"You have a new name in the Status, by the way," I said after we broke the hug. "You're officially Zery now!"
"That's nothing short of amazing!" Zery said, smiling big and wide.
I had to amend my earlier thoughts about her accent. It was odd but not too heavy now.
The dragon was still in her fully human form, and she was enjoying the ease with which she could move around the cramped cave immensely. As we went down the hole, though, she showed off her draconic strength, tempered by her smaller limbs but not at all gone.
The room with the core was small and cramped, full of all sorts of crap that we had ignored last time. We entered through the hole we made to extract the draconic core, but this time we weren't in such a hurry and took a little time to explore.
The computers were even more broken than those of our sector's control room, the screens and keyboards caked with layers of dust and mold. The tubes coming from the wall were empty, dried Green and dead nanomachines sticking to the glass in thick globs of stinking muck.
"How is the Green even here?" I mused. Somehow, seeing it all dead and dried up made me realize the absurdity of the situation.
The Green was a technology developed in the early 2300s, replacing the much clunkier life extension pods that only the uber-rich could use and making a long life something everyone could achieve. But seeing it here made it feel so alien and out of place, in its dead and dried decayed form.
"Same as with everything else," Vespera said. "We don't fucking know."
I chuckled, examining the rest of the room. The only feature worth noticing was the core. Massive and immaculate, untouched by dust and time both.
Elyra looked at it in reverie. "A Dominion!" she uttered.
Her hand gingerly went to touch the angelic core, running her fingers across its multifaceted surface.
Dominions, I thought, piecing together the information coming from the bond. The demonic core in the control room had been an Avenger of Evil, and a Dominion was the equivalent tier of the angel race. A powerful entity, tasked with maintaining the divine order, or so a part of my mind supplied. Probably from Elyra now that I thought about it. Day by day, it was getting harder and harder to really be aware of where one of us ended and another began.
A thought that made all of us very warm and happy, honestly.
The angel let go of the core, turning her back to it. Now that the bond was wide open between us all, we could feel her thoughts. She had acknowledged the significance of this core, and her desire to aspire to such heights, but turning her back to it meant that she refused to let it pull her back into a past that she didn't remember, and that did not represent her. If she ever got to that level of power, it would be by moving forward and not backwards.
"Guys?" Calla called.
There was a computer that blinked with text. The screen was cleaner than the others, dust and grime smeared by hasty hands that had also interacted with the keyboard, leaving stains where they compacted all the muck.
DEFENSES DEPLOYED, the screen read. It also indicated, via a diagram, that out of the many dozen golems it could awaken, there had only been energy for one.
"Someone was here before us," Zery said. "They wanted to fuck us up with the golems, but their plan failed."
It certainly was a disconcerting possibility, one that had us on high alert as we ransacked the room of all valuables and prepared to remove the core from the wall. To do so, Zery elected to turn back to dragon form to better use her longer limbs to move it.
It was still awkward, the core being a sphere almost two meters in diameter, but she managed to lift it with a little help from Elyra's shields. Now it was only a matter of widening the exit tunnel and retracing our steps, keeping an eye out in case whoever tried to ambush us with the dead sector's System automated defenses was going to pull some more tricks on us.
When we reached the room full of sharp crystals, we quickly learned that we could roll the core through as if they weren't even there, the deadly rock formations as brittle as glass when smashed against the nigh-indestructible magical sphere.
And then, it was simply a matter of rolling it all the way back to the control room. We fought monsters and looted their corpses along the way, but we tried to stop as few times as possible, filled with a sense of excitement at the prospect of finally being done with it.
At the very least, there had to be a level coming from all this ordeal. The core was empty, but we had a veritable stash of monster cores to fill it up waiting back at the control room, plus all the ones we were gathering along the way.
We did stop once, though. To investigate a strange side tunnel that stank of sewage. Why venture into shit-smelling tunnels? Not masochism. The guild map indicated that we were quite close to the city now, and if the tunnel smelled of sewage…
"Heavens," Vespera cursed as we reached a metal grate. It was enchanted. "It really leads to the city sewers."
At my nod, she slashed at the metal with her claws and easily overloaded the enchantment, pulling from the shared mana pool to do so. We explored a little, but stopped just short of a sort of treatment plant near the river. People were milling about, and we didn't think it would be a good idea to be spotted here.
After backtracking, we put the grate back in place as best we could, and didn't stop until we passed through Calla's shield surrounding our little area of civilized tunnels.
"The tunnel might be useful, if we figure out a way to sneak past unseen," Elyra said as we approached the control room. "I might have an idea, using light and shields to redirect sight, but I will need some help testing it."
"Of course," I said. "We'll also need to be careful about other things like heat and magic, plus any detection spell people might have."
"And enchantments," Vespera supplied. "But that's the cool thing about magic compared to technology, isn't it?"
I cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I mean," the demon explained. "If Elyra can figure out how to do the basic thing, make herself invisible, then all she has to do is pump mana and mental energy into it and the magic will take care of being magicky or some shit and make it work!"
"Are we sure about this?" I asked.
She crossed her arms. "How did you make your magic missile, Sol mine? Was it a skill?"
"No," I said.
"Did you methodically think through all the steps involved in the spell like a maniac?"
I hummed. She had a point.
"You just let magic do its thing, then?" I asked.
She shrugged.
