Vigor Mortis

Chapter ???: Dragoneye Mortis, (1)

Whatever Vita expected to be doing this morning, it sure wasn’t hurling head-over-heels through an unknown void. Like getting sucked down a river, she tumbled uncontrollably, no memory of how she got here and no idea where ‘here’ even was. Time seemed to have no meaning here, space was nothing but a force pulling her along. She’d given up struggling, spending her time pulling mana into and out of her soul. What else was there to do? Only when she was unceremoniously dumped into the middle of a field, landing face-first in the grass, did she come back to her senses.

And then the voices start.

[*Ding!* Welcome to Pallos!]

[Name: Vita]

[Race: n<>

[Age: 16]

[Time remaining on System locks: -72,435:53:22]

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You’ve survived your early years, and the system is now fully unlocked for you!]

“What? What the fuck?” Vita snapped, jerking her head up and looking around.

“Ooh! We finally caught one!” a sing-song voice announced.

“What is this thing?” another voice grumbled. “You were supposed to get a human!”

“This is a human!”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Who’s there!?” Vita shouted, trying to feel around. But there was nothing. No souls, anywhere. It felt like she was still in the void.

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You’ve earned your first class – [Child of Nothing] – Mist]

[Child of Nothing] – A starter class for eÁ*Â>n £ÃûùZ9Ào¡ Aôâ/¥Wà ¼±»ÙBè! +4 Free Stat points per level.

[*Ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Nothing] has leveled up to level 1 -> 8! +4 Free Stat points per level from your class, +10 Mana for your race per level, +1 Speed and +1 Dexterity from your element per level!]

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You can now advance your class!]

“Class? What’s a class?” Vita growled, standing up to look around. “Who is saying all this? Where am I?”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Observe]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Identify]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Meditate]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Lying]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Conning]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Stealing]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Walking]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Running]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Climbing]!]

“Ow! Ow, stop dinging!”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Gymnastics]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Throwing]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Dodging]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Polearms]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Jumping]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Spotting]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Survival]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Knives]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Combat Reflexes]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Poison Resistance]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Pain Resistance]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Food Prep]!]

“What is this? Stop yelling at me!”

“Aww, the poor thing is confused!” the first voice tittered.

“We should probably just choose for her,” the second commented.

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Mood Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Lie Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Food Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Stomach Capacity]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Monster Muncher]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Corruption]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Blasphemy]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Cannibalism]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Pedicide]!]

“Pedicide!?” Vita snapped.

“Really? You want that one?” asked the first voice.

“Well, I’m not sure it will come in handy, but if you insist!”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Vigilant]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Adaptable]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Active]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Learning]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Loyal]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Dedicated]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Intimidating]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Cute]!]

[*Error!* SKILL SELECTION OVERRIDE!]

“Right, well, we’re choosing Pedicide… and she’ll probably need Polearms…” the second voice mumbled.

“Stealing!” the first voice insisted. “Stealing is fun!”

“Right, okay, Stealing… probably Survival? Oh, and Loyal, we should make her Loyal.”

“Give her Corruption!”

“We are not giving her Corruption. We’re already going to be in trouble for this.”

“Conning, then! Everyone loves a good con! I can’t wait to see what she does with that!”

“Right, Conning. And… Intimidating, in case she gets delayed.”

“And Cute!”

There was a pause.

“You want her to be Intimidating and Cute?”

“Yes!”

“Shut up and show yourselves!” Vita shouted furiously, finally scrambling to her feet.

At least all her gear was intact, even if something seemed to be blocking her soul sense. She looked up, down, left, right, trying to find the source of the voices. She felt nothing, but everywhere she looked things just seemed more wrong. A bright blue sky, devoid of even a single floating stone. Some kind of super bright pain-orb floated up there instead, causing suffering whenever she tried to look at it.

“Show ourselves?” one of the sing-song voices cooed, high-pitched yet oddly androgynous. “You’ll never see us if you merely look around.”

