The man ran at Serenity, giggling. Serenity wasn’t entirely certain if he was insane or if there was a deeper meaning behind his words and actions, but that didn’t matter; Serenity wasn’t about to let the man reach him. Any chance he’d had to resolve this semi-peacefully was gone.

So he Evoked the physical shield spell he’d stored that morning; it seemed like he could store a physical shield and a magical shield just as well as the pair of Quickness and Slow, and the shields seemed more useful against a horde of insects.

The man bounced off the shield spell and fell on his butt, clutching something near his chest. Serenity didn’t take the time to look; he simply used his ax. The man was clearly bipedal; unlike the insects, he should die easily.

He did. It was positively simple after the insects; the man had clearly not invested in his Phys.

The shield dissipated moments later. He probably hadn’t needed it, but he’d expected more from the insects’ controller. He was about to step away when he realized that he felt the warm buzz of a large monster core.

It took him a moment to confirm that it was coming from the man in front of him and not the mantid a few steps away.

Loot Core

A core about the size of a golf ball appeared in Serenity’s hand. He shook his head before tucking it into his backpack; this probably explained why he hadn’t found any cores on the overgrown insects themselves. The man was clearly the center of the grouping.

He knelt down and took a good look at the man. He’d once been human or something very close. The signs of that were all there, including hands that were clearly human.

A closer look revealed all the ways in which the dead man was no longer human or any other species Serenity knew. His face was nearly human, but it was dominated by a protruding pair of compound eyes. Two pairs of arms emerged from his hips instead of normal legs, looking more like chitin blades than anything else; they didn’t look like proper insectile legs, either. His belly bulged grossly; from the end, near where the belly button should have been, Serenity could see a large, sharp spike that pointed forward. It reminded him of a bee’s stinger, except that it was far larger.

Serenity took another look at the man’s belly stinger. He’d wondered about where the insane variety of insects came from, and he’d seen enough over the years to have a sinking feeling about where it might be, especially combined with the man’s words about “incubators”.

He had a very good guess as to what he would find when he examined the “debris” around the edge of the room. It would be bodies, and they would almost certainly not be intact.

Serenity turned to look and found that the others had made their way up to him while he was looking at the dead bugmancer. At least, he hoped the man had been a bugmancer; it was probably the least terrible of the options. “Rissa? Please make sure that we mention that all of the bodies need to be burned. Quickly. Including this one. Especially this one.”

“Sure. Why?” Rissa looked down as she spoke. “What is that? He doesn’t look right, and I don’t think it’s just that he isn’t human. Am I just being too, uh, human-centric?”

Serenity sighed. “That’s what happens when you survive absorbing monster cores. It’s why Margrethe tried to kill me.”

Serenity had talked to Margrethe quite a bit since then and learned a great deal about what monster cores did. If he’d known then what he knew now, he’d never have eaten them like candy during his first Tutorial and found out that they had a completely different effect on him than they did on normal people.

He still hadn’t eaten many since then. Somehow, knowing what they could do made them far less attractive, even if they did still smell good.

“Someone tried to kill you over absorbing monster cores?” Katya sounded puzzled. “I know you aren’t foolish.”

Serenity shrugged, trying to pass it off as a minor thing. He still felt angry with Margrethe, but knew that his anger was at least partly irrational, because her actions had almost gotten Echo killed. “It was a misunderstanding. She missed and we had a long talk afterwards. Several long talks, actually. She’s still fanatical but she doesn’t think I need to die anymore.”

Katya stared at Serenity for a long moment. “You are more forgiving than I.”

Serenity shrugged again. “I’m trying. Whether or not I succeed …” Serenity shook his head. “I haven’t always been forgiving. I know exactly where being unyielding leads, so I’m trying to be better. Trying to be a better person.”

It was the closest he’d come to revealing his past. Perhaps someday he’d say that he knew from the example of the Final Reaper, but for now he didn’t want to get into it.

Serenity stood and headed towards the portal. He needed to close it and move forward.

Oh, and gather the portal’s coordinates. That was important too.

Closing the portal was easy. The thought of the walk back, possibly with spiders, made Serenity intensely uncomfortable. He’d do it if he needed to, but he didn’t want to.

Instead, he examined the dome of earth that covered the “room” with the portal. He could feel cell tower signals just at the limit of detection, but none of them stuck around long enough for him to do more than authenticate to the network - something Aide usually took care of, but Aide was sharing the information with him.

Serenity was grateful that, unlike the last room, the portal room wasn’t filled with bodies.

