We all looked at the announcement of the Boss Rush with resignation.

  “That didn’t take long,” I commented.

  “We have seven days,” Urg muttered, unintentionally sending the words into the Moon Silk.

  “What was that?” Second asked.

  “Just planning.”

  “What about?” I turned towards them.

  “My mortgage, what do you think I’m planning about?” Urg snapped.

  I bristled. I had always hated that type of response when I got it, but I tamped down my annoyance and said, “What are your plans then?”

  “Nothing much right now, I’m only trying to judge what’s possible within seven days. Oh, and by the way, how close are you to evolving Jacob?”

  I looked at my levels, around 30 till I could evolve, “Not very, and I only got as far as I did because of the XP boost during the fourth phase, and I'm not sure that's even around anymore due to the Fifth Phase coming up.”

  Urg clicked their tongue, “Didn’t think of that. Second, can you test it out; Question and Action?”

  The two headed ape unsheathed a needle made from a shard of crystalline bone and pulled it back, ready to attack one of my Anteaters.

  But I screamed, “Hey, the hell do you think you’re doing!”

  Second stopped just before eviscerating Thor, both of their head turning towards me, “Doing what Floaw asked…”

  “Not against one of my good minions, here, do it against this one,” I put forward one of the random forest critters in my entourage, this time a large blue squirrel, “Also, in the future, don’t attack any animal just in case, unless it attacks you or something.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind and honor,” they said before killing the poor critter.

  Feeling bad for it despite knowing I’ve done much worse, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

  Then Urg Floaw said, “So, what’s the answer; Question?”

  “Jacob is right, no XP boost.”

  Urg swam around in the water bubble a bit more vigorously than usual, and said, “We have seven days, and we lost our main way of powering up…. Jacob, can you answer something for me?”

  I nodded, then realized I was a moth, and that didn’t translate well onto my body, “Sure.”

  “This terrain, and the little tunnels, that’s your doing; Question?”

  “Yes.”

  “How flexible is it to additions like Second and I could make; Question?”

  I had no idea, but said anyway, “Reasonably, but that’s not taking into account that The Great Debate doesn’t teleport us to somewhere else for the Fifth Phase.”

  “Reasonable, but I do not believe so. The Great Debate is a machine like any other, and creating a whole new area when a perfectly fine one already exists would be wasteful. Also, we can do very little we can to improve ourselves within seven days, but we can do quite a bit with the land in that time. I believe it would be idiotic not to take this action.”

  “Can’t argue against that,” I replied.

  I had originally said it so I could get a break from the non stop life or death situations that had been my life for the past month. But there ain’t no rest for the wicked.

  Then we got to work planning out what we wanted to do. It was a bit awkward since we had to be connected via Moon Silk to talk to each other. But we got used to it, having also done extensive planning to keep the annoying Silk connection to a minimum.

  We made two major changes. The first was one I had been thinking about for a while, a thirty foot wall around my fortress that we designated as our battleground. We had some disagreement about it because we didn’t know if the Boss Rush was going to be a bunch of decently strong enemies. Or just the single big guy, and a wall wouldn't be useful in the second scenario, but since we didn’t know, we compromised. Making the wall smaller than I intended, and got rid of the mote I wanted.

  My minions doing most of the building while Urg and Second brought the materials, such as the dirt and wood. Second using their brute strength to carry the material, Urg using their water constructs.

  The second change were the pockets of water placed throughout the battlefield, some small ponds exposed to the air for quick access. But most of them were in the tunnels in case the enemy got inside of them, so Urg could quickly kill whatever was inside, and so the enemy didn’t know exactly how much water they had access to.

  We were able to get the framework of that and make a good amount of progress on it. The sun falling below the horizon, the two other contestants prepared for bed, roasting one of the minions I had given them over a fire. They tried to invite me over, but I didn’t eat meat, and I also didn’t need sleep, so I just continued the construction, slower without them, but it wasn’t impossible. But I had mostly gotten away from them to get space to think about how to use my Free XP.

  So I pulled up my Status Sheet, thinking through what I could do. The first thing my mind landed on was my Evolution Level. I didn’t think I was going to get my evolution, but I was hoping it would give me enough Mutation points to get some mutations. Which I only realized that I hadn’t even looked at them, and when I opened them they were;

  Antenna: Imperial, Mutation available

  Crown of Lunaris: A piece of divinity passed down from Lunaris to those that the god has personally chosen to be part of their inner circle. This mutation amplifies Lunar Scale Dust potency by infusing it with a piece of Domain.

