Billy cursed in frustration for the thousandth time.

  The Progressor being used was equivalent to a rank-30 Avatar.

  Billy had returned four times as a Core and managed to retain his mind. He thought the Fluid would be no problem at all, but he was entirely unprepared for how alien its mind was.

  Both Fluids and Committed beings were based on a single Intent, a specific action that their entire existence was focused on. This Fluid had "Exploring" as its Intent, and exploring was all it did.

  He spent the first few hours desperately trying to control the Fluid, to no avail. It fixated on anything remotely interesting, only to lose that interest as soon as it got close, shifting its attention to something else.

  He felt like a rodeo cowboy desperately trying to tame a wild bronco with attention-deficit disorder.

  He attempted to use the Mrs. Daisy technique Jenna had recommended; he closed his eyes and visualized the scene. When he opened them, he found himself in the back of Mrs. Daisy's car, but no one was driving. Billy squealed in her eighty-year-old voice and jumped over the seat, trying to grab the steering wheel.

  However, the wheel became unstuck from the axis, leaving it in her hands as the car careened out of control.

  Billy quickly dispelled the scene. It was not working.

  He finally found the trick to make it function. He had only to focus his attention on anything and try to find a detail that made it interesting or unique; the Imperial would quickly run to it; the trick to make it stay was to keep looking at it in new ways.

  He managed to lure it back into Discovery’s house by focusing on the appeal of exploring their kitchen.

  The Fluid ran like a prize racehorse up the wall of the building, entering their home through an open window.

  Now that he knew how to make it move, he tried to refine its control by making it open the door out of Discovery’s house. He focused on how marvelous and incredible the world hidden by that closed door would be, only to have the Fluid smash right through the door, turning it into splinters.

  He could feel Jenna swearing through the link, too.

  “You are repairing that door, prepper man,” she heard her say.

  He finally managed to open another door by focusing on how fascinating it would be to see the lock in action. He was getting the hang of it.

  He summoned his status screen to take a look and found out that doing so stopped the Fluid in its tracks. Interesting mental actions also held its attention. That was good to know. It was the only way to keep it from wandering all over the place.

  It was the first time he could properly study a Progressor status screen, and what he saw made the Avatar system look crude by comparison.

  His stat screen showed similar stats to the Avatar system, plus one extra stat, Capacity, ranked at 3.

  That implied one capacity point per evolution. No matter how much he mentally nudged at it, he could not gain any information about what it was suitable for.

  He decided to keep his status screen always on, driven by a gut feeling that the system was much more dynamic than the one he was accustomed to.

  He had three abilities, listed under his single stat, one per Evolution.

  -Multilimbed: Create any rank three power as long as it meets all the following requirements.

  -It must be used for exploration.

  -It must manifest as multiple limbs emerging from the Fluid’s form.

  -It must be related to movement.

  -It must have a one-minute cooldown. If the chosen power also has a cooldown, both add.

  The Fluid may ignore one or more of these limitations by sacrificing two power ranks for each.

  The Fluid may soften one or more of these limitations by sacrificing one power rank for each.

  -Ovoid Form: Create any rank three power as long as it meets all the following requirements.

  -It must be used for exploration.

  -It must manifest as the Fluid’s body becoming ovoid.

  -It must be related to defense.

  -It must have a maximum duration of ten seconds.

  The Fluid may ignore one or more of these limitations by sacrificing two power ranks for each.

  The Fluid may soften one or more of these limitations by sacrificing one power rank for each.

  -Translucent Flesh: Create any rank three power as long as it meets all the following requirements.

  -It must be used for exploration.

  -It must manifest as the Fluid’s body becoming translucent.

  -It must be related to stealth.

  -It requires at least thirty seconds for activation.

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  The Fluid may ignore one or more of these limitations by sacrificing two power ranks for each.

  The Fluid may soften one or more of these limitations by sacrificing one power rank for each.

  Billy could easily see the pattern.

  Created powers must be related to the Intent, manifested as a specific body feature, have both a specialized function and a distinctive additional limitation, specific to each power.

  Limitations could be ignored, but this would severely weaken the power.

  Even so, it looked like an incredibly versatile system.

  Billy also understood that Bob would never gain any skills from this form.

  For some reason, the Skillmaster could only unlock Pantean skills that were an integral part of the description in Billy’s true screen.

  Metaskills capable of creating a wide array of abilities never seemed to unlock anything for him.

  He kept the spawn screen summoned and tried to run down the facade of the building, much as he had done before. He did so by convincing himself that the lower floors were very desirable for exploration. This time, he focused on the status screen, trying to discover how the Fluid’s powers worked.

  His appendage developed suction cups, allowing him to walk down the building's wall as easily as if it were horizontal.

  Multilimbed: Suction Cups x 3: Utilize suction cups to walk on various surfaces, including vertical ones. Once the suction cups are dismissed, Multilimbed can’t be used again for one minute.

  He marveled at the sheer flexibility of the Fluid. His status screen started flashing as he walked down the facade.

