In the wake of killing the reaper, a large part of me wanted to blow up the mana-collection site, summon Tal’Ket to call us back to the cabin, and then call it a day. Verin and Cal could wake up in their rooms, and that would be that.

  It was a nice thought, but I was trying very hard not to do dumb things anymore. Arguably, much of my current situation was the result of rash or poorly thought-out decisions, and Newly Sort-of Healed Tess(?) was going to do better. For all I knew, attacking the giant crystal would cause it to explode, and I’d want both Verin and Cal awake for something like that.

  Instead, I chose to take care of two more immediate concerns as the others woke up. First, food. Judging from my own body, I was pretty sure the reaper had been providing me with some sort of nutrients, but it was clear it hadn’t been enough. I felt starved and weak, and my throat felt dry and scratchy.

  Technically, with Arcane Choker, I had skills for all of that now. I toggled on Aqua Lung to immediately take care of my hydration issue, periodically switching to Satiated Stomach to handle my malnourishment.

  Still, the skills would never measure up to an actual home-cooked meal, and besides, I would need to make Verin something anyway. It was a shame Cal hadn’t managed to snag a few pieces of hydra, as our extended stint in the jungle had depleted most of our traditional protein sources. With that being said, I’d recently gotten quite good at cooking jungle stews that were specifically not poisonous, which is exactly what I set out to do.

  The second concern was my leveling notification. In this case, the only part I hadn’t read through was my stat distribution.

  Congratulations! You have reached level 17.

  As a Protagonist chosen by a god of luck, your free stats have been randomly allocated.

  +1 Constitution

  +1 Strength

  +1 Endurance

  +2 Intelligence

  +3 Wisdom

  +1 Luck

  +1 Perception

  +1 Charisma

  Divine Synergy Activated

  +1 Dexterity

  This time around, I was fairly pleased with the allocation. Sure, while I was in the dungeon, I could have done without the Charisma and Luck and probably even the Perception. On the flip side, I was quickly coming around to the merits of Wisdom. Now that both Overload Weapon and Overload Armor were maxed out, my fighting style was turning out to be pretty mana-intensive. More than that, the stat also helped out with my mana manipulation skills and enlarged my Arcane Storage space.

  It wasn’t exactly ideal considering how few real combat spells I had, but I was hoping to remedy that shortly. Sett had promised that he’d wake up and teach me a few new tricks once we destroyed the first mana-collection site, which I was fully planning on blowing up after breakfast.

  Does it count as breakfast? I think it does. All of us are just waking up and we haven’t eaten anything today, so I’m calling it breakfast. In fairness, I wasn’t sure my mind had slept in multiple weeks at this point, but that was an entirely separate matter.

  For a while, I worried that there was something wrong with the others as they continued to sleep, but as the comforting scents of warm food wafted over to them, they stirred. Verin, perhaps having expected to fall asleep from the hydra’s poison, didn’t look particularly frazzled. Cal, on the other hand, woke up dazed and confused, with an uncharacteristically ugly squint.

  To her credit she collected herself rather quickly. To her discredit, she almost immediately used her newfound wakefulness to gloat.

  “Huh. Feel like I’m forgetting something. How did I get on the ground? Not the point!” Quickly raising herself to her full height and throwing her hands to her hips, Cal tilted her chin up, doing her best to gaze down upon us imperiously despite her short stature. “You two! Guess what? You two passed out, so I had to beat the boss all by myself! Bow down! Grovel! Uh, do whatever else people do when they worship someone. Your savior is here!”

  I rolled my eyes at the warrior’s antics, her words at least answering one of my more pressing questions. Looks like I freed them before there was too much mental scarring. I’d been half afraid that the mind spawn had trapped them in some multi-week-long nightmare, but if Cal was anything to go off of, then they seemed pretty fine. Verin, too, appeared to be no worse for wear, forgoing any bowing to grab some soup. Doubtless, she was ravenous, and the only reason her stomach wasn’t growling was likely her heavy-duty Etiquette.

  “Damn. Really not getting the proper amount of groveling here. Tough critics. Anyway, do either of you know why I passed out? Believe me when I say that’s not supposed to happen. And Tess, when did you wake up? Whatcha been up to?” The princess sidled up to me, and I handed her a bowl of stew, trying to hide the smirk from my face.

  For once, I was feeling quite eager for the upcoming conversation.

  “Nothing much,” I admitted. “Pretty much exactly like you said, actually. You two passed out, so I had to beat the boss all by myself.” Pointedly avoiding eye-contact with either of them, I let the statement linger there as they sat in a sudden stupefied silence. “Sorry, what was it you said? I think it was ‘bow down and grovel’?” I chuckled while the two of them looked at me like I’d just grown a second head.