“Because we’re on top of your head!” squeaked the other, suddenly leaning down over Vita’s face.

“Ack!” Vita jumped, smacking at her scalp as the two giggling creatures leaped off her head and fluttered into the sky, buzzing around her.

They looked like tiny, doll-size humanoids, naked yet genderless, dashing about on dragonfly wings as they laughed at Vita’s ineffectual attempts to swat them.

“Where am I?” she demanded. “What do you want with me?”

“This one does not listen to the System!” one giggled. “Foolish, foolish! You must listen to survive here!”

“You are on Pallos! We brought you here to send you on a grand quest!”

“The grandest of quests!”

“Atop the spire of stone, a treasure unmatched in beauty and worth awaits! In the direction of the setting sun you will find it guarded by a beast most foul!”

“Most hungry!”

“Most vile! There, you will slay the creature and claim your prize! Only then will the champion be sent home!”

“…Fuck off!” Vita snapped. “If you can teleport me all the way to crazy land, then deal with the stupid creature yourself! Just zap it a few thousand feet into the air and leave me alone!”

Seriously, this could not make any less sense. Vita was becoming increasingly convinced that she was hallucinating, possibly under some sort of cognimancy spell. Two tiny, flying, riddle-talking bug people definitely pushed things well over the cliff of possibility.

“The prize! The prize! We cannot claim the prize for the hero claims the prize!” the two fairies sing, clasping hands and dancing in a circle in the air. “The champion from beyond the world shall quest and seek the prize!”

“Nope, nuh-uh,” Vita grumbled, starting to walk off. “Fuck this Capita shit, I’m out. How do I wake up?”

“Well, first, you go to sleep,” one of the fae answered, turning to face her with a grin.

“More fucking riddles!?” Vita complained.

“No,” the fae answers. “Initiate class advancement.”

“What is a—”

[*Error!* CLASS ADVANCEMENT OVERRIDE!]

With a snap of the fae’s fingers, Vita found the ground flying forward to meet her once again, unconsciousness rapidly approaching.

“I told you we should have gotten one from Earth,” the other fae complained. “They always pick these things up faster.”

“Eh,” their companion responded. “Call our sibling. We can do that too.”

—

Elaine groaned and rolled over in her sleep. She’d been missing home, and was sleeping with her mom’s pendant in her hands. Peaceful sleep eluded her though, as she was tormented by nightmares. By failure, by death dealt to her friends and dealt by her own hand.

Her hand tightened, like it was fighting the grip of someone strangling her, then loosened, dropping her pendant.

Three fairies popped in around her.

“She’s unprotected! Get her!” The one the size of a hummingbird yelled, pointing at Elaine.

“Just because you’re the tallest…” Grumbled the short one, weaving her hands, dusting Elaine with power.

“Wait! The Quest! We must tell her the quest!” The tallest one, still hummingbird-sized, said.

“Oh right. Flowers! Gotta get the flowers!” The middle one said.

“Idiot! You didn’t make it into a riddle!” The shortest one reprimanded, buzzing her wings with crossed arms.

“And now, I steal the sun!” the middle one interrupted, snapping her fingers.

Vanishing Elaine.

“Maybe we should’ve woken her up, before telling her the quest.” The tallest one said, tapping her chin, then shrugging.

“Ah well. It’s her fault for sleeping.”

Elaine woke up four feet off the ground, and falling fast.

She cursed a foul invective, trying to activate [Talaria] right before she landed. She hadn’t slept with her sandals on though, so the skill failed to activate, dumping a surprised Elaine face-first into the dirt.

She immediately flipped up, on guard, ready to fight against whatever had attacked her. Being teleported around wasn’t exactly a friendly move.

She narrowed her eyes at the still and silent jungle around her, mentally noting that the sun was high in the sky. She’d been moved a long, long distance.

Or massively slept in.

No System notifications. Elaine felt her heartbeat pick up, as she quickly tried to check her status. She breathed a sigh of relief as it popped up.

