"Has he... always been able to swim through the ground like that?" Vex asked, glancing at Sev with only the faintest hint of awkward incredulity. He was pretty proud of himself for that, actually.

"No," Sev said. To his relief, the cleric sounded about as confused as he did. "...Doesn't matter right now, though. Stay focused."

Right. They were still in a fight for their lives; a horde of upper Bronze-ranked monsters were beyond the scope of something their party was built to deal with. They were managing surprisingly well so far, but Misa in particular was falling behind; her Skill could only help her hold back the enemy, not kill them.

Most of the time, anyway. The practice she'd put into using it paid off; sometimes, in the process of the Skill forcing her to move in physically impossible ways, it would incidentally allow her to shear her weapon through an enemy with absurd physical force. In those instances, it definitely helped her kill monsters. But that was easier said than done.

Derivan, on the other hand, seemed to be managing well enough by himself. Vex opted to focus his efforts on helping Misa. He wasn't worried about hiding his class anymore — he'd already decided to tell them, after all.

He spun his dagger, feeling the runes call out to him as he did so.

Magic was more than just a set of skills offered by the system — more than runes that programmed reality.

Magic was alive. It was a living art that wanted to be used.

He would not be locked down by a system that drew boundaries and imposed artificial structures on a force that desired nothing more than freedom.

He was a [Chromaturgist].

Vex didn't know what it was about his class that allowed him to work against the system. He would have assumed it was a fundamental conceit of using a system-offered class that he would be limited to its capabilities.

He certainly wasn't complaining, though.

This spell was one he'd figured out a while ago, while trying to understand the structure of a basic [Fireball]. His class gave him the ability to read and examine Skills on a deeper layer than most people had access to; he could see not only the way the mana flowed into the spell, but the runes that the system created to assist its formation.

One to gather the mana into a ball. Another to keep it tightly contained. A third to convert the mana as it spread outward, twisting the neutral mana into the aspect of Fire; that part of the spell would only trigger on impact as the containment layer shattered.

It was all so... tightly structured. There was a certain simple elegance to it, certainly, but he couldn't help but feel like he could do better.

So he did.

The gathering rune was fine, but he improved on it, having the spell draw from both his personal mana stores and the ambient mana in the air. With the mana concentration of the Nucleus being what it was, it meant the spell was more powerful than ever. That was as simple as copying the runic node that drew from his mana stores and tweaking it slightly, layering it strategically over the spell..

The containment rune existed only to ensure that the spell exploded at the point of contact. Pumping enough mana into the spell forced that mana to expand once the layer broke. This had been harder for him to modify — he'd had to study other spells that accelerated the spread of mana. Area-of-effect spells, mostly, that affected a larger area than the mana input would suggest. The result was a rune that created a layer that, rather than shattering on impact, would crack at specified points and start shrinking, ejecting mana with force.

The last rune... it was hard to explain what he'd done with it. His modifications to any rune that changed the aspect of mana relied on his understanding of the concept it encompassed. This, more than anything, was the part that was more art than science. The runes sang to him, and acted in concert with him, and they worked together to bring his understanding into reality.

Fortunately, fire and mana were two concepts he understood very, very well.

His dagger finished moving through the air. He cast.

Unknown skill attempted!

Parsing...

Displaying best approximation.

[Aspect of the Plague ### Manaburn ### Fireball]

It was always interesting to see how the system decided to label his spells. He'd think about that later. For now, he watched with [Advanced Mana Sight], making sure his spell was working as he'd intended.

The spell was brighter than any [Fireball]. It sailed through the air in an arc, crashing into the middle of the monsters that spread out in front of Misa; when it landed, it bounced. Fire sputtered out of the spell like a liquid rather than plasma, lasting longer and spreading further than any spell he'd attempted back when he was still trying to hide his class.

Where any amount of the liquid fire touched a monster, it sank into its skin and began to burn. Not at nerves and flesh and tissue; the thought of a spell like that made him flinch. But it burned at the mana they could access, eating away the very resource they needed for most of their skills.

