The world locked around me like a clenched fist.

  I could move my legs, feel the muscles strain, but space refused to cooperate. It was as if the distance between where I stood and where I wanted to be had been nailed in place. The air thickened, pressure bearing down on me from every direction, absolute in its assertion, a declaration that motion was now a luxury item, and I was a pauper. As someone used to manipulating space, it was more than a little disorienting, especially because I realized that the one trapping me didn’t have any special spatial skill, just an abundance of power with which to enforce their will.

  A slow clap echoed through the shattered hall. I rolled my eyes. Really?

  A man stepped out of nothing, not phasing or teleporting so much as deciding he was now present. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in armor that looked ceremonial at first glance but radiated a density of power that made my skin crawl. His hair was silver shot through with gold, his face unlined despite the weight behind his eyes. He wore the symbol of the Order etched into his breastplate, giving form to his authority.

  “Impressive,” he said conversationally, as though we were discussing architecture instead of the pile of corpses at my feet. “You dismantled a siphon node, killed a Light Seer, an Infiltrator, and a Dreadnought, and nearly turned a tower into a courtyard. That tells me you have some skills.

  “Actually, the fact that you did it so quickly suggests a power level far higher than your level would indicate, and the damage you did to the building indicates just how much raw power you’re capable of. This is going to be annoying to explain to my people, but I suppose I’ll just have to tell them that the Lawgiver struck down an infidel. All of this combines to tell me a great deal about you.”

  I tried to reach for mana out of reflex and nearly blacked out.

  There was almost nothing left.

  The fight, the brute-force shattering of the sunburst, and the layered casting to overwhelm the siphon had burned through my reserves far faster than I’d realized. My class core felt hollow. It was refilling, certainly, as my regeneration rate was fairly prodigious, but any time I tapped out my mana reserves, there was always a price to pay.

  The man tilted his head slightly. “I think that we need to have a chat. You aren’t the type to yield your secrets to questioning, so I’ll speak candidly with you. While you’re here, you are my guest, or my prisoner, however you prefer to look at it. Either way, my will is absolute.”

  I wanted to groan inside but remembered the oldest lesson of 80s action-coms. A monologuing villain was a path to victory.

  “Arbiter Kalix,” he continued, offering his name like a courtesy rather than an introduction. “And you are… not from here.”

  I didn’t answer.

  He didn’t mind. He walked a slow circle around me with his arms clasped behind his back, boots crunching on broken stone and bone, eyes never leaving my face. I could feel him probing, not with spells exactly, but with attention so focused it felt like magic.

  “The lesser members of our Order don’t understand such things,” Kalix went on calmly. “Other systems. Other rule sets. It would trouble their faith to know how contingent reality truly is.” He stopped in front of me, studying me like a rare specimen. “But you? You are something odd.”

  I forced my breathing to stay even. Every second mattered. My mana regeneration ticked upward, but painfully slowly. My mind was already pondering options. Three minutes, maybe less—that was how long I needed to refill my class core. Might as well have been three years.

  “Where are you from?” Kalix asked, genuinely curious.

  I said nothing.

  He smiled faintly. “Very well. I’ll narrow it down myself.” His gaze sharpened, and I felt pressure brush against my soul, not enough to harm, just enough to test. “Not born of the Fey System. Not bound to the Lawgiver. You smell of structure, of layered authority.” His eyes flicked to my hands and he laughed. “Heavens, perhaps?”

  That made me laugh too, despite myself, short and hoarse. “You find the name funny, too?”

  Kalix’s smile widened. “Immensely. Any system arrogant enough to call itself that lacks context. I find that I rather like my place here. The Fey System is old, and soon it shall be reborn as something better.” He leaned closer. “But that’s not all. There’s something else in you. Something old. Something sealed.”

  I met his gaze then, deliberately. “I’m from the Heavens System,” I said. “And I’m not here to convert anyone.”

  “Pity,” he replied lightly. “We could always use more interesting enemies.”

