“Shit.” I spat, pushing my legs past their limits to get out of the oil as soon as possible. Okeria’s shield flashed as black veins split the pentagons apart, running up my body far faster than I’d expected. I needed to get out of the oil as soon as possible.

My foot caught on something in the oil and I stumbled. I found myself staring down into the sludgy abyss that was the floor while my weight carried me forwards, and I knew that if I didn’t do something I was fucked. Faceplanting in the oil would definitely destroy what remained of Okeria’s shield, and then it was only a matter of moments until my armor followed. I pulled out my shield in a moment of panic and slammed it down in front of me, slicing through the oil until it hit rock just a half-inch below.

//WARNING: CONTINUED CONTACT WITH SLYK SIGNALEECH OIL CAN SIGNIFICANTLY DAMAGE THIS WEAPON.

“I know, I know.” I muttered, righting myself and continuing my sprint after unsummoning my shield. I swiped through my inventory as I ran to check if the oil had somehow followed my weapon into my inventory, and found that there was a massive hazard symbol plastered above the image of what was now a shield. If I got past the slyk safely, maybe that would be the time to try out my new-ish Floodpetal Scales function. That I still somehow hadn’t taken for a test drive.

The oil hardened under my feet for my last few steps on solid ground. I crouched down before I lept at a piece of chest-high debris, digging my fingers in to whatever ridge I could find before I pulled myself up. I didn’t look back before I dropped down on the other side of the debris, falling further than I’d expected into a ridge that the signaleech had carved with one of its massive legs. The slyk in question shrieked when another notification popped up in the corner of my vision, and I held my breath in the relative darkness with the hope that it was distracted with Okeria.

Seconds went by, and I had to make the choice to keep waiting or trust in Okeria. I weighed the options for a split second as I rose to my feet, looking up and out of the scar at the debris that was just barely taller than I was. I’d be a sitting duck as long as Wipe Away was active, and the stats I’d drained from the slyk were so minimal that Okeria wouldn’t notice if they went back to normal. But what if they did end up mattering? What if those single-digit losses made the difference in one of Okeria’s attacks sinking deep in a crackling eye?

I grimaced, because I couldn’t risk it. Okeria dying meant I was beyond fucked, and I didn’t fully trust him to call for Keratily before he bit the dust. Okeria was selfish, and that was the one thing I could truly trust. If he thought killing the slyk was worth the risk of dying, and that calling in Keratily would significantly diminish his share of the rewards, he wouldn’t do it. And I certainly wasn’t going to make it past the signaleech on my own, even if it was snacking on Okeria’s corpse.

I’d spent a little too long making the choice, as another shriek front he slyk coincided with a notification, but this time I had to move. I pulled myself out of the scar and rolled along the ground, keeping as hidden as possible, and scanned the room I found myself in for whatever it was I was looking for.

If the first room was the factory floor, and the second one was an office, then this one was without a doubt a massive storage facility. Rows upon rows of empty shelves stretched out into the distance, illuminated only by the soft crackling of raw electricity that ran along oily veins that stretched from the pool of oil near the debris I’d climbed over and snaked away into the depths of the warehouse. A few of them climbed shelves of their own, pulsing with electricity that came and went as if it was being constantly squeezed through.

What I was looking for had to be connected to those veins. And since this was a hazard, I highly doubted that just following the ones on the ground would lead me to them. I needed to check the veins that were the closest to me that ran up the shelves, or just go up high enough to get a better vantage point. Both of those things could be accomplished at once, so I set out to accomplish them.

I chose a vein that ran through the middle of the warehouse so I could get a better look around when I climbed one of the shelves and set to following it. I was extra careful not to get too close to the vein, just in case any oil popped out and splattered my shield-less ass, but stayed close enough that I didn’t lose the vein when the pulse of electricity got too far ahead of me. The shelves around me were strangely empty, even when I noticed a vein running along them, and I started to grow worried that this wasn’t the right place to be either.

Hell, Okeria could’ve sent me on a wild goose chase so he got all the glory for himself. Though he had initially wanted me to take the part he was currently playing, so he’d either planned for the scenario of me rejecting his offer or he actually knew there was stuff in here somewhere. I wish that I could outright trust Okeria like I had with Jun, or even almost immediately like with Nia, but he hadn’t shown anything that could make me trust him like that.

