“I can guide you to the Shepherd. Do you not want to meet your God?”

They were deep into the Rustic Plain, the bocage stretching out from the lower floors of the Fields, camping in the ruins of a farmhouse that had been impaled and raised up by a sleeping treant disguised as a tree.

Jason grabbed a leg of the dinner table to pull himself up the slanted kitchen floor, put one leg in the floor pantry, avoided the waterfall that came from the overflowing sink, and eased himself onto the doorframe.

He grimaced as he put his leg up, and checked the gash in his calf. It was bleeding.

[Adventurer Path]

[Skills: Wanderlust, Light, Lesser Ward, Create Fire, Magic Weapon]

[Flock Path]

[Skills: Find Water, Breadcrumbs]

[Adventurer level 9]

[Skills: Basic Mending, Sure Grip, Lesser Weather Resistance, Improvised Weapon Proficiency: II, Lesser Resonance]

[Other: Lesser Vigour]

Sixteen years old, male, one hundred and eighty-eight centimeters tall, give or take a few, seventy kilograms heavy, give or take a few.

All of his measurements, his mannerisms, even the surface of his thoughts, were as easy to read as letters here in this giant silver web they all drowned in, though the two boys in the kitchen didn’t even seem to notice it.

Pain, exhaustion, that impatience he perpetually kept at bay, curiosity, wariness …

Scars marked his sun-bronzed skin. He treated his wound with a lazy near-efficiency that came from a merciful experience with wounds.

The blood on his hands … old but shallow. The first time he’d truly killed something had been years ago—thirteen? He wasn’t a killer.

That light in his eyes, though, as he glanced up through the broken windows over the overflowing sink even as his leg bled. [Wanderlust]! A poet of yesteryear who had taken up arms and let himself be raised up by the winds of his times.

Healing potions were stored inside his bulging pack he tucked into the pantry. Some empty, some full. He didn’t use them though he was mortally exhausted after a fight with those parasite-infested runts that had shared this home with him.

Poor company, those. Always giving me those shifty glances as their lifeless magic fought for the sentience they needed to flee.

He didn’t use the potions out of health concerns, nor supply concerns … possibly financial concerns?

He had taken the easy route not a day ago, guessing by how tender some of his new meat was.

Spiritually, he was elated.

Emotionally … a little sad.

Ah!

He was leaving. [Wanderlust] still pulled on his soul like a longing, and maybe some small part of him realized the crossroads he stood in, but the poet child had to go home.

Spiritual high, emotional crack—yes, yes, he could work with this. Seeing the signs of worship and going after the Shepherd had been shortsighted but there was nothing he could do about it now. He had to shift his approach.

“You want to follow in his footsteps, do you not? Don’t you hear his words calling to you, little Jason? ‘Every child should go on a journey,’” he quoted the man with his voice. “If you want, I could guide you to your Well.”

Finally, Jason looked at him in concern. Because he had used his voice?

Oh, if that is all it takes to push you, child, this is going to be so much fun!

“You know of the Wells, do you not? The Shepherd himself travels them. Do you not wish to see the worlds? Jason,” he imitated his voice once more as he called his name, “let me help y—”

Jason slammed the lid of the treasure chest shut. “So what are we going to do with it?”

Mm. Awkward. He could continue to speak, but this voice would be muffled. It would not have the same dramatic effect.

Frederick sat on one of the treant’s motionless arms, the ‘branch’ that had broken through the floor next to the sink and gone out the opposite wall, entangling the table on its path.

He could still see him, even though he sat in darkness with a few other trinkets inside the treasure chest—he could see everything within his field of influence, and far more if he plucked on the silver strings around them, far more than these two humans could.

Sixteen years old, male, one hundred and seventy-eight centimeters tall, give or take a few, also seventy-eight kilograms heavy, give or take a few.

He was in better shape after the fight than Jason, though not necessarily because he was a better combatant. He kept his brown hair styled even in the Tower. Telling.

