52 - Battle Royale (Patreon)

The worst case scenario slapped me in the face in a threefold barrage.

One: we would be fighting underwater, where we had to fight water resistance with every movement.

Two: we were fighting marine animals specifically adapted to fighting underwater.

Three: they weren’t the local wildlife.

The enemies meteored down from above like orbital strikes, somehow plummeting towards us in split-seconds like there wasn’t a lick of resistance in the water. Lindon, Yerin and I were almost struck. Two more did actually hit Orthos’ shell, driving him down and cracking into his shell.

When they pulled their snouts out from the divot they had dug in Orthos’ shell, revealing blood and gore in their wake, I finally got a good look at them. They were sharks, that much was clear from their wide maws, beady eyes, and their razor-sharp fins that almost looked metallic in the light of my spear.

Mostly, they looked like Abyssal Deepwater sharks from the Trackless Sea. That also happened to be the main species of sacred beast found in the Tidewalker sect. Shit. The consequences of not destroying that damn portal. The latecomers had arrived.

I also saw something that looked like a half-anthropomorphic hammerhead shark, something that vaguely resembled a moray eel with arms, and, concerningly, a veiled, manlike figure higher up, watching and waiting; someone or something that didn’t look like a shark at all. 

The surprise scattered our group as Orthos silently bellowed in agony. In the chaos, I could only focus on myself. I had to force myself to fight, despite my crippling internal injuries and half-collapsed lung.

I thrust my spear at the nearest one. I had an open shot, and I could end one player immediately, which would make the ensuing melee far more manageable with a numerical advantage. That is, if Orthos was still in a fighting shape.

My spear glanced off the hide of the shark, protected by a dense layer of water madra and aura.

So thick was this spiritual defense that it fully extinguished my spear, plunging us all in darkness.

I widened my eyes in shock, pulling the spear back and reactivating Nova Blade as quickly as I could, just in time for the shark to rush towards me.

I had no illusion that I could survive in a head-on clash. I had no leverage, no grounding, and I couldn’t even hurt my opponent. 

This was exactly the situation I had been hoping to avoid by rushing through the three well habitats before other factions could get too far. These Tidewalkers had us outnumbered, on a battlefield of their choosing, and all around me a battle for our lives under the worst circumstances imaginable had begun. 

Even at my best, this would have been a disaster. I was not at my best. Before I’d taken even one step into this water, my internal injuries had turned me into a wreck of myself, little better than a cripple. Every breath felt like inhaling glass, and all I could taste was blood and bits of my hacked-up lungs.

I threw myself out of the way of the shark, swimming towards me like a torpedo. It was so fast, in fact, that it had no control over itself after it missed, and instead continued long ahead. A headlong movement technique? That was good. Those were easy to predict and deal with.

The fights my friends were getting into, on the other hand, did not look so simple.

I dodged another headlong charge, noting this time a battery of launcher constructs strapped to the enemy shark’s sides 

–which weren’t being used. The constructs were heavy in my spiritual sense. And yet they weren’t getting used. Why?

Starfire Surge reduced the world around me to a crawl. Are we being underestimated? By a pack of glorified animals?

There was a deeper truth to unpack there.

These foes, perhaps accurately, saw us as nothing but prey.

This was no time to be indecisive about last resorts. I quickly bit down on a small phial I’d been keeping in my robe’s front pockets and swallowed it, tiny shards of glass and all. 

A Heartseeker Pill. A double-edged Truegold-level pill refined from the concentrated essence of a mélange of fatally toxic/hallucinatory mushrooms, made for berserkers and last stands with the effect of agitating the user’s blood essence; igniting their lifeline in a sacrificial trade of long-term vitality for a short-term blaze of power. A pill so dangerous it was actually illegal in some of the world’s more civilized nations. I’d refined it myself, while still employed by the Imperial College.

What did I need my lifeline for with Northstrider’s well so close? Here, in this time and place, the lifeline was nothing but another resource to be burned.

And a deeper certainty rested in my heart, a truth far deeper than this little skirmish: that with or without this suicide pill, nothing had changed for me. The Bleeding Phoenix and the Blood Shadow had put the remainder of my life on a timer, an infernal clock whose gears I could feel scraping over my bones with every moment, with every breath taken since I had woken up.

Advance or die.

The pill sank into my stomach and then, with a pulse of madra, instantly liquified and melted into my channels. For a moment, I shuddered as its effects washed over me. I couldn’t even bite back my own scream of pain as the pill’s foreign madra impaled my heart, my core, my very lifeline from within by a sensation that felt like nothing less than a million white-hot insects, pulsing through my veins.

My blood essence was roused. My lifeline began to burn, vaporizing into a great flood of madra.

But then. Before that second tide of madra could reach my core–

A disaster happened. 

Or rather, came from within.

Even through the suppression imposed by Eithan’s scripted restrictions, my Blood Shadow woke up.

And it smelled a feast.

I had not planned for this.

The shock coming from within killed my cycling, and with it, my enforcer technique. I almost died in that instant, dodging another headlong shark charge that came so close it scraped my shoulder bloody. 

The battle on the outside marched on, even as the war within began. 

Blood Shadow gave off a spiritual roar of desire and sent out a tentacle that pierced straight through Eithan’s scripted restrictions.

Despair blackened my thoughts. I somehow slid out of the way of another headlong charge–was this damn shark toying with me?

My halfhearted Nova Blade failed to penetrate the Enforcer technique. I got knocked wild into the water, desperately trying to defend myself. 

Then I activated Starfire Surge again, slowing the world back down to a crawl in order to fight this threat coming from within.

In those instants few instants left where I was too distracted to stop it, the Blood Shadow’s tentacle had turned into the spiritual equivalent of a vacuum cleaner; it was devouring everything–the madra created by the Heartseeker Pill, my blood essence that had been agitated by the pills effects, even parts of my lifeline that the pill’s madra had broken off but hadn’t yet finished sublimating into madra.

These weren’t some small nibbles out of me; it was taking everything it could reach through its restrictions. And with the Heartseeker pill in play, weakening my body’s usual internal defenses… that meant everything.

Perhaps I had overestimated Eithan’s restriction on the parasite. Perhaps I had underestimated this tiny fragment of a Dreadgod. 

It meant to try to devour me from within, entirely, right here and right now.

But I had a tool for exactly this situation. One last tool. With the crawling slowness of Starfire Surge, I took something else out from my robe’s pockets. One last safeguard. A heavily scripted needle of Goldsteel.

This needle had been Eithan’s last resort. I had never been meant to use it this soon. He had left it in my void key after fucking off to God knows where, with very specific instructions.

I plunged it into my chest, just enough to scrape the outer lining of my heart.

The suppressive effects activated, and a strength greater than my own flooded into my body and spirit. A fragment of an Underlord’s will, carrying his soulfire, resonated through my body… and looking at me with a sense of distinct skepticism. 

