Ninety very rushed seconds later I carried a full suit of armor back into the time-warped room and set to modifying it. No matter how much material it used it always cost 125 potential to make an eelbone piece of equipment, which was exactly my calculated half-point between an item on level with //ENDLESS and the next step up from there. I was lucky that I’d been able to find a suit of armor that was both common and shoddy, since I assumed trying to modify or replace anything of higher value would have cost more potential than I had saved up.

The End informed me that I’d wasted one and a half hours of the four I’d been granted, but that still left me with two hours to create and get used to my new armor and weapon. It wasn’t much, but as I pressed the shield I’d grabbed onto my interface, I was brimming with anticipation. I hadn’t had a good fight in a few years–not one with a person, anyway–and the prospect of fighting whoever Addia’s chosen was left me jittery and full of yet-to-be-used adrenaline.

I set my newly minted shield on the ground and glanced over at my bone reserves, which seemed to be running dangerously low. I’d run out of bone long before I ran out of potential, which meant I’d have to get experimental. I grabbed a gauntlet and the chestplate off the armor mannequin I’d carried in, then pressed them one-by-one into my interface. The size of something didn’t usually mean it had better stats, which was why I’d had enchanted boots and gloves in my last life long before I had an enchanted chestpiece or helmet, so the more pieces of armor I could get away with creating with my rapidly depleting bone stores, the better.

One gauntlet ended up costing the exact same potential as creating a chestpiece, but it only used up two-fifths as much bone to create. After creating that one gauntlet I’d have enough bone left for just over two chestpieces. Instead, I used what I had and created the other gauntlet, both boots, and a helmet. I still had a little bone left, but it wasn’t enough to make any other pieces of armor.

“This’ll have to be enough.” I assured myself, looking over the gear I’d created with a twisted sort of pride. It was far from the best I’d seen, and equipping it actually made my stats take a hit, but if I fought anything fire-based I’d more than make up for it. If I’d misjudged, though, and only Inopsy had a fire-based core, I was doomed.

But that seemed highly unlikely. When I finally swapped over to my stat sheet to see the final damages, I was pleasantly surprised. The nodes I’d taken from Inopsy’s core had sort of made up for the losses equipping the eelbone gear had come with, and the ceiling was certainly higher with this new equipment.

//Sebastian Cormier: 21 year old Human Male

//Core: //NULL

//Equipment

//(//CORRUPTED,Shoddy) //SLITHERBURN-VISAGE

//(Few,Professional) Copperbound Mossplate

//(//CORRUPTED,Shoddy) //SLITHERBURN-BRACER x2

//(Few,Professional) Copperbound Mosspaulder x2

//(Few,Professional) Copperbound Mosspants

//(//CORRUPTED,Shoddy) //SLITHERBURN-GREAVES x2

//(//CORRUPTED,Shoddy) //SLITHERBURN-BLADE

//(//CORRUPTED,Shoddy) //SLITHERBURN-BLOCKADE

//(//CORRUPTED,Crafted) //ENDLESS

//Core Stats

//Mastery: 10 //Hazard: 5 //Health: 53

//Armor Stats

//Battery: 10 //Speed: 12 //Power: 15 //Resilience: 21 //Recovery: 9

//Core Functions

//CONSUMPTION

//CREATION

//ENTROPY

//Spine of Enmity

//Floodforest’s Gift

//Armor Functions

//ENDLESS

//FIRESTORM-DEVOURER x7

//Inventory

//(Scarce, Unknown)Copper Peony x 15

//(Depleted, Unknown)Crystallized Mossrot x 10

I raised an eyebrow at the fact that Firestorm-Devourer had stacked with each armor piece I put on, and when I pressed on it for further information, it made me wonder why the Copperbound gear I’d worn before didn’t have anything like it. It was a sort of set bonus, but as I fully took in what I saw, it also seemed to be a slight punishing mechanic.

//FIRESTORM-DEVOURER stacking: for each piece of equipment with FIRESTORM-DEVOURER equipped, the amount of (Fire) and (Electricity) able to be stored increases, but it is also equally split among all pieces equipped.

That meant that I’d be getting the exact same amount of stat bonuses for the amount of fire I consumed, but that I’d reach the 25/50/100% milestone bonuses much later. They’d give me better bonuses, sure, but not having that 25% consumed resistance to fire and electricity could be extremely dangerous at the start of the fight. Though if I survived long enough to fully fill my stores, there was a chance that I stood a chance. I just had to hope that whoever I was about to fight didn’t realize they were fueling my strength until it was too late.

“Okay, you got this, Seb.” I muttered encouragingly, letting my armor take hold of my shield on my back and my sword at my hip. “Even if I ended up making gear that boosted everything but my recovery, I’ve still got this. It’s not like I expect this fight to be long and drawn out or anything.”