[Adventurer Path]

[Skills: Danger Detection, Memory: The Smile in Her Voice, Bravery, Evasive Maneuvers, Light]

[Adventurer level 12]

[Skills: Lesser Coordination, Charming Smile, Basic Game Theory, Lesser Strength, Quick Strike, Glimpse the Sublime]

[Other: Lesser Luck]

Luck, huh? This one was far more of a challenge, but one he welcomed. If Luck was what had brought him here to this crossroads today, it was a lack of Wisdom that would see the two choosing none of the roads as they went home instead.

They had found the marble slots underneath the sink and activated the enchantment that made the water flow. Now, they used it to wash up and refill their bottles.

Were they any wiser, they would be scavenging for any container they could find and the materials to craft more so they could fill those with the water as well.

It had all sorts of healthy minerals, vitamins, and trace essences inside it that would help both a young body and spirit grow, but it was also filled with a Wakefulness of the true kind.

Any alchemist worth their flame would pay handsomely for a bottle of it. These two didn’t even realize what it was, nor that the ‘branch’ Frederick sat on was alive.

The water had overfilled the sink. It flowed freely down the floor to feed into the soil outside where the treant could slake its thirst.

In two days' time, it would wake and rampage across the bocage, a challenge one might expect from eight floors up, but one with merit. As the treant rose, it would unearth the buried cellar filled with more treasures and a cave system that led down to the source of the water.

Jason’s gate was brimming with potential. He would level as soon as he slept. But his spirit was dissonant—he wouldn’t receive an ideal gift. Were he any wiser, he would have prepared better for his ‘level up,’ but it was too late now.

He could help with that, subvert his connection, and ensure he got a more powerful Skill.

And if the two of them traveled for another week or two out, they might glimpse floors in the distance that were unfamiliar to them, city gates or abandoned towns, and realize the true position of the floor they were on.

If they did, their discovery would bring them fame and more levels, shake the Five Cities as a whole, and irreparably change their future.

It might even be enough for those idiots in Ostfeld to realize the true nature of their Tower, and how much of its potential they had been wasting over the past centuries.

Alas, the boys knew none of it and planned on leaving. If only someone would warn them.

If only someone hadn’t slammed the lid shut while he had been speaking.

In the dark, he grinned.

Well, he would tell them. For a price.

“It’s a talking head that says it can lead us to God. What do you mean, what are we doing with it? We’re keeping it, of course!”

“Do you make a habit of trusting talking heads that say they can lead you to ‘God’? Especially ones found in the new Towers?”

Frederick gave him a blank look. “It’s a head. What’s it going to do? Talk at us? If you don’t like what it says, you can shut it up.”

“I’ve heard rumors. The guild and … the Tors might have posted a bounty for beings like it. So if you want money … What would even you even want to do with it?”

Oh, little Jason didn’t trust his defenders?

Frederick grinned. “I don’t know. Yet. How about we hear it out?”

They climbed around the kitchen and the lid opened again. The two stared down at him.

Before he could say something, Frederick asked, “Hey, so what are you?”

“I could tell you. For a price?”

“A price, huh? What price? What do you want?”

“Don’t tell me you want our eternal souls or something,” Jason said.

“No. What would I want with souls? Useless baubles,” he spoke to buy himself time to consider his approach. Talking to two different people at the same time was such a hassle. Much easier to manipulate a person one on one.

“I … would ask for help.” He made his voice sound less grandiose and more like a boy himself. Slightly embarrassed. As if he had been caught in a baseless boast.

“Help?” Jason gave him a suspicious glare. “With what?” The glint in his eyes, the cloud in his thoughts. He thought of crime.

He pulled the rug out from under them, “Living. I am quite helpless on my own as you can see. All I can do is wait here and hope for someone to find me. Someone who thinks I’m worth something, so they take me with them on their adventures.”

Frederick’s smile slipped. Even without the silver web, he was easy to read: The mixed values of his belongings, cheap and expensive, old and new, sentimental both.

New money.

His surface thoughts rang dissidant with his smile and posture. Doubt bubbled up from deep within but a hunger to prove himself kept it at bay.

And the single mote of gold power he sheltered within his spirit? That he tried so hard to keep alive and emulate, that colored his whole self a silvery yellow?

[Lesser Luck].

