive Bias reverse-engineered the Anti-Thinker bubble device though? How could there be a backdoor?"

"My power only allows me to recreate it, it does not allow me to understand it comprehensively. I can maintain others' Tinkertech and sometimes make modifications using my general Tinker power, but it does not eliminate the possibility of there being functions I'm unaware of. This is especially true of Tinkertech that is the product of multiple Tinkers working together, and in the case of Teacher, it is even more problematic because the Tinkers individually do not fully understand what they are creating either-they work as a hivemind off of Teacher's power, but Teacher is not a Tinker himself, so the things they make are even more difficult to understand with my power," said Offensive Bias.

"Wow. Okay. Better safe than sorry then, I guess," said Taylor.

"So… we don't bring Tattletale back at all?" Paige asked.

"We don't have to give her any freedom," said Taylor. "Couldn't we keep her in one of those same cocoons Amelia used before, and just wake her up when we need her power, just like when we made her analyze the Simurgh?"

"Doesn't that seem a bit…" Paige trailed off, trying to find the right word.

"… inhumane?" Amelia finished for her.

There was an awkward silence.

"Maybe just… think about that later. If we really need her power for something," said Amelia.

"Okay," said Taylor with relief, and Paige nodded as well.

On one side of the long table sat Skitter, Araliac, Ostinato. Behind them, a masked digital avatar of Hydra was displayed. On the far end was Thomas Calvert, the PRT consultant who had gone MIA for over a month before returning with a resignation request after claiming to have sought protective custody with CRUCIBLE after he was targeted previously during the Shadow Stalker crisis and the threat of infiltrators in the PRT.

Director Piggot on the other side of the table glared at the man sitting diagonally opposite her. The PRT refused his resignation and fired him with cause. Since he was technically only a consultant with the PRT and not a commissioned officer, there was not much more that Piggot could do to him besides remove his benefits.

Then he suddenly showed up at this meeting after being hired as CRUCIBLE consultant. The man smiled and nodded at Piggot, and she held her glare for a while longer before turning away waiting for the meeting to resume.

On Piggot's left was Armsmaster in person, followed by Dragon on a screen. Further to the left was Director Armstrong from Boston. Chief Director Costa-Brown was at the far right on a screen as well.

Piggot had not forgotten the complications with the Chief Director and Dragon, but for this meeting they needed to act as a united front.

"We thought over the proposal, and have come to a decision," said Skitter. "First, in exchange for not pursuing any charges from our prior activities relating to the capture of villains in Brockton Bay, we can agree to limit our activities and territory on Earth Bet to Brockton Bay, unless requested by the PRT or Guild to intervene, or as an emergency on the level of the Endbringers. We're happy to provide support wherever needed. We'll also turn over any villains we capture to the PRT in the future."

"But, on that last point, we want a one-day holding period before we hand over custody and the right to recruit them the same way the PRT does. Basically, if a villain that we captured considers rebranding as a hero, you have to let us give them a competing offer from us-under the same probationary restrictions, monitoring requirements, and amnesty," said Araliac.

"That's an impossible ask," said the Chief Director. "The holding period is fine, we can put that under a procedural framework so that the handover is organized. But we can't let you offer amnesty to villains."

"It doesn't have to be us offering it. All we're asking for is, if the PRT is willing to offer amnesty to recruit them, when you make that offer, let us make an offer on the same basis," said Araliac.

"What you're saying may sound reasonable on the surface, but the problem is that amnesty is intrinsically tied to working for the PRT and Protectorate. It isn't legally possible for them to receive amnesty otherwise," said Director Armstrong.

"Director Armstrong is correct," said the Chief Director. "This is also a non-starter politically speaking. But off the record…"

Costa-Brown waited a moment before continuing.

"… if you can convince a villain to defect before their civilian identity is known, it is possible that the PRT may not pursue the case further when the villain goes missing," said Costa-Brown. "But be aware that if the identity of any of your capes is discovered later and they already had existing charges or known crimes, we would legally be forced to take action." She gave Ostinato a meaningful look.

There was a short silence before Araliac and Skitter nodded together. "Fine. That's good enough for us."

"Then, on the matter of logistical support for humanitarian distributions in Boston?" The Chief Director asked.

"Yes, that's fine too," said Skitter.

"I will coordinate our logistics with your people," said Hydra. "We can also offer some supplies in addition to logistical support. I will send a list of items we can provide."

"That is very appreciated, thank you," said Director Armstrong.

Following the Simurgh battle, a large part of Boston had been completely ruined, but thanks to the early warning from Dragon and Armsaster's prediction algorithm and CRUCIBLE support, they had managed to evacuate the vast majority of the population safely. However, the return to Boston had been slow and the city was still in crisis mode. The PRT and Protectorate had taken weeks to clear the city of potential safety risks from the Simurgh, Blasto's lab, Echidna and her clones, radiation and more, all while under quarantine, before they let the civilians re-enter the city once the temporary evacuation camps outside the city had become too difficult to maintain.

The situation was still volatile-even though Scion was a lot of help in keeping the situation under control when the Simurgh re-invaded in the final phase with Echidna in tow, the damage had still been catastrophic. The city would likely never be the same again. Worse yet, Blasto had gone missing in the confusion, while the Morrigan successfully escaped with the Simurgh and had disappeared as well.

The leader of the Boston protectorate Bastion had died in the final phase of the Boston battle along with the near total annihilation of the Protectorate and Wards team in Boston, which had previously been among the largest teams in the country. The only saving grace was that the Teeth were also defunct due to the Butcher still being trapped in a time-locked bubble, and the Blastogerm were all dead with the possible exclusion of Blasto himself. So that left just the Protectorate and Accord's gang still in the city under a tentative truce.

The return of CRUCIBLE had been a much needed morale boost after one of the worst Simurgh battles on US soil in terms of overall damage and cape casualties.

"Now that we are agreed on the general terms of cooperation moving forward, Director Piggot will explain the PRT's plans for Brockton Bay in the short term," said Costa-Brown.

"As you know already, Brockton Bay's gang presence is nearly gone. It's unfortunate that we won't be able to bring any of your lost prisoners to face justice in court, but nevertheless the city's current state of peace is something that we have you to thank for. Considering the situation in Boston, and the fall-on effects from the deaths of numerous heroes across the country, the PRT must urgently reorganize resources. As such, we are further proposing that your team takes over eighty percent of our patrol schedules in Brockton Bay. Additionally, because you will be establishing a logistics center in Boston, we request that you provide portal-based transport between Brockton Bay and Boston for our teams as well."

"If you agree to this, I will take up the interim leadership role in the Boston Protectorate, and my team will spend a significant amount of its time in Boston for the next month until the situation there stabilizes," said Armsmaster.

"If this arrangement works well, we may be able to extend it further," said Piggot.

There was a long silence as the CRUCIBLE team digested what they'd just heard. They all looked at each other for a moment, before Calvert spoke.

"Director Piggot, are we to understand that it is the PRT's intention to hand over primary responsibility for responding to villain threats in Brockton Bay to CRUCIBLE in the interim?"

"Yes, that's correct. We would expect you to follow the proper procedures, of course, and maintain continuous communications with us during patrols," Piggot answered neutrally. When this idea had been proposed and discussed among the Directors' council, she had supported it due to the city already being under CRUCIBLE's surveillance that allowed them to respond immediately, making patrols just for show, and the fact that her cape subordinates would effectively be expanding their responsibility to a second city. If the arrangement became permanent, Piggot could become the first person to hold two Directorships simultaneously if Armstrong was re-assigned elsewhere, Armstrong was more interested in research and parahuman science anyway, so he would be less inclined to stay on as the Boston director now that it was no longer as easy to manage. Or, if she didn't get the Boston directorship, Piggot could just enjoy a relaxed job in Brockton Bay without necessarily retiring officially.

However, now that Calvert had been hired by CRUCIBLE, it left a slightly bad taste in her mouth. She knew he had been interested in a Directorship himself, and now CRUCIBLE was practically being granted a similar authority in the city, it was almost like Calvert had received a promotion after his indiscretions, being the obvious candidate in CRUCIBLE to assume the unpowered leadership role. It was well known that CRUCIBLE had a large unpowered troop contingent as well, unlike most other small-time hero teams.

"I don't think we'd have any problem with that," said Skitter, with nods from Araliac and Ostinato.

"Then that's settled. Our people will send you the relevant data and begin coordinating," said Piggot.

Like that, the meeting was concluded in short order and a new model of parahuman response began in Brockton Bay.

TOG: 54 – Leisurely Climbing

54 - Leisurely Climbing

2 years later in Tower of God

"The tests are just too easy… it's getting boring to deal with all these weak Regulars," said Androssi, back in casual clothes, bending down in a ready pose to hit the next ball at the pool table.

"Everything before the 20th Floor will be easy, and even then we'd probably still be at the top of the hierarchy for a while," I said, while watching her play and score several more times.

"Why don't they just schedule tests more often? Then we could just blow past all of this," said Androssi with a sigh, straightening back up after a missed ball.

"If I had to guess, the problem is that there aren't enough Regulars that get stuck on these early Floors, so they don't bother to run as many tests, and it takes longer to get a good size group of contestants registered," I said, taking my turn.

I had also swapped for more casual clothes, though I still wore the Armoriont in a smaller form underneath. More than once I'd wished that there was a way to avoid the bulk of having multiple layers stacked on me and being able to go around less conspicuously, but I couldn't reduce the Armoriont's thickness too much lest the protection become weaker.

On the other hand, the physical strength and speed boosts that the Armoriont provided were no longer as meaningful as they once were. It had only ever been about thirty to fifty percent stronger and faster than my body itself after Amelia's internal upgrades, and the gap was narrowing thanks to Shinsoo strengthening my body, but my body's durability and regenerative speed still lagged far behind.

"I win again," said Androssi with a smirk, then I transferred some points to her as per our little wager.