My gauntlets granted power when they were fueled with fire, my boots speed, my helmet battery, and my shield resilience. There was absolutely no help for my lowest stat; recovery, and I’d crippled the Floodforest’s Gift by removing so much of the armor I’d taken from there. I shook my head and tried to push the worries out of my mind and let the adrenaline take over, but I just couldn’t. This wasn’t like the time with the eel; this time, I could go find Jun and we’d both simply run away. This time, I was going in to protect the Matria–a woman I barely knew–and I was going to fight an Embodiment’s chosen to do it.

It was suicide, plain and simple. And no matter how much I enjoyed the crazy battles this world facilitated, I’d only once looked forward to a suicide mission. The very first one.

After that, all I could picture were the friends that hadn’t come back. Each and every time we were backed into a corner to attempt one of the obscenely dangerous hazards for one reason or another, I’d lost friends. It never worked out fine, even if we got exactly what we’d gone in for.

I felt my hands shake, then balled my fists to try and stop it. I had an hour and fifteen minutes left in this place. I needed to use it to be productive. I couldn’t just stand here picturing the absolute worst ways that this could possibly end. But that was exactly what I did.

My stomach cramped, my palms were sweaty, and I couldn’t think straight through an oncoming migraine and the thunderous beating of my own damn heart. I remembered feeling like this before I went down into the first hazard I’d completed with a group of other scared, confused people. I remembered fifteen of us going in. I remembered seeing the warnings that we were far too low tolerance for the hazard, but being just high enough to not get kicked out.

I remembered four of us coming out.

I remembered the screaming and crying as the four of us got blamed for the deaths of siblings, parents, lovers, and friends. I remembered the feeling of cold steel running through my gut, and the colder stares of the onlookers as they watched me get what they deemed I deserved. I remembered bleeding out for hours on the dirt as my armor worked ceaselessly to keep me alive.

Somehow, I didn’t remember hatred. I remembered crying. I remembered screaming. Both my own, and both at my uselessness to protect the others. That probably led to me becoming the vanguard for every group I was in, the wall that the danger broke on before it could even get to my friends. But it was never enough. Too many good people died. Hell, too many bad people died. Dee was a real bastard, but he changed. So many people never got a chance to change.

My hand gripped around my sword, and I turned to the vent with my lips set in a thin line. I couldn’t let anyone else die under my protection. I’d told Jun I would be there to help her. I’d told The End that I’d save Persephonia. I wouldn’t go back on my word, and if anyone had to die, it would be me. Jun and Persephonia would help humanity in so many ways that I couldn’t. But if either of them died, humanity would fend for itself, just as it had in my last life.

I pulled myself up into the space before the vent and stared at the wall for a few long moments. There was so much I wasn’t ready for, so much that I’d never be ready for, and so much that I stood to lose. Nia was a chosen. That explained how she’d written in English for me, but also brought up a few disgusted feelings that I didn’t want to acknowledge. I couldn’t help but compare her to the freaks that I’d killed, or Garrett who’d quite literally taken everything from me, but my desire to save her never fell from a personal choice to an obligation. There was something different about her.

“An hour and a half.” I muttered. “An hour and a half, then I have to go out there.”

It wasn’t enough time. I needed to train. I needed to grow. I’d seen how low-level people fared against stronger opponents, and even with the advantage of surprise they usually lost. I reached up to feel the ribbon that contained the Scorched Bloodcoral Concoction and wove it between my fingers, longing for the confidence and brutality it had given me when I fought the eel.

{Do I really have a shot at surviving this?}

A too-long silence followed my question. One that completely undermined the messages The End eventually sent.

//YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERED ONE OF ADDIA’S CHOSEN AND SURVIVED.

//SHE PREFERS THOSE LIKE THAT MAN.

//USE THAT KNOWLEDGE HOWEVER YOU SEE FIT.

I had a chance, but it was mostly out of my hands. Inopsy had only survived because I wrongly assumed him dead, and then I’d survived because he found me interesting. Or maybe he was paying me back in his own strange way for not killing him, even though I’d had every intention to. I glanced back at the room and sighed, then turned and dropped down under the weight of my own reluctance. I needed something more. I just couldn’t go fight a monster with my strength.

I zeroed in on a small stone bowl that had fallen under the rotten eel meat; the stone stick with a rounded end inside of it glued to the bowl with the sticky mess of rotten flesh. I took a deep breath and began wiping it as clean as I could, using what little water I’d stored in a canteen to the best of my abilities. In the end, all I couldn’t get out was the smell. I hoped that wouldn’t interfere with what I was about to make.

I took one of the copper peonies from my inventory and pulled it apart, individually placing the petals and leaves into the mortar and discarding the stem. I ground it down into a fine paste then added some of the eel marrow, stirred it until it was uniform and combined, and finally added some eel blood I’d secretly stashed away. It was the texture of wet sand, a deep red that gleamed with flakes and specks of copper, and somehow smelled like a copper kettle over an open flame. I rolled the mixture between my hands until it had formed into a sphere that was the size of a golf ball, shook my head, and split the one ball into two smaller ones.

They wouldn’t be dry for a long while, and I didn’t have anything to speed that up. I stared at the two pills I’d haphazardly thrown together and activated //ENDLESS to get an idea of what I’d just made and if it would be of any use whatsoever.