  “Lady Tess, are you feeling well? Ignoring the… implausibility of that assertion, you strike me as slightly different today.” Verin peered closely into my eyes as if expecting to discover I was an illusion.

  You laugh a single time, and suddenly everyone is worried for you. “Long story, but I fixed a bit of my mental damage, and I’m in a good mood. Here, settle in and I’ll explain it all.” I summoned our mattresses from storage, giving them something to sit on besides the strange white ground, and with that, I started from when I’d woken up.

  A part of me had briefly considered just not telling them, and with a wince, I recalled that was pretty much exactly what I’d done when I’d fought the Forsaken Seer back in the labyrinth. We could just pretend that Cal had fallen asleep from the poison, and that there was nothing in this region to begin with.

  In the end, though, I figured they ought to know, so I went through the story of the mind spawns and the reaper. Admittedly, I downplayed certain elements. They didn’t need to know that I’d spent multiple days contemplating a slow and miserable death or how much I’d sobbed on grabbing my new Legendary skill. Still, they got the gist -- evil mental boss, new skill, partially healed mind, boss dead.

  While both of them had strong reactions to my story, neither of their responses was what I’d been expecting. At the end of my story, Cal threw her arms up in the air with an exasperated groan.

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  “Seriously? I had, like, two seconds to be the special one before you did something even more ridiculous. I was planning on bragging about the hydra for at least a few weeks! Months, even!” She flopped back on the mattress, throwing her finished bowl to the side.

  “I mean, you still can,” I pointed out. “I’m sure it was pretty impressive, and you saved our lives. I think you’re allowed to brag about that a bit.”

  Without getting up, Cal lazily waved a hand. “Bah, it’s not the same anymore. Anyway, thanks for saving me from being stuck in a mentally scarring coma for the rest of my life, I guess.”

  Verin eyed the princess’s limp form distastefully, as if her words had just broken several fundamental rules of etiquette. “Placing the melodramatics aside for a moment, I, for one, would like to express my sincere gratitude to both of you. I am heartened to be here with such dependable allies and -- though it slightly pains me to say it in the Lady Calilah’s case -- friends.”

  Despite her warm words, her tone quickly shifted to something far sterner. “I admittedly have the distinct sense that you are minimizing certain elements of your tale in the retelling, and now that you seem more amenable to conversing, we will be talking more of this at a later date to ensure your well-being. At the same time…”

  After over a year of knowing Verin, my heightened Perception often allowed me to spot the subtle twitches of her face signalling her different moods. In this case, though, such high-tier sleuthing wasn’t necessary, as she barely attempted to hide her pouting.

  “Lady Tess, do you mean to tell me you have acquired your second Legendary skill? Truly? Do you understand how poorly that reflects on me? Between the three of us, we now have a full three Legendary skills, and yet none of them belong to me? Unacceptable.”

  Despite myself, I started to laugh, which only made me feel even worse for Verin as her pouting intensified. When her face shifted into a warm smile and she began laughing alongside me, however, I quickly realized this had been the intended effect of her complaints.

  “It is good to hear you laughing again, Tess.”

  It was hard to argue with that. With any luck, it might not be such a rare occurrence anymore, either.

  As the three of us slowly recovered our strength, Cal graced us with a full recounting of her hydra fight -- with what I assumed were a few embellishments, of course -- and we happily chatted away until our bellies were full.

  “I called dibs! Why are we acting like I didn’t call dibs?” With her feathery blade at her side, Cal stood directly before me, blocking my way forward. “I want to be the one who whacks the big crystal!”

  Having taken the time to lick our wounds and stretch out our slightly atrophied muscles, the three of us assembled to carry out our actual goal: destroying the mana-collection crystal. The massive, blue-white gem loomed ahead, lying in the center of a large ritual circle. While said circle wasn’t nearly as massive or complex as the one housing Sett, it was still beyond my abilities, and every time I glanced over to try and make sense of it, my head started to hurt.

  Spell Insight has reached level 15!

  That, more than anything, was one of the reasons Cal would be leaving this to me.

  “Do you have a good enough ranged attack? Because otherwise, you’re going to have to step on the spell circle, and we’re not letting you step on the spell circle.” I hadn’t seen any sections that screamed “kill whatever steps here,” but there was no reason to risk it. “Also, I know you have your shroud, but if this thing blows up after we attack it, it’s better to be far away.”

  This, of course, kicked off a new round of arguments, and while I knew Cal wasn’t actually going to push the issue, I decided to play my trump card. Not having told them earlier, I was able to drop a proverbial bomb on the conversation.

  “And besides, it’s my birthday and I said so.”

  Unfortunately, this prompted a completely different set of questions and complaints, pulling Verin in as well. Thankfully, I had a pretty good way of getting us back on track.