  My mana ticked higher. I could feel it now, the spatial core beginning to hum, threads of possibility stirring at the edge of my perception. Not enough yet, but close.

  Kalix noticed the change instantly. “Ah,” he said softly. “There it is. You’re regenerating.”

  I didn’t bother denying it.

  He straightened, folding his hands behind his back. “You know,” he said, “most who stand where you currently stand are begging by now. Some threaten. A precious few try one last desperate strike.” His eyes gleamed. “You’re doing none of those. That tells me you think you can still escape.”

  I rolled my shoulders as much as the field allowed. “I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Then allow me to disabuse you of—”

  I poured everything I had into Here Not Here. I knew I could manipulate space independently of the system, but I hadn’t put enough time into practicing it, and for efficiency’s sake, there was nothing like a system ability. I didn’t stop with the contents of my class core, but pulled from my Hell class as well, with all the tainted mana it granted. Any space left over I topped off with my spatial core, which alone held four times as much mana as my class core. I rarely even thought about it anymore, which was yet another reminder that my status sheet had become too cluttered.

  None of that mattered now. I poured my will into Here Not Here and reached for more. It answered.

  It was like ripping open a wound in reality with my bare hands. Space screamed as I forced it to bend, the invisible restraint around me cracking under sheer volume and intent. Kalix’s brows rose in genuine surprise as the field fractured.

  “Interesting,” he murmured.

  The portal tore open halfway, shuddering under his counter-pressure, and for a terrifying instant I thought it would collapse entirely. I shoved harder, dumping every last drop from the spatial core into the tear and twisting the destination at the last possible moment.

  I couldn’t go to the warehouse—that would have betrayed my allies. I couldn’t go to the guild hall for the same reason, or even the inn. So I went to the only other place that I knew well enough in this world—the entrance to the Endless Dungeon.

  Kalix reached out, fingers brushing the edge of the distortion. “Running already?”

  “Strategic withdrawal,” I snapped.

  With that, I was gone.

  I hit the dungeon entrance at a dead sprint, rain and chaos blurring together as Order forces turned in shock. I threw myself forward and crossed the dungeon threshold just as gray static swallowed me whole.

  The world dissolved into nothingness. I found myself caught halfway into the dungeon entrance, in what appeared to be a gray room. As I opened my perception to what I was seeing, I got a sense of endless possibility waiting behind every one of the billions of tiny dots of gray that made up the walls.

  Quest Update—remaining Order members:

  Arbiter: 1/1

  Infiltrators: 22/23

  Dreadnoughts: 63/68

  Law Wardens: 19/20

  Light Seers: 1/2

  Truth Flames: 10/10

  Lawspeakers: 14/26

  Lawkeepers: 144/240

  XP gained: 7,500,000

  Psi Seed: 0/4850

  Precognition 6 >> 7

  Psionic Construct 2 >> 5

  Physical Enhancement 1 >> 2

  Defensive Fighting 952 >> 953

  Slashing Weapons—Life Slash 1030 >> 1031

  Polearms 970 >> 973

  Mana Channeling 971 >> 994

  Here Not Here (Epic 90%) >> 95%

  Lightning Arc Mastery (Epic 55%) >> 62%

  Trailblazer’s Aura (Legendary 5%) >> 6%

  Celestial Restoration (Epic 66%) >> 68%

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: Loading Room

  The grayness was oddly comforting, and I let myself decompress from everything that had just gone down. There really was a lot I needed to unpack, but I never had time to do so. My newly improved temporal affinity had me fairly certain that this gray room existed in a time dilation far more powerful than the one that I’d created for Samvek and Tad.

  Thinking about the two of them brought a smile to my face. Tad was someone I could see myself liking as much as any friend, despite only having known him for a handful of days. Unlike Ryan, who shared my love of battle and action, Tad was much more reluctant in that regard. But we had another shared interest, namely crafting. A friendship could be built on less.