Wyrms could no longer [Burrow]. They crawled on the ground instead, wiggling ineffectually forward. Burrowing Spiders attacked without mana, their normally deadly, bladelike legs reduced to the rough equivalent of a stick.

And it was spreading. Clouds of mana, invisible to the naked eye, seemed to spread through the air every time an infected monster moved; it would sink into other, uninfected monsters, slowly burning through their mana too.

This spreading aspect — labeled 'Plague' by the system — was new to him. Vex was suddenly very glad that his party members were excluded from the effects of his magic, and decided that he'd reexamine the runes that went into this spell later.

If there was a later.

"Vex, what the fuck was that?!" Misa called up to him, and the lizard nearly jumped. "That was amazing!"

"Um... new spell! I'll explain later!" Vex shouted back. He glanced at his mana, tail swishing around nervously; the spell had taken nearly all of his rather impressive mana pool. 1,400 MP... it would be a while before he could cast it again. But the effects would last for five minutes, and there were smaller spells he could cast in the meantime to keep the party ahead.

He breathed. He was still nervous. They needed to survive for ten minutes; with a spell he couldn't cast again, that left them with still half of the full time they needed. But Misa was fighting a little more steadily now, beating back the enemies and killing them, albeit slowly; even Derivan was fighting with a little less tension —

Knowing that Derivan was leaping in and out of the ground didn't make the sight any less ridiculous the second time. The situation still felt a little unreal to him.

Okay. Derivan would be fine.

Vex had to admit, the sight was amusing, and made him feel a little bit better about their impossible odds.

It proved to be a grueling fight — but they managed. It took every last scrap of the resources they had available. Sev was throwing out healing every time he could spare the mana, looking more and more haggard every time he did so. In an attempt to save on mana, Vex leapt down from his platform and joined Misa at her side, relying on [Dagger Proficiency] to fight instead of spells.

(Misa protested this rather vocally, but didn't have the time to physically stop Vex, with all her efforts focused on making sure he didn't get hit.)

Misa kept her skill up, paying in blood for every enemy that she would have failed to stop without the skill — but as the skill kept going, she got better, anticipating each enemy's movements and relying on her skill less and less. It was one of the benefits of fighting a fixed set of monsters.

Their patterns became recognizable. Easier.

A memory teased at her, and she forcefully shut it down. Now wasn't the time.

Derivan's [Satiated] buff wore off, and he didn't have the mana to keep using it — but his initial use had given him enough of a head start that he could handle the enemies coming in from his side.

The spell Vex used helped both of them, of course, until it wore off; once it did, Vex leapt back onto his platform, supporting them both with basic [Fireball]s and [Conjure Dagger]s. It was a fight they were slowly losing — a fight they would lose, if it kept going with the same intensity. But already there were fewer enemies, the monsters tapering down to a saner number.

[Grade 2 Mana Crystal will be upgraded to Grade 3 upon dungeon formation. Estimated time left: 10 seconds.]

10 seconds left. The monsters were almost entirely gone, with a few stragglers being quickly cut down by Derivan or Misa. Vex and Sev were both meditating, recovering their mana. They were all alive. Derivan and Misa were injured, with a few close calls nearly taking Misa out.

But their injuries were nothing that wouldn't heal.

The clock ran down.

3.

2.

1.

Grade 2 Mana Crystal has been upgraded to Grade 3!

Dungeon formation in progress.

Logging Mana Nucleus state...

Ambient mana concentration detected at %!

Ambient mana deviation measured outside 3 standard deviations!

Recovering...

Excess mana will be routed to bonus dungeon rooms. Excess deviation will have unpredictable effects on dungeon formation.

What?

On the one hand, this should have been over, and it didn't matter what the system said as long as they didn't have to keep fighting. But the mana concentration was strange — should have been impossible, even. The mana deviation had gone up, even though it usually stabilized as a dungeon progressed towards forming.