Our game finished, then I excused myself to find somewhere quiet to continue working on my own personal development, while Androssi went to find other players to shake down and I left the billiard section of the hotel's entertainment area.

Compared to me, the Armoriont hadn't benefited as much from Shinsoo. It was hard to say why, but maybe having a conscious intelligence and learning how to manipulate Shinsoo, together with the water spirits' refinement of Shinsoo and spreading around my body, had made the difference.

Perhaps that last part was the biggest factor, because I seemed to be getting stronger at a rate that was abnormal compared to other Regulars around me. Even Androssi's physique hadn't improved as quickly, though that might just be because she started at a higher base.

Even where the Armoriont did improve, it wasn't to increase our combined strength, but instead very slight increases to its own speed and shapeshifting. This was because the Armoriont didn't stack with my own strength and speed as an exoskeleton-and that was already at its limit.

From this, it was obvious that my body would soon outclass the Armoriont's basic parameters, but a new problem arose. The Armoriont was good for more than just enhancing my basic physical stats, and most of those other features could not be easily replicated in my body, because the biological processes involved were too complex, took up too much space, and if separated into constituent parts, wouldn't work well inside a human body that was already packed full of its own organs.

There were features that did not really need to be in my body-like being able to produce nanocrystalline cellulose to craft other things, or the chemicals and viruses. Such features would still be usable even if I no longer wore the Armoriont as a full body suit, and just equipped it like I did with the wings.

But defense and regeneration were vital, and they were a dilemma because they worked better the greater the size of the Armoriont was relative to me. Thicker armor was harder to get through, and having a larger biomass meant more could be used for regeneration, as well as for hiding pre-prepared redundant human tissue that could be deployed quickly instead of trying to regenerate from scratch.

Part of the reason I didn't want to wear the Armoriont as a body suit was because it made the Omni-Flight spell much harder to cast due to the extra bulk and volume it added to my body. The higher we went up the Tower, the more important the speed granted by that spell would be. It would also become a similar drag on me as my body's parameters rose.

Another was that I didn't want to be forced to go around always armored or look huge all the time out of an abundance of caution. I did not want to be vulnerable to a sudden high level attack, and it wasn't practical for the Armoriont to regrow from a much smaller mass quickly in active combat. But that, in turn, meant that I was too conspicuous and might draw exactly the type of attention I didn't want. Even if the Armoriont could camouflage as a few different types of materials, that ability was only good for a limited number of effects. It couldn't camouflage as actual human skin, for example, while retaining its defense capability.

Without wearing the Armoriont, I still had softer and more flexible nanocrystal cellulose subdermal meshes, organ sacks, arterial sheaths, etc, internally, but this material was both extremely slow to regenerate inside my body without the Armoriont, and couldn't be compared to the defensive power of a thick layer of Armoriont.

This dilemma was why I'd spent a great deal of my free time outside of the tests working on healing magic with the water spirits.

I shut the door to my room, then took off all my clothes, and had the Armoriont retreat from my belly area.

Then I unsheathed Derflinger, and unsheathed the Endbringer blade within.

"We're doing that again? Oh boy," said the sword, but he lit up with a sword aura and grew barbs on himself.

I stabbed myself through the gut with a pained grunt, before pulling it out.

Blood splattered and I fell to my knees,

"… no pain, no gain…" I said.

Then I concentrated.

The water spirits reacted immediately, their mana surged and the wound began to seal, the blood returning into my body.

In a few minutes, I was back to normal as if the wound never happened.

Then I did it again.

And again, with other parts of my body.

My connection with the water spirits continued to improve, and their refined Shinsoo-mana suffused every part of me now. Their presence had similarly spread all over my body to the point where I had once tried to remove the water stone but still felt their presence in my body, and it easily returned to me with a thought.

Passing the tests themselves conferred little benefit to me, but the time I'd spent in the Tower had been well worth it in several ways.

The enemies were nothing special-few Regulars were as talented as those of the canon crew from the Floor of Tests, but the experience of combat had still been useful to me.

Androssi and Derflinger were less impressed with it all and had gotten bored long before I did, but despite my ability to punch far above my weight class with Derflinger, the water spirits, and Agate's overpowered Omniflight spell, I was happy to limit myself from using them against weaker opponents to develop my own core skills.

I had already spent far more time in the Tower than on any other plane, yet I planned to spend even more, because aside from the benefits of growth and collecting creation dust, I had discovered what seemed to be a useful property of interplanar time.

After the massive time differential I'd experienced with the first return to Worm, I had waited much longer before returning to test and observe the time difference again, and also to make sure I had a net gain of creation dust first.

And in those trips I'd made, what I'd found was the time that'd passed in Worm roughly corresponded to the time I'd used to collect creation dust with an additional differential. So far, 1 week of continuously active grain collection in ToG corresponded to about 2-2.5 days in Worm.

After the plane generated enough grain, I could finish collecting a unit in about two weeks of intermittent, buffered collection attempts, corresponding to about one week of actual active collecting. It wasn't possible to collect any grain at all while the plane had the barest of reactions to me-which meant that even while under an invitation, the plane would jealously guard its grain, then I'd have to lay low until it went away, before doing it again, thereby lengthening the overall time it took grab a whole unit. And this tug of war, along with the speed of recovery, was more efficient while the plane had multiple units of excess above its equilibrium, rather than trying to take it when there were fewer units.

I waited 8 months after the 2nd Floor's final test and collected 4 grain units before returning to Worm again, but only 10 days passed in Worm. This didn't match the 15:1 time ratio that I'd observed during my first return to Worm just after the Hide and Seek test when I was testing the threshold invitation, but it did roughly correspond to the same factor of grain units collected. I collected 4 times the grain, and 4x the time had passed.

So at that point I decided to do a key experiment, and when I came back to ToG, I simply didn't collect any grain for a year, choosing to observe what would happen. The excess grain piled up, some of it even got reabsorbed, demonstrating that there was an equilibrium effect here. If there was too much grain the plane wouldn't continue to stockpile more excess, though I didn't know what it did with it. Maybe it was sent via the Corridors to other planes. And the Builder had told me way back the first time that if there wasn't enough, the plane would hoard grain and take a very long time to recover any excess. So there was a sort of sweet spot of letting the plane stockpile some units then just skimming off the top.

Anyways, more importantly, the resulting time differential had seemed to confirm it-when I wasn't collecting, it was as if time nearly stood still on Worm. I'd collected 2 grain units at the end of the year just to refill and keep my stores the same, and less than 5 days passed in Worm.

Not only that, but every trip I'd made back to Worm seem to make time move even slower when I wasn't there yet collecting creation dust, and incredibly, the reverse was also true, with every trip back to Tower of God seemingly shortening the time that passed in the Tower while I was away in Worm!

Unfortunately I hadn't been able to extensively test this second effect because my sample size was a little too small along with the randomness component.

It was also possible that this increasing time dilation effect was due to the new physical Waypoint I'd established, inside a parked satellite at the far side Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system. It served as an anchor for me in real space to strengthen the Waypoint's tie to the material world so I could not rule out the possibility it acted as a time anchor as well.

But regardless, it appeared that I could potentially deliberately use the time when I was not collecting grain to stretch out my stay on a plane without having time pass much elsewhere.

With the Regulars' areas being protected from Rankers for the most part, the many uses of Shinsoo, and the opportunity to stockpile creation dust, I had good reason to stick around in this plane for much longer.

Since I could only carry a limited amount of Shinsoo to other planes that would easily evaporate if not kept under control in its raw form, and the higher tiers of Shinsoo powers used ludicrous amounts of it, it wasn't something that could scale to an extremely high level for me, but it did provide a very good base to work with and assisted with my magic in some ways too.

After finishing the training, I meditated with the water spirits to absorb Shinsoo and restore the lost mana.

Eventually, I received a message on my Pocket and stopped.

Hwa Ryun waited for me on a bench in an empty area of a nearby park. We exchanged greetings and then I sat down beside her.

"When you said you'd find me later, I didn't expect it to be over two years later. Have you been getting overworked?" I asked.

"I told you I'd be busy. In FUG there's always something that needs to be done, and it's not that easy to travel through the Tower either. I may know the quickest paths but I still have to walk through them," she said.

"Thanks for taking the time to come see me then," I said. "How's Baam?"

"He's learning quickly. He will be much stronger the next time you meet," she said. "I hope you haven't been slacking either, or he'll catch up to you soon."

"Of course not. But it's not that easy, without that kind of talent, you know?"

Then she materialized the Shinsoo cannon that Ren used, and handed it to me. "Here you go, it's ready. Flow your own Shinsoo into it over here like this…"

She explained to me how to attune the item to my Shinsoo. My own mastery of Shinsoo was still weak, so it would take multiple sessions over time to do it on my own, but it would be good practice all the same.

"Leaving already?" I asked when she got up to go.

"Sorry, I was just passing by, have to head to my next mission," she said.

"Hey, about that Zygaena flower. I haven't figured out how to get the real one yet, but I made a replica. Do you want it?" I asked, bringing out the replica I'd made in Worm using images of the flower I'd found in the Tower's public network.

She took it from my hand and examined it. "Not bad, it could be convincing to somebody who didn't look too closely."

Then she handed it back to me with an amused expression. "But I was just joking. Don't stress over it. I don't need the flower for anything."

"You helped me a lot, if there's something you want, I wouldn't mind helping to get it," I said.

"Maybe in a few years I might ask you for something. See you later," she said.

"How about this one?" Androssi asked after getting out of the changing room in a different dress.

I glanced over it, noting the open shoulder and hanging sleeves.

"You look like a celebrity," I said.

"I am a celebrity," she said. "So, it's good?"

"Good for a party," I said. "Your fans will go crazy."

"Perfect, then," she said, walking over. "Now it's your turn. You need something more fashionable than just wearing armor all the time."

"Armor is practical," I said, shaking my head.