He had cautioned me about using the pill before I’d had the chance to reinforce my own advancement and lineline using the wells. I’d thought I could handle it. Neither of us had thought the Blood Shadow could pull this kind of thing so soon.

I didn’t have time for Eithan’s shit here. Especially that of a little fragment of him. Fuck all the way off. 

The fragment of Eithan’s will dissipated, sublimating into my spirit–carrying the distinct sense of a wide white grin all the while.

I collected my entire will, every scrap of my madra still under my control and every fragment of grit in my entire being and aimed it at my Blood Shadow.

Down! Back into your cage! 

It answered with the spiritual equivalent of a polar bear clawing me across the face. The sheer willpower behind this tiny, infinitesimally tiny fractal fragment of a Dreadgod’s power was beyond belief. Even at my best, I might have lost, giving it my all.

Submit, you little shit!

And I was not even remotely at my best.

Even with the help of Eithan’s soulfire-infused needle, the goddamn Blood Shadow resisted. It cried out in sheer want and desperate hunger for the bounty of my body.

Still, it almost disappointed me with how bestial and feral it really was, when it came down to it. Sure, it was hunger incarnate, but it wasn’t a very effective predator. Just a monster hiding in the dark. Like these sharks.

I wasn’t afraid of the dark.

In that moment, when it felt my determination to win this tug of wills or die trying, the Blood Shadow abandoned its feasting and tried to kill me outright. It sent forth a spike of physical madra, from its cyst around my core and going straight to my heart. 

A wall of Eithan’s scripts and soulfire stopped it cold.

Oh no you don’t you little shit of a parasite. Down. Down!

The combination of Eithan’s safeguards and my own will stopped the parasite cold; then we retaliated, bludgeoning it so badly that it lost some of its essence, which would no doubt get recycled back into my body.

With a final resentful, gurgling snarl somewhere in the depths of my spirit, the Blood Shadow let go of the feast of blood essence surging forth from my burning lifeline, and retreated back into the glorified cyst around my core that it called a home. 

The Goldsteel needle’s scripts evaporated, melting and joining into Eithan’s existing safeguards around my core. The bars of the cage had been successfully duck-taped back together.

Now the Heartseeker pill’s remaining effects could reach me.

My lifeline burned. When what was left of the wave of blood essence reached my core, my battle cycling instantly brought it to every inch of my body; my eyes, my arms, my toes, my fingernails. And the pain of all my internal injuries disappeared.

Even after the Blood Shadow had stolen the majority of the pill’s fire, it was a very respectable boost–almost, not quite, very close to a Truegold advancement. But it was close. Very close.

Ordinarily, the effect might have lasted half an hour. But after the Blood Shadow’s sabotage–I had minutes.

Time to make it count. I let go of the mental component of Starfire Surge’s acceleration, and the world around me began to move once more.

The shark came for me in a flanking maneuver.

The Solar Flare I sent at it this time practically blazed with madra. 

I reactivated Starfire Surge, and as the world slowed around me, I wrestled my madra back under control. I took a quick stock of my situation in spirit and body.

My thoughts, my eyesight, my spiritual perception… my everything had gained a sort of hysterical, bloody pallor. It was all I could do to preserve my mind under the effects of Starfire Surge; if my will failed here, my thoughts would collapse into little more than those of a berserker in a bloody fury, and my lifeline would burn out in minutes.

I quickly cycled in and out of Starfire Surge; the technique accelerated my thoughts to the point that it slowed down my relative mental time. By stuttering in and out of the depth’s of the Enforcer technique to clean my mental dream madra of the pill’s ignited blood essence, I could keep my rationality.

Physically, I almost felt fully functional again. 

Orthos was carrying through his grievous wounds, blasting Blackflame into the depths of the water, along with Lindon. Yerin was facing a particularly enormous shark—no, not a shark. A shark-like human, like Ekeri, but almost naked, though wearing a breastplate and a cape of scales. A peak Truegold. Fuck.

Was that the prince of the Tidewalker Sect? He arrived with a full force of fighters at his side? How was that fair? Or, perhaps, was this was a kill squad sent by the Tidewalker Herald, to punish us for our incursion into Ghostwater? 

I glanced back at my opponent, who should have finished cooking from my Solar Flare by now.

The light died down and revealed a bubble of water madra and aura intertwined together, protecting the shark within. And it was swimming towards me with the speed of a rocket. Fuck.

I could tell at a glance that the Tidewalker defensive technique wasn’t comparable to a standard shielding technique. But the mechanics of it–

I set up a Celestial Anvil in the Tidewalker Highgold’s way.

It crashed right through. The explosion didn’t stop the shark’s forward motion.

I swam out of the way, but it still managed to bump me on my shoulder, sending me spinning uncontrollably and killing my enforcer technique again. 

This damn water shield. I reactivated Starfire Surge yet again, slowing down time. Between it and remaining threads of Dream Well water in my system, everything felt clear to me even through the Heartseeker Pill’s haze of blood essence; the battle situation, and the amount of pain I was in. It felt like there was a sun in my chest, burning away at my body with every cycle of my madra. The healing I had received and the advancement I had made hadn’t even been enough to heal the residual damage. Just cycling had reopened my wounds. 

To give up Starfire Surge would make things more painless, but it would also put the final nail in my coffin. I had no plans to die now. That would let the Blood Shadow win.

And I’d be damned if some pale imitation would try to wear my skin. 

I was one-of-a-kind.

I covered my skin in the bright bands and artistic swirls of Starfire Surge and angled my arms against the direction of the spin, negating the forces to zero. When I was finally in control of myself again, I pointed my spear back at the shark, sending another Solar Flare at it. It dodged away, but I tracked its movements, dragging the Striker technique along. I had to see how the Tidewalker enforcer technique was dispersing Solar Flare. I even used my Copper sight, trying my best to penetrate through the translucent wall of water aura in the way. Ghostwater was absolutely lousy with it, and it made you feel constantly wet, but in your soul, not your body—The constant swimming did that on its own.

I was aware that I might end up inviting a Sea Drake to the party, but then that would be all our problem, not just us. And in that confusion, we could maybe eke out a win.

As my Solar Flare grazed the Tidewalker shark, I poured more madra into the technique, aiming for a kill. And if not, maybe a bigger Solar Flare would have more effect, at least?

No, as it turned out. This Solar Flare–twice the size of the one before–was even more useless. And now I could see why.

The Tidewalker defensive technique looked to the naked eye like a cone of almost-black water coning out from the shark’s snout and sheathing most of its body like a second skin. To the spiritual senses, it felt like a tornado writ small but deep, dark and endless.

With a sinking feeling, I realized this technique might as well have been something tailor-made to handle area attacks, Striker attacks. It was basically a compression-style technique, something that worked by creating and controlling fluid flows of heavy water to scatter and disperse opposing forces into the surrounding plain old water–and if my intuition was right, the shield of heavy water could endlessly replenish itself from the surrounding water and water aura. It turned the shark’s body into the eye of a small storm, where internal pressures and forces were kept stable no matter the raging of outside forces. Which ended up with the effect of creating the best anti-Striker Enforcer technique I’d ever seen, and it was pretty good at countering physical attacks as well. Probably worked against most physical-type Ruler techniques one might find in the sea, on top of that. 