  Wings: Imperial, Mutation available

  Cloak of Lunaris: This mutation amplifies Slip Away's potency by infusing it with a piece of Domain.

  Tarsus: Imperial, Mutation available

  Sceptre of Lunaris: This mutation amplifies Moon Silk potency by infusing it with a piece of Domain.

  Abdomen: Imperial, Mutation available

  Heart of Lunaris: This mutation amplifies Royal Wills' potency by infusing it with a piece of Domain.

  Ok, that was a lot of extra Domain. I really should’ve looked at this sooner. Why didn’t Terra tell me about this when I asked her about how to get my Domain stronger? Eh, she probably already thought I knew this, I mean, what idiot wouldn’t even look at their own Mutations in the weeks they had them?

  I pushed that line of thought away and looked at my Free Xp that was in the yellow. Roughly estimating how many levels I would gain based on what it already gave me, until I relized had no way of knowing how.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  So instead I did the math on how many levels I would need, which should’ve been around seven, or ten… or maybe five?

  Math was never my best subject, ok, there was a reason I found out one of my math teachers was unfaithful when I was snooping around his school computer. And that wasn’t because I was on a moral crusade; it was because I was trying to change my grade. The moral crusade came after, when I failed at hacking his PC and was just trying to spite him.

  After I gave up on that, I poured the Free XP into my Evolution level, planning to stop when I had enough. But the energy had other ideas, having built up momentum, finally finding an outlet. Like an anchor dropped at sea, I pulled against it futilely to stop it from wasting itself. But eventually it slowed down fractionally, and second by second it lost its momentum, stopping a minute later.

  Desperately looking at my Free XP reserves to see how much was wasted, and was left pleasantly surprised to see them in the orange, my Evolution Level at 68. Tentatively, I poured more energy into it and reached the Max level with the last dribbles of energy with a satisfying ding from the system, all the more sweet since I didn't have to work for it at all.

  Then I remembered who I had killed to get this, and the taste turned bitter. Then I turned my mind to something I hadn’t thought of, when I mutated and evolved I was going to be unconscious up to 24 hours. What was I going to tell Urg and Second? I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them, ‘Hey, so there’s going to be a perfect opportunity to kill me!’ But I don’t think vanishing on them was going to be the best idea either.

  I thought over it during the night till the sun came up, and when the other contestants woke, I finally decided to bite the bullet.

  “Ok, so, um… I still have some mutations available for me.”

  Urg took the sting of Moon Silk I had offered them, and said, “Yes, and?”

  “Well, I'm going to be unconscious for roughly a day. So I won’t be able to help with building, and I thought that disappearing for a day would be, you know, a dumb thing not to tell y’all.”

  “Understandable, we will continue with our plan while you do so; Partings.”

  Then they let go of the Moon Silk and continued what they were doing. Leaving me confused as to how that went so easily. Well, better not to look a gift horse in the mouth. So I, and my most valuable minions, descended to one of the deepest tunnels made by the ants specifically for this purpose.

  When I was nice and cozy, I selected all the mutations, falling unconscious. But when my body fell asleep, something else inside of me stayed awake, surrounded by a white void. I flailed around, trying to gain ground, but nothing seemed to help.

  Then I heard a familiar and derisive voice, “Huh, you’re finally here.”

  I looked towards the source and saw a green moth the size of a large dog with a pattern on the back that looked like eyes, and it had talked with my exact voice.

  “What the hell are you?” I furrowed my brow, my human brow.

  “I’m the one you creatively named Bug Jacob.”

  “Wait, aren’t you just a ball of instincts and stuff?”

  “I should’ve been, but you never accepted me like an idiot, and now with the Evolutions I've developed into a full blown person.”

  “How does that even work?”

  Bug Jacob moved their wings up and down in an imitation of a shrug, “Maybe our brain getting more complex gave me space to grow, I don’t know, it just does.”

  “Ok… then what is this place, and how have I not met you before?”

  “This is the Memory Realm, and you’ve never met me before because you refuse to listen to anything I ever say. You know, like an idiot.”

  “Well, first of all, I don't listen to you because you’re the idiot, not me. Do you know how many times you’ve almost gotten me killed because you were wrong about something and were screaming in my ear during a life and death situation?!”