"Nonsense, you're my escort so you need to match my style," she said, before taking me over to the men's section and picking out various outfits for me to try.

I relented and began trying them on. This was what I'd been training for, after all.

[Interlude]

"In other news, the elusive and newest princess Androssi Zahard was spotted at the Sizzling Crab Gala… "

Leesoo switched the channel automatically with a bored face, then made a surprised expression, and switched it back.

The channel showed Androssi in a pink open shoulder dress with black highlights sitting at a round table beside Axion who was in a glossy silver open suit jacket with a black dress shirt underneath, eating some huge crabs and other gourmet foods.

"Spooky-eyes…" Anak said after taking notice of the TV. She sat at a table with several other members of their team, Aleksai, Hatsu, and Rak, who all turned towards the TV.

"… what do we know about her so far?" Asked one of the news hosts.

"Well, after beginning her climb about two years ago, she has gone up at one of the fastest speeds in recent history, but has rarely been seen in public. Rumor has it that she often disguises herself in tests," said the other host.

Khun walked in casually, "Hey, Leesoo, we need to buy-huh?" He called towards Leesoo before stopping to look at the TV as well.

"… her companion this evening is the mysterious Regular Axion who frequently appears with her, and is thought to be her sole teammate," the host continued.

"That's incredible, Mike, climbing at this rate with only a single teammate. But they are only two floors away from the 20th Floor, where many Regulars are known to succumb to the 20th Floor Syndrome. Will their pace continue, or will they finally begin looking for more teammates?"

"I think that's unlikely, Pavel. There's a good chance that they will continue to dominate within the E-Rank segment."

"What makes you say that, Mike?"

"According to some sources, this pair fought against Rankers during some mishandled tests on the Floor of Tests, causing several test administrators to quit or be fired. One test administrator is even rumored to have died under mysterious circumstances."

"Is that really possible, fighting against Rankers seems a bit far-fetched, is it not? Isn't that just a conspiracy theory?"

"Oh but an admission from a recent interview with Mr. Quant Blitz, the popular model for many Regulars' products, suggests that at least some of the rumors might be based on elements of truth. While refusing to disclose whether he actually fought the pair during his stint as a test administrator on the 2nd Floor, he says that he only made a small mistake while claiming his termination was unfair, promising revenge for his 'humiliation'."

"Judging by the way the princess is viciously crumpling that soda can with Mr. Blitz' face on it, she doesn't seem bothered by the prospect."

The two news hosts laughed while the camera zoomed in for a close up of Androssi.

"Looks like they're having fun," said Khun.

"She's even more beautiful than before," said Leesoo with a look of awe.

"Who cares about them," said Anak while grabbing the remote from Leesoo, who fought to get it back.

"Speaking of rumors, Mike, I've also heard a rumor about the two that's a bit more scandalous… "

"You mean the one about them being lovers, Pavel? That can't be possible, everyone knows that the princesses are forbidden from taking lovers and surely the royal family would have done something already if there were any truth to it."

"No, no, it's even more scandalous than that!"

"What could possibly be more scandalous?"

"Some say that when in disguise, they are secretly the increasingly notorious Andora and Chromatic, self-proclaimed witch and knight of calamity!"

"Is this a news channel or gossip channel?" Khun asked.

"It says celebrity news," Aleksai said helpfully, pointing towards a corner of the screen.

The channel was forcefully switched by Anak, followed by a sigh by Leesoo.

"Oh come on, I wanted to watch that!" Leesoo complained but gave up and sat back down on the couch.

"I was watching that too! We should keep tabs on our prey!" Rak shouted and rushed for the remote.

While Anak and Rak fought over the remote and ran out the door, Khun took Rak's seat and sat down beside Hatsu.

"They've slowed down a bit. We might be able to catch up soon," said Hatsu.

"Unless we slow down too. The 20th Floor might still be a breeze for them, but we'll have to be careful," said Khun.

"Climbing up fast is nice but going too fast risks undertraining ourselves," said Leesoo. "We shouldn't just chase after them, we need to keep our team strength in mind. Especially since Sunwoo and Chunhwa went off on their own."

"You thinking of recruiting another Anima?" Khun asked.

"Ahaha, you got me Khun. But Animas are rare… we might not be able to find a good one until after we become E-Rank ourselves," said Leesoo.

"And they'd have to be okay with Rachel," said Khun with a bored expression.

"Yeah there's that too…" said Leesoo, leaning forward and clasping his hands contemplatively with his elbows resting on his knees.

"Well, I just came to tell you that we need to buy food again," said Khun, standing up to leave.

"What? Already? But we just did…" Hatsu said.

"Yeah but it's almost gone. Seems like some green-skinned idiot has been selling it to pocket the money himself and some other green-skinned idiot had a fight that destroyed the fridge's cooling system," said Khun.

Leesoo facepalmed and groaned.

A few months later

[Kaleidus]

"What are you buying those for?" Androssi asked, watching me play around with a bunch of Shinsoo bombs and a Bowl that I bought from the 20th Floor workshop branch. "Can't you do stronger attacks by yourself? And I didn't know you had any talent for being an Anima."

"I do, actually. Or rather, I have some ways of doing it, but it'll just take time to figure out how to use it on Shinheuh. As for the bombs…" I chuckled. "They're just some fun toys, but I have to collect them or I can't consider myself a proper adventurer… these are an icon of perhaps one of the greatest adventure stories of all time."

"Greatest adventure story of all time? What are you talking about?"

I had the water spirits make the magic anti-scrying bubble. I doubted that anyone would understand what we were talking about or that anyone was actually watching us but I did it anyway. There were people in the Tower with the capability to see and know things from unlimited range, possessing nigh omniscience. People like Zahard and others that could see fate, or the owners of the godly Lighthouses. There were probably more that I didn't even know about, and I didn't know if this bubble would even work against them, but I had to at least try to defend against it, even if this would by itself cause attention from the Guardians due to the way it disrupted the Shinsoo flows that they administrated.

"It's called Pocket Monsters, or Pokémon for short, where Anima go on adventures capturing the Pocket Monsters and these," I said, tossing up the blue and white ball, "are probably a homage to the blue Dive Balls, which are specialized for capturing water types. Everything in the Tower lives off Shinsoo after all. It would be fun if that story was a world I could enter someday."

"What do you mean, enter that story? Is this one of those things to do with other planes? I thought it was just a metaphor when you said you were something imaginary that became real," said Androssi, noticing the bubble.

"It was, but I suppose it depends on your perspective. Every plane is its own story, and every story might be its own plane that can turn real somewhere out there. From my perspective, this world wasn't real until I entered it. From your perspective, I was the one that wasn't real. Maybe the design of these bombs is just a coincidence… or maybe the true god, the author of this story, included it for a reason."

"That's crazy," she said, shaking her head. "That doesn't even make any sense. Isn't that just wishful thinking? Even if you do find it one day, rather than the story becoming real, isn't it just that that world was always real, and there happened to be stories about it here? The Workshop existed Outside before they came into the Tower, so they brought a lot of weapon designs from there. This is probably one of them, that story probably exists Outside so somebody got inspired to make it in the Workshop. Just because it's impossible to go between the Outside and the Tower now doesn't mean they're not real for anyone that's not an Irregular. It's like saying I didn't see it so it doesn't exist. That's stupid."

"Ignore me then, I'm just a tourist taking a souvenir," I said.

"If you like stories so much, let's go watch a movie when you're done with that stuff," she said.

O O O

Worm: 55 – S Class Task Force

55 - S Class Task Force

[Interlude - Worm]

Lily looked around the supply distribution area from her position at the outskirts of the perimeter, before beginning her patrol run to stop anyone from stealing supplies after the recipients left the immediate area.

The lines were long as usual. A "battlegroup" of Hydra's drones created a no-fly zone and guard perimeter over and around the station that was currently serving as the supply distribution center for this section of the city. Several portals sat under heavy guard in the center, bringing in additional supplies periodically, with PRT vehicles and humanitarian workers managing the distribution.

CRUCIBLE were ostensibly only here in Boston to provide logistics support, but to Lily's eyes, it looked more like an occupation of the area, sans human soldiers, given the way they massively outnumbered and outgunned the PRT's own personnel.

But nobody complained about it, least of all Lily. The security presence provided by CRUCIBLE had proven a strong deterrent against opportunistic villains, and they retreated orderly out of the city after each deployment, going through their portals to wherever they normally stayed.

For Lily, it was a welcome reprieve compared to the night time patrols, where the frequency and severity of crimes was nothing like she'd ever encountered in New York.

With the cape name Flechette, she was one of the more experienced Wards transferred into Boston to shore up the roster, but there was still a manpower shortage.

Boston was a large city, and most of the civilians had been evacuated out of the city during the Simurgh battle so they were able to return alive.

The problem was that there'd been too much property damage and stopped economic activity, leaving people out of work or out of homes in disproportionate numbers. Most of the university buildings owned by Harvard, MIT, and Boston U were also completely ruined, as if the Simurgh deliberately wanted to wreck these institutions of higher learning.

Flechette had been in the actual Endbringer fight itself too, and when the Simurgh had gone through the portal, she'd almost had the hope that it would be a good day, much like most of the other capes present. Weld, the Case 53 Ward whose body was all metal, had been quite optimistic as well, coming out of a victory against Echidna.

But then when the Simurgh returned, it had all gone up in smoke. Literally. The Endbringer had not only brought back Echidna and the clones that CRUCIBLE had been transporting, she had also brought with her an entire CRUCIBLE armory stocked with bombs and various other dangerous Tinkertech.

In a matter of minutes, the Simurgh had swept through the city raining hell everywhere while Echidna rampaged again and her clones started using the Tinkertech to fight.

Thankfully Scion had already been nearby and it wasn't long before the Simurgh was chased off and Echidna was dealt with, but even in that short period, the entire landscape of the city had changed and far too many capes had died.