A part of me even suspected that all these potent battle effects of the Tidewalker enforcer technique were merely side effects; this was probably the exact technique with which these abyssal sharks could dive to the depths of Cradle’s darkest oceans, if I was reading the involved pressure distributions correctly. 

Overall, it was an amazing Enforcer technique. In other circumstances I might have taken notes.

Desperation was starting to blacken my thoughts. How could I even counter this?

I gave up the Striker technique and changed tacks, quickly cycling the pattern for Celestial Anvil, this time going all out. It seemed fond of its little movement technique, let’s see it try to smash past this one. I was curious to know the result, too, as I hadn’t used the Forger technique in full throttle yet since my advancement to Highgold.

Just as the shark started its technique, my spirit threw me a warning, and I manifested the technique in the nick of time. The shark crashed head-first against the exploding wall. The force of it was so powerful that even while standing on the safe side of it, it blew me away dozens of meters. The shark had been blown back as well, spinning away and creating a swirl of blood around itself.

Wounds ran through its form like the cracks of a shattered window, but its movements seemed fine, like the best I had managed was a superficial attack. It shook itself out from its momentary stunned state. A thought occurred, and I wondered if I could somehow find a way to induce tonic immobility in the shark, rotating it so that it lost consciousness. 

The idea had some academic merit, but even if these sharks operated in a way that made this tactic possible, they were clearly intelligent enough to have trained countermeasures against this. If I was powerful enough to induce tonic immobility in them, then I might as well also use that power to restrain or kill them.

My spirit pulled me out from my thoughts with a spike of warning and I spun around just in time to deflect the arrival of another shark, smacking it across its face with my blade. Rather than deflect its trajectory, I had merely pushed myself away from it.

Pushed myself further away from my group.

Panic seized my heart, and I poured more madra into Starfire Surge, swimming as fast as I could back towards them.

The sharks had other ideas.

My previous opponent flew in with its movement technique that turned it into a torpedo, and I weaved away just as another of the sharks forged a pair of enormous dark-blue jaws rowed with sharp teeth.

I sliced it in two with Nova Blade and continued swimming.

Orthos was in a bad shape. Blood leaked out from the wounds on his shell at a disgusting rate, but what was even more worrisome was that he wasn’t even fighting, just… twitching.

Mercy’s leg had been twisted the other way at the knee, and a shark struck Lindon head-on with its movement technique before my very eyes, hitting his chest and shooting him away from all of us.

Lindon’s mask filled up with blood until it just popped. He looked like his entire head had blown off with all the blood around his head, but it soon cleared to reveal a mostly untouched face, and a gaping mouth pooling with blood and water.

The shark left him alone and then grabbed hold of each of Yerin’s Goldsigns, yanking her around like she was a dog toy while the peak Truegold laughed.

No, no, no, nononononono—

Not this. Anything but this.

Lindon rummaged through his pocket, digging up a spare bubble, and slapped it onto his mouth, but he wasn’t taking any breaths even as the bubble emptied all the air around his head. The momentary lack of air didn’t concern me as much as what that attack had done to his insides, specifically why he wasn’t breathing at the moment. His lungs had completely collapsed, tissue torn up as well. It had affected his stomach, too. Some of that blood had been mixed with bile. He had taken this attack head-on, and would have probably fallen apart by now if it wasn’t for his Iron body.

I refocused on my enemies. 

This was kill or be killed. They were giving no quarter, they would get none from me. 

Firstly, I need to figure out a fucking weakness to this Enforcer/Ruler technique of theirs that give them so much defense. There was an element of natural toughness there, too. What I had read of them in the Imperial College’s records were strictly based on their biology as sacred beasts. They were adapted to surviving under the crushing pressures of the deep sea, living no less than ten thousand meters under sea-level.

We’d see what was greater, then. The pressure of the sea, or the pressure of Eithan Arelius’ training?

I didn’t go through all of that pain during the year and a half that I had survived here just to get slumped by some vaguely threatening fish. Time to get active.

000

Lindon’s channels burned from the exertion of maintaining so many techniques at once. It was not even ten minutes ago that he had fought against one of the strongest Gold dragons of their generation, and although Little Blue had done her part to cleanse his madra channels, none of that soothing comfort remained in the wake of this surprise battle.

And then a moment later, his sore channels became the last thing on his mind. Everywhere he had looked, there was danger. Mercy had been clipped by that ramming Enforcer technique, and it looked like all the bones in her left leg had broken at once. Yerin was being handily clubbed around by the flat of a humanoid shark’s bone sword and Orthos–terrifyingly–was hanging on by a mere thread.

And something was… wrong with Sky. Lindon hadn’t seen it, but right after the battle had started, Sky’s spirit had blazed like a bonfire, almost like an average Truegold–then guttered down to nothing more than a cinder, like the last embers of a fire about to die out–before weakly reigniting and settling into the spiritual equivalent of a rather powerful, but very sickened peak Highgold. Which would have been unnaturally strange all on its own.

But this was no time to think of his friends. Lindon knew he had to trust his friends, and focus on the enemy here and now.

And in Lindon’s distraction and disorientation, having to fight water currents to stay upright and in the direction of the enemy, one shark had flown right past his guard, expertly maneuvering as a fish could do in the water. This variant had a head that looked like a hammer, with eyes at each face. And it had struck him like a hammer as well.

The pain hadn’t registered at first. Instead, the first thing he had noticed was a loss of structure, like something had hollowed his entire torso of all vital organs and bones. The stream of blood that followed out of his mouth was hardly a surprise either at that point.

It was only when his Bloodforged Iron body pulled at his madra like an alcoholic would a bottle of liquor that the pain started to happen, during the upswing of his healing process.

His madra stalled suddenly. He realized why a split second later; he could no longer breathe. His mask was gone. He rummaged quickly for his spare and put that on. His Iron body breathed for him in agonizingly slow sips. He could do or think of nothing sophisticated at this point.

His pain only climbed, higher and higher up as his Blackflame madra depleted to heal him. With panic, he realized that wasting Blackflame madra on healing would only put him worse off than before, so he switched cores. His pure madra was useless for anything that wasn’t an Empty Palm. 

But he could use an Empty Palm, couldn’t he? He forced the pain aside to take a look at his surroundings. His scythe was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Quickly, he swam after it while considering his idea. The Tidewalkers were using a spiritual defensive technique. The Empty Palm worked best on the spirit. If he could punch through their bubbles, switch cores, and drill their vulnerable bodies with Dragon’s Breath, that would be the end of it, right?

He caught the scythe, and did it just in time to swing the sharp tip towards a shark mid-movement technique.