  “Oh no! We’re starting! Can’t talk now. Verin, glacier up!” Summoning my bow, I began channeling a healthy dose of fire and earth mana into an arrow, hoping to give it both explosive power and a good deal of sheer weight.

  With a curse and the promise of interrogating me later, Verin sprouted a layer of ice, quickly erecting a few ice walls in front of her for good measure. Even Cal backed off from the heat I was putting out, activating her Apex Shroud while going back to hide with Verin.

  Not knowing exactly what was about to happen, I opted to charge up my armor as well. The resulting mana cost of operating both class skills at full-tilt was prodigious, but with any luck, I wouldn’t need too many shots.

  When the air grew hot enough to burn a fire elemental and the weight of the arrow began to fight against my superhuman Strength, I at last released the bow string. Unerringly, the arrow soared through the strange void-like space of the mental region before impacting the crystal with all the grace of a pyroclastic buffalo. The sheer mass and momentum of the projectile allowed it to burrow deep into the crystal, setting off a din of crunching and clinking and cracking.

  Then, of course, there was the fire mana.

  Very quickly, it became clear that the hydra hadn’t been a fair target to gauge my strength with. Faced with a high-leveled boss with powerful protective scales and a ridiculous Constitution, it was no wonder that I hadn’t managed to put on my best showing. The crystal, quite naturally, did not have such a high level of protection.

  With an ear-shattering boom, it exploded, sending crystalline shards every which way. A few plinked against my armor, while more yet tore into Verin’s glacier, but both of our defenses held. When at last the air stilled, perhaps a full third of the collection crystal was simply gone, and the rest wasn’t in the best of shape.

  “Nice. You think that’s it?” Cal appeared at my side, taking in my handiwork.

  Activating Arcane Vision with a squint, I examined the mana in the area, both in the remaining chunks of crystal and their surroundings.

  All in all, I didn’t like what I saw.

  There were, I imagined, safe and specific ways that one was supposed to disable such rituals, and something told me that explosions weren’t what the original architects had in mind. No longer able to properly hold the mana that the ritual was transporting from Sett, the remainder of the crystal became brighter and brighter under my mana vision. At the same time, something seemed to have malfunctioned with the spell diagram itself, leading it to collect its toll from not only the earth beneath it, but also the sky above.

  Given that the dungeon appeared to be roughly dome-shaped, the sky was much closer to us here on the outskirts, and the ritual began pulling directly from it. The swirling, technicolor mana eddies began to languidly descend, taffy-like tendrils peeling off and accelerating towards the crystal.

  When they connected, the entire effect was much like the tiny whirlpools that formed while draining a bathtub, though on a much larger scale. Dozens of twisters of mana flooded the confines of the broken crystal, smushing into the limited space and making it even brighter than before.

  “You know, I don’t think it is,” I admitted. Neither Cal nor Verin had access to mana vision, which meant the entire show was for my benefit alone. “In fact, I think you might want to stay in Apex Shroud right about-”

  My words were lost as the entire world exploded into a dizzying array of different colors, each of which smashed into my armor at mach speeds. Rather than hitting me with a brief, cataclysmic blast, the magical surge was unremitting. Damage notifications came in, one after another, as I braced myself against pure magic damage and physical force alike.

  As the ritual continued to degrade under the onslaught of energies, however, the sky began to still. Slowly, the chaotically writhing downwards funnels of mana settled into dormancy, and the buffeting winds died down.

  When at last it was over, the landscape before us was entirely transformed. Where once there had been a massive crystal, now there was only an even larger crater in the strange whiteish ground.

  Am I good? All of my limbs still on? A quick scan through my notifications proved that most of the damage had been superficial, rebuffed by my fully charged armor. A glance behind me revealed that Verin’s ice walls had all been blown away, but her glacier had protected her from the worst of the damage.

  As for Cal, she chose that exact moment to pop into existence right by my side.

  “Not to jinx it again, but that was it, right?”

  I waited for some heavenly lightning bolt to punish us for Cal’s hubris, or perhaps some retaliation from the dungeon for wrecking its crystal. As the seconds ticked by and our surroundings remained unchanged, however, I let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “I think so,” I replied. “I think we actually did it.”

  The full weight of our achievement hadn’t yet hit me, and while I felt compelled to say something fittingly momentous, something much simpler came to mind instead.

  One down, three to go.

  We spent a while just standing there, taking it all in, with Verin climbing out of her glacier and joining us. When at last we’d sufficiently basked in our accomplishment, though, we left with little fanfare. After summoning Tal’Ket, we hopped onto the giant roc’s back, and with a burst of air mana, we were off.

  As one, we soared back to the cabin, onwards to bigger and better things, and onwards to our eventual freedom from the dungeon’s clutches.

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