Just to make sure, she flickered through a few active skills really fast. [Mantle] still worked, [Shine] still lit things up, and Elaine pointed up and fired off a [Nova].

Perfect. Her skills still worked. Her mind was entirely intact – this time.

A bush rustled, and Elaine whirled around, seeing a human-sized dinosaur flying through the air towards her. Its feathers were broken and patchy, but its claws were long and its teeth were vicious.

[Bullet Time] activated as Elaine leaned back, firing a narrow beam of Radiance through the raptor’s head. It drilled through in an instant, but Elaine didn’t get a kill notification. Cursing, she fired off a [Nova], throwing up [Mantle of the Stars] behind the skill, protected by a mystical wall of shimmering stars.

[Nova] landed with a roaring explosion, blasting the raptor to pieces in a fiery, golden inferno, yet there was still no kill notification.

How tough is that thing!? Elaine cursed to herself as five more raptors leapt at her from the bush. Five more headshots, no notifications, and Elaine blew another [Nova] at point-blank range, swearing as her shield needed to protect her from her own skill as well, burning mana she couldn’t afford to waste.

Everything settled for a moment, and Elaine took a look around, seeing six burned and broken bodies laying on the earth jungle floor in pieces. Elaine picked the one that seemed to be in the most pieces, and piece by piece, started to incinerate it.

Halfway through, it clicked.

“Puppets. Or body hijackers. Or zombies. Wait, it can’t be body hijackers, they would’ve gotten killed. Spore jackers.”

Elaine threw her hands up in frustration.

“Either way! Not a living creature, no kill notifications.”

She moodily kicked one of the re-dead raptor’s bodies.

“And no experience by the look of it. Great. Just great.” She complained, continuing to talk to herself. Helped distract her from the fact that she had no idea where she was, or which way home was.

Still, this was hardly the first time Elaine had been almost literally thrown into a jungle with no equipment to survive, so she didn’t bother to waste any time panicking about it.

A screech made Elaine turn her head, and immediately she saw dozens, if not hundreds of raptors storming across the jungle towards her.

That part was new.

Elaine started running away, to give herself more time and space against the raptors. She blindly fired [Nova]s behind her as fast as she could – it wasn’t like she needed to aim to hit 5, 6, 7 of them at a time! As the dead started to fall, however, their master took notice.

The explosions also helped get her attention.

“…The heck sort of monster did they find?” Vita mumbled to herself, planting a shard of her soul into yet another dinosaur corpse and feeling it spread throughout the inside like the branches of some ethereal tree. The body rose, her power flowing through it. The Dreg stood and waited for instruction.

“Follow me and attack on my command,” Vita ordered, drawing her spear.

Each of the dozens of dinosaurs in earshot moved into formation, surrounding their master in as even a formation as possible. [Voice of Command] and [Coordinated Horde] at work, she supposed. Dreg zombies were infuriatingly stupid, and back home they’d barely be able to walk without tripping over each other. This… “system” stuff was definitely a bit weird and abstract, but Vita couldn’t deny how helpful it was. Especially since, for some insane reason, nothing in this damn world had a soul. Her army was made out of Dregs because she couldn’t make anything but Dregs! If not for the [Horde Queen] class, she’d be sunk.

Her other class seemed like kind of a dud.

More blinding explosions thundered nearby as Vita mounted a raptor zombie, riding it as her force approached. Anything capable of unleashing magic that powerful would easily overpower an unled section of her horde, but Vita was hardly above letting her minions tire whatever it was out, especially now that the system changed the stakes. Her entourage leaped over the half-vaporized bodies of her former minions, and she raised a hand.

“[Soul Reclamation],” Vita muttered, feeling a leap in power as the shattered dust of her broken shards spiraled towards her in a radiant swirl. At least she wouldn’t lose any parts of herself invested in the Dregs, even if they got smashed to dust. Still, Vita hated this damn world. There was nothing here she could feel with her soul sense. Nothing but her.