The bubble popped as the scythe continued unimpeded. It was only the shark’s speed of movement that saved itself from getting run right through by four feet of a deathly blade. Still, the furrow that Lindon had gouged through it ran from stomach to tail, and in the same movement, he had pushed himself away from the path of the shark.

The scythe had broken through the bubble. How? Was it because it was a Lord-level construct? At this current point in time, that shouldn’t allow for anything but indestructibility; certainly not increased attack potency.

Perhaps that was exactly it, though? That physical attribute of indestructibility was precisely what allowed the blade to stay so keen to such a tiny point.

“Small attacks!” Lindon cried, though he had forgotten himself. Not only had his voice come out damaged and weakened from his poor, ruined lungs, but that sound didn’t travel anywhere except for in his little bubble.

With panic, Lindon realized that they would all have to come to this conclusion on their own. Lindon saw Yerin and her Blood Shadow doing battle against the humanoid shark wearing bone armor and a cape of scales. Sword aura bit through the bubble, but not enough to fully destabilize it. The Truegold met her with a serrated sword made of sharpened bone, but from experience, Lindon knew that that would only be to the Truegold’s detriment. Since this beast didn’t look to be on an actual sword Path, eventually Yerin’s aura resonance would turn even that bone sword into a weapon in Yerin’s arsenal. 

Yerin had been struggling before, but evidently, bringing out her Blood Shadow had dramatically increased her chances. He left her to it to focus on Orthos.

The same hammerhead shark that had crushed his organs swam towards the dragon turtle, but a rope of shadows held it back. Mercy. Lindon threw a thin bar of Blackflame at it. True to his predictions, it punched straight through the bubble.

Then the shark kept swimming, Mercy now tied to it. Quickly, she released the rope technique, but the shark had pulled her down far enough that she was now well and truly separated from the rest.

It swam up to meet Mercy, mouth wide open. Lindon threw a Dragon’s Breath at it. It was too wide, and washed over its newly formed protective bubble. So did Mercy’s technique.

Then Orthos, trailing blood, swam up in a violent surge, body covered in a thin film of Blackflame madra as it snapped its jaws on the bubble, ripping through it to take a bite out of its tailfin. The shark shook itself free violently, leaving behind a bleeding trail and a missing top-half of its tailfin. It whirled on Orthos, but Mercy had tied it up again in the shadow rope technique. A pair of constructs strapped on its side activated, firing a pair of red beams of heat and light at Mercy. She quickly twisted out of the way from the twin beams.

Lindon had to disengage from this fight in order to meet the fury of the shark he had wounded. Its fury met his as he solemnly swore to wipe it out. It was a Lowgold opponent, too, from what his senses told him.

With certainty in his heart, Lindon believed that they could win this.

000

Between my spiritual perception, my Copper sight, my intuition, and seeing Lindon come to a similar conclusion to my hypothesis, I had gotten the picture. So this Tidewalker Enforcer technique could disperse madra across an area? Fine. From there, it logically followed that a given surface area of madra had an upper limit to what it could disperse without destabilizing the wider structure. 

The problem was that the Tidewalker’s Enforcer technique was designed to handle high pressures. I suspected, though, that it would suffer if exposed to pinpoint extremes of other forms of force, or better yet, combinations thereof. Arakmedes had taught me that madra was governed by four great forces. Fusion, fission, friction and ignition. Since I wasn’t a Lord, or a nation, the first two were still beyond me. Pressure fell under friction, so it was out, at least by itself. That meant ignition was the key. 

Lindon had the advantage of physically piercing through the Tidewalker technique with the inviolate edge of an Archlord blade. 

I needed a similar effect, but as a Striker technique that originated completely from my own power. 

In short, I needed a convergence of extreme heat and pinpoint pressure, emphasis on the heat. Something with instantaneous pinpoint effects of ignition that could overwhelm the inherent adaptability and malleability of the Tidewalker technique.

How was I going to achieve such an effect? Pressure equals force over area. Add force, minimize area, turn up the heat as high as I could make it go, and bob’s your uncle. If there was anything the Path of the Collapsing Star was good for, it was this.

The sharks were off fucking with easier prey, and I only had one to contend with. It was no longer using its movement technique to convey itself. I had already shown my hand in countering it after all, so now it had to come at me the old school way, encased in its little shell.

I began to form another Solar Flare, but this time, I concentrated. I called upon every scrap of madra control I had ever learned, cobbled together every last scrap of my will and understanding of scripting and technique-crafting. And then–

I halved the Solar Flare in width, then halved it again, and again, and again, and again. Towards the end, the effects became almost asymptotic, more easily described with mathematics than language; a process of  folding and folding, tapering towards zero but never quite reaching nothingness. Similarly, I doubled and redoubled and thrice-doubled the temperatures until my channels could take no more. 

That was a more dramatic way to say that I was trying to fold a piece of paper more than seven times. Eventually, I hit a plain-old wall.

I actually had to scale the Solar Flare somewhat down in power from the usual - maybe a quarter less madra could be put in without critically destabilizing the miniaturized Striker technique. And I had to compensate somewhat by making the technique shorter-ranged. A lot of it had to be sacrificed to make it even possible to launch. A lot of net-negative tradeoffs had to be imposed to make this modified technique even possible. Ordinarily, it would not have been worth the cost. Sacred artists in the Gold ranks, without the benefit of soulfire to directly impose their willpower upon their madra were not ever supposed to make off-the-cuff modifications this extreme to techniques in the middle of battle. I knew all that from my discussions of the sacred arts with Eithan.

And yet I had a window to experiment, and a razor-sharp mind to guide me to success.

I abandoned my stance. Instead, I rested my spear on my shoulder and aimed it like it was a sniper rifle–I needed both hands to form a technique this demanding of my madra control. Tracking the shark’s movements, and using my spearhead’s blade as a rough sort of iron sighting, I launched an impossibly bright Solar Flare no wider than the lead in the core of a pencil.

The burning-white line, so bright that even I could barely look at it, speared straight through the Shark’s heavy water Enforcer technique, like it wasn’t even there–and then, I realized, straight through the center of its body, a few inches right to the tip of its nose.

It also flash-boiled an entire line of hundreds of feet of seawater, scalding my arms and face red. And yet–

This TRIUMPH—was not completely outside my expectations. I did not drop the Solar Flare. I might have, in any other circumstance. At any other time or place, my own surprise might have shocked or stunned or startled me into losing my grip on the technique. 

I did not do any of those things.

But I did grin a wild, animal grin. And in those split-instants before the Solar Flare could even begin to taper off–

I wrenched the technique to the side along the shark’s entire width.

It bloomed open on its side like a book of charnel horrors, all sorts of unrecognizable guts and organs and gore, spilling into the sea in a shockingly large, greasy crimson stain. A ghostly image of a shark split from the corpse, sitting still in the water, just… watching me while its fleshy prison continued forward.

The corpse’s forward momentum lazily carried it forwards and past me, dying the waters around me in red.

I realized, then, that the entire battle had paused, figures from both sides staring in shock.

