“Well, with that out of the way, ya know why I’m where I am. Preached my way ta the position of grand warden, got cured of what ailed me, and then kept the position despite my many attempts ta give it away ta someone who deserves it more. The last part is how I got back in Thraiv’s good graces, and that can be summed up in short order; Keratily Keratily put in a good word ta her mother and Thraiv ordered me back home for a long winded talk that ended with me somehow getting the honor of being her right eye. And a little more, if ya know what I mean.”

If Okeria had had eyebrows, I know he would’ve been waggling them for perverted emphasis. “So it doesn’t matter that you had godblood in you, you can still get ‘a little more’ from gods?”

“Wait. Does that mean you have kids?” Jun asked suspiciously. “I went to early school with a Willow and a Desdia Perek who were both first generation godbloods. Are they… yours?”

“To the first question; it does matter, but only if ya don’t have more than five generations separating ya from the gods. But the big thing is that I don’t have a drop of godblood in me; I didn’t exactly take the legal route ta the all-world.” Okeria answered my questions, then turned to Jun. “And ta your questions; Willow and Desdia are both mine, yes, but I’ve never seen them in person. Just a whole lotta communications powered by Thraiv and their grandparents back home. Wish I could get them ta come over here, but they’re both more than happy staying back on Sotrien, and I’m not about ta take that from them. Plus they’re adults that can make their own decisions, so all I can do is make offers that don’t really get considered.”

“Huh, small world.” Jun said with a nod.

I politely nodded along, but there was something that Okeria hadn’t said anything about yet. Two somethings, actually. “So why are your eyes sewn shut? And how are you seeing us right now without them?”

“Cameras linked directly ta my nerves.” Okeria said with a snap of his fingers. One of his floating cameras appeared above his thumb, then disappeared. “As long as they’re close, I get real-time feedback from them. But if they’re far away, I gotta set them ta record and bring the info back ta me. I’ve got some in my helmet too, ta act like normal eyes. And sewing one set of eyes shut is normal for someone who wants ta become one of the eyes of their god.”

Jun coughed to interrupt, drawing a sigh from Okeria. “Alright, fine. Little miss won’t let me paint myself in a good light here. I didn’t fully lie there; ya used ta sew two of yer eyes shut if ya became a right or left eye, but that fell outta practice a good three centuries ago. I was trying ta show my devotion by being like the priests of old, ta hopefully get in Thraiv’s good graces without actually doing anything ta earn it. And that was before the cloudy rot got into my eyes, so I can’t use that as an excuse. It was all me.”

This felt a little more like a therapy session than I was comfortable with, but it was pretty interesting. None of the people I’d met in my first life had been blind and in the new world, so it was a struggle I’d never once thought of. Would the system leave them blind and searching forever, or would it try and give them a core that would let them see somehow? Poe’s core didn’t help her walk outside of her armor, but the armor itself completely negated the fact that she was in a wheelchair while she was inside it. And now that I thought of it, Dee’s core didn’t do anything to help with the onset of his arthritis. Was it really completely random who got what?

I considered letting that question knock around in my head, but I had someone here who could probably give me more than a few answers. “Your core helps you see, right? Did the system give you it because you were blind, or do you think it was all a coincidence?”

“Mmh, that’s something I’ve wondered a whole bunch myself. My core didn’t give me the ability ta see, but it certainly painted a pathway for me ta follow.” Okeria mused, reaching one hand up to his bottom set of eyes and running a finger along the silver cord. “If I had ta say, I’d guess that the system didn’t do that on purpose. I just wanted ta see again, so I eventually worked my way ta what I’ve got now. But if my core had given me fire manipulation, or even a stat boosting core, I wouldn’t’ve been able ta see again on my own power.”

Okeria sighed and shook his head. “I’ll run myself in circles if I don’t give up on that now. We can ask Keratily when she gets here; she’s been alive long enough ta know far more than I do. But if neither of ya have any more burning questions, it’s about time for the trawler ta up and leave and we’ve got a slyk ta kill”

The sound of multiple dusty impacts and a rain of shrapnel instantly took me out of the conversation. I swiveled to look outside the window and saw the boulders from the non-massive slyk sitting on the platform, a trail of oil raining down on it and splattering out before being sucked into the rock. I had all of a moment to wonder what the hell had just happened before I saw Okeria standing next to the rock with his helmet on, waving for us to join him outside as the station began to rumble.

