I scrambled back from Fifth of the Mist, trying to flap my wings, but I had gotten used to my human body too quickly, losing the familiarity I had with this body. So I just flailed around wildly on the branch, not even lifting off the ground as the wasp got closer and closer to me. Feeling Bug Jacob mock me in the back of my head.

  I called upon my minions, but they were too far away, and I watched as Fifth walked towards me. Then, then… they walked right past me and kept going, hitting a tree trunk in the way. They didn’t stop but pushed against the tree, head butting it, then I got a notification from the System.

  “You have killed contestant Fifth of the Mist, you shall be rewarded appropriately.”

  I looked between the notification and the still living Fifth of the Mist I saw right in front of me, trying to do the math. Then a thought struck me, I had destroyed Fifth's core, the part they had said was the most fundamental part of the self. There’s no reason it would destroy the mind or the body, only the person inhabiting them.

  My flying minions had finally reached me, twitchy and ready for any order to fight. Instead, I had them nudge the body that once housed Fifth in a different direction, but it just kept on walking in a straight line, eventually ending up head butting whatever was in his path again.

  Should I use Lunar Scale Dust on them to stop him from hurting themself?

  I felt a slimy sensation run through my veins at the thought. So instead, I assigned some of my lesser minions as babysitters, creating a little den for them in the ground. But another issue soon came up, Fifth didn’t know how to eat.

  I originally thought I had just gotten them the wrong food, but after testing everything, even rocks and manure. And this was just one of the things they didn’t know for some reason, like flight, or walking in any direction that wasn’t forward. After spending half of the day trying to solve the problem, I decided to back away from it. I still had a death game to win after all.

  I spent the next few days regrouping, deciding to relocate all my troops around the ant colony. Having two forces monitoring all entrance points was only useful when there were multiple enemies, so they couldn’t sneak up on me. Thinking back on it, the idea wasn’t the best in the first place, it spread my sources out too thin, and I was lucky that I caught Krath, considering how many holes in monitoring she could’ve snuck through when I wasn’t there.

  This time, I decided to create a fortress, manipulating the ground around the Ant colony to my advantage. Such as clearing the land out for a mile, and creating tunnels underground for my minions to stay in when inactive, so the enemy didn’t know the extent of my forces.

  But despite the distraction, my mind always went back to Fifth of the Mist, they had gotten visibly skinnier and weaker in the days since I got out of that memory realm. But all they did was walk forward and sleep. They didn’t even struggle when I had one of my minions pick them up in their claws to relocate them.

  Eventually, through some experimentation, I found a way to feed them using the ants. I had them crawl into Fifth's mouth, shoving their head into Fifth's throat and vomit up food from their social stomachs. It was a normal thing for ants and other insects to do, but it was still another reason in my ten hour long power point on why adding exceptions to the endangered species list is a good idea.

  Bringing my mind away from that disgusting little train of thought, and brought my focus back to my Domain practice. I was stationed in one of the tunnels of my still developing fortress, pushing my domain outwards as far as I could, replicating what I had done in the Memory Realm. Which I suspected was how Krath had kept track of me in our fight. Though my range wasn’t anywhere near as long as hers was, only around a hundred feet. Bringing my senses along with it, or more accurately, sense, singular.

  For some reason, it had become significantly harder in the real world. I could only bring along one sense, along with the magic sense the domain naturally had. If I tried any more than one, my head felt like hot needles were being poked into it. I had a couple of theories as to why, the first was that the Memory realm was significantly lacking in details due to it being made of memories. My second and more esoteric theory was that when I was in the Memory Realm, I was closer to my core, which I think is connected to my powers, because when I was separated from it, I lost them.

  The only thing I could do about the first was practice, something I was going to do anyway. The second one was a bigger challenge, because I had no concrete idea how to get closer to my core.

  But a couple of wobbly ideas were better than none. The first one was to subjugate Fifth of the Mist and hope they still had their abilities, since the Memory Realm was the only realm way I knew to get to my core. But I promptly crossed that one out, the thought of doing that sending a shiver down my carapace.

  My second idea was to fall asleep like how Fifths' ability had done to me, and try to lucid dream, but that came with a few issues. My moth body just didn’t sleep; the closest thing was getting knocked out or when I was mutating, but those didn’t come with dreams. I thought maybe I could use my Complex Pheromone Production or gather herbs that could induce sleep. But that came with the issue that I had no idea what I was doing, so I was more likely to chemically lobotomise myself.

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  There was also the problem that I had no idea how to lucid dream, I had done it randomly a few times, but that was just random chance. So this idea was a bust.