For a moment, a part of me distantly considered an unexpected gain from this modified form of the Solar Flare; the Striker blast’s speed had been much, much faster than normal…

If I could fix the range issue…

A thought for another time.

And then I scraped together what was left of my will–this modified Striker technique was hard to form, and even harder to launch without blowing my face off–and launched it again, aiming at the Truegold shark through the Remnant that had formed. I blasted the Remnant—a painted shark that looked to be made of rocks and chunks of glinting metal, hitting the Tidewalker’s Truegold shark, who was in a sword battle with Yerin—and her Blood Shadow.

His Enforcer technique fared no better against the modified Solar Flare than his underling’s had. But he didn’t die. The technique had–tragically–failed to penetrate some kind of scripted armor he was wearing, a breastplate of bone. But I wrenched the technique downwards and carved out a long, deep line from his uncovered left leg. 

I barely had time to celebrate before I felt a heavy slam on my back.

A shark had rammed me while I was distracted. A full-force ram.

I barely had a moment to contemplate the fact that I was very, very dead. I had seen what this hit had done to Lindon. Saw it in Mercy’s ruined leg. It was a wonder that the hit that had clipped my shoulder and sent me flying hadn’t broken anything, or really… hurt much.

Why hadn’t that hurt? Sure, I was under the effects of the Heartseeker Pill, but I should have been able to feel snapped bone and a loss of range of motion. Oh well. I would never know, for now I was dead. This was it.

My madra drained out of my core, burning my channels along the way as it latched onto my body. My bones bent with the impact, and I readied for them to snap at any moment. They didn’t. My ribs bent all the way until the spine pressed itself against my sternum, all my vital organs squeezing, all the air in my body forcing itself out from my flattened lungs as my chest seemed to, for a pregnant moment, take the vague shape of the shark’s head.

The hit launched me towards my group, where the Truegold had begun to swim away from Yerin.

I waved my hands to stop myself in time.

Breathing was impossible.

I tried to cough, to see maybe if I was also going to vomit blood.

No.

Instead, I felt a sharp, lancing pain from the sides of my chest, coming from a pair of ribs. This time as I tried to breathe, I did end up getting a sip of air for my troubles. I waited for the rest of the damage to become evident.

After several seconds, all I could sense was that my ribs stung harshly and breathing was kind of hard, but that was about it.

This wasn’t—that couldn’t… wait, what?

I patted myself down. I wiggled my toes. Kicked my feet. Took a wheezing, pained breath.

I was… okayish?

No, wait, that didn’t matter as much as the fact that I was alive!

How was I fucking alive?

I shook my head. Thoughts for later. I looked around. The sharks were swimming around us now, faster and faster and faster. That’s why none of them had bitten a chunk out of me while I was paralyzed and waiting for death to arrive, giving me ample time to process my continued living.

The water currents began to push the group and I together. Even Orthos had finally returned to us, still leaving a trail of blood.

If I had any control over my breathing, I would have already tried to release another laser beam. Instead, I couldn’t help but… marvel, slightly, at the fact that I was still alive.

Orthos and Lindon tried to hit one of the sharks with dragon’s breath, missing every time. Now the fish were blue-black whirls traveling too fast for any of us to hit. And, seemingly, they had created a technique surrounding us, like that fucking bubble shield. Except, I observed, that it kept techniques and targets in, while still driving the water aura against us. And the walls were closing in on us.

Lashes of water thicker than the surrounding water, shimmering differently in the light, lashed towards me. A Ruler technique? I fought those instead, and slowly brought my breathing up in the proper cycling method. It would take me several focused seconds to recreate the laser, meaning I would have to take some of these lashes head-on.

This would hurt. 

But my laser would return that agony with interest.

Then I felt the premonition of death itself beyond the fog of the sea. A predator had arrived.

The sharks slowed down, seemingly to investigate for themselves. Too late.

A harpoon crashed straight through a bubble of one of the sharks, coming out the other end of its tail. The rope that the harpoon was attached to pulled back, pulling the shark with it, into the fog. Into the waiting maw of the true terror of the seas.

Oh what the fuck was this shit?

I heard a low rumble through my bubble, but felt it the most in my chest, especially my injured ribs.

Then as one, the sharks fled.

The predator arrived in the form of a big dolphin. No, not the dolphin, but the hunter riding on top of it, long brown hair trailing behind him, as well as a roll of rope around his torso and a bloody harpoon in his hands. His wide eyes were menacing to behold, and why were his cheeks so bloated? Was he feasting on the flesh of the shark he had reeled in already? How was he this hungry? What sort of hungering monster had we invited to this battle, and why was I finally starting to feel alive?

I would probably die, but I was so ready to fight this guy. It would be legendary.

Then suddenly, the boy’s widened, manic eyes eased from horrifying to simply curious, and of course he had blown up his cheeks, he was holding his breath. What the hell was that paranoia? Was I finally starting to lose it? Or was it a dream Ruler technique? He raised his hands in a placating gesture, and I could hardly imagine why a guy like this would ever even want to hurt us. He looked like a kid. He probably was a kid.

Perhaps this was the dream Ruler technique? The terrifying monster lulling us into a false sense of security before slaughtering us to a man, woman or turtle?

Holy shit. Dream artists are terrifying. I need to figure out a way to counter this shit pronto. Perhaps in the Tablet Library, if we ever made it there. I couldn’t even trust my own senses at the moment.

The standoff lasted several seconds before we all seemed to come to the same conclusion: there would be no more fighting.

A road of purple light formed in the water. Dross’ work. 

With this newfound tentative ally of ours, we made our way through the sea for several tense minutes, all our eyes on the dolphin-riding warrior. I had gone down to give Orthos a spare mask; his body forced him to use Striker techniques through his mouth, which obviously wouldn’t play well with a breathing apparatus. An oversight on my part, and a rather embarrassing one at that. I couldn’t believe I had outfitted Orthos with inaccessible gear. It was an insensitive oversight on my part, and could have cost him his life.

I would have to apologize profusely for this, and hope that Orthos forgave me.

Finally, the darkness of the sea abated, and we were met with an end to the water.

The habitat that lay before us was a dark blue-purple half-sphere of air, maybe half a mile across and a few dozen feet high with labyrinthine corridors of dream tablets visible, glowing faintly from within through the barrier. The habitat was built atop an… island? A slightly larger crag of rock and sand that rested atop nothing at all, eternally floating in a fixed point within the depths of Ghostwater’s pocket sea. A bit like the Skysworn’s cloud fortress, in a way.

The Spirit Well. Finally.

The main entry point, the closest thing to a ‘door’ was the column of water directly in the habitat’s center, twisting gently. We stepped out from the column into the center of a maze of dream tablets and tiled corridors.

Once he left the water, Orthos tried to rise from the ground with shaky powerless legs, before falling flat on his underbelly, giving up.

“We’ll carry you,” I said as I crawled up to Orthos on my knees. “Rest for now.”