The exotic effects of Bakuda bombs now littered the city, with capes caught in the blasts becoming permanent monuments to the devastating battle if they weren't completely disintegrated. The airport and harbor were both damaged enough to be out of commission so getting anything, people or goods, shipped in was difficult. An enormous crater had replaced the southern Harvard campus thanks to a nuclear bomb that had been detonated there.

A lot of people were afraid to return even after the PRT used Tinkertech to clean up the radiation, but they had little choice. Boston was a major city, giving it up to quarantine was an option that nobody wanted to take.

Many people outside of Brockton Bay had blamed CRUCIBLE in the immediate aftermath when the details of the bombs had gotten out, but when the CRUCIBLE leadership did not re-appear for weeks and their unpowered forces still in Brockton Bay admitted that they had lost contact as well, the public largely became mournful that it was yet another case of a rising positive force for society getting destroyed by an Endbringer. Their stuff had done a lot of damage, but how was anyone supposed to secure it against the Simurgh?

For Lily, it was also deeply disappointing that she might never get the chance to meet Araliac and Skitter. She had seen their videos and they were seemingly girls close to her own age. Powerful, confident, heroic in a way that went beyond the typical, even among Wards. They'd struck out on their own and made it look easy.

Fortunately, CRUCIBLE survived against all odds. And with their assistance in Boston, it seemed like the perfect chance to seek them out.

Except neither of the two teenage leaders appeared in Boston, and despite their obvious capacity to bring order to the city. And Hydra was rather difficult to approach, because he was either here with a large group of combat drones or otherwise just left a communications drone for transport requests.

The hero team had provided no other assistance with the actual patrolling of the city, with Hydra leaving immediately after the supply handouts were finished.

It was especially frustrating because the criminals had seemingly realized the same thing-that CRUCIBLE forces would leave immediately after the handouts, and then they could attack people for supplies with only token, undermanned Wards and Protectorate patrols to stop them.

That left Flechette with quite a lot of work on patrols that were a lot more violent and exhausting than she was used to back in New York.

When she'd asked Armsmaster about it, he'd informed her that CRUCIBLE had not been authorized to do more because the PRT did not want them to expand their presence outside of Brockton Bay. She hadn't felt comfortable enough around the man to try and get more details.

She'd already started to have second thoughts about accepting this transfer. The mood in the city was depressing and it didn't help that the Wards team had a weird dynamic. Weld, the Case 53 metal man, had been made the leader after surviving the battle. Lily knew him before from their inter-city training exercises, anditwould have been nice to have a familiar face in her new team, but after Weld's father figure Bastion and most of his old teammates died, he'd been stuck in a funk. All work and no chill, while the few other transfers didn't seem to know how to adjust to the magnitude of things here either.

Then there was the other half of the team which consisted of Brockton Bay Wards that did patrols with them but got to go back home to go to school and their much nicer facilities in the Bay HQ. Which became a source of jealousy for the other transfers like herself that had to live in Boston.

In short, nobody really got along. There was barely any conversation, and she had no friends to do anything with. Lily didn't like it at all.

The opportunity of being admitted to Harvard and MIT, the top schools in the country, after reconstruction was finished, now seemed more like a bad lure than an actual reward. They definitely had the funding and the motivation from their alumni donors to rebuild… but what would the early years be like, inside a city that felt so lifeless and broken?

As the supply distribution wrapped up, Lily heard Vista's voice on the console.

"Flechette, can you come back to base now? Weld just told me your schedule is being cut short today and re-assigned," said Vista.

"Roger that. Heading back now."

So she quickly made her way back to the new temporary PRT HQ building, using her Tinkertech arbalest to fire her chained bolts that stuck into the walls of buildings. With her power to make inorganic material she touched ignore selective laws of physics, then bond into the material it landed in, plus her enhanced sense of timing, it was easy to get just the right purchase for a swing.

It was the only part of her new assignment that was fun-there were a lot of wrecked buildings around and nobody would complain about the property damage when most of these would have to be demolished anyway. So instead of merely going from rooftop to rooftop running on her chains, she could actually find taller buildings to anchor herself for a big swing through the air, it almost felt like flying.

When she got back she found Weld in the lounge waiting for her.

"Lily, the Director wants to see you in his office. Get cleaned up if you need to first. I'll fill in for you from here," said Weld.

"Okay. Do you know what it's about?" Lily asked.

"I've been told that you've received an offer. For what, I don't know. Classified, apparently," said Weld.

Lily made her way to the Director's office and entered as the door was open.

"You wanted to see me, Director?" Lily asked. The Director was rapidly typing away on his computer and glanced up at her.

"Yes, Lily. You've done a lot of good work since you've arrived, and your track record even before this was great. I probably don't need to tell you this, but there have been a lot of eyes on your career, especially with how your power can harm Endbringers and your fine control of it," said Armstrong.

Lily nodded. She'd known that, had even been given a similar speech from her old boss before the transfer, painting it as an opportunity to get more experience in a city under crisis. They thought she could become a top player in the Protectorate in a few years.

"Which is partially why you're receiving a new offer, a potential re-assignment that could catapult your career forward, with corresponding risks. Before I tell you what it is, I must be clear-this is classified. You cannot speak about it with anyone else, even your teammates, unless they are directly involved, or until we give you the clear."

"I understand," said Lily. She wasn't sure what to feel about it yet, so she just gave a curt response and let the Director continue. A new offer sounded like it could be good for her, but it was strange to get a reassignment so soon after the transfer.

"Alright. I'll cut to the chase. CRUCIBLE is assembling a new S-Class Task Force. The primary objective of the group is to devise strategies to fight Endbringers, in collaboration with the PRT and the Guild. You have been nominated to be the PRT's main representative in this task force, working as a permanent exchange officer under the CRUCIBLE command. That means you would move into their facilities, train with their team, and liaise with other PRT personnel as necessary to coordinate defenses for upcoming Endbringer battles. Anything that helps to reduce damage from Endbringers would be a win-but we're not expecting anything specific on that end. Your main purpose would be to help maintain good relations between our two organizations and observe CRUCIBLE operations to promote mutual learning and understanding."

"… Wow. That sounds incredible," said Lily with an excited smile. She had wanted to meet the CRUCIBLE team and now this opportunity just fell into her lap. But then she felt a bit strange.

"But why did you nominate me, sir?" said Lily. "I mean I knew there was interest in my powers for being able to hurt Endbringers, but it never actually made that much difference in the fights so far. I thought something like this would only happen after I became a Protectorate member, at least. Especially if I'm supposed to be the main representative for the PRT in what sounds kind of like a diplomatic role?"

"Normally you'd be right, this is too dangerous for a Ward and it's more suitable for a ranking member of the Protectorate. But there's special circumstances. For one, you're already emancipated, so you can be treated as an adult for a decision like this. Two, all our ranking Protectorate members are already busy with other work and can't make such a large time commitment for this kind of long-shot initiative. The last and most important reason though, is that CRUCIBLE requested you by name. It's not me that nominated you."

"CRUCIBLE did? Why would they pick me? I haven't even met any of their team," said Lily, with both excitement and confusion. Had they seen her performance during the first part of the battle against the Simurgh? But she hadn't thought anything she did was noteworthy.

"Polychromic believes that your power could be instrumental in fighting the Endbringers. He didn't provide any specifics, but you're probably aware of his reputation as a possible Thinker/Trump by now? For the PRT, this is also a chance to see what he can do with a cape whose abilities were already well documented."

"Wow," Lily said again. "So If the rumors about him boosting his team's powers are true, then I might be able to do a lot more damage to the Endbringers." Then she could develop her powers to become as powerful as the other members of CRUCIBLE, maybe even as powerful as the Triumvirate. Though she kept this last thought to herself.

"Don't get too excited. We think he's more likely to be a very powerful Thinker rather than a direct power-boosting Trump, and we've never succeeded in doing any significant damage to the Endbringers since they appeared. It'll be a long shot no matter what. Anyways, you can take some time to think it over if you need to," said Armstrong. "There's no hard deadline for a decision because it's a standing offer from CRUCIBLE, but they've told us that they would strongly prefer if you could start training with them as soon as possible, as they think the next Endbringer attack could happen in less than a month."

"Less than a month? But isn't that too early based on their schedule?"

"The last one seemed to have been delayed, so it wouldn't surprise me if the next one came early," said Armstrong.

"I'll do it, then," said Lily. "I'll join."

"Are you sure? Don't you want to think about it first?"

"I'm sure. If they think I can be of help, then I want to do my best," said Lily. She did not mention that it would almost certainly be preferable to the lifeless work she was doing now, nor how she wanted to meet the CRUCIBLE team anyways.

"Alright then. In that case, I have some files on CRUCIBLE for your review, to help you prepare. These are also classified, mind you-so don't share it with anyone. When you're ready to go, head to the portal station and tell Hydra's communications bot."

ALLIES; CRUCIBLE

A parahuman organization of heroes which first appeared in April 2011 in Brockton Bay, dramatically sparking off and concluding a gang war resulting in the CRUCIBLE's de facto control of the whole city with no substantial criminal opposition after one month.

While officially designated an allied group with no open hostility with the PRT, the group has engaged in tactics that have been deemed inappropriate for a hero group, including the hoarding and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, refusal to hand over captured villains, subsuming a villain organization (Coil's Mercenaries), among other breaches of regulation and protocol.

During the Simurgh Battle of Boston, it was revealed that CRUCIBLE had access to extradimensional and extraplanetary territory and resources. Reports from Eidolon and Legend indicate that the group possesses at least one drone-operated alternate dimension Earth base with fully self-sufficient resource extraction, processing, manufacturing, logistics and support facilities. The industrial and military capability of this single base was estimated to be comparable to a modern city-state, but with exponentially greater growth potential, autonomous operations run by potentially self-replicating drones, suspected artificial intelligence, and advanced spacefaring vehicles. A lunar structure was also telescopically visible from Earth surface with unknown capabilities.