I shared a look with Jun before joining Okeria. “How’d you know the trawler was leaving?” I asked when I took a spot next to him, watching as the massive rock-boat slowly cut a path through the rails. “It has something to do with the text on the side, right?”

“First Honourable Eightfold Matria of the Thirty-First Squadron.” Jun said matter-of-factly. “Oh, wait, I think I get it. One hour, eight minutes, and thirty five seconds. One H, eight M, and thirty-five S. That’s about how long it's been since the thing came in, right?”

“As right as rain.” Okeria confirmed. The sound of the alarm he’d pulled to summon the trawler blared once more, and the yellow numbers on the trawler flaked away to nothing. “We can lock one trawler in the port for as long as we want, but others will keep coming in for as long as it's locked in. But the switchport’s protection weakens with each trawler in the yard, so we gotta be careful with how long we let this one sit here.”

I nodded and glanced down at the slyk. The thought of multiple trawlers worth of these things showing up and attacking us didn’t give me any comfort, but this hazard seemed to be fairly straightforward. We’d find something in each trawler that let us do… something… and we’d use that something to get back out. But then again, we’d just get spat back out right where Endra was waiting for us. Okeria didn’t seem to be worried, though, so this hazard had to have multiple exits. Which meant we’d have to go somewhere else if we wanted to leave safely.

“Don’t tell me we need to commandeer a trawler to get out of here.” I realized, looking up at the massive boat. “That slyk inside was way too strong for us to fight, even if we were on-level with the hazard, so there’s gotta be another way.”

“Well, you’d be right and you’d also be wrong. There is a very normal way ta clear this hazard, and it involves going down into the tunnels below and finding some pieces of a doorway that allows ya ta get back out where we’d come. But we really don’t want that now that Endra’s powering up minute by minute, so we’re taking one of the alternate ways I’ve found in my multiple times through here for materials.”

Okeria lifted his hand and pressed his palm to the slyk, and a weak pulse of electricity visibly traveled between the two. “The place ya go is determined by what kinda monstrous slyk that’s made the belly of a trawler into its home, and from what I saw of that one, we’ve got a loneswarm on our hands. Which won’t take us where we need ta go, but I do need the materials ya can get from killing it. So I’ll be doing that while ya two work on killing this weakened infester here.”

“No you aren’t. Not yet at least; we don’t have any functions or weapons that can break this rock, and nothing that can get through the tiny holes to the oil inside. No amount of believing in ourselves is going to make the slyk any weaker.” Jun said seriously, walking up next to Okeria and placing her hand next to his. “Seb can hit it with a hammer, but that’s pretty much it. His new armor’s broken and neither of our floodforest’s gifts can turn small enough to fit into those pores. You might be able to electrocute it, but we’ve got nothing.”

“A hammer?” Okeria muttered, then looked to the sky for a moment. “Huh. Human, did you make multiple weapons out of the creature’s bones?”

I shook my head; I’d only made the one sword, and I’d lost it fighting Endra. “Nope.”

“So your core function lets you change the shape of your weapons, then?” Okeria inferred from the information I now realized he was watching. “You fought Endra with a sword and a spear, but you only made one of them. Is that all your core can do, or is there more to it?”

“No, only the copperbound gear can… change… shape.” I slowly said as I realized what I was saying. I had transformed the slitherburn sword, but how the fuck had I managed that? Even the copperbound gear was supposed to lose its transformation ability when it left the forest, but I could still change it. “Actually, I don't know how I did that. I don’t think it’s part of my core.”

“Huh, how strange. Well, if ya can make a hammer, ya can beat the daylights outta the slyk until ya expose its main body. The rock’s as solid as ironroot, but continuous damage will eventually get ya ta the gooey centre. Like so.”

Okeria stepped back and swung a staff that had appeared between his hands in one swift motion, the crackling of electricity as loud as fireworks as it collided with the slyk. A small chunk cracked off, leaving a very obvious spiderweb of cracks underneath. I noted that the staff just looked to be the same gun barrels as before stacked on top of each other, but there was a strength in that weapon that didn’t fit its makeup.

“We’ll talk about your strange transformative abilities when I claim my prize.” Okeria said, letting his staff fall from his hands. It spun and transformed into a four-barreled cannon that swung around to hover over Okeria’s shoulder, connected to his armor by one thick silver cable that crackled with electricity as it breathed light blue. “And from one quick-equipper to another, don’t tell anyone that the transformation thing isn’t a part of your core. People get strange when they find out ya can do something they can’t and they can’t blame the system for that difference.”