He must have come into contact with Luck sometime throughout his life, before he got his first Skill, and he had nurtured a small part of it instead of spending it, trying desperately to make it his own.

He had been blessed by someone, favored by someone, a fleeting thing, a chance meeting—and he had nurtured the memory the same as he had the Luck until it too became a Skill.

[Memory: The Smile in Her Voice].

He had been left behind.

He adjusted his eyes as he glanced at Frederick, showing him a glint of the same doubt the boy kept hidden inside.

Frederick immediately put his facade back up. “Yeah, no, sorry. Church boy here is right. I can’t take a suspicious severed head around with me if I don’t know what you are.”

Jason shot him an annoyed look.

He waited around for a few seconds and twisted his face this way and that to give the illusion of ponderance. Finally, he answered, “I would consider myself a muse. If you are asking about my species, I am a spirit. However, you may look at me as a living book if you would like?”

“What, like a spellbook?”

“I do not know any spells,” he lied. “I do keep lore.”

“A spirit?” Jason asked. “Where did you come from? Why are you here? Who put you here? And why are you stuck in the form of a head?”

“I … am not sure,” he lied. “I remember being asleep for … a long time. My memory is still foggy right now. I woke up not long ago and was carried all over the worlds from place to place. I picked up what I could along the way. Finally, I was stored here.”

“By whom?”

“All sorts of people. Traders. Rats. Other spirits. One human … I think. Young … or was it old? Female … probably. Small. Shorter than you are.”

They gave each other a knowing look.

He tried to look as dumb as possible, feigning ignorance of the being he described.

“Did you get a name?” Jason asked.

“I don’t think She has a name.”

Frederick perked up. “Hey, do you have a name?”

“No.” He had not earned that honor yet, but maybe these two children would give him the chance he needed?

“Really? Is there anything you’d like us to call you?”

He genuinely considered that. “ … Kory? Maybe not. Uhm ...”

“You look kind of like a sour old lemon. How about we call you Lemon?”

Lemon … lemon … lemon … He tried the word out in his mind and beamed. “Sure!”

“Give us a second, Lemon,” Frederick said and shut the lid again.

They climbed to the other side of the kitchen and spoke in hushed whispers. Because they assumed he couldn’t hear them? Cute.

“Trust me,” Frederick said.

“Why? I know we go to the same school and … that’s about it for you.”

“Jarod—”

“Jason.”

“Jason. You wound me. We’ve had classes together. I know you’re friends with Lisa?”

“I know you aren’t. Look, you showed up out of nowhere. Technically, I have a claim to this area so I have the final say.”

Frederick shrugged. “I followed a hunch, saw you in the distance, and then I followed you, and you lead me here. I’m feeling lucky about this.” He grinned. “Trust me?”

Jason hesitated. “How would we even keep it? We’re not on a team.”

“I mean, if you don’t want it … and I do want it …?”

“Then you would have to get it appraised for its value and give me half. And even if it isn’t as valuable as you say, again, I think the Tors put a bounty out on these things. They might confiscate it.”

“Huh … shared custody? Or! Or. How about we ask it whom it wants to go with, like a lost puppy?”

“Do you really want to do this?”

“Yes.”

They climbed back over and opened up the lid again. Lemon tried not to roll his eyes.

“Oh, good,” Lemon sighed. “I was worried you had left me here. I mean, there’s other stuff besides me in this chest, but if you think I am not valuable, maybe this all would have looked like junk to you and …”

“Lemon.”

“Yes?”

“Say we want to take you with us,” Frederick said.

“Yes.”

“Which one of us would you want to go with?”

He feigned confusion. “Both of you? I thought you were a team?” Better to have the set to manipulate than a single person, he decided, especially if the two considered themselves to be accomplices in crime.

“We’re not,” Jason said.

“Oh. You looked like one? I mean, you looked like you would do well together … If I had to choose, I wouldn’t know how. I don’t know either of you yet. Maybe you could carry me around for a bit and I could decide then, or … Do you not have some way of deciding?”

“We do,” Frederick said, “but we might have to smuggle you out of the Tower so—”

Lemon dropped off his head. He hit the bottom of the treasure chest in the form of a yellow mask with an open mouth, sharp fangs, and carved spring green and blood-red hair.