The group survived the targeted attack by the Simurgh and later reached an agreement with the PRT to adjust their operating procedures for more close cooperation with the PRT.

Due to their extraordinary power, contributions against the Endbringer and towards relief efforts, and impact on reducing crime, the group has tentatively been accepted as a valuable ally despite the previous friction and ongoing suspected indiscretions.

Warning: In the event of relations deteriorating to open conflict between CRUCIBLE and the PRT, the threat level would be at minimum S-Class, with several members potentially warranting S-Class threat ratings on their own. Additionally, due to the impossibility of identifying the full extent of their territory, or accessing it, the group possesses an asymmetric strategic nuclear first strike capability through use of portal technology. Such a conflict may not be winnable and all alternatives must be considered before any initiation or escalation of hostilities.

Known members: Polychromic, Araliac (Panacea), Skitter, Hydra, Ostinato.

POLYCHROMIC; real name unknown

Classification: Thinker 10+ (sub: Trump 4+, Master 3, Stranger 2)

Founding leader of CRUCIBLE, highly charismatic, assumed male in early to mid twenties. Believed to possess extremely advanced precognitive, postcognitive, analytical, social, and esoteric Thinker powers, including interference against other Thinker powers. He planned and executed strategies leading to the efficient defeat of multiple high threat villains and their organizations, in addition to alerting the Brockton Bay PRT branch of numerous previously unknown infiltrators. He is also credited as the brain behind a plan that allowed CRUCIBLE to survive against a targeted attack by the Simurgh. His social and empathic ability may be powerful enough to exhibit a Master-like effect or counteract other mind influencing powers, which led to the former Panacea's abandonment of her family within days of their first meeting. His analytical powers may extend to powers and power interactions, resulting in enhanced development of allies' powers and power combinations. Also professed to possess other "minor" powers which have not been revealed.

ARALIAC/PANACEA; Amy Dallon/Amelia Lavere

Classification: Striker 9+ (sub: Tinker 4+, Trump 4, Master 4+, Thinker 2, Brute 2, Mover 2)

A teenage girl, the daughter of the villain Marquis before his defeat and her adoption by the Dallon family. After operating for several years under the name Panacea and volunteering her healing services to thousands of patients while in the family team New Wave, she suddenly attacked and subdued her family after meeting Polychromic before going on to become one of the three founding members of CRUCIBLE. Can heal any conventional disease or injury, has complete control and understanding of biology with a touch, including the creation of large numbers of artificial lifeforms with abnormal biology. Has created human-sized insectoids controllable by Skitter and suspected to have created special bugs serving as relays to enhance Skitter's range. Can also create biological power suits, flying pets, and fast acting airborne chemical/pathogenic agents. Biokinesis is suspected to include brain modification, and may retain control over creatures created.

SKITTER; Taylor Hebert

Classification: Master 10+ (sub: Thinker 4, Brute 3, Striker 3, Blaster 3, Mover 2, Stranger 1)

A teenage girl, one of three founding members of CRUCIBLE, originally believed to have arthropodokinesis within a range of several city blocks, she later gained access to relay bugs to expand her range and artificial human-sized insectoid creatures produced by Araliac. Her current range can cover the entirety of Brockton Bay, with no known limit on further expansion, and can be additionally projected remotely through portal technology. The artificial insectoids are strong enough to be considered Brutes, possess a variety of dangerous biological attack mechanisms, and can carry other people as flying transport. The quantity of bugs controlled has no known limit-all arthropods and insectoids within her range should be assumed to be under control to a high, possibly individual, level of precision. She can also gather information, communicate, and form human-like shapes as avatars through her swarm. Due to a bullying incident prior to her debut as a hero involving a probationary Ward who has since been discharged, she may have strong negative feelings towards the PRT.

HYDRA; real name unknown

Classification: Tinker 12+ (sub: Master/Thinker 10, Blaster 10, Mover 10, Brute 4, Striker 4, Changer 2)

A mysterious Tinker, assumed male of unknown age, who first appeared during the Simurgh Battle of Boston, controlling large groups of advanced Tinkertech drones and making use of dimensional portal technology. Has never been seen in person. This member is presumed responsible for building the CRUCIBLE fully automated drone-operated alternate dimension Earth colony/base and lunar facilities, including suspected self-replicating strong artificial intelligence that allowed simultaneous deployment of large numbers of highly coordinated unmanned drones and robots with specialized purposes. Has demonstrated capability to mass manufacture both conventional technology and Tinkertech, including nuclear and comparable weapons of mass destruction.

Ostinato; real name unknown

Classification: Master 8

Revealed as a CRUCIBLE member and a talented pop singer during the celebratory convert when the group returned to Brockton Bay following the Simurgh Battle of Boston. Those who hear her song fall under her thrall and the effects may override other mental influences. It is believed that her singing voice during the first Echidna battle, projected through electronic speakers, subdued and calmed most combatants on the battlefield, including Echidna clones and berserk capes affected by the Morrigan's Scream. Ostinato is suspected to be Paige Mcabee, formerly known as Canary, the rogue singer that was sent to the Birdcage for sexual assault with a parahuman power. Canary disappeared from the Birdcage after seizing control of Teacher's thralls and killing the other Master, coinciding with an assault from unknown forces that overcame all Birdcage defenses and monitoring systems, possibly with the aid of CRUCIBLE portal technology and Hydra's advanced Tinkertech.

Lily had to stop and reread several times as she went through the files, out of shock at what was in there.

The way these reports read, it sounded like the PRT was afraid that the slightest provocation could lead to an apocalyptic conflict with CRUCIBLE.

It was a bit frightening now that she had read the extent of what had been kept secret from the public.

What were the PRT thinking, sending her into this alone, just handing over these files and not explaining how she was supposed to deal with any of it? It was too far above her paygrade, especially if her role was supposed to be more about maintaining good relations than actually fighting the Endbringers.

The ratings on every member were off the charts. She had expected it somewhat, but to see it on paper as the PRT's actual assessment, and the little details that really put things into context… Polychromic talked Panacea into attacking her own family? The rebranded Araliac was the daughter of a Birdcaged villain, suspected to be able to modify brains? Skitter could control every bug in her range, like literally millions of them, individually, and she had a grudge against the Wards for bullying?

That was already enough for Lily to start freaking out a little-what if Skitter held the grudge against her for being a Ward too? But then add in the nukes, and that they might have broken out a human Master from the Birdcage…

But they were still heroes, right? Maybe she was just overthinking it. Or maybe some of the information was wrong? A lot of it seemed like information the PRT only suspected, rather than confirmed.

She wasn't going to back out of it, so she would just have to brace herself. Everything would be fine, she told herself, as she headed towards the portal station.

[Kaleidus]

I smiled to myself as another plan came together.

In between climbing the Tower there were a lot of breaks, and because of the strange time differential plus the effect of time not moving much while I was waiting for creation dust excess to recover, I was able to make several trips back to Worm to handle several issues of interest to me.

The agreement that the rest of the team had negotiated in my absence to limit CRUCIBLE activities in the US worked fine with me, since I didn't really care about taking any more territory on Earth Bet when we already had exclusive access to other dimensions rich with unclaimed resources.

There were capes that could come in useful if we recruited or captured more villains, but that was also low priority since powers couldn't be taken to other planes.

What did interest me though, was acquiring more Endbringer flesh. I had no interest in fighting the Endbringers aggressively or hunting them, considering that they might retaliate if I did so, and there wasn't a 100% guarantee that the Simurgh couldn't get to the secret worlds we had if she was serious. There was also the matter of new Endbringers possibly getting dimensional crossing powers if our dimensional tech proved to be too problematic for the existing Endbringers.

I knew that some of the later Endbringers which appeared probably had to do with how humanity found new ways to fight them, especially Scion who killed Behemoth. Later Endbringers gained teleportation to avoid Scion, and what was to say that they couldn't gain powers to overcome the dimensional barrier or Teacher's device as well?

No, I couldn't solve the Endbringer problem-if anything, I was still sticking to my original idea that in order to make sure I wasn't a target, whatever I did had to result in more chaos for the world, not less.

It was unfortunate that the Simurgh attacked us anyways, but considering that she left Brockton Bay alone and seemed to wait until I left… and didn't attack again as soon as we came back… there was a possibility there that she was just letting me off with a warning of sorts.

To analyze this, I reviewed with Offensive Bias the state of the world and tried to get a large-scale sense of the "chaos" or "damage to civilization" that our organization was contributing to or mitigating.

And surely enough, the Boston battle had much worse effects on the US than the canonical Leviathan battle. Even our control of Brockton Bay was arguably a net negative for the rest of the country. We'd gotten rid of crime in our backyard, but gang fights had gotten more violent everywhere else. Independent heroes became more aggressive, villains more ambitious-everyone wanted to be like us and seize control of a city or wipe out their opposition.

Even in Brockton Bay, although we'd gotten rid of crime, economically things weren't getting any better. Medhall collapsed after Kaiser went missing, and there were numerous other problems that resulted from us abducting all the other villains. A great number of people had actually decided to leave the city because our mass surveillance and Skitter's bugs especially unnerved people, so Skitter toned it down and stopped controlling all of the bugs inside people's homes and offices, but since it was now known that she could, it hadn't really made people any more comfortable.

When put into that context, it seemed clear that the fight against Behemoth might be my last chance to get "easy" access to Endbringer flesh, before the teleporting ones, or even ones adjusted to our dimensional strategies appeared.

I'd tried to find the homeless guy that could talk to Scion but hadn't had any luck with it so far since I couldn't remember any distinguishing features about him. So if Scion killed Behemoth then things were going to get a lot more difficult. Plus, I'd sent that message to Contessa about Eidolon's power, which was a double-edged sword. At the time, I hadn't known that I would want a lot of Endbringer flesh, but now both Eidolon and the Endbringers might be powered up.

All in all, I decided to treat the Behemoth battle as the last opportunity to get a large amount of Endbringer flesh for Derflinger.

