The Sarcophagus hummed, a low predatory vibration that I could feel in my legs. I turned back to the holographic display, the red light throwing jagged shadows against the concrete walls.
"Help us?" Valentina scoffed, though the fire in her voice had dimmed to a smolder. "You just threatened to kill us fifteen minutes ago."
"I didn't say I would kill you. I said I'd protect myself," I tapped the screen, scrolling. "I said I'd kill anyone who stopped me from getting out of this forsaken reality. Different thing. And considering your current combat rating is barely above 'Athletic Civilian with a Sparkler,' stopping me isn't something you need to worry about."
Valentina opened her mouth, then snapped it shut.
I focused on the screen. My mana was still crawling up at a pathetic rate. Without my specialized ammo, I was a bluff. Without medical supplies, a walking bruise. I needed all of it and I needed it now.
"Star Sapphire," I said, not looking back. "Step forward."
The girl froze, her glasses flashing in the dim light. She looked at her friends, then slowly shuffled toward the pod, clutching her Sapphire Lens like a shield. "Um. Er. Yes?"
"Your polearm," I said. "It was a custom construct, wasn't it? Hard-light projection over a mana-conductive alloy core? Not a standard point purchase for your class and signature."
"Y-yes," she stammered. "It was — well, a mid-grade foci. I spent six months of allowance and my share of our first dungeon run on the core. How'd you guess?"
"It was garbage," I said flatly. "I snapped it with two fingers. If a Husk had done that, you'd be seizing on a hospital floor right now with the doctors panicking over your braindead remains."
She paled, knuckles white. "I… I see."
I didn't say sorry. Apologies were for people who couldn't fix their mistakes.
I tapped the Grade 1 Melee catalog. The list populated.
Vibro-Knife (Standard): 150 Pts Mono-Filament Wire Spool: 300 Pts Grav-Hammer (Civilian Model): 800 Pts
All options available to someone whose world had discovered the corresponding technology organically.
I filtered for Polearms.
"Hephaestus's System processes the cores of the monsters you kill," I said, my voice falling into the rhythm of a briefing I'd heard a thousand times from Majalis. "The Dungeons in this world aren't necessarily related directly to the Chaos Beasts from last night. They're bleed-ins from the Sea of Imagination."
"The what?" Maya said.
"A realm of potential and possibility where all of reality sort of came from. Exists both everywhere and nowhere. The fabric between it and the physical world is constantly shifting. It's leaking through now because some idiot in your world dug too deep and broke the walls at some point in the recent past. Common problem in worlds that experience a rapid technological growth spurt, or where occultists live too long without understanding what they're doing. Dungeons are pressure valves. They vent the excess Imaginary Energy so it doesn't explode and rip apart the plane all at once. The creatures that come out are part of the vent — a pressure release to keep the world from being overwhelmed. In theory."
"In theory?" Maya echoed.
I nodded. "It's complicated stuff. I don't fully understand it myself. But the monsters in your Dungeons and the ones I killed last night are related, even if they aren't the same creatures. Imaginary Phantoms might as well be sentient — they leak out of the rifts and cause trouble by reenacting what they do in stories humanity tells across countless worlds. Goblins, elves, the standard fantasy range. Chaos Beasts are worse. Much worse. The entity behind them wants to subsume and destroy all of sentient reality. You can't negotiate with the Blight. It just is."
I tapped a listing and scrolled to a simple, elegant-looking glaive.
[ITEM: CERAMIC-WEAVE BLUEBELL GLAIVE (MODEL 7)] [DESCRIPTION: TELESCOPIC SHAFT. HIGH-FREQUENCY VIBRATION EDGE. MANA-CONDUCTIVE WEAVE COMPATIBLE WITH 'BLUE' MAHOU SHOUJO.] [COST: 6,400 POINTS]
Expensive. A dent in the stockpile. But I had broken hers, and a debt was a debt.
"Catch," I said.
I hit purchase. The Sarcophagus hissed, a cloud of white vapor venting from the side. The front panel slid open, and a sleek, matte-white rod shot out.
Linda squeaked and fumbled, nearly tripping, but caught the rod with both hands. It was heavy, cold, hummed with a faint, menacing buzz.
"Twist the grip," I said.
She did. With a sharp snick, a curved, translucent blue blade erupted from the top, vibrating fast enough to blur the air around it.
"It… it feels like part of my nervous system," Linda whispered, staring at the weapon in horror and delight. "The conductivity. It's practically zero resistance."