  “I only ever threatened your life when we were fighting that Jaguar, but you would’ve been dead ten times over from that fight alone if I hadn’t been there.”

  “Then what about everything else! When I was meditating, you were constantly distracting me!”

  “I was trying to help you!”

  “By doing what, destroying all my progress?”

  “You were going to get us killed with what you were doing. And you were doing it wrong in the first place, I was trying to direct you properly!”

  “Then you should’ve just told me!”

  “I did, but someone is constantly ignoring everything I have to say!”

  I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying something to stupid. Taking a deep breath, I said, “This isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

  “Finally, something smart.”

  Ignoring the comment, I continued, “So you said this was the memory realm, like the one Fifth of the Mist used?”

  “Yeah, but it’s less a realm and more a mental projection of ourselves.”

  “Eh, semantics. But it can do the same thing as Fifth did, right?”

  “This is our mind infused with our power, we don’t need his abilities to do what he did. But if you’re referring to finding our core and practicing our Domain, then yes, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I perked up, “Then get talking, bug boy. Chop, chop.”

  Bug Jacob let out an annoyed sigh, “Well, I wanted to show you how to properly use our Domain. But first, we’ll need to get to the core.”

  They left a pause for me to ask a question, but I stayed silent till they kept talking.

  “God, I hate how you do that.”

  I giggled, “Why do you think I do it?”

  They shook their head and continued, “Well, anyway, to get to our core, we’ll need to visualize it simultaneously."

  I tilted my head, “Our core?”

  “Same body, same head, same core.”

  “But Fifth only brought me along in the Memory Realm, and I reached it myself?”

  “The spell was focused on you, so it sorta pushed me to the side, including my influence on the core.”

  “Oh, ok, so back to the core thing. Do we seriously just visualise it?”

  “It’s a bit more complex. We need to imagine everything associated with it, but essentially yes.”

  “But how would that bring it to us?”

  “This isn’t a physical space, it’s mental. Anything we’re thinking about is in front of us. Now, are you done asking questions? Time still passes in here, we only got 20 hours till the mutation stops, and I’m not sure of your ability to get back here.”

  I nodded, “So just visualize it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Feeling awkward, but wasting no time, I closed my eyes and remembered the ball of floating static, the memories of a PC screen, of me killing Fifth of the Mist swirling together as they entered my mind. Then I felt a shift. And when I opened my eyes, I saw the field of purple grass I had killed Fifth in surrounding me, smudged and undetailed now from the corrosion of memory, the ball of static in front of me. Three familiar strands floating out of it, two of them pumping something into it. One was a sterile gray, the other a muddy green, and the third a bright green ribbon floating around like it was adrift in water.

  I went to touch the gray strand, but Bug Jacob yelled at me, "Don't do that, you idiot!”

  And I stopped, my finger hovering an inch above it, then I pulled it away, scowling, “Rude.”

  “Rude! You'd better be thanking me, that’s the Domain of The Great Debates system, and it has some nasty hair trigger defenses. Believe me, I learned that hard way; it’s the reason why I was distracting you when you meditated.”

  “What do the defences do?”

  “Don’t know exactly, but it nearly tore my soul right in half.”

  I glanced at the gray strand and took a healthy step away, “So what are we doing to train our Domain?”

  Bug Jacob went over to the third loose strand and grabbed it with the palps around their mouth, “Nothing much for now, just teaching you the basics and getting you used to using our domain.”

  I nodded, “And what are the exercises or whatever you want me to do?”

  “Well, the first thing you should know is that it isn’t you that’s going to be doing this, it’s going to be us.”

  “Why?”

  “I said this earlier, it’s our body and mind, you’re just the dominant one, and it’s too late for you to integrate me unless you want to kill me. Which I don’t think you want to, unless you’ve gained a taste for it after Fifth of the Mist,” they laughed half heartedly.

  I flinched and reiterated quietly, “So what is it we’re going to do?”

  They gestured for me to come over, “We’re keeping it simple, just intentionally move this ribbon, our Domain, if you haven’t caught on. We’ve already been doing a crude version of it with that sense trick you’ve figured out, now we’re doing it with more control than just telling it to go in that general direction.”

  I grabbed onto the ribbon and said, “Sounds easy enough.”

  Suffice it to say, it was not.