Which was why she ended up so surprised to find a human shooting the explosive blasts at her army.

Hmm. Threat or potential ally? It probably depended on their opinion of animancy, considering that she was currently riding a zombie. Without her soul-sense, Vita couldn’t get a good handle on how powerful this armored kynamancer was, but the way she was tearing through the raptors like wet tissue paper felt like a pretty good hint. Just to be safe, she quietly subvocalized an order, letting [Voice of Command] carry it to her minions. Hidden zombie raptors started circling around to flank the human. If things went badly here, they’d be able to attack her from all sides. Given the wary distance she was keeping from the Dregs, she wasn’t a close-in fighter. Probably since she’d just blow herself up with whatever that offensive kynemancy spell was.

The human noticed Vita, immediately identifying her as the source of the zombie raptor plague by merit of her riding one of them, and shouted her way.

“Oi! You! Call off your raptors!” she yelled.

Oh, hey, she was talking. Vita decided to take that as a good sign.

“Okay.” Vita answered, glancing over at her attacking zombies. “Stand down!”

The raptors immediately halted in their tracks. Elaine blinked in surprise. That didn’t usually work. A quick [Long-Range Identify] picked the girl up as a [Mage], maybe in the high-two hundred low-three hundred range? A potential threat, but unlikely to be a big one.

“Um. Hi. I’m Elaine,” she said, waving a hand but not coming closer. A cape, seemingly made out of stars, appeared on her back. “What’s your name?”

“…Vita,” the girl muttered in answer, not meeting Elaine’s eyes. Getting a good look at her, Elaine realized this ‘Vita’ seemed barely thirteen years old, the poor thing. Although she was also armed and armored to the teeth and surrounded by an undead raptor army, so point in her favor there. None of her equipment seemed to be metal, though, for whatever reason. Maybe it was cultural, like the Dwarves?

“Vita. Cool. So do you know where this is, kiddo? I seem to have gotten yoinked again, and I have no idea how to get home.”

“…M’not a kiddo.” Vita grumbled, eyes narrowing. Why did people keep calling her that? “And no. I have no idea. This place is weird and the sky is empty and blue and something called ‘the system’ keeps screaming in my ear and nobody has a fucking soul. Why doesn’t anyone have a soul?”

“I am pretty sure I have a soul,” Elaine insisted, raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t like she could have gotten flung through the aether and drop-kicked into Pallos without one. “And, wait, are you from somewhere without a system? Oh man! Are you from Earth?”

Vita blinked.

“You mean like… the ground?”

“Guess not,” Elaine muttered to herself. “[World Traveler]. Gotta be more than one place. Plus, there was that whole mess with the fairies and those other people that one time…”

Elaine snapped her fingers.

“Fairies! Did any faeries do anything to you?”

Vita scowled.

“That depends. Are fairies like… tiny assholes with bug wings that never answer any questions?”

Elaine looked more than a little nervous at that description.

“Fairies are wonderful people who simply enjoy a few harmless pranks now and then. Yup yup.”

Elaine locked eyes with Vita and slowly nodded twice. Or, she tried to lock eyes with Vita, but Vita seemed distracted, not looking in her direction.

“They’re of the most perfect tiny size,” she said, pinching her fingers together in roughly the size of a fairy. “And they’re the most beautiful, elegant, gorgeous people ever, with enough power to pull a half dozen people from different planets into one spot for a practical joke. Aren’t they just AMAZING!”

Elaine was slowly shaking her head at the last part, praying to Papillion and all the other gods and goddesses in the great sky above that this Vita would pick up the hint.

Vita did not pick up the hint.

“…No, can’t be them, then,” she concluded. “Mine were annoying assholes. They stuck me with a bunch of dumb skills, talked like crazy people, and then I ended up getting attacked by… whatever these things are.”

She motioned at her menagerie of undead dinosaurs.

“I got excited when a few of them shot lightning at me, but of course they can’t replicate the trick once I’m controlling them. Fucking Dregs.”

