The next five days went by at a snail’s pace. Keratily didn’t have to convince Okeria to give up his slyk loneswarm since she’d killed one of her own inside the trawler, and she continued to decimate those powerful slyk day-in and day-out until Jun and I had consumed enough cores so that we could equip all the corrupted gear I was about to make. It was undeserved power, and we both knew it, but the other option was staying here until we somehow managed to kill enough slyk on our own to make it out of here.

So we pushed down those feelings of unworthiness and took what was given to us. Okeria equipped us with weapons and armor that upped our hazard tolerance to the point that we could stay in the hazard without getting kicked out, but still not high enough to get rid of the warnings. And on the morning of the seventh day, it was my turn to spend some of the nodes Keratily had earned for me.

I rolled my hand across the pinnacle of the extenders we’d managed to create with the loneswarm’s materials, mourning the fact that I still wasn’t a high enough level to equip it. Neither was Jun, for that matter, but she was definitely a lot closer than I was. Her core gained mastery for doing pretty much anything, and had just reached mastery twenty-two last night.

I’d known she would grow quickly, but this was on another level. She’d hit the wall of massively increased level requirements soon enough, but she overtook what had taken me more than a few years in just months. And she wouldn’t be stopping any time soon.

With one last look at the best extender we’d managed to make, I readied myself to press it into my core and corrupt it with the absolute mass of empty nodes I now had.

(Professional,Few) Oilslyk Extender: Loneswarm Variant.

Core Mastery Requirement: 27.

While equipped, grants an external battery supply to a designated piece of equipment. Supply is equal to [7]/13/20/28% of current maximum battery. No more than one battery can be equipped to a piece of gear, but all batteries’ strength is increased by [5]/10/15/20% for each ‘Loneswarm’ Extender equipped.

Upgrades at Item Mastery [1]/21/36/57

The infester variants made for better battery packs, but these Loneswarms would overtake them if we could equip enough of them. Which was something Jun just couldn’t do. We’d tried stringing together a mass of the infester variants in a sequence to make a stronger battery, and it had sort of worked, except it was now a larger target for anything that wanted to take out Jun’s armor. And it only worked on her chestpiece, which had no innate functions to speak of. The end result looked something like this;

(Shoddy,Few) Oilslyk Extender: Infester Variant Sequence x6.

Core Mastery Requirement: 22.

While equipped, grants an external battery supply to a designated piece of equipment. Supply is equal to [3]/7/12/18% of current maximum battery.

Additional batteries designated to the same piece of equipment: 5. Current bonus: [90]/125/165/210% strength.

Total effectiveness: [5.7]/15.75/31.8/55.8%

Upgrades at Item Mastery [1]/22/57/91

The amount of battery Jun’s extender sequence could give her at max mastery was insane, but it was also almost double what I’d managed to get in my old life. She planned on swapping out her x6 for three Loneswarm Variants when she reached core mastery 27, since they would be better for her until she hit item mastery ninety-fucking-one on the x6, but if she ever managed to get the x6 to ninety-one…

“Seb, you’re stalling.”

Jun glared at me from the other side of the storage closet we’d shut ourselves in. I didn’t feel comfortable showing Okeria and Keratily the corruption process, even if Okeria had already seen it once with Nia’s core, but I still needed to do this. And yes, I was stalling, for reasons I couldn’t quite put into words.

It was just… this was the first time I’d be corrupting something that was actually strong. And I really didn’t want to see how many nodes I’d have to sacrifice to do it. “Yeah, I know.” I sighed. “Getting a move on, now.”

I pressed the loneswarm extender to my core, holding my breath until it spat out what it needed to corrupt the powerful trinket.

//OFFERED ITEM: (Professional,Few) Oilslyk Extender: Loneswarm Variant. COST: 1,426

“Holy shit, that’s a lot.” I gulped, looking over my core to see if I even had enough potential to make this thing. I was a little more than enough thanks to Keratily’s efforts, but if all of our equipment was going to be this expensive, I might only have one more in me. “Here goes, I guess.”

//58 EMPTY NODES CONVERTED TO POTENTIAL.

//CREATION ACTIVATED, WITH THE FOLLOWING MODIFIERS FROM THE BASE ITEM:

//REPLACE: THE //CORRUPTED ITEM WILL TAKE A BURDEN.

//TOLL: THE //CORRUPTED ITEM WILL EXTRACT ITS COST.

My core swallowed the extender whole in the blink of an eye, consuming it in the maw of scale-petals, then shone bright white for a moment before spitting words and a brand new corrupted item out at me.

//CREATION COMPLETE: OILSLYK EXTENDER: LONESWARM VARIANT HAS BEEN CORRUPTED INTO //MIMICRY

I expected to be holding something like the ribbons of //ENDLESS, or the bony material of the //SLITHERBURN stuff I’d made, but as I stared down at the mass of pulsating sludge in my hands, I wondered just what the hell I’d done.