A featureless pale head, like a mannequin doll’s, rolled the other way.

It took the two boys a surprisingly long time to decide on how to fix the issue, all the while they talked to him as if they expected him to reply, and Lemon said nothing and stayed still.

Finally, Frederick picked him up—and Lemon let a bit of his essence slip inside his spirit.

Not much. Not enough for most people to detect. Not enough to do anything with it. It was like breathing in someone’s direction. Most of it would dissipate over time or even be used or digested by him.

But every time the boy touched him, and as long as he held him, he would be able to breathe wisps of his essence into him, and motes of it would survive, until one day they were enough that he could do something with them.

Frederick placed his mask back onto the mannequin’s head. Yellow flesh flowed over it and his light green and dark red hair spilled free.

“What was that?” Jason demanded.

“You said you had to smuggle me somewhere. I thought that might be easier if I were easier to hide?”

“You can change forms?” Frederick asked, sounding excited.

“If I have a body,” Lemon said.

“And otherwise, you can't move on your own?” Jason sounded suspicious.

“I am quite helpless,” he lied.

“Why? Other spirits can move. Some can move even between worlds.”

“Seriously?” Frederick asked.

“Spirits come in all shapes and sizes, Jason—”

“‘All spirits are of Vim,’” he said with the air of quoting scripture and the edge of a man calling out a liar.

Lemon frowned, and the expression was genuine. “Certainly. Why should that mean I must be able to move on my own?”

“Because all spirits are like them. In anatomy alone. They can move, and have tassels, and—”

“No,” Lemon interrupted him. “I am related to Vim. I am of Them only in the most distance of connections and in the cloth of my being, as all spirits are. I share interests with Them as a muse. I am not shaped by Them.”

He was closest to another of the Six. That someone would fail to consider that was proof of how far the worlds had fallen, but he would see them righted again. He would earn his name.

“See?” Frederick nudged him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it’s clear Lemon does.”

Jason still frowned. “You said you could lead me to the Shepherd.”

“I can lead to where I saw last him,” Lemon said.

“You met Him?”

“In passing—”

“Wh—?”

“Not on this world.”

“Oh.” He sagged and paused for a moment before he asked, “What's He like?”

Lemon considered the question and answered honestly, “Kind.” Only when he said it, he meant something much different than what the boy had probably heard.

The Shepherd was a weak, short-sighted, foolish man who had failed to learn from his mistakes, who had helped to bring about one calamity, and who would help to bring about another ... Actually, a lot like this Jason.

Jason smiled softly.

Lemon mirrored him.

Frederick awkwardly glanced between them and spoke up, “So! Should we get this deal on the road? Oh hey, Lemon? Do you know of any cool loot hidden around here?”

He considered. “This house used to have a herb garden? You might find some valuable plants nearby.” He awkwardly twisted his eyes toward the window.

He could have told them about the other treasures this crossroads had to offer, the cellar buried beneath their feets, but it was too much too soon. He had waited three hundred years for this chance. He could be patient for a few more.

“Yeah, can you lead me to, uh— Oh, how should I even carry you around?”

“You can carry me by my hair if you don’t mind. I feel no pain. Or maybe you could use a net or noose to tie me to your pack? I would love to see the scenery, even as a mask, too!”

And he didn’t need to physically make skin contact to influence him, just be close to him.

“Sure. You look pretty awesome as a mask. Reminds me of Trest. Maybe I could tie you to my shoulder or something?”

“Like armor!”

Frederick used some rope to tie him to his pack and carefully climbed down the house. Jason wordlessly joined him. They scoured the house and the area for valuables, readied their things, and turned back.

Just like that, without further discussion, they took him with them when they left.

It was so easy. He could barely contain his excitement.

It would take them hours to get to the exit they had found. Jason was wounded. He used his staff as a walking stick. Frederick didn’t have the discipline to walk at a consistently quick pace. So they fought the monsters that caught up to them, and that gave Lemon the opportunity to compliment them on their teamwork, shoddy though it was.

They prodded him for information and Lemon gave them what crumbs he thought would be useful to maintain their interest and acted dumb for the rest.