Elaine facepalmed.

“Right, what did your totally-not-fairies ask you to do? For all I know, they told me while I was asleep, and considered it fair game. Then again, this is still Pallos, I could just try to find my way home normally…” Elaine muttered to herself. “Do you have any sandals on you?”

That is… certainly a question a person could ask someone that just attacked them with zombies, Vita thought to herself.

“I’m sure you are going to be shocked to learn that I do not,” she deadpanned, kicking her legs lightly to show off her leather boots and greaves. “Is that really an important question right now?”

“Well, if by some miracle you did, I could fly and look around.” Elaine said, as if acquiring sandals equalling flight was the most normal and reasonable thing possible. “Guess I’ll have to climb a tree instead. Ook ook, imma monkey.”

Vita blinked, not sure how to respond to that.

“Um, have fun, I guess?” she hedged. “If you can find a ‘spire of stone’ in the direction of whatever the fuck a ‘setting sun’ is, that’d be a big help. Apparently the assholes are keeping me hostage here until I kill something there and claim a prize for them.”

Elaine was already halfway up the tree, moving far faster and more nimbly than Vita would’ve given her credit for.

“…Do you not know what a sunset is?” Elaine asked, as she slowly scanned the horizon. “Do you not have a sun? Are you some sort of mole-person, living under a planet? Is that why you’re short?”

Elaine was finally taller than someone. Finally.

“Firstly, fuck you, I’m still growing,” Vita snapped. “Secondly, the only kind of son I know of is the family member, thirdly no I’m not a goddamn mole person and fourthly what the shit is a planet? I’ve heard you say that word twice but I have no idea what it means.”

Elaine slowly looked down at Vita. Mostly because she was still in the tree. She blinked.

“Why don’t you tell me about where you live, and we’ll compare notes while we walk that way?” She said, pointing in a direction. “Saw some big fuck-off temple-looking thing, which is probably where we should go, one way or another.”

Elaine then just jumped out of the tree, nimbly slowing herself down with little flares of starlight steps that appeared under her feet.

“Huh,” Vita muttered, watching the scintillating magical flares. “You are a really powerful kynamancer, aren’t you? Well, we don’t have to walk if you don’t want to. Feel free to pick a zombie, any zombie.”

She casts a hand out to indicate her horde of unblinking, unliving reptiles.

“I promise they don’t bite. Unless you do anything stupid.”

Elaine shrugged.

“If they don’t bite my head off, I’ll be fine. I can just regrow stuff.”

Vita eyed Elaine, wondering exactly how that worked.

“Why would you tell me that? Also, wouldn’t you just starve if I had them keep biting you?”

“Maybe, but you’d have to bite me a lot. I’m pretty mana-efficient.”

“But where do you get the mass from?”

“It’s created from mana.”

Vita’s eyes went wide. What? That was incredible! The possibilities were endless!

“How efficient is it?” she asked excitedly. “If you cut off your arm and then eat your arm, is that enough food to regrow your arm again? Less? More? I bet if we chopped off enough of your body parts and I hid soul shards in them we could create a mass-enslavement trap zone. What about blood loss? Do you get dehydrated? Can you create water too? Oh shit, I’m so happy I found you. I thought I was going to starve out here!”

Elaine looked at the raptors they were riding on, and back at Vita.

“Starve? Really?” she asked with a quirked eyebrow. “Also, I’m attached to my body parts. Pun intended. Yes, I can regrow more. No, I don’t plan to lose an arm. Even if it’s for a, um…”

Elaine stumbled over ‘good cause’, because really, she couldn’t see it that way. ‘Let me be an endlessly regrowing food source for the hungry offworlder’ was low, low down on her ‘to-do’ list, no matter how friendly and disarming said offworlder might be.