Something felt wrong. To all of them, even the ones that didn't know the specifics of dungeon formation; there was a foreboding there.

Calculating parameters for bonus rooms from local seeds...

Seed 1:

Bonus room created:

Misa swallowed, staring at the name; an old, old pain welled up inside her. She didn't know what she was supposed to feel, only that something about this felt terribly invasive.

Seed 2:

Bonus room created:

Seed parameters exceed allowable local parameters. Seeking administrator approval...

Recovering...

Bonus room created:

A World Without the System>

Vex stared. Well, that was that, he supposed; he'd been planning on revealing his class anyway, although he hadn't expected it to happen quite like this. There was still a speck of nervousness in him — it was hard to completely be rid of the fear he'd held ever since the notification first appeared.

But no one said anything. He glanced around, and Misa offered him a small, supportive smile, like she knew what he was feeling and wanted him to know it was fine. Derivan simply looked curious.

Sev seemed... kind of surprised, but not about the class.

Feeling heartened by his comrades, he glanced back to the message — but his heart dropped slightly when he saw the last part.

What the fuck was red? He'd never seen that color in the system, and the error preceding it worried him.

Seed 3:

Unexpected seed! Compensating...

Bonus room created:

The Bridge Between>

Derivan froze. He wanted to speak, but the words felt thick in his throat; he stared at the screen in front of him, willing it to change. He could feel the sharp gazes of his friends, drilling into him.

The system hadn't even afforded him a name. It—

"It's fine," Sev spoke softly before his thoughts could spiral further. The armor looked up, then, only to see that the others were offering him tired smiles.

...They'd known.

"...Thank you, then," Derivan said with a bow of his head. "And I am sorry for keeping up the ruse as long as I did."

"You had to," Misa said shortly, glancing at Sev. The cleric nodded, and his words dipped into a careful warning.

"Right now, the system's on pause, because it's calculating. I don't know what will happen once it's finished, but I don't think it'll like that you're playing outside the role it gave you. Derivan... be careful."

Derivan didn't know what to say. He nodded once, feeling trepidation rise up within him; Vex glanced at him nervously, then walked over to sit next to him.

It was a small gesture of support, but it was one he appreciated.

Seed 4:

Compounding errors detected. Local fractures detected. Compensation nodes saturated. Unable to further compensate.

WARNING: Local boundaries may fail catastrophically without administrator override!

WARNING: Local boundaries may-

Override command accepted. Bonus room offered:

Come and find me.>

"...Okay," Sev breathed. "I... wasn't expecting that."

"What the fuck secrets have you been keeping?!" Misa burst out, though she seemed more startled than angry.

"It's complicated," Sev muttered.

"It might not be all him," Vex offered, though he looked worried. "It mentioned compounding errors, right? Almost all of us had some kind of error. Yours might just be the—"

Another box interrupted them.

WARNING: Mana concentration and amount of deviation still in excess. Routing excess mana...

Grade 3 Crystal upgraded to Grade 4!

Grade 4 Crystal upgraded to Grade 5!

Grade 5 Crystal upgraded to Grade 6!

Grade 6 —

Override command accepted. Remaining excess mana routed to Overseer summoning. Repent, sinner, for ye are but a lamb before the slaughter.

"I don't think this is finished yet," Sev said, a little lamely.

The four of them stared at the notification. The notifications. The second box hovered ominously, larger and with a greater presence than all the previous ones.

"I never thought I'd see a box this threatening," Vex commented, his tail twitch betraying his nervousness. Misa snorted anyway, needing that small bit of humor.

But that was all the time they had.

The force walls that Vex had built shattered like so much broken glass, and the [Earth Ward] dissipated.

Above them, mana was boiling, twisting and turning into currents, gathering into a single form.

Barely visible above, the overlay of the system glowed. For all that it was nearly impossible to see in the chaos, it commanded all their attention.