  I also felt like I could understand the pressure he was under, even if our family situations were diametrically opposite. Either way, when I left this world, I needed to be sure I had a way of coming back. Crafting with Tad simply held too much potential for both our futures.

  While I was… wherever I was, I figured I needed to consider all the choices that loomed before me.

  There was no immediate need to worry about the evolution to Terrakinesis. Yes, it was important and would help to define my future path, but it wasn’t a pressing issue. It wasn’t like it was going to help me all that much here, even if it could be used in the dungeon. But when I got home, it would be a different story.

  That got me thinking about the best way to leave the Fey System. When I’d evolved Spirit Walk, I’d been in my Pokémon mode, having to have them all. The system had offered me three upgrade options, but I couldn’t choose between them. So I did what any self-respecting Architect of the System would have—I merged them all together into a single ability. I pulled up the description to consider it, but I cut out the parts that didn’t matter to focus on what I needed to know.

  Spirit Walk-True Spirit (Legendary): This Perception-and-Will-based ability is broader in scope than most any other type of movement or intangibility, as it bestows upon the user the potential of all spiritual forms—astral spirits, spirits of the Void, and spirits of the dead, to name a few—and allows travel in all their realms. The user becomes undetectable as pure spirit. All gear on their person becomes intangible while the ability is active.

  The user may travel through any means their own body is capable of producing, whether it be magical or mundane, for the duration of the effect. A true spirit does not produce kinetic energy, and may not physically interact with the material realm. The rules for this vary from plane to plane, with notable differences in places like the astral plane and the Void.

  Beware, movement through the spirit realm is different from that of the physical realm.

  Duration: Two seconds per level. The duration is increased while in either the Void or the astral plane, but experimentation will be necessary. Casting magic or using mana-based system abilities, or even using raw mana while in this form will reduce the duration by variable amounts.

  Cooldown: Thirty seconds. The cooldown begins after the user’s body takes on a corporeal form.

  If I was reading that correctly, then I could move through the Void with this. That would make it possible for me to cross between systems, universes, and dimensions, but I would need to take on the form of a Void spirit.

  Normally when I used Spirit Walk, I was inhabiting my own human spirit. Thanks to my evolutions, my body was already a blended form, combining the spiritual and physical. I’d come to realize it was also a step towards ascension. Kalix, the Order’s ascendant here on Aerth, hadn’t been the only one examining me while he had me locked in place.

  I’d taken the opportunity to examine him as best I could. I supposed that I might have been limited normally, but combining my physical senses with Spirit Sight and System Sight had revealed a great deal. I could confirm what I’d been told about ascension, noting that his form was not that of a soul inhabiting a body, but rather was a completely blended form. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I knew it was pertinent.

  For now, it was enough to get me thinking about Spirit Walk. I needed to develop it more, and soon, because I was becoming increasingly certain it was the key to getting us away from the Fey System. Sure, Selena might have been able to finagle it. Her reality warping ability was off-the-charts broken. I laughed as I realized that under almost any other circumstance, she’d be the center of attention, and I’d simply be hanging on her like a lost puppy.

  With that bit of clarity, I resolved to find ways to work on Spirit Walk over the next couple of days before the attack. It was hardly the only aspect of my build I needed to work on, though. For now, I was going to set aside my Hell class, my cultivator’s core, the primordial, and even minimize my concern over Psi. Yes, I’d seen how useful it could be, but I wanted to focus on my core build.

  That meant that I needed to raise epic-tier abilities to legendary. I put Mana Body out of my mind for the moment. I needed to upgrade it eventually, but I’d substituted it out for Blip, an ability I hadn’t even used yet—part of me had instinctively known Blip wouldn’t save me from the ascendant, so I hadn’t bothered with it. Outside of that ability, some of my mainstays were close to evolving, and had actually gotten closer in my last fight.