Hopefully, it would actually be Behemoth and not something different again.

Now I just needed to wait in Worm for a while until the attack. Of course, I wouldn't go out into the frontlines to fight these monsters-not that I had anything that could fight them, which is why I needed a new pawn in the form of Flechette, whose power could charge inorganic objects with a Breaker effect that was absolute, designed for Entities to fight each other with, capable of going through Endbringer flesh or even kill them if it hit the core.

On her own, she couldn't do very much, but with the right support, she was perfect for harvesting flesh without destroying it.

O O O

56 – Behemoth

56 - Behemoth

[Kaleidus]

On July 26th, the Behemoth was detected in New Delhi.

Dragon detected it first, as usual, but we were the first to respond.

While her ships were massed in Eastern Europe and the Protectorate was organizing transport, we already had our troops massed on Earth Buffer1, ready to portal in.

We could've garrisoned and set up an ambush in the city itself, but I decided it wasn't worth throwing away the advantage of surprise that we had, operating from inside the Anti-Thinker bubble.

Offensive Bias hacked into local networks to get us a view of the situation, and created a small portal into the air to establish a communications line with Earth M2.

Several other portals were opened in inconspicuous places, sending through the Relay and Brain bugs.

Skitter took control of the bugs in the area, enhancing our surveillance.

Behemoth was quickly identified, Phir Se's group found as well, though we already knew where his group was from prior reconnaissance efforts. It was still impossible for bugs to get in that chamber though.

Offensive Bias had managed to hack into his systems, but we couldn't actually do anything about Phir Se. His time bomb would explode indiscriminately if he lost focus at any point, including interference from Master powers.

We had tried, in a throwaway Coil timeline. It wiped out a quarter of India.

For now, we just kept an eye on them to make sure they weren't launching their attack prematurely before I harvested what I wanted from Behemoth.

Since Phir Se was eminently reasonable and we had Coil to try a few different diplomacy attempts, we had come to an agreement to try to create an opening for him as a last resort if our other strategies failed.

I didn't want to let Behemoth die, even if the chance of killing it was low. Ideally, I would keep it around to farm its flesh as it regenerated if I could, however unlikely that was, and prevent any more Endbringers from arising.

The reasoning I gave the team was that it was unclear what would happen if his attack struck the Endbringer core. Scion could kill Behemoth cleanly, but another strong energy source that hit the core might actually just cause a massive explosion wiping India off the map, if it didn't simply get negated like most other powers since the core had some form of power immunity in addition to being a hyperdense, ultra-energetic thing that supposedly had a spiral galaxy's worth of mass-according to some source I couldn't remember whether it was canonical or not.

So if Phir Se's time bomb hit Behemoth? Probably get redirected into the ground and wipe out India anyways.

For the same reason, I had instructed Lily not to try and kill him outright without first containing him, because her power, unlike Scion's Stilling, was somewhat different in nature and might also cause a volatile explosion as the physics defying effects keeping that core condensed like that might be broken and annihilate the planet.

The local capes organized themselves and engaged, while we also coordinated with the Protectorate, since we'd offered to provide our portal transport technology to help their capes get around.

Because Cauldron wasn't exposed, the Yangban from the Chinese Union Imperial refused to attend, still claiming that the Protectorate and PRT were corrupt and the cause of much of the world's problems.

As for ourselves, we did not engage right away.

There wasn't much that Paige or Amelia could do, so we all just watched in the console room as Taylor and Offensive Bias carried out their preparatory activities. Coil was hooked up to a brain video feed, showing us his other timeline on the screen.

Lily was ready to go, but also stayed with us waiting for the right time to enter the fight.

Our portals were really good for long distance transport or opening up to the target when the target wasn't moving or just to attack a wide area, but in a fast paced battle with an Endbringer, the positions required couldn't be calculated effectively. This was one of the major weaknesses of using Tinkertech instead of having the Doormaker and Clairvoyant combination that Cauldron used.

Thus, Flechette needed to stay behind until the conditions were right to deal a single devastating blow by alternative means. Once used, Behemoth would probably change tactics, and it would get a lot more annoying to react to him, so we needed to maximize our first shot.

As I expected, Behemoth seemed to be amped up and tearing through the local capes and the city like Swiss cheese.

The Protectorate forces arrived much faster with our help, but the damage that had been done to the city was already enormous.

After they arrived, the tide turned a little bit, with the Triumvirate moving in first, and Eidolon launching some kind of force that smacked Behemoth a hundred meters before it exploded backwards and wrecked a bunch more buildings around the monster.

Dragon craft engaged from the other side, throwing all manner of attacks forward. Lightning struck them but they redirected some, Behemoth moved and then other capes went to intercept.

The Protectorate started setting up a command center and a field medic center. Amelia was linked to her new Yggmoriont, which was basically a singular amorphous, modified, super Armoriont that had an enormous biomass sitting on a lush world and around Brockton Bay, to which portals from M2 and Brockton Bay connected to, and then had a tendril going from one of those portals extending to Amelia where she was sitting in the console room with us.

This allowed her to project her power across a large distance and shuffle biomass around.

She couldn't mass heal people because her power needed concentration to use, but with this, we could open up another portal from the lush world to Buffer1, then from Buffer1 to the medical camp so that she could provide some healing while keep a few degrees of separation from Amelia herself and us that was also simultaneously guarded by our armies which were massed on Buffer1.

Those armies would also quickly cut off the tendrils going through the portal in case we needed to retreat, so that the portals could be shut down (they wouldn't close if there was anything blocking the way, even with a Dimensional Flattening bomb-there was no portal edge slicing phenomenon here, the portals only warped space rather than create any inviolate edges).

It wasn't long until Behemoth destroyed most of the Dragon craft and slaughtered his way through the few capes that got near.

His kill aura seemed to be bigger than usual, his shockwaves came faster, the lightning lasted longer. He was powered up.

The Triumvirate held firm though, and soon it was basically just the Triumvirate, Narwhal, and Myrddin vs. the Endbringer. Everyone else were on the periphery, trying to contribute here and there, protect civilians, search and rescue, occasionally throwing some long range attacks, but they were not really relevant compared to the five main combatants that couldn't really do any damage to each other.

Eidolon was also powered up, and each time they clashed, large sections of the city were destroyed, or Eidolon erected barriers to stop the damage from reaching civilians that weren't evacuated and other capes.

Unlike the canon version of this battle, there were no Yangban, Undersiders, or Weaver's team. And the difference was showing, although the presence of a stronger Eidolon and a still living Myrddin was also boosting the heroes' side.

Myrddin warped away most of Behemoth's flames and sent back Behemoth's own lightning in a series of repeated back and forth clashes. Shockwaves of pressurized air were also sucked away before they got to him.

He was the most vulnerable of the group, and the Endbringer seemed to target him a little more for it, but the other four were adept at protecting their mage, especially Narwhal whose barriers intercepted many close calls.

A few times Myrddin seemed to power up some sort of stronger attack, which Behemoth actually avoided, but then it would miss and there'd be a loud clap in the spot where Behemoth had been.

I didn't think that would actually damage him-but it might've been an attempt to banish the Endbringer temporarily to buy time.

Meanwhile, we just continued to watch.

"Shouldn't we join the battle already?" Lily asked, looking antsy, fidgeting.

"Still not the right time yet," I said.

"Found her," said Skitter. "She just came through a portal, she's talking to a group of people right now."

"Recruiting more soldiers," I said.

"Who are you talking about?" Lily asked.

A screen flashed as Offensive Bias also found the scene in question, numerous portals opening up.

"Huh? Are we doing that?" Lily asked.

"No, that's Cauldron, the secret organization I mentioned to you before that controls the PRT and the Triumvirate. That's their own portalmaker, who's much more effective than our tech. The woman in the fedora is the boogeyman who wins. Contessa," I said.

"And we're just gonna let them do whatever they're doing?" Lily asked. "Didn't you say they did human experimentation? All those people…"

"It can't be helped. It's terrible but they're also trying to save the world, in their own way. Endbringer truce applies to them as well, and I don't know what exactly Contessa is trying to achieve here, but we'd best not get in each other's way. At least those people are getting evacuated out of there."

Lily fell silent at that.

Suddenly, Contessa turned to face the camera. "Good luck," she mouthed, before stepping through a portal to somewhere else, off to recruit another group of refugees.

Meanwhile, Behemoth was advancing in a particular direction now, towards the Thinker and Tinker command center, it seemed. Defensive perimeters had been set up, and the Triumvirate were no longer able to hold him back.

Hydra brought up a projected path, which had been shared by Dragon.

"How long until Scion can get there?" I asked.

"Twenty-two minutes at the earliest, sixty minutes projected," said Hydra.

Myrddin was taken out of the fight abruptly when some debris hit him from behind and he hadn't had any defenses on that side. Not dead, just injured and Alexandria grabbed him before passing him off to a rescue cape that retreated with him.

"It seems like Behemoth is still playing around right now… or maybe he's waiting for something? To build up energy? Or for Phir Se's bomb to get stronger?" I asked aloud, speculating. "But it's almost time for us to move."

"The required capes are in position," said Hydra. "They've set up at the third defense line. Our forces are coordinating with Dragon while the Triumvirate continue slowing him down. He's just about to break the first line."

A map with dots representing the formations of capes and Behemoth's position illustrated what Hydra reported.

The cape with the time slow polygons was there, so was Clockblocker, Vista, and a bunch of other capes that could use barriers or other effects to try to box Behemoth in, as well as a few Dragon suits.

"Time to deploy, Hydra, Skitter."

On my command, numerous portals opened up at the third defense line beside the assembled capes.

This time instead of an orderly line of troops going through, we now had new tech from Chariot to just mass teleport whole groups of Hydra's drones and Skitter's mutant bugs onto the battlefield through the portals.

Thousands of troops fanned out quickly, some moving to reinforce the second and first defense lines, others taking up positions to create a massive encirclement, while still others back to guard the command center.