"Maybe I need to wake up and move around a little to jog my memory?"

When they finally found an exit, he was glad to finally slip into his mask form because then, he could openly grin.

They stepped out the Tower to elsewhere—Hadica. The sprawling city bloomed within his perception as his influence unfurled, and it was a vibrant field filled with so much life. Over a million ripe souls, waiting for the harvest.

Still and silently, Lemon laughed. He was finally free!

Jason stared.

Lemon shut up. He hadn't actually been making a sound. The boy shouldn't have noticed anything, unless ...

[Lesser Resonance]? The Skill made him more open to magical effects—items, potions, and other people’s support Skills and spells.

Lemon thought at him, bringing up images of food and slaughter, and there was a definitive reaction: when they stepped into the loot tent, Jason bought a treat at one of the food stands.

And suddenly, Lemon wished Jason had been the one to pick him up and carry him around all day.

They brought him to a woman who appraised him, flooding him with a spell made of a mixture of her essences, spirit, and that silver web all around them that nobody seemed to pay heed.

The spell inspected every nook and cranny of his being, searching for answers, and Lemon looked at it and lied, I offer advice.

The spell stared back at him like a dumb child with an open mouth and wide eyes, nodded happily, and scampered off. It was a seer spell but not a truth-seer. It had to be told to search for lies, otherwise, it would accept them when they were given.

The woman still wanted to buy him and when the boys declined, she offered to buy the mannequin head instead.

“It’s like a summoning crystal, you see?” she said as she summoned different skin tones, eye colors, and hair from the head. “You can create profiles with it. Any beauty, art, or alchemy school would love to have it.”

“Thanks, but we might need it,” Frederick told her and they haggled over the few other trinkets they had instead.

All the while, Lemon thought at Jason, Take me with you, take me with you, take me with you. He wanted them to switch already!

Apparently, they were headed in the same direction, to the same school, which worked perfectly for him. Before they split in a dim hallway, Jason stopped and said, “How about I take Lemon for tonight? We can meet up in the morning and figure out what to do.”

“I don’t know, I’ve already made plans with Thomas and the others to hang out for the morning and—”

“Too bad. Then you’ll have to wait another day to pick his brain.” Jason held a hand out.

Frederick smiled. “How about this? I’ll give you the mannequin head. That way, he’ll have to stay a mask and neither of us can talk to him until we hang out again?”

“Sounds cruel.”

“Hey, you’re the one who told me not to trust him.”

And Jason doesn’t trust you either, Lemon thought.

“Unless of course, you could just buy him another summoning crystal to use as a body?” He gave him a dry look and moved his hand expectantly.

Frederick paused, caught in a lie, and sighed. “Fine. But give me your room number so I know where to find you.”

Lemon grinned, naturally, until he saw the sack Jason held out to let Frederick drop him inside.

Aw.

Jason carried him to his room and Lemon brushed up against his leg a few times, but it was barely enough to plant a single mote of his essence inside him.

He put him in another chest filled with piles of old clothes and other junk, locked the door, and left, only to return hours later—and ignore him.

No fun.

When he went to sleep though, there was at least a bit of excitement. His discordant spirit brushed the sea of dreams, and his humming gate made a connection—it blazed and grew larger.

Magic flooded his body, golden potential and silver strings that drowned out Lemon’s mote like a mountain grinding out a raindrop. It met the cracks, impurities, and discord of Jason’s spirit and it smoothed them over. It filled his mind, read his spirit, and broke down its own potential, expending itself and corrupting itself to affect a specific purpose from all that it was capable of.

And when it was done, what was left of it wrapped itself around his spirit like a gentle hum.

All around him, more and more silver lines snapped from the window to the wall, floors, and ceiling and stuck there as the web around them grew denser. It watched Jason and him both with a million eyes and organs.

Lemon didn't mind. He plucked one of those strings and heard Her voice ring out from inside the boy:

[Adventurer level 10!]

[Spell — Heroism obtained!]

He laughed as he met the eyes. Heroism. Is that supposed to be a challenge? And he looked out upon the city through the window. He couldn’t wait to slash and burn it all to the ground.