  Here Not Here (Epic 90%) >> 95%

  Lightning Arc Mastery (Epic 55%) >> 62%

  Those two were absolutely central to my build, and got used in almost every battle, along with Force Construct Mastery. That ability had seen a significant increase in flexibility and power when it had evolved to legendary, and I wanted the same for my core spatial and lightning abilities. Here Not Here was pretty close, so I was confident I could get it over the hump, but Lightning Arc Mastery still had a ways to go. If I was going to make it happen, I’d have to practically fart sparks for the next two days straight.

  Then there was my other active ability that was still only epic tier.

  Self-Propagation (Epic 32%)

  I was split on this one. It had proven to be incredibly useful inside the dungeon—destroying that monster without it would have been incredibly time-consuming. There was, however, also something about it which left me uneasy, in the same way that Blood is Life made me uneasy. Evolution was a part of life, though, so maybe I needed to lean into it. I’d need to think on that once more, too.

  Perhaps the easiest upgrade would be Halo of Rebirth. It had only reached legendary tier a short time ago, relatively speaking, but the cycle of death and rebirth I’d been thrown into when facing Gallarosa had pushed it to the point of evolution. It would be my second ascendant-tier ability after Blood Is Life. I made a mental note to look at it as soon as I was out of this gray room. I didn’t feel comfortable evolving anything here, as I felt cut off from the Heavens.

  With the planning taken care of, I realized I had more notifications to review than the upgrades to Here Not Here and Lightning Arc Mastery. I scanned through them quickly.

  Quest Update—remaining Order members:

  Arbiter: 1/1

  Infiltrators: 22/23

  Dreadnoughts: 63/68

  Law Wardens: 19/20

  Light Seers: 1/2

  Truth Flames: 10/10

  Lawspeakers: 14/26

  Lawkeepers: 144/240

  XP gained: 7,500,000

  Precognition 6 >> 7

  Psionic Construct 2 >> 5

  Physical Enhancement 1 >> 2

  Defensive Fighting 952 >> 953

  Slashing Weapons—Life Slash 1030 >> 1031

  Polearms 970 >> 973

  Mana Channeling 971 >> 994

  Trailblazer’s Aura (Legendary 5%) >> 6%

  Celestial Restoration (Epic 66%) >> 68%

  Unfortunately, the notifications didn’t bring up anything new to consider, so when I still found myself unable to communicate with Selena or the others, I was left with nothing to do but consider the existential dread I’d felt while I’d been held by that ascendant.

  Helplessness wasn’t something that I was used to, even though I’d been experiencing it far too often as of late. With Gallarosa it had been awful, to the point that the system… or something… apparently smoothed over my memories of it so I didn’t wake up with panic attacks from reliving being caught in an endless cycle of death and rebirth as I was slowly being unmade from the multiverse.

  Just thinking the words told me that I should feel more strongly about them, but I didn’t. It had happened, and it was out of my mind. But I couldn’t stop focusing on the helplessness I’d felt when facing off against this ascendant. I wasn’t naive, so even if I was overly confident at times, I knew that no legendary was supposed to be able to face off against an ascendant.

  The battle with the Matriarch hadn’t been nearly as bad, partly because I’d known at the time that she didn’t really want to kill me, but to tame me. But against her, I could fight back. She didn’t lock me down. She wanted to see what I could do. In the midst of battle, I didn’t ever feel helpless. It was like defiance was an answer to the problem of despair.

  Another realization struck me. Kalix had been stronger than me by a long shot, but he also hadn’t been the equal of the Matriarch, who in turn wasn’t a match for Selena’s father or uncle, and definitely not a match for Abel Kalestian.

  The question was what to do with that information. It had taken everything I had just to break free, and he wasn’t necessarily going all out. No, he might be weak as far as ascendants went, but did that mean a group of us could defeat him? That had been our working plan all along, and our reason for dealing with Decimus, who I absolutely knew couldn’t be trusted. If everything went according to plan, he could be our sacrificial lamb and buy enough time for the rest of us to overwhelm the ascendant.