  But another idea popped into my head, meditating. From what little I knew, it could do what I was looking for, since I was trying to get closer to the core of my being. I didn’t have a therapist on standby right now, so clearing my till I could ‘see’ myself like all those gurus I saw online said seemed like the next best thing. And the results over the past few days were… not entirely fruitful, but were at least informative.

  When I had decided to start doing it, I hadn’t taken into account my unmedicated ADHD screaming in my ear to get some dopamine in my system. It didn’t help that Bug Jacob was still distracting me about random things that he said were of utmost importance.

  But for the fractions of a moment I was able to get into the proper headspace I could sense what felt like three threads. Two were coming from far away and going into me; one of them felt like what Terra’s domain. The other felt sterile and cold, like a hospital, which I wasn’t able to make heads or tails of.

  The third though, was what I was looking for. It was coming from somewhere inside myself and circled around me like a dance ribbon. And it was ready to follow my orders like a soldier. Though I wasn’t able to make out much else due to the aforementioned distractions, finally feeling like I was making progress, I didn’t stop trying.

  But I was interrupted when I noticed my minions stirring around the edges of my fortress, so I flew towards them to see what was happening. And when I got closer, I realised that the final fight had started, the familiar sight of the eight (Formerly six) armed and now two headed ape that was Second of the Snows at the very edge of my fortress.

  I started to give orders to my minions to attack, but I stopped when I saw something, no, someone else with them. Urg Floaw the axolotl floating in a ball of water next to Seconds' head, reflections flickering throughout the ball of water, depicting everything caught in its reflection at varying stages of decay or youth.

  Which should’ve been impossible since I saw them on the map fighting…

  No, I didn’t see them fighting. I just saw them close together, but why are they here together?

  I saw Second of the Snow start drawing their weapons in response to my minions' aggression, but Urg tapped their shoulder with a water construct, leaving a wet spot on their fur. The ape then turned one of their heads towards them, then Urg created a hand out of water, pointing it towards me.

  Crap, they’re working together to kill me!

  I immediately ran away, hiding in a tunnel, casting my new sight out with my domain, it was blurry like my real eyes, which I was covering to keep the visual input at the amount my brain was used to. But despite sight being one of my worst senses currently, I still chose it out of sheer familiarity, and because it didn’t give me that big of a headache like smell or touch.

  And with this new ability, I saw my minions prepare to fight. But for some reason, Urg and Second of the Snow were putting their weapons away and holding up their hands.

  What?

  I didn’t let my minions attack in case this was a trap, but they were still tense, ready for a fight.

  And through my domain, I spoke, “What is this?”

  The two of them jumped, looking around for the source of the voice, then at each other and nodded. After that, Urg started to gather water. I had my Anteaters step forward in case of an attack, but Urg stopped when they saw that. Then started again, this time slower, I kept my minions focused on it while I kept an eye out for a sneak attack in case this was a distraction.

  But nothing happened, and the water construct eventually turned into two hands grasping each other in a shake. One of them was small and slender but had seven long fingers with three joints each. The other was almost human except for the skin being the texture of bark and with claws at each finger tip, reminding me of Fifth of the Mists' real form in the Memory Realm.

  After mulling it over for a moment, I said, “An alliance, you want an alliance?”

  They both nodded enthusiastically

  “Why? We all know there’s only one way for this to end.”

  After I said that, Urg rearranged their construct, changing it to the form of three small humanoid looking figures that had an exoskeleton made of a dozen different minerals, and with those seven fingered hands they showed earlier. Then they slowly changed, seeming to rapidly age, the exoskeleton falling apart, and their back hunching over till it fell over and died

  Then I remembered something they had said in the third phase, “Is this that plan you came up with, where we just wait till we die of natural causes and whoever lives gets to go home?”

  Then they both nodded in agreement.

  I was silent, thinking over what I would do. If I accepted it, there was no real guarantee that they would uphold their side of the agreement. Especially since I had built up a reputation as a liar, so it would be smart of them to backstab me first. And even if that didn’t happen, there was no way the gods would like that outcome. They wanted competition, they wanted violence. And so they would force us to do something else, which was most likely going to be far worse than what was happening now

  Then a thought popped into my head, I could just ask Terra, I still hadn’t decided to choose a reward, and I wouldn’t be in any danger in this world since no time passed in that space of hers. So if I went to her and the information wasn’t restricted, which I couldn’t think of any reason as to why it wouldn’t be, then I would be golden.

  So I called up the notification, hesitating as I saw it, remembering what I had done to get it. But I mentally pressed the accept button. The nauseating sensation of teleporting coming over me as I was launched into a sea of stars with the Earth below me.