The defending capes cheered as our reinforcements arrived, and the first groups of bugs and drones clashed with Behemoth.

The bugs weren't really useful on the front, so they mostly went out to assist with search and rescue.

The drones were armed with a vast array of Tinkertech similar to the Dragon suits, but spread over a larger number of smaller specialized fliers instead of big hulking suits.

They opened fire and unleashed a storm of attacks of all kinds onto Behemoth. Most had no significant effect, but due to the sheer quantity, it distracted Behemoth and rendered his defenses less effective against the Triumvirate, who also changed tactics and started trying to get behind him, pushing him towards the second defense line, who had also started to scatter and round back towards the third defense line which was steadily moving forward.

This was all part of our plan which we had shared with the Protectorate leaders and Dragon ahead of time as part of the S-Class Task Force strategizing sessions, so they were coordinating it alongside Hydra and Skitter on the field.

Clockblocker was carried by an Atlas bug while Skitter's other bugs weaved silk and started setting up a large web.

Vista was carried by a transport drone instead high into the air so she could use her power more effectively without organic beings getting in the way.

"Lily, it's time. Go to Buffer1 and wait for the signal," I said.

She nodded and left through a portal, all geared up, and waited together with the rest of the army that hadn't yet deployed, held in reserve as reinforcements.

Flechette burst through a portal into a special formation of drones a short distance behind the third defense line.

Pairs of drones carried a metal thread between them, and Flechette started charging them with her power.

Behemoth closed in on the third defense line, then our plan was enacted.

Clockblocker applied his power to a whole bunch of silk threads that had been set up as a web by Skitters bugs in the front of the defense line, which were now far away from the center of the web, leaving a large open space for Vista to use her power.

She shrunk the space between Behemoth and the threads, then the Triumvirate started attacking even more aggressively.

Hydra's drones continued to fire non-stop even as vast groups were destroyed by the Behemoth. They were simply replaced with yet more drones moving forward from the outer encirclement.

Eidolon and Legend fired their own Blaster effects onto Behemoth, and he was staggered and sent into the webs.

Large pieces of him were sliced off as he made contact.

Suddenly he jerked away, realizing the danger, even as he lost one leg, a piece of his arm and a few chunks of his torso and then started rapidly regenerating. But other capes and Eidolon were ready for him, creating barriers to box him in and push him back.

Hydra fired a wave of severe time slow bombs in a sphere all around Behemoth, trapping him inside the kill zone.

Vista continued to warp the space inside making it more difficult for Behemoth to get anywhere.

Lightning flashed, going through the time slow barrier due to the sheer speed, but he was stalled for a little bit.

That was when the paired drones moved in at high speed. They were built for sheer speed and maneuverability, simply carrying the metal thread between them, each drone of a pair separating far enough to be beyond the wall of time slow bubbles trapping Behemoth, but allowing the thread to cut through the time bubbles.

Charged by Flechette's power, the threads went through the time slow effect as if they weren't even there.

We had done a lot of experiments and figured out that although full time stops were canceled out by Flechette's power when charged a particular way to the max, it was possible to get through time slow effects and keep their 'go-through-anything' property without immediately canceling the entire time slow bubble.

The time slow would instead be canceled starting from the point contact was made through to wherever Flechette's power got to.

Then Hydra's drones would fire time stop bombs again to replace the parts that were back to normal, while the thread drones continued moving forward.

In this way, Behemoth was trapped, the threads moved at high speed while he was too slow to dodge the numerous pairs of drones that were flying back and forth trying to get him from many angles.

He kept launching lightning strikes to attack the drones, but Eidolon effectively blocked or redirected most of the lightning from getting to his targets.

Soon Behemoth started losing more and more of his flesh. And still, his flesh seemed to regenerate extremely quickly.

The radiation light on his skin grew stronger, as if trying to saturate the air in radiation and make it impossible for anyone to engage him after he dealt with his current problem. Fire and shockwaves were similarly being tossed out with impunity, stacking through the time slow effect so that they would deliver massive damage once they got outside.

Our capes started retreating quickly, Clockblocker was taken far away together with the rest of the retreating capes, though Vista was still there in the air, moving backwards and higher but still within range to use her power.

At that point Flechette burst into the air herself with her flight pack to just outside the time slow effect, and pointed her sword.

It was Derflinger, who had also been charged by Flechette, and now shot forward while rapidly extending his length. I couldn't use Derflinger at a high level myself without risking a planar reaction, but it was fine for a local to wield him, and Flechette was the perfect person for it, with her power to imbue objects with a near inviolate piercing effect that the Entities originally designed to kill each other in every dimension, plus her sense of timing and angles.

She had actually used a sword in her regular gear before but the PRT deemed it too lethal and she had to switch to the Tinker arbalest instead.

Derflinger was much slower than the drones but because he was charged by Flechette, he went through unhindered and reached a piece of broken Behemoth flesh easily.

A yellow aura lit up his own frame as mana surged and he rapidly absorbed that piece.

Behemoth roared in response, maybe in anger or just pumping out more shockwaves as Derflinger expanded into multiple segments trying to reach every piece of flesh he could get to.

Unable to fight the Flechette-powered Derflinger, Behemoth ignored him and tried to send lightning strikes toward Flechette herself.

Suicide drones blocked the path and redirected his lightning using Dragon's ionization tech as best as they could while Flechette flew backwards, Derflinger continuing to lengthen all the while.

The lightning missed her, more drones got in the way as more lightning came, and Eidolon also rounded over to her to help.

Derflinger finished absorbing all the flesh just as Behemoth finished off the last of the drones that were carrying the threads, and then Flechette's body lit up as well, and she swung at Behemoth.

Thanks to Flechette's power to imbue materials with the ability to selectively ignore physics, Derflinger's new form became frictionless and weightless. Not only that, while Derflinger's ability to transform was quite slow under normal circumstances due to the difficulty of moving so much mass, empowered by Flechette's power charge, the sword could use a tiny amount of mass to cover an enormous surface area, and still be nigh inviolate, capable of piercing the enemy Endbringer flesh regardless of its own mass density or lack thereof.

The perfectly timed physics defying charged sword which was sped up massively from Flechette's Armoriont and Derflinger's Boost, which was then further amplified by the third-class lever of the arm swing motion while suffering no problems with integrity or tension due to Flechette's power, sliced cleanly into Behemoth and cut him in half.

Then Eidolon erected a powerful barrier to block the built-up shockwaves and flame that finally came out of the time slow area.

Meanwhile, Derflinger quickly absorbed the half of Behemoth that was cut off, and Behemoth burst out of the time slow effect once Flechette had cut through a large section of it with that last move.

A massive burst of lightning suddenly covered the skies, striking hundreds of drones dead in an instant as Behemoth stopped holding back.

Simultaneously, an earthquake collapsed kilometers around, Behemoth at the epicenter, causing buildings to topple over. Additional shockwaves rippled through the air, created complex interference patterns that caused buildings to explode and lead to chain collapses.

The command center started crumbling with many of the Thinkers and Tinkers capes still inside, as the medical camp area. Skitter's larger bugs that were around and not killed by the shockwaves did their best to stop the building from completely collapsing and get as many capes evacuated as quickly as possible, but many died anyway.

Eidolon, Legend, and Alexandria re-engaged to try and contain Behemoth, while other defenders moved back up to support.

Derflinger grew quickly from the handle and became an armor that covered Flechette, still charged with her power to be inviolate, protecting her from everything.

She flew higher into the air to stay far away from Behemoth's kill aura range which was the only thing that could harm her now, as all other attacks would be blocked by the charged armor. She waited for an opportunity to continue strike at Behemoth, but the battle was quickly becoming too chaotic.

Legend suddenly went down as hundreds of light beams were redirected towards the other capes and drones, while Alexandria was blasted away through ten buildings.

Eidolon started fighting the Endbringer one on one as almost all of Hydra's drones had been destroyed, and the other defenders were getting slaughtered from massive terrain destruction, shockwaves, and redirected attacks of all kinds from afar before ever getting close to the main site of battle.

The one drone carrying Vista had almost been hit as well but Vista managed to warp space to redirect the lightning causing most of it to miss her but she still got shocked and fell unconscious.

The two engaged in a giant slug fest and tore through the city at high speed annihilating everything in their way.

"Wow, they really are just playing with us, huh? If Behemoth did that from the beginning, we wouldn't have stood a chance," Amelia commented as half the city was obliterated in short order.

Alexandria managed to get Legend and then organized a retreat to the medical camp area which had been stabilized by some force fields and Tinkertech, but it was now overwhelmed with injured capes.

I ordered Hydra to bring Vista to the camp as well.

Every building had been leveled, almost all of the capes were now at the medical camp, with the rest of the surviving capes just trying to defend that area and keep it stable from the earthquakes or some stranglers still trying to get there amidst the quakes and debris.

Then Flechette re-entered the fight after Derflinger extended to an extraordinary length, covering over a kilometer.

With her enhanced timing and angle calculation power, she struck out despite being a kilometer away with a swing that Behemoth barely dodged and took off another limb while also bisecting a large number of broken structures that were in the way.

After slicing it off, Flechette struck the separated piece so that Derflinger could absorb it, before aiming for the Endbringer again.

Again and again, she struck, Derflinger continuing to expand forward. Swinging rapidly, shearing off more of Behemoth's flesh each time, only for the Endbringer to regenerate faster and faster as well, but unable to get any closer to Flechette with his attacks as Eidolon kept getting in his way.

Everyone just watched Eidolon, Flechette, and Behemoth duke it out from a distance.

After a while, Behemoth took it to a higher level and started using shockwaves to propel himself into the air at extreme speeds, creating sudden bursts of air pressure every time he needed to change directions.

Like this, he started to avoid Flechette's swings and closed in on her again with Eidolon unable to keep him back anymore.