"It fits with what the System tells me," Calla said. "It is wasteful, and it is not something regular people can do, but it is the basis of freeform casting, an art long thought lost. Mana and will, together, become something more."
"Just like dragons," Zery said. "Imposing our will onto the universe."
"Or," I tried. "More like a negotiation, rather than an imposition, like the bond."
She shrugged. "To each their own."
But, I felt that she was curious enough to try. Later though, because now we had a core to connect.
The process was as nerve-wracking as it was easy. Deceptively so. Just disconnect the cracked battery and roll in the replacement core, lining it up with the tubes of Green inside an alcove already perfectly shaped to house a core of that size and tier.
Except, what was going to happen to the System when we disconnected it? What—
Nothing. The answer was nothing. We removed the cracked battery and put in the new one. There was a low hum, and nothing else. Not even the System acknowledged the change, although we figured it must be because it was low on energy now.
"Let's feed it all our cores," Zery said somewhat impatiently. "I want a level."
"To take a Step in your Draconic Ascension?" I asked.
"Nah," she replied, flashing me a grin. "Taking the first step will not be easy. For now, I want stats!"
"Heaven yeah!" Vespera cheered. "Stats! Let's do it!"
The new, improved battery born of a Dominion angel core pulsed and glowed as all the energy from the monster cores was drawn into it. It took a lot to reach the point of saturation where the System—through Calla—let us know that we had enough energy to level up the bond. And I mean a lot. It made it all very clear that, even though we were slowly becoming rich, using money to buy cores to farm for easy levels wasn't going to be economically sustainable.
Besides, it was as if the energy coming from bought cores was less willing to participate in pushing our level higher, or at least that was the sensation I got. Not even the System could give us a clear answer about that, given how novel our situation as its agents was for even it. It had no recollection of past agents, as it had been back before it was bound by the strange encroaching limits of the advancing void—the machines' kill code.
It still struck me as impossibly strange how that code somehow made it all the way here, into what had to be another universe, and found a way to interact with magic and mess everything up, but then again. I did. Why not the code too, right? There were computers. There was the language. The strange cultural similarities. The fact that there were humans and humanoids. Too many things aligned just right, I guess, not to take the situation seriously.
I just arrived a few millennia too late, I thought.
Just in time to meet us, the girls replied.
Finally, the battery stopped glowing. We had already made it clear what we wanted out of this new level, and so when the first System window appeared, we were not surprised at all.
Level up! Bond level 4 → 5
+100 to all stats.
Just to be sure, I checked our status, focusing on the little portion that told us about our powers.
Bond Level 5
+150 to all stats
Status is always concealed from prying eyes.
Something changed then, the feeling akin to sand shifting beneath our feet. Vespera looked around, half in a panic, a strange tingle in her back that brought with it a cold, pervasive sweat that made her shiver.
It continued, increasing, almost to the level of pain. She tried to shut it off from the bond but of course we didn't let her, which meant that all of us were shifting uncomfortably, as if trying to scratch an itch right in the middle of our backs that we couldn't reach.
"I see magic gathering," Elyra said.
I blinked, and suddenly the world unraveled into currents of mana and magic. I usually stuck to normal vision, as mana was everywhere and this kind of sight was often more confusing than not, but it was always there in the back of my mind. I had been blind to this change due to all the mana we released when we charged the battery, but now there was no way I'd miss what was happening.
Magic was being pulled from the very air, guided by strange invisible strings, the mess of all aspects of naturally occurring mana, the aspects from the cores, and even the pure unaspected energy that always hung around hidden underneath the mess of colors and elements. It slowly changed as it gathered. It turned dark, resembling the boiling mass of black clouds streaked with red of Vespera's magic.
Then it changed again, becoming an oily, messy thing. It moved like actual oil.
"Demonic element," Elyra said, awestruck. "It is… beautiful."
Vespera was utterly uncomfortable now. She looked at herself through our eyes, feeling out of place with all the magic focusing on her. She was worried about the Demonic aspect, her attention mostly on Elyra, studying her every reaction to what was happening.
"Beautiful?" she found herself asking, not even realizing her lips had moved.
"Very," the angel said, not tearing her gaze away from her back. "Vespera, I have fallen in love with a demon. With you."
"But," the demon argued. "This is pure Demonic! It's not like my magic. It's different!"
"And I still love it, because it belongs to you."
Vespera nodded weakly, but when the pain intensified, her mind began to spiral. "What is it doing to me?!"
By then, the oily substance had fully gathered, flowing on her skin and…
She screamed as the magic burrowed into her skin, entering her body and fusing with her bones. We caught her before she could fall to the ground, taking our share of the burden of pain. It was like liquid fire, bones cracking, flesh rending and tearing and being molded into something…
Two little things came out of the oily magic as it started to disperse. Small, fragile, they poked out of her back and twitched under our gazes. When Elyra touched them, Vespera flinched for a moment before relaxing, almost overwhelmed by how sensitive they were. Now, as she leaned into the angel's delicate fingers, we all felt the soft, leathery membrane of the small pair of cute little wings. The thin yet strong bones making up their structure. The pointy tips, like talons, sharp and dangerous.
"Amazing," I said.
"And cute," Zery added. "They look just like the guard of your demon sword!"
"I…" Vespera tried to speak, but she was overwhelmed. "I…"
"Yes!" Elyra exclaimed, elated. "You do. It is real. You, little troublemaker, have wings! Congratulations, little demon."