“Of course I’d starve, I don’t recognize any of these plants and I don’t know the meat-treating spell,” Vita explained, as if that were some common sort of thing. “Although… I guess you have a good point. If you’re a strong enough biomancer to regrow limbs mid-combat and form matter out of mana—which I thought was impossible, but I’m assuming it’s one of these weird ‘skill’ things—you probably can make meat safe. We can eat one of the zombies if you want. Hey!”

She pointed at one of the raptors and snapped her fingers.

“Head to that lady over there, rip your arm off, and give it to her, would you?”

Elaine’s eyes bugged out as the raptor did exactly that, a sick tearing sound echoing between the trees as the arm’s bones and tendons were ripped out of the shoulder. It politely offered her the morsel with its remaining forelimb.

“Um. Thank you. For your… arm.” Elaine managed to choke out, minding her manners. She held the arm up, and let golden, burning light emit from her hand to the arm, starting to cook it.

“Why are you doing that? Is that your meat prep magic?” Vita asked.

“No, this is cooking it. Because I like cooked food. Meat’s generally safe to eat, except for parasites, bacteria, possibly prions if you’re real unlucky. Cooking handles almost all of those. Ascaris suum, listeria, salmonella, and probably a dozen different tropical diseases I don’t know about.”

“Never heard of any of that. What about heat-resistant magical diseases?” Vita asks seriously.

Elaine shrugged.

“A possibility. Worst-case, I’ll just heal myself,” she said, taking a huge bite of roasted raptor wing.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tastes like chicken.”

“Wh- hey! Give me some!” Vita complained, spurring her riding raptor closer.

“Sure, here you go.” Elaine said, handing over the roasted arm. “Let me know if you want any healing.”

“Sure, I’ll take free healing. Mom always said to take everything free you can and to never piss off the healer! …Or was that ‘make’ everything free? Eh, it works either way.”

Elaine looked at Vita, amused.

“Gotta eat the arm first before I try healing you of any problems the arm can cause, yeah?”

“Oh, right.”

Vita took a brief moment to decide whether trusting this random stranger was worth eating zombie flesh over, immediately decided that yes, obviously it was, and chowed down on the chicken wing. Er, raptor arm.

“Right! Healing please!” Vita said.

Elaine just glanced at Vita, making sure both were in sunlight, then her jaw dropped.

“WHAT THE HELL!?” she yelled. “Are you even human!? Healing you just drained every drop of mana I had!”

Elaine seemed to check something floating in the air, then did a double-take.

“And what’s up with my mana regeneration!? You are human, right?”

Vita shrugged, taking a moment to swallow her zombie flesh.

“Depends on who you ask,” she answered frankly. “Why do you care? I thought you said you were something called a monkey.”

“Because my healing has efficiency factors. If I can imagine what I’m doing? More efficient. If I’m closer to you, or touching you? More efficient. If I’m healing something small, rather than large? Less mana. The more human someone is, the more efficient I am. Restoring an arm takes a few thousand points. You? For an internal bacterial problem that might not even be there?”

Elaine leaned in, intensely studying Vita, drinking up every detail about her.

“Over one hundred thousand mana gone in an instant. Vita. Are you sure your System says you’re human?”

Vita fronwed, following Elaine’s lead and glancing at something invisible in the air.

“…My ‘race’ category just says a bunch of jibberish characters. I just thought the whole thing was broken or something, though. I mean, my mana is listed with a period and an ‘e’ and shit like that. Not even real numbers.”

Elaine’s mouth opened, paused, and closed again.

Open…. Pause…. Close.

“Yeah, okay, I’m going to call the race thing a bug and say that’s why healing you is so inefficient,” she said. “Don’t lose an arm or anything, I’m not sure I can regrow it.”

“What about my mana?”

Elaine shuddered.

“Please tell me the numbers after the E are small. Please.” She begged.

“Um, it says… nine point four five three seven seven E… forty-three? And my mana regen is negative a thousand something.”

Elaine just shook her head.

“Right. Negative mana regen can kill you, if you let your mana get to 0. That’ll happen for you in…”

Elaine twitched her fingers a few times.