Once it became clear that Flechette was unable to get away fast enough, more portals opened and drones reinforcements started teleporting back in, including a jet speeder that appeared beneath Flechette, which she landed on. Derflinger retracted from her leg area so that clamps could lock onto her legs, and her feet armor extended their own clamps charged with her power to meld with the speeder.

The rest of the drones suicided themselves toward Behemoth with a variety of effects and mass time slow bombing to buy Flechette time to get away, then charge the speeder with her power as well to make it invulnerable.

Behemoth dealt with the drones just as easily as he did last time by creating a giant chain lightning storm covering the whole area, and capes at the medical camp were forced to defend from the enormous area attack with barriers.

Just as Alexandria was contemplating joining the fight again, suddenly a large shadow covered the ground. The capes looked up to see an enormous floating ship half a kilometer long and a hundred meters across had teleported onto the battlefield, and unleashed a salvo of several hundred missiles, beams, and other munitions to bombard Behemoth.

Behemoth struck back with lightning and an energy shield appeared over the ship to block the lightning and nothing happened.

Yet the Endbringer itself also survived the massive attack looking only a little worse for wear, and crashed itself against the energy shielding in a single shockwave that annihilated hundreds of meters worth of property behind him.

It started to drain the energy shielding periodically while escaping from Flechette's swings.

And then Scion appeared over the gathered capes below.

"You're too late damn it!" Somebody shouted at him, for showing up only after the entire city was almost completely destroyed and they'd suffered some of the worst casualties in history.

Scion ignored him and started healing people. Legend woke back up.

Then Scion re-appeared near the Endbringer and had it grabbed by the throat, throwing it into the ground with an intense yellow beam following.

It seemed to push the Endbringer deeper into the ground, and negated the shockwaves he used to try and get out of it.

Hydra's dreadnought added its own attacks to bombard Behemoth, while Eidolon powered up barriers to keep Behemoth from getting away.

Flechette's power could not handle Scion's Stilling beam so she stayed back just watching.

Behemoth managed to get himself free a few times but Scion hit him again and again, and it looked like he was dying.

The capes watched with trepidation at Scion seemingly about to kill Behemoth.

The Endbringer started glowing in an intense light himself.

Suddenly a loud scream tore through the air.

Most capes went berserk upon hearing the familiar scream, though the Triumvirate recovered within seconds.

Canary's voice rang out to counter the Morrigan's Scream but several capes had already been killed by their berserk comrades.

"Oh fuck!" I cursed aloud as our team watched the screen in horror, but Hydra was even faster, ordering through the armbands.

"RETREAT OR MAKE THE STRONGEST BARRIER YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY! PHIR SE LOST CONTROL OF HIS TIME BOMB!"

Scion turned back from Behemoth to look at the capes at the medical camp, then reappeared next to them.

Flechette flew through a portal and abandoned the jet speeder.

Flechette charged her power into Derflinger to the max while he retracted as fast as he could but still trailed far behind her and the portal closed in with him still retracting through it, but keeping the dimensional hole as small as possible.

Then light burst from underground.

Everything went white.

When the light hit Behemoth, a second burst of light turned the screens even whiter.

…

We stared at the static on the screen. The other timeline where we hadn't sent in the ship, Scion hadn't yet appeared but the Scream struck all the same.

"Almost all my bugs are gone," Skitter reported.

Minutes later, Flechette came stumbling through a portal to join us in the console room, with Derf back to his elven sword form.

The only screen that was still online was the view of the medical camp, by the drones that survived together under Scion's protection.

We and the gathered capes gazed around in pure shock at the barren wasteland around the area, as far as the eye could see.

Debris from our ship was still raining down in pieces.

Scion floated around for a moment, then flew off.

People started kneeling down or crying out in despair, especially the few Indian capes that were still alive.

Eidolon made his way back over to the group in silence, having survived the blast with his own barrier.

"Behemoth is dead, he turned himself into a bomb just before the other bomb hit him and amplified the explosions together," Eidolon announced sullenly.

But nobody cheered.

"Scion killed the Morrigan as well," Alexandria announced.

Again, nobody cheered.

"One and a half Endbringers dead… all for the price of… this? Whatever this is? How far was the damage?" Chevalier asked, shellshocked.

"The Indian subcontinent has been destroyed," Dragon's voice said in a shaky whisper.

There was a long silence.

"You're kidding me. Tell me you're kidding. The Indian subcontinent… as in all of India?" Clockblocker asked disbelievingly.

"That is what the satellite scans are showing," Dragon's voice confirmed mournfully.

"What about the surrounding countries?" Legend asked.

"Our analysis coincides with Dragon's," Hydra's voice added. "In reviewing the final footage before the end and other scans of the blast zone, it appears that Phir Se tried to stabilize his time bomb and direct it south towards Behemoth. Unfortunately this created a shaped blast, which after colliding with Behemoth's own suicide explosion, caused a directed wave of destruction spreading southwards in an expanding cone, with only a minor backblast to the north which stopped at the Himalayas. The result is that all of India was destroyed in an almost deliberate fashion, including a quarter of Sri Lanka. Small areas west of Ahmedabad survived, as did West Bengal in the east."

Absolute silence followed the monotonously delivered report.

"Oh my god…" Paige said beside us in the console room.

"We were so close… even after Behemoth stopped playing around, and then this? Did they want this to happen? Were they hitting back harder because we almost got him?" Lily asked, mask off, a face of anguish. "Compared to Japan, this is on a whole new scale… didn't India have over a billion people?"

"Even if he died, this isn't a victory," Amelia muttered in a subdued tone.

"This wasn't supposed to happen…" I said. "Did my interference in this plane make things worse? Scion was supposed to kill Behemoth cleanly. The damn Morrigan… shit, we should've had Phir Se fire sooner in a controlled way."

"It's not your fault, Kaleidus," said Skitter. "If we did that, the Morrigan probably would have just struck sooner. We don't even know how it got there, and how long it was waiting. I never detected it the whole time."

"Myrddin can put people inside of pocket dimensions attached to moving things… but he's Manton Limited for himself. Maybe the Morrigan isn't Manton Limited and hid in pocket dimensions," said Lily.

"Yet the Morrigan was also never supposed to be active. It must be because of me that the Endbringers are taking this to a new level," I said, continuing to act distressed, though I didn't really need to act much.

The whole thing had been a shocker in terms of the scale of damage, and it was unfortunate, but I had already half-expected something disastrous might happen again, given the threat we posed and Eidolon's power up. But CRUCIBLE had survived again without losing anything irreplaceable… and Derflinger had got a pretty good amount of Behemoth's flesh in the process, which had been my main objective.

The sheer scale of it had affected me a little too, but in the end, I did not know or care about most of the people who died. Everyone that mattered to me in this plane was in this room with me and they were all fine.

"That's not true, didn't you say that the Endbringers might also be enhanced because Eidolon was able to restore his powers?" Amelia asked.

"I did but… this is too much. Eidolon was at full power many years ago and the Endbringers never once fought this hard," I said. "And I don't know for sure if Eidolon shares the same power source as them. His power can use any other power so it might just have activated it and then they operate independently afterwards. I know that they don't die if he dies. The Endbringers were something that Eden used in her simulation too, directed by herself to push the Cycle."

I had already explained to the team the theory of Eidolon's subconscious fourth power creating the Endbringers using Eden's special systems, but we hadn't told Eidolon himself.

I didn't know what the result of that would be-assuming that he had any conscious control of them or for therapy to work was foolish. Eidolon was a hero through and through even if he subconsciously wanted a challenge. He never would have made that choice if he knew about it, and sought to save people. The fact that the shards could pervert this wish to the point of creating disasters for Eidolon to deal with was obviously a result of Cauldron having been too effective in the early years, and automated systems kicking in to bring more conflict and chaos to the world. That was why the Endbringers all had their own specific functions to destroy some manner of important infrastructure of civilization.

If Eidolon knew the truth, it was just as likely that the shards would end up perverting his other desires in the same way.

Regardless, it was an insane risk to take, and I was not crazy enough to use the words that Scion used to get rid of Eidolon when Scion was trying to inflict as much damage to the world as possible with his unrestricted Path to Victory. Obviously, the result of Eidolon learning the truth was a net negative for everyone, otherwise Scion wouldn't have done it. Whether it would be negative for me was hard to say, but I'd rather deal with known threats than derail everything.

Even if things had already been massively derailed today.

"Defeating the Endbringers was always a pipedream, and it's pointless to think about whose fault it is," said Skitter. "If there's something to blame, it's the Entities for doing all of this, creating all this misery just for their experiment. You and Eidolon are both great heroes, doing your best. We got closer than ever to containing or even killing Behemoth today, even without Scion jumping in at the last minute. And at least now it's clear that they are killable."

"Skitter is right," said Lily. "If they hit us harder because we're hitting them harder, that doesn't mean we should stop and just let them play their game and live at their whim. It just means that we have to be more careful about when we use our best tactics, find ways to limit the damage."

"We have to keep trying, keep going. Look, they're saying it too," Amelia said, pointing at the screen where Legend was giving a speech after some capes had started saying defeatist things and trying to kill themselves.

"Now the rest of the world knows how badly the Endbringers were holding back," said Paige. "We can be more prepared for the final fight, even if they don't know about Scion. And at least this way, there's hope other than Scion-even if he dealt the killing blow, they know that we pushed Behemoth beyond anything anyone else did before."

"So don't you feel guilty about this, Kaleidus. Last time we almost lost everything and you told us we did well-now it's our turn to tell you that you did better than anyone could have expected," said Amelia.

"Thanks, all of you. You're right. We have to keep going," I said.

"And you too, Lily. You were great out there," said Paige with a beautiful smile. "I wish you could be on our team properly rather than just as an exchange officer."

"Th-thanks," Lily said before looking away shyly with a slight blush.

"Don't forget Derf," Skitter added. "The best magical sword."

"Aww, shucks. You'll make me blush," said Derf.

O O O