  His Capacity points dwindled to zero, temporarily converting into Body +1, Balanced +1, and Swift-Footed +1. The entire process took less than a minute.

  When it was finished, he sped up and down the building as if in a dream.

  He tried another experiment, convincing himself that there was something worthy of exploration behind a metal grid protecting an abandoned shop. His many limbs grabbed the grid and tried to tear it apart. As expected, the points began changing into stats related to physical strength, but at a much lower rate than before. The closer the actions were to his Intent, the speedier the process became.

  The system was paradoxically both restrictive and versatile: it allowed the Fluid an incredible amount of freedom to design its powers, as long as they were related to its Intent. A society based on this system would be composed of individuals with highly specialized functions: tools, not persons, as Governance had implied.

  He wondered how similar this system was to the one Committed Imperials used.

  He had a gut feeling that they were more alike than he expected.

  A couple of hours later, he felt safe enough with his new body to attempt infiltration.

  He ingested all his cores, both symbiotic and dimensional, into his gelatinous body by contemplating the idea of how easy it would be to study them if they were inside him.

  The Fluid’s body could perform almost any action, as long as it was motivated correctly.

  He used his translucent Flesh power to make the cores transparent as long as they were held inside his body, and travelled to his nearest target, a dungeon located in the poorest district in the river.

  Billy transformed his multiple limbs into rotors that propelled his ovoid body through the sky, much as if he were the offspring of a suppository and a helicopter.

  His capacity points shifted, making him more aerodynamic and increasing his speed. His actions, not his desires, controlled them.

  He soon came into view of the entry into the Dungeon.

  Fluids, despite their chaotic nature, seemed much more organized than their Committed counterparts. Several monstrosities, in a state of continual mutation, heavily patrolled the entry.

  Billy felt Jenna’s thought inside his head. “They are somehow scanning all who enter. I want you to enhance your sensory abilities and study how they are doing it.”

  Billy concentrated on how wonderful it would be to discover how they were doing it, and his ovoid body turned into a giant eye, allowing him to perceive the other Fluids in the entire colour spectrum.

  “See those vapours in the infrared range?” Jenna asked. “They are clearly emitting some kind of identifying pheromones. Try to match them.”

  His translucent flesh power was linked to stealth.

  The only way to explore that dungeon was to match the pheromones the other Fluids were emitting. Just as he thought that idea, his skin changed, developing the glands necessary to emit them.

  He flew through the entry unmolested.

  He repeated the operation several times over the night, depositing the protocores and the dimensional beacons in the desired places.

  The alchemical pills he had taken before starting his adventure, coupled with facing risks inside a dungeon and his Essence Digestion passive, granted him enough achievement points to pay for his Fluid form before his mission was over.

  Fluids were exquisitely adept at fulfilling their intent, and his shape was based on Exploring. As he placed the last core, he concentrated on how interesting and meaningful it would be to explore the way back to Discovery’s flat.

  Just as he turned around, he was hit with a whiff of pheromones, heavy with the tang of suspicion and a heady aftertaste of irony.

  “Are you quite over with what you were doing? Would you mind explaining your actions?”

  The four guardian Fluids protecting this dungeon suddenly materialized around him, their pheromones communicating their intentions and moods with a nuance only a smell-based language could achieve.

  Nobody could beat Billy at Exploring in his current form. Unfortunately, no one could beat these four at Watching.

  “Seems I have been caught,” he transmitted to Jenna. “How bad is the situation?” she asked, her thought tinged with worry.

  “Not particularly worrying. I have already deposited the last cores, and I know how to deal with these four,” he answered back.

  “Do I even need to ask?” wondered Jenna as Billy exploded in mid-air, taking the four Watchers with him.

  Back in the Blue Room, he had four different Watchers to choose from for his Revenant power. They all shared the same Intent, but had different physical mutations. No two Imperials were alike.

  Billy chose the highest-ranked of them, a feline form covered in eyestalks with five evolutions.

  He paid 2500 achievement points, and the Fluid Watcher (5) became part of his Akashic Library.

  He decided Discovery’s apartment was essential and should be guarded at all times, so he ran out of the dungeon, emitting pheromones tinged with anger and surprise. We are being attacked, help.

  That particular Fluid had some authority over the others, as all of the Imperials guarding the gate entered the Dungeon as one.

  He returned to Discovery’s apartment, stopping only to shed his Fluid form and return to his natural one. It would not do to survive today’s dangers only to get clobbered by Pob’s Bounty patrol.

  The rest of the Losers were already waiting for him.

  “The mission was a success,” he informed them. “All the beacons and seeds have been placed at their designated spots.”

  “Not a complete success,” added Jenna. “Both you and Bob had to resort to violence. That will trigger an investigation into your actions. Sooner or later, they will find them. We have to act tomorrow.”

  As they went to their bedroom, he felt Jenna’s hand on his forearm.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked him.

  He kissed her passionately. “I have missed you so...”

  “Fix the door, dumbass,” she cut him off.