"An old friend of mine designed that thing," I said, turning back to the screen. "Don't try to block anything heavy with it. Deflect, then sever and saw. It cuts on the molecular level and can whitelist specific mana signatures."
"Did she just —" Althea whispered to Maya.
"I think so."
"Right," I said, cracking my knuckles. "Debt settled. Now I need to survive."
I had 12,050 points remaining.
I looked at the ammunition tab. The Withered Calyx was a hungry beast, and standard Association-grade mana shells would just jam the mechanism. I needed density.
10-Gauge Void-Slugs (Standard): 500 Pts (Case of 250) 10-Gauge 'Petal-Steel' Buckshot: 1,500 Pts (Case of 200) Thresher Fuel Cells (High-Density Ichor): 500 Pts (Pack of 5)
I bought the Petal-Steel and the fuel. Two thousand gone.
10,050.
The medical tab. My ribs still felt like a jigsaw puzzle held together by willpower and spite.
Nano-Regenerative Suite (Grade I): 2,000 Pts Hemo-Restore (High Density): 500 Pts (x2 Doses)
I winced. Three thousand points. That was a down payment on a decent environmental suit. But if I got into a fight with anything close to a teenage Lunar Knight Capsicum in this state, I'd fold like wet cardboard.
I bought them.
The Sarcophagus whirred, printing the injectors and the heavy matte-black boxes of shells. I grabbed a silver medical pen and jammed it into my thigh. Cold fire rushed through my veins. The ache in my chest dulled to a manageable throb.
7,050 points.
"You're spending a fortune," Valentina said, stepping closer to eye the catalog over my shoulder. Judgmental, and a little jealous. "If the exchange rate is one-to-one, you just blew nearly ten grand in seconds."
"Even if the mana-point values of Imaginary Phantoms are the same universally, your local economy probably skews the conversion rate," I shrugged, opening the armor section.
Points had many uses under Hephaestus's Systems. You could use them to construct items from the user's personal reality — a high-quality rifle — or something from a more advanced world, like a plasma cannon. It was all about balance between power and cost. You could also buy upgrades to your body.
I'd never gone down that rabbit hole.
I couldn't afford a 'maybe.' And honestly, I couldn't stomach one either. I still had nightmares of being turned into a soulless puppet. I'd had enough creepy needles and rods poked into me for one childhood. The idea of paying to do it to myself again wasn't something I could make fit in my head.
I had an inkling that Star Sapphire's scanner was purchased through a custom class build. That was what made points so valuable as a medium of exchange in the first place.
The System crafted arcane power out of an individual's Soul Graph — the culmination of nurture and nature that made a person unique. A fingerprint in the aether, and the key to their true strength. Items and abilities one could obtain through fast-tracking one's Soul made points virtually priceless in comparison to earthly goods.
"The Association controls the points economy," Althea muttered, voice growing distant. "They control the flow of credits, and they control the flow of magical items as a centralized exchange, so that makes sense."
I paused at the catalog, then clicked the [AUGMENTS] tab.
"Star Morganite," I said.
Maya jumped, pigtails bobbing. "M-Me? Maya. Just Maya."
"You're the leader," I said, turning. "Which means you're the target. And right now, you're a target with a flashlight and a cheerleading routine."
"Hey!" Maya protested, puffing her cheeks out in a way that was probably meant to be intimidating but just looked like a disgruntled hamster. "The cheerleading thing is pretty cool! Rose Radiance has a very high purification rating! The woman who taught me Mahou Shoujo 101 says it has S-Tier cleansing potential!"
"Purity doesn't stop a kinetic impact," I said. "And purity won't help you when your Association knocks on your door."
The girls went still. The air in the basement got colder.
"What do you mean?" Althea asked, her tone shifting from curious to protective. She stepped slightly in front of Maya. "Why would they knock?"
"Because we were sloppy and you weren't thinking about the ramifications," I said bluntly. "In that last stretch of tunnel, I fired off enough energy to light up a sensor grid from orbit. You think a metropolitan area this size doesn't watch for abnormalities?"
Maya grabbed the edge of the washing machine, her face draining. "They're going to arrest us? For illegal dungeoneering?"
"No," I said, eyes on the equipment list. "If they viewed you as a threat, they would have breached the windows by now. They're curious. They're going to come asking questions. And when they do, they're going to ask who killed the Chaos Beasts that punched through before I collapsed the portal."