“I stopped counting at a few trillion years. You’ll be fine.”

“That’s a long time,” Vita opined. “But you said it was just broken, right?”

“The race sounds like a bug. The mana?”

Elaine shuddered, changing the topic.

“How about we get a move on to that ziggurat? Also, do you have some sort of mana regeneration buff? My numbers are going crazy.”

Vita shrugs.

“Uh, I think so. My [Infinity Beyond the Veil] skill might be doing that. Kind of a pretentious name, right? Whatever brought me here picked all my classes and skills without giving me a say in the matter, so I’m not totally sure what everything does. This [Maw of Mana] class seemed totally pointless since people can’t run out of mana anyway, but… I guess you can? I bet that sucks. Also, how come it’s purple?”

Elaine gave Vita a look. Okay, so maybe the girl was a lot stronger than her level let on.

“So… about telling me where you’re from?”

“Oh, right, I mean, I don’t know if there’s much to say. I’m from Verdantop island? Country of Valka?”

Elaine answers Vita with the kind of flat, blank look that made it clear she’d never heard of those places.

“Have you heard of either of those places?” Vita asked anyway.

Elaine sighed. The girl was more than a little strange, not picking up on expressions, only rarely emoting, and never making eye contact. She was probably somewhere on the Autism spectrum. That had to be wretched in the type of medieval society that the girl’s equipment seemed to imply she was from.

“No. I have not,” Elaine clarified. “You mentioned something about the sky being the wrong color and not knowing what the sun is so I imagine we’re from different worlds entirely.”

“Yeah, my sky is yellow,” Vita confirmed. “And all the other islands are visible above, while you guys have… nothing. It’s weird. Is this not like… one of the top islands, or something? Oh! Maybe it is! Maybe you guys can run out of mana because we’re super far away from the Mistwatcher!”

“See, now it’s my turn to ask you what that is,” Elaine prompted.

“Um, it’s the big mass of eyeballs and tentacles tens of thousands of miles across that you see when you go to the edge and look down? And gives people souls, though… hmm. I guess you don’t have one.”

“I still definitely do,” Elaine protested, though Vita ignored her. Still, a mass of eyeballs and tentacles tens of thousands of miles across? What the hell? What kind of insane Lovecraft world is this girl from?

“Also, the planet we’re on has no edge.”

“What happens when you walk in one direction forever then?” Vita asked instantly, since obviously there had to be an edge somewhere. Maybe they just hadn’t found it?

“You end up back in the same spot,” Elaine answered easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Vita hesitated, wanting to argue more, but decided to leave it be. As long as she never saw the edge, what did it matter to her?

“So… okay, maybe we’re not orbiting around the Mistwatcher at all,” Vita admitted hesitantly. “But… what does that mean? Where are we? Is this your… ‘world?’”

“I think so,” Elaine said. “Although we’re a long way from where I’m used to. This world is called Pallos.”

“Oooh! Yeah, Pallos! That’s where the naked flying assholes said I am!”

Elaine winced.

“Please, please stop calling them that” she begged. “We really do not want to make them mad.”

Vita frowned, looking around.

“I… guess I need them to get home, so that’s fair. Do you think they’re listening to us?” she asked.

Gods, I hope not, Elaine thought to herself.

Instead of answering, she spurred her raptor on, trying to make it go faster. The lifeless construct reacted by… not reacting at all.

“Uh, you okay there?” Vita asked. “Are you trying to make it go faster? Let me. Speed up!”

The raptor Elaine was on shot off, and she swore as she tried to keep a grip. Raptors weren’t exactly made for riding, nor was Vita any sort of master [Leatherworker], able to make a saddle.

Vita didn’t need one. The Dregs carried her with unnatural grace, like she was some sort of royalty, and she seemed utterly unbothered by the bareback journey. Dropping Vita? Literally unthinkable. Mostly due to a lack of brainpower. Elaine’s butt was not so lucky, but what was ranger training for if not being flexible enough to ride a zombie dinosaur?