//MIMICRY(//CORRUPTED,Professional): Core mastery requirement: 0.

Current item mastery: 0.

Current Function stored: N/A.

Designate a function to have //MIMICRY store that function within itself. That function is active for the bearer. Imposes a -2 stat penalty to the wielder for each node in the function’s length. If //MIMICRY’s mastery is lower than the stored function’s requirement, that function’s battery cost is increased by 3% per level of the difference.

Upgrades at item mastery [1/47/75/92/???]

I handed //MIMICRY off to Jun without a second thought. The penalties would be so much lower for her, and it would let her use God-Pen Inscriptions right away without using up pretty much every node in her core. She stared at the pulsating mass for a second before she opened her interface and identified it. Her eyes shot up to meet mine, sparkling with excitement at the possibilities this thing opened to her.

“I’m setting God-Pen to forty nodes and forty mastery. I can stomach a forty-stat loss thanks to all those slyk cores rootia got for us, and an eighty-percent increased cost could be a whole lot, so I don’t want to go over that. I have enough stat nodes to make five ‘stars’ now, so hopefully not all of the inscriptions are super expensive.”

Jun opened her interface and worked through whatever she had to do to equip her new corrupted trinket, then yelped as the sludge lept from her hand to wrap itself around her neck. “SKIES ABOVE GET IT– oh, nevermind. It just equipped itself. Hujh, the penalty splits itself evenly among my stats. Good to know that it didn’t destroy one of my stats.”

After some fiddling with her interface, Jun sighed in annoyance. “Okay, so what the function didn’t tell me was that it doesn’t give me a new inscription for every single ‘star’, even if that’s what the drowned description says. I just made the first one, and now it's telling me that I have to make another three to get the next inscription. Which would’ve been four without my function.”

I shook my head and blew out a long breath. {I don’t know why, but a lot of functions flat-out lie to you.}

“I noticed.” Jun muttered, then slid her hands across her interface until she finally nodded and closed it. “Okay; I had enough to make one ‘star’ of each type, and that gave me exactly two different inscriptions. I’ll get a third in another four ‘stars’, so by the time we get out of here that’ll be done with.”

The band of sludge around her neck shifted and shimmered until it was barely visible against her black and yellow armor. That was until two symbols carved themselves into the mass, glowing a dark yellow against the black band. The first was a simple one; two horizontal lines separated by a crescent moon lying on its side, one line balanced against the two points while the moon rested on the other. The lines went a little further than the moon was wide, giving the symbol a feeling like the moon was being crushed between the lines.

The second symbol was a little more complicated, but not by much. It looked like the outline of a slightly ovaline gem, with straight lines where some curves should be, and two spirals inside that spun in opposite directions. I blinked and refocused on the symbol, unsure if I’d actually seen it moving, and confirmed that I had. Neither of the symbols made any impact on me, since I still couldn’t read any of Jun’s language, and I couldn’t make any connections to things I knew.

Jun pressed a hand to my shoulder. “You don’t need to smash your helmet into my neck to see the symbols, Seb.” She laughed, then pushed me away and placed a finger on the crushed moon. “This one is the Compressed Moon, and it makes things lighter or heavier. Not so light or heavy that it’d be like gravity manipulation, though. And this one,” Jun gestured at the other symbol, “is a Twice-Eye. Apparently it lets me multiply things I put it on, but that doesn’t really make sense to me, so I’ll have to try it out first.”

Apparently Jun meant right this moment, as she grabbed the other loneswarm extender from my hand and flourished her hand. A black stylus with a dripping dark yellow tip appeared between her fingers, and Jun quickly marked the twice-eye symbol on the top of the extender. She studied it for a moment before nodding to herself, then took a deep breath and unleashed her function.

The extender shuddered for a moment, the mark Jun had put on it shimmering with potential, and then there were two of them. The extender we’d made, and a perfect copy with the mark on top of it glowing bright. Jun fumbled the second one and almost dropped it, but caught it in her left hand and sighed in relief. Then she grunted and fell to one knee.

“Let the function go.” I said seriously, bending down to look her in the visor. “It’s using a lot more battery than you expected, right?”

“Just a little more.” Jun squeaked. The twice-eye stopped glowing a moment later, and the second extender simply vanished. “Just activating the inscription took almost half of my stores, and it was draining me by another ten-percent of my max every second it was out. That’s… that’s way too much, Seb.”

“It’s probably because of what you tried to copy.” I said, offering a hand to help Jun back to her feet. “You should see if there’s a sub-function description of your inscriptions, and not just names.”

Okeria clapped a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up at him, he pointed at the massive trawler that had come in a few hours earlier. “She’s leaving in twenty minutes, and we’re going with her. It’s time ta make some gear that actually ups your hazard tolerance.”