I stepped closer to Maya. She smelled like strawberries and panic.
"If they find out it was me," I said quietly, "things get complicated. My existence breaks categorization. If I show up on their radar as a Level 459 anomaly with no ID, I become a problem to be solved. And I am in no condition to fight off whatever heavy hitters run this city."
I didn't know who the top dogs were here, but every world had them. If I met a team on the level of the Starlight Blossoms right now, at 12% mana and recovering ribs, I'd be a smear on the pavement. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
I needed a buffer. A smoke screen.
"So," I said, pointing at Maya's chest. "You killed it. Until I figure out what's going on. You did the job."
Maya stared, mouth hanging open. "What?"
"You. Star Morganite. You unleashed a latent burst of high-density mana in a moment of desperate heroism. You collapsed the dungeon. I wasn't there. I'm just — your cousin. Reimi, from Japan. I'm assuming you have a Japan here. Or Canada. A civilian refugee you chased into the tunnels after some goblins breached the portals. Maybe I have a passive 'Storage' skill or something useless that explains why I'm weird. I am not a combatant."
"I can't lie to the Association!" Maya squeaked, waving her hands. "They'll scan me! They'll know I'm Level 15! They'll see my output isn't high enough to vaporize a Chaos Beast!"
"Not if you have this."
I turned back to the screen and purchased the item I'd been eyeing.
[ITEM: PRISMATIC MANA-CONDENSER (LENS MOD)] [EFFECT: ARTIFICIALLY AMPLIFIES OUTPUT DENSITY BY 300% FOR SHORT BURSTS. WARNING: MAY CAUSE WAND OVERHEAT.] [COST: 3,000 POINTS]
The Sarcophagus spat out a small, faceted crystal the size of a walnut. It pulsed with a heavy, unstable pink light. I tossed it to Maya.
"Meld that onto your wand. It's a lens. It doesn't make you stronger. It lets you triple the mana you can focus through the scepter. When they ask for a demonstration, you fire one shot. It'll look incredibly overjuiced. They'll buy the 'Prodigy' narrative because they want to buy it. Everyone loves a rising star."
Maya caught the crystal and held it like a live grenade. "You spent three thousand points on a lie?"
"I spent it on an investment," I said. "You're the prodigy. I'm the cousin from Canada who sleeps in the basement. That's the deal."
"Can we at least test it first?" Maya asked, her voice small.
I gestured at the open basement floor. "Go ahead."
Maya hesitated, then closed her eyes. Pink light flared at her collar, spiraled up and out and when she opened her eyes, Star Morganite was standing where a pajama-clad teenager had been a second before. Wand in hand. Frills and ribbons in place. The crystal in her other palm.
She melded it into the gemstone at the tip of her scepter. It sank into the pink stone like a sugar cube into tea, and then the whole thing pulsed with a hard, unstable light that made the air around it feel wrong.
"Aim at the wall," I said. "Don't overdo it. Smallest beam you can manage."
Maya lifted the scepter. A thread of pink energy the thickness of a pencil shot out — and hit the basement wall like a freight train. A crack the size of my fist bloomed in the concrete. The air smelled like burnt sugar.
Maya stared at the damage, her mouth open.
"That was the smallest one," she whispered.
"Welcome to being a Prodigy," I said.
4,050 points remaining.
I closed the menu. Four thousand points was a thin margin, but it was enough for a pinch.
The girls went quiet. Linda was turning the glaive in her hands, testing the balance. Val was watching me with narrowed eyes, clearly trying to figure out my angle. Althea leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking tired.
And Maya looked like she was about to hyperventilate.
"W-W-W-Wait! You can't just drop that bombshell on me and walk away! I can't take credit for that! I'm a Level 15, Class I, Tier 1! I've barely been doing this for two months! What am I supposed to do?!"
I walked past her, heading for the stairs. "Get a better costume, maybe? Also, I think I'm going to get some more strawberry milk. I hope that's okay with you."
The girls all froze, then turned to Maya. She stood in front of the Sarcophagus, hands clasped around the crystal, eyes wide.
"I — uh —"
"You're going to need to spruce up," I called over my shoulder, heading for the kitchen. "You're going to get a lot more attention soon. You have to look the part."
"H-Hold on! My parents are still coming home later! You can't just —" Maya's voice shot up an octave.
"Reimi! Reimi wait! REIMI!"