Orthos groaned as he pulled his head back into his ruined shell.

I stood up, and felt an immensely sharp stab in my chest. My entire torso felt like a wrung-out dishrag, honestly. I doubled over and fell on my hands.

Lindon fell on his knees and started throwing up more blood, coughing weakly.

Yerin crouched over me, “Can you run?”

“No,” I whispered, laboring for breath.

Before I knew it, Yerin hauled me up like a kitten and laid me gently on top of Orthos’ shell. Lindon joined me soon after, back laid over a gash in Orthos’ shell. Oh God, we shouldn’t touch that—Mercy soon followed, lying next to me. She tried to prop herself up, giving me a view of her injured foot.

“Dross, which way?” Yerin asked.

Another purple line traced its way across the floor. ”Right that–oh my!”

Suddenly, my stomach lurched as Yerin carried Orthos, all of us on top. Then she started running. Not slowly, either. Certainly not her top speed, but the fact that she could even move this fast with such a weight on her back was incredible.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Mercy, my voice wheezing and low.

“I broke my leg, so,” she shrugged. She opened her void key and retrieved some of the low-grade meds I had given to her for holding. They were low-grade in her standards, but I had refined most of them myself with the scrappy materials I could afford. I’d basically given up all of my life-savings in order to afford them, or the ingredients for them.

They wouldn’t heal something as destroyed as her leg, but they would straighten it out and hold the splintered bones in place so that they wouldn’t heal wrong.

She shared some with me, and gave me more for me to give to Lindon. I did, swallowing my own. I felt a sudden numbness in my entire body. A painkiller. Fucking A.

Mercy’s leg untwisted and straightened. She stared at the process in horror, myself in fascination. I wish I could claim credit for that particular drug, but that was not of my own make.

I turned towards Lindon, who was taking quick and shallow breaths. “How are you feeling?”

“Need… madra,” Lindon said. The pills would work their own magic, but the best healer he could rely on was his Iron body.

“We got plenty,” I said with a numb, sleepy sigh. “Where we’re… going.” 

Then I saw the interloper, riding his dolphin next to Orthos’ upraised form. A slight-figured and slightly short young man, nondescript of features, with light brown eyes and skin tanned so deeply it verged on bronze, wearing a casual desert wanderer’s poncho and tan shorts rather than sacred artist’s robes. He wore a wide-brimmed brown hat, and overall looked more like an ordinary person than a warrior. My spiritual senses told me that this was someone to be careful of, though it was difficult to get a sense of his specific advancement. His strength was interwoven with that of the dolphin’s. Some sort of beast contract-type Path? No, probably something along those lines, but deeper. This felt like actual power-sharing. Together, they felt like a Truegold, though it was hard to say where they might have been placed within that echelon.

High, my gut and intuition both told me. Very high. 

He gave us a cheery wave, keeping pace with Yerin’s running stride. “Well met, ya’ll! I’m Palutin of the Eastern Wastes. Apologies for the dream Ruler technique from earlier. I jus’ needed to make sure that all them sharks had run away.”

Why would a Wastelander help us here? “Are you a Chosen of the Beast King?” I wheezed.

“That’s right,” Palutin said with a grin, speaking in a Wastelander’s casual country drawl. “This here’s my companion, Dolph,” he patted the three-meter long dolphin. Creative name. “Marigold be somewhere else round here, enjoyin’ some food.”

Oh no. I sat up a little and eyed this Palutin, “Anyone at the tablet library?”

“No one,” Palutin said, "Well now, if it's the Spirit Well you're frettin' over, don't you worry none. There oughta be plenty for all of us, if'n you can even get to it. I don't need any right now anyhow, seein' as I'm just workin' my way towards my Soulfire revelation."

Peak Truegold. Boasting, a casual threat, or was he really just… like this? 

I would love to befriend another Mercy-type, but… surely this was too good to be true. “Not to spit on any kindness on your part, Palutin,” I muttered tiredly,  “But would you mind answering why you would help us out like this?”

“I don’t know,” Palutin shrugged, "I reckon it has somethin' to do with your Akura friend, though I ain't too sure myself. All I know is the Beast King nudged me this way."

Well, gee, “Thank you, friend,” I tried for a wide smile, but I’m sure I only came off as diseased and delirious. 

Palutin looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “I ain’t your friend.”

Oh, wow. “It’s an expression,” I said. 

“I don’t like it,” he said, “Sounds like a lie is what it does.”

“Well, I am feeling friendly,” I said, “Despite,” I gestured vaguely at my form, “Since you saved our lives and all, so perhaps I wanted to use a springboard towards eventual friendship?” I said, “Considering what you did for us.”

“Eeeh, I don’t know,” Palutin rubbed the back of his head. “I did that mostly for my own sake, weakening eventual rivals. You did good, managing to kill one of em.” He doesn’t even see us as competition, I realized, unpacking those words while Palutin ducked his dolphin under the level of Orthos’ shell, to look at Yerin. "Wow, your friend sure is strong! She must've eaten a lot of predators."

“Huh?” Was he digging for information on her? “I’m sorry man, it’s just… really difficult to interact with you right now.” His blatant refusal to acknowledge friendly relations was one thing, but then he kept acting in an overly familiar way.

It was off-putting to me. He seemed like a nice guy, for a country hick, but he was hard to read. 

Or maybe I was reading into things too much.

“Sky,” Mercy said, giving me a reproachful look, “Apologies,” she said to Palutin, before giving him a radiant smile. Oh no. “What he meant was, we’re quite… tired, as you can tell. We haven’t been able to put our best face forward yet, or been able to thank you properly. And we would like to be friends, if you would let us.” She grinned despite her injuries, and it was a sweet smile. You couldn’t say no to that smile.

“Wow, thank you,” Palutin said, “I am flattered.” Then he just… didn’t say anything else, just staring into space like we were stupid for expecting a definitive answer on where we stood with him.

Perhaps a change in tack was in order… “In all honesty,” I said, “I can’t wrap my head around your motives. So naturally, that makes our interactions a little fraught, in my opinion.” Brutal honesty, the final tool of communication.

Palutin focused on me and gave a gracious nod, "For what it's worth, it didn't cost me a thing to save y'all. If I'd been at any risk, I wouldn't have done it. I sure wouldn't have risked Dolph's life for a bunch of strangers. To me, friendship's all about sacrifice, and I sacrificed nothin' to save ya."

“So you just don’t like sharks,” I said.

Palutin chuckled, "They don't much like me, truth be told. But that's only half of it. My master told me to give y'all a chance. And sure, I'd save someone I'm on neutral terms with if I had the power and there was no risk to me or my friends. Just seems like the obvious thing to do, don't it?"

Mercy’s expression visibly warmed, even as my thoughts churned. The only reason why the Beast King would send a friendly (or close enough) disciple our way would be to work to some higher goal–for some reason. Why? It couldn’t be that he meant to cozy up to us. Was he doing Akura Charity a favor, maybe? That did seem plausible. The Sage of the Silver Heart couldn’t act directly to protect Mercy, after all.