A low hum stirred me out of my thoughts, and I found myself looking up and to the right almost instinctively. The hum seemed to come from everywhere at once, but I just knew that whatever was making it was up on that shelf. I glanced down and saw that the vein I’d been following was climbing that particular shelf, and that the electricity pulsing through it was somehow brighter than it had been moments ago. As if the source was closer now, and the charge dissipated the further away it got.

I looked over my shoulder and had to stifle a gasp. I’d somehow run so far that I couldn’t even make out the ruined doorway in the distance. There were a whole seven more notifications that I hadn’t noticed until now, and as I stood there lost in my own thoughts, two more appeared. Something was very, very strange here, and it all had to do with truly getting lost in my own head.

Three more notifications. “Fuck.” I spat, shaking my head to clear it and focusing up towards the low hum on the shelf. “Alright, Seb, just keep talking to yourself. Maybe that’ll stop whatever the fuck is happening from happening.”

I gripped the lowest part of the shelf that I could and grunted as I hoisted myself onto it. “That’s one down. Still need to climb up six more of these, and they are definitely not designed for climbing. Good thing armor shores up your weaknesses since I never worked out my upper body a day in this life.”

I grunted and muttered to myself all the way up to the seventh shelf, which was still four from the top of the unit, and found myself staring at what I could only describe as a very large grape-shaped pod of oil. It sat on a ring of featureless stone that the vein plugged itself into, and out of, snaking along the wall and off into the distance.

“If this isn’t what I’m looking for, then I don’t know anything.” I said confidently, and almost pushed my arm into it all at once. That would have been an extremely fucking stupid idea. As it was, I stood there with my hand less than an inch from the pulsating slyk-oil pod feeling just as stupid as if I’d done it. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

An idiot that didn't know where to go from there. “Alright; Okeria said he stuck his arm in this before, and that he could actually feel it, so does that make it safe for me to touch it?” I shook my head. “No, that doesn't make any sense. Every other bit of oil I’ve touched drained me good, so why would this be any different? I need to find some other way to get this done with.”

I opened my interface and scoped out my inventory. “My shield’s still infected from just barely touching the oil, but it’s not permanently fucking my battery stat like my armor is. So maybe if I unequip gear that I get oil on, it won’t screw me over.”

I still had my pair of copperbound gauntlets on me, but I really didn’t want to lose them if they got destroyed by the oil. Unfortunately, all I had was the armor I was wearing and the copperbound stuff… and the eel-bone armor that was already fucked and broken. It wouldn’t give me any stats, and wouldn’t give me any protection, but would the oil do anything at all to it in that case?

“It could hurt to try, but what the hell.” I decided, calling my right Slitherburn gauntlet to me. It immediately felt a thousand times heavier than the one I’d had on, and I dismissed it and resummoned it just to make sure it still obeyed my commands. “Here goes nothing.”

I cautiously pressed my fingers against the surface of the pod, half expecting my gauntlet to shrivel away to nothing, but nothing much happened. I set my mouth in a thin line and pressed on, feeling the surface tension break around my fingertips as they slid deeper and deeper into the minifridge-sized pod. The oil felt like nothing against my inert gauntlet, but the background hum suddenly became cacophonic as it shook the living daylights out of me. I shook to the resonance of the strange hum, feeling something in my body shiver and shake against itself until my vision clouded and I saw nothing but signals.

So many signals. Little bursts of electricity that populated my vision like stars on a perfectly clear night, traveling quickly between nowhere and somewhere before disappearing completely as they completed their mission. I saw a signal that I somehow knew was the sensation of me recognizing the signal flash before my eyes, spiraling larger and larger until it took up the entire night sky in a flash of electricity that was recognition and understanding.

Like the bellows of a forge spewing out smoke I rose, feeling my mind floating away before dissipating into nothingness that was somehow also everywhere and everything at once. I felt the trawler. I felt Okeria and the signaleech fighting in the main room. I felt each and every one of the two-hundred and eighty one control points pleading for my touch, for their purpose to be wrought, for their secrets to finally and mercifully be taken from them.

I pulled back, but it wasn’t out of disgust or fear. I was simply done with this one, even if it felt like I’d barely gotten anything out of it. I clenched the hand that hadn’t been pushed into the pod twice to make sure it still worked, then looked down at my useless gauntlet that was spiderwebbed with so many strands of thick oil that I didn't know if I’d be able to fix it.

And the utterly empty stone shard clenched within.