Aide? How close are we to the surface?

This location is less than ten feet below the current surface; the earthen dome is approximately two to two and a half feet thick based on the most recent information available. This location was above ground in records prior to the portals’ appearance.

Good enough. It would take a lot of his mana, but Serenity could absolutely clear that much earth out of the way. His Solid Affinity was terrible, but even it would probably work. Nihility was the other obvious possibility; it would destroy the material instead of moving it, but that was fine; ordinary dirt was simple enough to replace.

Wait a minute. Why was he looking to use a spell to move something when he had a Skill that would probably do it for him?

Potential of the Rift

Your Rift to the Origin will allow you to move items or creatures to the Origin and retrieve them later. Items or creatures stored in the Origin will be exposed to it. You may travel to the Origin using the Rift.

Hmm. It said “item”; Serenity wasn't certain how that was defined or even if it was defined. It probably meant that he wasn’t supposed to move part of something.

On the other hand, the Final Reaper didn’t survive by never pushing the bounds of what he was “supposed” to do, especially with Skills. Pushing the boundaries was one of the ways to get new Skills offered (or at least shape the direction new Skills would take). It was worth a try; if it worked, it would be far more mana-efficient than using a spell. It would probably also be faster.

Serenity used the map to orient himself away from the direction they’d attacked from; he wanted to see if the fight was over, but he didn’t want that badly enough to risk taking a bullet if they thought opening the dome was an attack. He could walk around the dome or just ask, once he had a reliable cell connection again.

He’d used his Potential of the Rift Skill before, but only for small things; it was extremely useful for holding his weapons when he wanted to shift forms. This was the first time he’d tried it for anything large.

No time like the present.

Serenity reached out to the wall and touched it; while the Skill description didn’t say it, it was far easier to store something he was touching. Storing himself was easier still, but it wouldn’t help here.

As Serenity concentrated on the Skill, he gained an awareness of the items he could push into the Origin through his Rift. Both of his selves were on the list, as was his belt and backpack, but the items stored in the belt and backpack weren’t. His armor was. He could also feel that a number of Rissa’s items and even Rissa herself were options, probably because she was wearing his second form as armor.

Serenity had the feeling he was going to lose that argument the next time they had it; after all, she hadn’t even been attacked, while he’d had a scorpion’s stinger bounce off his scales. Maybe he could point out that his scales were almost as protective as his armor-self?

He still wasn’t sure he’d win. Rissa could be just as protective of him as he was of her.

Serenity shook himself and focused on the Rift again. The wall wasn’t listed. Maybe he could move some dirt? There was a coating in the way, but it should still be possible; for all that it was compacted, it was really just a bunch of different pieces of dirt.

He pushed against the skill and it gave. The coating and dirt near Serenity’s hand disappeared; as he moved his hand farther, more dirt disappeared and then some of the dirt, no longer held in place by the missing dirt, fell to replace it and was moved as well.

Serenity stepped closer to the wall and concentrated on moving dirt.

It took time and he was buried, temporarily, three different times, but Serenity eventually created a ramp leading outside through the dirt wall. Once it was large enough, he headed a little ways away from the opening and dumped the dirt back out of the Rift; it wouldn’t do to leave it in the Origin.

When it came out, it gave Serenity the oddest feeling of hominess, as though there were just a hint of the Origin clinging to it. There was no particular mana or Essence about it, and the feeling dissipated quickly, far faster than the amount of time it’d taken to send the dirt through the rift in the first place.

Serenity decided it was a good thing he hadn’t simply left the dirt in the Origin; he didn’t need to go around creating eldritch dirt of all things. He’d have to remember to use caution when he stored things, but he wasn’t going to let it stop him unless he found consequences worse than a momentary dissipating Affinity.

Now that the wall was open, Serenity could hear occasional gunshots in the distance. He wasn’t going to head that way to check it out, but it was nothing like the level of gunfire he’d heard before they entered. He guessed that they were probably dealing with nothing more than stragglers. That would likely continue for a while.

The group trudged out of the blocked-off area, watching for bugs. There were a few, but they seemed cautious instead of aggressive, and there were no difficulties. It wasn’t long before they found themselves explaining what they’d found.

Rissa had to remind Serenity about both burning the bodies and having soldiers find the tunnel-digging worms, but once Serenity explained that it was to prevent possible infestations and/or gigantic worms digging under the nearby city of Manchester, the plans to deal with the remaining bugs and bodies started moving quickly.