I gave him a weak grin, “Glassy Sky Arelius, though you can call me Sky if you want. Whether or not there was any sacrifice involved in you saving us, we owe you one anyway. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

“New friends!” Dross said from under Orthos. Was Yerin carrying him around, too? 

“Careful with the ‘friend’ word. We go by stricter definitions here,” I called out to Dross lazily, but he just continued on.

“This is very exciting! If we get enough friends, no one will threaten us either because we will have the advantage of numbers! Why doesn’t everyone try to make friends with as many people as possible? What if you made friends with your enemies, too? What if we all befriended our enemies?”

Palutin’s expression darkened. “I don’t know, disembodied voice. But there are people I would never make friends with.” Oh, shoot. For a second there, I thought he would try to take Dross from us.

So… he was just going to roll with the whole disembodied voice thing, then.

“Hmm, hatred,” I said to Dross in an explanation, “War is fueled by hatred. And sure, you could try to make friends with your enemies or try to get rid of your hatred, that could certainly solve things.”

“Sometimes, it ain’t in your hands,” Palutin glared at the sand, "Sometimes, you gotta fight a war where you kill someone's loved one 'cause they killed one of yours in the past. Even if you could get over that, 'cause there ain't no bringin' back the dead, if’n your aim is to protect your loved ones, you still gotta fight. Don’t matter how you feel about it, don’t matter how it hurts. Losin’ friends hurts more."

“People are so emotionally driven,” Dross said, “I never would have guessed that rationality was such a low priority for you all.”

Oh God, Dross. Way to be extremely condescending to a random Peak Truegold with unknown motives.

“Ain’t nobody all rational,” Palutin said wistfully. Was he really not going to ask? Was I maybe just going delirious from all the pain? “That’s the sad part of being a person, but it’s also the beauty of it,” he gave a contented grin to Dolph, rubbing his head as he chuckled lightly to himself. Then he chuckled again, nodding his head.

Was… was he talking to the dolphin? A talking dolphin? Was that some sort of telepathy? Dream ruler technique… dream ruler madra! He was a dream artist! He could talk to wildlife! Wow!

Talking to animals…

Amazing.

Wait. 

I was lying on the shell of a talking giant dragon turtle that can spew fire out of his mouth. 

I talk to this fellow on a regular basis.

I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Oh, wow, I’m so sleepy.

The tablet library was up ahead, another stone facility guarded by scripts. Whether or not they still functioned would depend on whether or not the cracks in space from Ghostwater’s destabilization had reached them.

Meaning, this soon into the game, they probably still functioned.

Lindon, right next to me, threw up a fountain of blood. It splashed on my clothes. Eugh. 

That definitely woke me up. 

Hmm… that fountain of blood vomit didn’t seem quite all that healthy.

“You need more medicine, Lindon?” I muttered as I dug into my barely opened void key, rummaging for some extra elixirs in the bag I had pulled up to the entrance of the key.

I offered him a handful, but he wasn’t in any position to accept, so I just lifted his head up and fed the elixir into his mouth slowly. 

This felt like an almost herculean task. Then suddenly, it became all too easy. Mercy’s arm held me up as I fed Lindon the life-saving elixir.

Thankfully, he swallowed with every mouthful, not choking on any of it. I didn’t know what I would do if he did. Once I ran out, he started slowly gaining a more healthy complexion, and I gently laid him on his back once again.

I gave Mercy a nod, “He’ll survive.” With a sigh of relief, she slowly pulled her arm from my back, laying me gently down on my back as I suddenly felt a deep exhaustion.

It had nothing on Lindon’s pain, though. Not after that hit he took, that struck him dead-on on his torso.

He had taken the same hit that I had, from the same technique.

All that had done was break some of my ribs. Every part of him looked shattered. What the hell had happened?

How was he suffering so much while I was just feeling a little sleepy?

I remembered my Iron body swallowing up my madra for a moment, and suddenly my bones became horrifyingly flexible.

Then it dawned on me: the Ethereal Iron body. It made my bones bendy. Had I ever actually tested the limit of that bendiness post-advancement? Sure, in my spars against Yerin and Lindon, I had noticed that my body was pretty resilient against blunt forces, but this felt like an additional layer of flexibility far beyond what was possible.

My ribcage had flattened.

Was this the power of Highgold? Had the advantages of my Iron body finally awakened, taking on a far greater level of power?

Yerin put us down for whatever reason, then I saw that it was to open the entrance to the well using Dross. Then she carried us in. We walked past more hallways of dream tablets fastened to the bookshelves before we finally arrived at that bonfire in my spiritual perception; the Spirit Well. It bathed the room in a baby blue glow. Wispy natural spirits of hazy dreams danced at the edges, enjoying the perfect balance of vital aura.

Lindon threw himself off Orthos once we were at the edge of the enormous Spirit Well. He scrambled four-legged across the tiles, crawled up over the well’s rim and slurped down a mouthful of its waters, staining the spirit water red as he did. “Yuck! Fucking gross, man,” I said. He didn’t hear me, as his entire head was submerged. Maaaan, why the fuck would he do that? Yuck!

He slumped back and gasped after his greedy consumption. Back to the wall of the well, he crossed his legs and began cycling. He hadn’t even opened his eyes to face my wrath. I’d get him back for this.

For fuck’s sake. There better be purification scripts or something in this well, or I’d be pissed. 

Yerin pulled me out from Orthos, and Mercy right afterwards. She looked up at his shell. “Hasn’t whispered a word,” Yerin said, “It’s looking bad.”

“Very bad!” Palutin said, having followed us in. He rubbed his fingers on his chin, regarding Orthos with a serious expression. “By my reckoning, he probably don’t have the night to live. We can slow that down with some meat from the local critters. A little Blood Essence would do him some good right about now.”

I faced Palutin and put both fists together in a solemn bow from where I was sitting, “I will pay you in scales if you can hunt some fish for him, Palutin.”

“Eh,” he waved a dismissive hand in front of his face. “Trading seems kinda pointless; we're in a Monarch's pocketworld. I don't reckon you could give me anything more valuable than what I can take here. Besides, I've seen the spirit medicines y'all are usin'. If you could afford better pills, we wouldn't be havin' this conversation.”

Ouch.

“I’ll do it,” Yerin said. “Seems to me I’m the only one among you who could shuffle half a step. Might as well step up.”

“Oh no, I can do it,” Palutin said with a grin and a chipper shrug. “I was fixin' to hunt some big game anyway, and once I finish up, there'll be more than enough meat for all y'all. You ain't my friends, but I'd never leave fellow wayfarers out of a meal if there's plenty. And there will be plenty.”

Shit. That was great.

Also, he had an insanely wide range of services he would provide for people that weren’t even his friends. Was I looking at the future Friendship Sage or something? 

Right then, I made up my mind: He’s good people.

“I’ll swing back,” Palutin said, “So that Dolph and Marigold can advance as well.”

