We climb back down the spire, then walk through the now nameless castle. The miasma has thinned and dissipated. I get to focus all my effort on [Suppressing] the little creature inside my body again. I’m almost tempted to [Deconstruct] it, really.

  But I don’t do that yet.

  As we walk, I do note that my latest skill broke one of the two patterns in their name. It doesn’t start with an ‘S’. Still ends in ‘ion’, though.

  Let’s see how long the pattern holds.

  “Snow. This Sylves is your friend, yes?” Amelie asks.

  I nod.

  “What do you plan to do after getting her, then? We may need to begin making decisions as a group. I do not wish to simply be pulled along with you.”

  Opal flashes me a small smile. Princess indeed. “You’re free to do whatever you like,” I say, waving a hand through the air. “I’m not forcing you to come along.”

  She looks at me for a long moment, an armor that’s been wrapped with strings pushing her wheelchair. “Hmmm,” she hums. “I suppose I do not mind tagging alongside your group.”

  “What got you travelling with Opal?” I ask.

  “Ah, that,” she says. Her lips curl upwards a little, and she lifts a hand to cover her giggle. “We lived in opposite flats in the same apartment building. When the world ended they checked up on me.”

  “You live alone?” I ask.

  She gives me a long look. “Mostly,” she nods.

  I don’t pry anymore, just nodding. She waits for a while before continuing.

  “Opal knew I’m disabled, so they decided to see about bringing me along on their adventure. We figured out how to use the skills. Then, that oaf decided to drag me along into a dungeon,” she throws my friend a sideways glance.

  “That sounds like them, alright,” I say, smiling faintly.

  “Ey! I can hear you!” Opal complains, half heartedly.

  Amelie nodded sagely. “Indeed,” she says, ignoring their protests. “Well, I do not truly mind. These skills have been rather useful for me, personally.”

  I nod. Being able to make puppets to push her chair must be nice. “Have you put points into heart?” I ask.

  “Yes. No, it has not changed my disability,” she says.

  “Right,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “It was a little rude,” she nods, “but you’re forgiven.”

  She really does have the princess-vibe down to a science. I smile slightly. “It’s appreciated.”

  For a few moments, we settle into silence, when Jess speaks up. “What’s Sylves like?” she asks.

  Inu gives her a longer look. “Kind,” she says. “Cheerful.”

  “Energetic and bubbly,” Opal supplies.

  “... A bit of a handful,” Thatch sighs.

  That makes me laugh a little. “You’re all so silly,” I say.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  “Thank you,” Jess says. “I appreciate it. Say, Snow, after this… what will we do?”

  I smile. “Learn magic. Survive. Find a way to climb to the next floor. Learn everything there is to learn about classes.” There are dozens of things I wanna do already. Work on my mana puzzle, for one. Dissect the heal skill I’m working on some more. Figure out solidification.

  Really, I should already be doing those while walking, shouldn’t I? If Sylves is hurt, I’d want to heal her, after all. I stop myself from humming as I think about the way the system made the mana flow again, and direct it to move that way, too.

  Of course, I fuck it up, casting a botched skill with a horrible effect. But it heals me, just a little. I’ve got those bits down tentatively. It’s just a resource sink.

  Despite my rather significant vessel stat, it drains my mana. I feel that ethereal power leak out of me like water down the drain, hungrily fuelling something that’s not even good enough to be called a skill.

  But it’s okay. I learn, I get better at visualising the bits of the structure I need, slowly expanding it. I’ll make the system acknowledge it, even if I stole it. So, I do it again. And again, as we walk.

  Whenever I’m low on mana, I instead work on solidifying small parts of it, turning them into grains, and squishing those grains into each other to create tiny needles.

  The mana seems to want to crystallize into rigid, somewhat elongated forms. It’s strange, and I’m pretty sure I could change it, but it works for now, and I don’t mind it. This will do for now. I can move the solid mana pretty fast, and it seems to mess with skills inside someone else’s body.

  So, I prep some, as much as my mana lets me, then go back to work on the healing skill.

  We walk down the hill from the castle, and then let Thatch lead us. He’s memorized the direction that Sylves was in. Pierced her with his gaze, or something like that. What a tricky skill to figure out.

  Mine feel a little more straightforward than that. Well, they’re still nuanced, of course, but his really is rather open to interpretation, isn’t it? I wonder if he could use it like an evil eye type skill. The kind that did damage to someone when he looked at them, literally manifesting the “piercing” part as wounds?

  Something to discuss with him when the general conversation dies down a little. I give a small sigh, taking out my headphones and popping them on, looking at the pathetic 50% battery left on my phone. I turn on some music, and the world starts to turn into nothing more than ambiance.

  I love noise-cancelling headphones.

  - - -

  There are goblins in the forest.

  It’s not quite a dungeon, not like the Dreadburg, but it’s still very different from the city. The mana feels denser, here, like someone pressing down on my skin. I don’t like it, but I bear with it.

  Just until we find Sylves, I can endure it, surely. As long as I have my headphones.

  I keep them on, even as a wolf jumps from the forest to attack us. I split my focus in two, part of my will getting to work on [Suppressing] the animal. Opal then quickly dispatches it, and I focus back on my personal little parasite.

  Since I’ve been practicing the healing skill, it’s been getting better. My insides feel a little less messed up, and the creature is being pushed back a bit. It’s growing stronger from eating me, yes, but I’m growing stronger faster.

  Just you wait, little parasite. I’ll dissect you yet.

  Norman and Bay don’t like the forest. It puts them on edge, constantly nervous. Jess, in comparison, seems to take it fairly well. She just maintains her calm, lashing out with frost whenever needed, then dissecting the bodies.

  She’s rather meticulous about it, too, storing bits of wolf meat for later use. It looks a little disgusting, especially since there were still grocery stores to raid, but we’d make do. The first really strange part was when we find a slime.

  It’s round, squishy, blue, and held in a thin membrane. It has no eyes, just a small sphere in its middle. A core, maybe?

  Opal pokes it with their sword.

  The slime explodes.

  My friend blinks back, and I [Suppress] the explosion, keeping us largely safe. Some acid spills on me, turning my hoodie into more tatters, and burning a bit through my skin before I suppress its effects, too, and shake it off. More practice for healing, I suppose.

  It hurts, though. It really hurts.

  “What the fuck was that?!” Norman yells, halfway hidden behind a hissing tree.

  “A slime,” I supply.

  “I can see that much!” he says, scowling. “I meant why it exploded!”

  That makes sense. I nod. “No idea,” I say, bowing down to grab the core. It hurts a little, but that’s okay. Yet, when my fingers touch it, it dissipates into motes of mana.

  Some of that pours into me, restoring my pool just a little, and I immediately cast another heal. The itching from the acid dissipates, and new skin grows where my old one became patchy.

  I take a long breath. “Well. Any of you good with a bow?” I ask.