I was still curious about something pressing, so I hauled myself up to my feet with Star’s End and looked at Palutin gravely, “How long do you think Orthos can last, even with sea drake or carp meat.”

“Hmmm,” Palutin looked up in thought, “It’s hard to say. He might not even be solid enough to eat anything. And he looks quite old. The treatment might not take real good.”

We needed the Life Well water. Even that could be a shot in the dark, though. Weak as Orthos was, wasn’t it possible that the elixir could just outright kill him? Still, it was better than literally nothing. We could water down the dosage, mix it with some Spirit Well water to get his spirit sturdy enough to support his body. Maybe a drop at first. 

I turned to Yerin, “Lindon might wake up feeling perfect in half a breath, but the rest of us are going to need time. Orthos doesn’t have any,” I focused on Dross next, who was tucked inside Yerin’s pocket, and said, “How far is the last well from here? How fast do you think Yerin can get there?”

“Three minutes of straight swimming should do it,” Dross said.

“Then I’ll do it,” Yerin said, “Stone simple.”

Dross continued. “Provided you aren’t bothered by any Silverfang carp or Diamondscale sea drakes or Tidewalkers, or whatever other factions may be lurking around.”

Palutin raised a finger, “Oh! There're three Gold dragons here too! They're part aquatic, so they'll definitely have a leg up on ya if you face 'em in the water.”

“Terrible odds,” I drawled, sighing. Still, this was important information. Just what had we provoked on the outside? Were all the factions now sending in spares to reinforce their young masters? I looked back at Palutin, who was currently riding Dolph. “Any chance you can give Yerin a lift there?” This could put the dolphin at risk. Hopefully the request wouldn’t piss him off, and even if he refused, it probably wouldn’t be a disaster.

“I ain’t the one you should ask,” Palutin said neutrally. 

Sky blinked. He couldn’t mean Ziel, could he? That would be ridiculous. “What do you mean you’re not–”

Oh, Sky realized, in a moment of inspiration. 

He’s a disciple of the Beast King.

“Master Dolph” Sky said, turning to the Scorchland river dolphin with the most serious, grave expression he could muster. It was floating in the air a bit above the floor, Palutin riding saddleback, swimming on currents of water aura and otherwise looking for all the world like an ordinary dolphin. “Can you please give a ride to my friend Yerin here, and help her save our other friend? We would consider it a great favor.”

The dolphin gave a series of cheerful yips and clicks, finishing with a sort of whistling trill. It was quite charming, actually. Almost musical. Though not even a scrap of it had resembled anything approaching an actual language.

What? Sky turned to Palutin with a helpless grin on his face.

"Dolph says sure," Palutin gave a shrug and a visibly warmer grin, "He's happy to help, provided it ain't too dangerous. But it should be fine. Dolph's the fastest swimmer I know. His kind gotta swim against the current of a ragin' river from sea to mountaintop every time they wanna reproduce. We can take her to the other habitat and back quick-like, then we'll go on a hunt on our own."

I considered Palutin more closely, and with a new level of understanding. So that’s how he is. I let out a breath of relief. Thank you, Beast King.

I gave Dolph a grateful nod, and he… winked at me.

What the fuck.

“Then it’s settled,” Yerin said, giving Dolph, then Palutin separate bows of her head. She sure caught on quick. “Thank you for everything. We will remember this.”

“Hop on!” Palutin said, even as Dolph yipped twice.

I took a few small things out from my void key, and then, for the first time in months, I took off the void key entirely, necklace and all. I gave it to Yerin with a slightly pained grin. “There’s a lot of important stuff in there, so if you die, I will never forgive you.”

“No pressure at all,” Yerin scoffed at me in obvious displeasure, taking the proffered necklace and putting it on.

“Call it an opportunity to advance even further, sword maniac,” I gave her a serious look, “Be careful, alright? Quick in and out. You don’t have to fight anyone.”

“Right,” she said. “Not like all your lives aren’t hitched to this wagon now.”

“You’ve got some practice in carrying us already,” I said with a self-deprecating grin, “What’s a little more? It could push you to Truegold.”

Yerin grinned proudly, and nodded resolutely. “Sit tight, then. And leave some of the water for me.” 

“Can’t make any promises,” I said, then I eyed the well, “You might want to take a quick sip right now anyway. You need a full core.” Yerin shrugged and walked up to the well, scooping up a handful of the water and quickly splashing it into her mouth before I could stop her. Gross. She did that three times in quick succession, within only one second. None of the water even went on her face. I suspected I had just laid witness to an incredibly niche survival skill: drinking water with your hand rapidly, and with no spillage. 

The Sword Sage had taught her that over reading. 

Without wasting any more time, Yerin ran and jumped on top of Dolph, behind Palutin, straddling the sea mammal smoothly. Then, they sped out from the dream tablet, flying over the shelves.

“She will be back,” Mercy said with a comforting smile. “You should rest.”

I returned her smile as best I could, even though I wasn’t feeling anything as neat and tidy as comfort or hope. There was something like pity in Mercy’s eyes when she looked at me, and it didn’t take any great degree of insight to know exactly what she was seeing. Between the back to back battles and the lingering effects of the berserker/suicide pill, I felt ready to collapse on my feet right now. I didn’t even want to know the current state of my body, or how many decades I’d burned off from my lifeline–much of it completely unnecessarily. Fucking Blood Shadow. I had taken an unimaginably huge L, and I couldn’t tell if I felt more embarrassed at myself or infuriated by the Blood Shadow’s antics.

That all-encompassing, bone-deep pain that I had walked with ever since the Bleeding Phoenix was beginning to return. Good thing I had given away the Dream Well water, too. Otherwise, I’d be forced to stay conscious for longer. I didn’t care how many colors of magic rainbow steroids Northstrider put into his über-caffeine. I just wanted some damn sleep. 

Then again, I could take advantage of some easy advancement first, right? While I was still conscious.

“Are you ready to gain some real power, Mercy?” I said, looking over at the vast stores of Spirit Well water. There had to be around thirty to forty barrels worth of it in one place. All of this could probably raise an entire small sect to Truegold.

Lindon’s pallid complexion was gaining color by the second, and his breathing became more even and level as the Spirit Well filled his soul, replenished his madra, and allowed it to finally address his myriad injuries. Even through all this pain, he still had it in him to advance. What the hell was my excuse?

I bent over the well and dipped in one of my travel jugs for a big scoop. Yes, I brought cups to drink from the wells with, I wasn’t a savage. I brought it to my lips and took a long sip.

The fireworks it sent through my spirit, cleansing my ravaged channels, stilling my madra, filling my core, wiping me clean of all spiritual exhaustion… that almost made this entire trip worth it.

If Orthos survived the day, that would be the real win.

---

Major thanks to Coldbringer/SnowGN for beta-reading and extensive editing, especially with this chapter and its detailed combat sequence! I'm beyond happy with what we achieved with this chapter.