Edge Cases

The boxes hovered in front of Misa, and she glared at it like she could make it go away through sheer spite.

Congratulations! You have completed the bonus room . The following rewards will be granted when you leave the bonus room.

Bonus Room Rewards:

[Unique Quality Gear: The Blade Arcane]

[Unique Skill: Heart and Home]

Bonus room dissolution commencing. You will be returned to the Crystal Challenge room once dissolution is complete.

Errors have been encountered during dissolution. You may notice strange effects.

The notifications had appeared almost as soon as they had left and returned to the 'bonus room', for all that Misa was loath to call it that. They'd raced to get back to the village, even as the timer ticked down. She'd returned only just in time to stop that attack from touching her father, and even then, it had been a close one. If it hadn't been for [Guardian's Premonition] guiding her eyes and telling her where to look...

But there was something else that chilled her, and made a fire rage within her veins. It was how familiar all of these injuries were. She'd seen all these injuries before, on the bodies of her friends and family.

"Sev," she said, and there was a quiet steel in her voice. "Can you help with the wounded?"

He nodded once at her, and divine magic flooded to him. One small piece of it drifted off to heal her father; she watched as it stitched his wounds back together, and Orkas' health rose again... But it was slowly ticking down, still. Sev had to move, and keep moving; the level difference helped, but there were so many he had to heal.

Misa would have gone to them herself — she wanted to. But something else was ringing in her head, for [Guardian's Premonition] had not gone silent, even after she rescued her father.

The gate would still fall.

She could see it now, even. Superimposed over the gate to their village was the image of a fallen, wrecked one, sliced into ribbons of wood and twisted steel. She remembered the sight well; it was what had remained after the dungeon break had first destroyed their home.

Her mind raced for a solution. She didn't understand why old injuries were appearing. But some of the guardsmen were looking at her in awe, recognition sparking in their eyes, and if she read her father's expression right...

"I remember," he whispered to her, and she nodded. She fought back the urge to say everything she wanted to say now, when she still had the chance; there would be time for it later. She would make sure of that.

"I'm going to fix this," she said instead, and she saw the way Orkas looked at her.

Pride. Familiarity.

Resignation. But underneath that resignation, the smallest spark of hope.

"Vex," she said, glancing at the lizardkin. "This isn't normal, is it?"

"No," Vex said, shaking his head. He looked vaguely horrified, and was looking around anxiously, like he was desperate to find a way to help — but he didn't have any ideas either. "It's not supposed to be like this. The room just... fades away."

That had partially happened. The sky was nothingness, now, instead of the blue of before. The monsters were fading away, though there were still skirmishes here and there, mostly between the now-skeletal delvers and the remaining monsters as they fought to protect the guardsmen.

"We cannot solve this alone," Derivan said.

"Good thing we have a whole village," Misa answered. She couldn't quite bring herself to smile, but there was a grim ferocity to her words.

They needed answers they didn't have; too much was unknown to them.

Fortunately for them — and unfortunately for the dungeon — it had given them the one person that could make a very, very good guess.

"I was hoping I'd see you," Charise said, grinning weakly at Misa.

Misa had found her mother not too long after barging her way past the gates — Charise was already on the way there, as if looking for her. She was limping, grimacing with pain with every step, but there was that delver that was carefully helping her every step of the way. He wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.

For all the pain that she was clearly in, though, her mother's eyes were bright and knowing.

"If things weren't so urgent..." Charise began. She sighed, and looked at Misa with a small, fond smile. "I can't convince you not to do this, can I?"

"No," Misa said, though the smile made her heart ache.

"Okay," her mother said once, accepting it with a nod; her face grew more serious, as she leaned into her [Intuition of Truth]. Almost immediately, she frowned, and glanced at Misa's hand. "You have something with you. Something important."

The spark she'd taken from the dungeon. She'd almost forgotten about it. The weight of it had left her mind, and as soon as it had, it weighed almost nothing; now that she was thinking about it again, she grunted, straining to lift the thing. "Do you know what it is?"

"No," Charise said, shaking her head, but she frowned at it nevertheless. "But everything... bends towards it. I can't even look at you without my attention being drawn there. It's linked to why everything is happening this way. [Intuition of Truth] isn't that detailed, but it doesn't need to be for me to see that."

Misa frowned, opening her hand to look at the spark. Even now, to her eyes, it looked tiny and unassuming; she couldn't imagine it holding the unimaginable amount of mana that Vex claimed it contained. She remembered seeing the thin wisp of light emanating from it, drifting up into an endless sky full of those tiny pinpricks of light... there had to be thousands.

The one it was linked to had been her village; she was sure of it. The sight would have been beautiful, if it hadn't filled her with dread. Was that why? Was this thing doing this to the village?

"You need to use your intuition skill, too," Charise said, interrupting her thoughts. Her mother peered at her closely, then took one of her hands in two of her own, giving her a gentle smile. "Breathe. Let it guide you."

Misa listened. [Guardian's Premonition] pulsed in her mind. The gate was in the process of falling; she had to know why. She had to know what she could do to stop it.

She didn't know why, but it guided her into memories of her childhood. She remembered the village as it was, whole and intact, everyone hearty and whole.

X-51 ####### #####R synchronization has reached 50%.

The notification startled her when it popped up; at the same time, Charise let out a gasp that was something like relief, and she stood a little taller.

Not a coincidence. Was it reacting to her memories?

Dissolution of bonus room has halted. Unable to proceed.

Unable to resolve problem within local parameters. Calling for administrator assistance...

<>ROR>

######Y ###### is not valid loot. Please drop it and allow dissolution to proceed.

If anything, the last message just made her clutch the spark to herself even tighter. They'd clearly gone off the rails in some way, but if that was allowing her village to stay intact...

Drop the ######Y ######.

That definitely wasn't a normal system warning. Everyone else saw the messages, too, considering the way they stared at the air in front of them, startled.

Administrator assistance. That would make this the second time they'd encountered an administrator? The first time—

Fine. You were warned.

The sky was pitch black; it had been the first thing to disappear as the dissolution began. But now that pitch black darkness began to move, the night sky undulating in a way that should have been impossible, and again — yet again — the system overlay appeared, visible to anyone that dared to look up.

Which was pretty much everyone. They all stared at the window in the sky and swallowed.

"Ah, shit," Misa said softly.

But it wasn't the appearance of the boss monster that worried her.

It was what she could see in the distance. It was not unlike what she had seen in the inner recesses of the dungeon; again, there were those small specks of light in the distance.

Only this time, they were growing, slowly but surely, and [Danger Sense] and [Guardian's Premonition] were both blaring at her.

"It's a [Meteor Storm]," Vex whispered softly, terrified. "Misa, you can't... we can't block that. There has to be hundreds of them. I've never seen..."

"How long is that going to take to hit us?" Misa asked.

"I-I don't know. A few minutes? Maybe a little less than ten?" Vex said, hesitant. The Serpent was still undulating in the air; it seemed to believe that its spell was all that was needed, and it was content to wait it out. Misa spared a moment to wonder if there was another god trapped nearby, wrapped in chains.

"I can block it if I have enough mana," Misa said. "I have 1,162 health. Ten percent of my health is 116 health. The cost markup from [Every Last Drop] turns that into 232 mana. I don't—" she grimaced slightly. "I don't have nearly that much mana. But we have a huge fuckin' mana battery in this thing, right?" She lifted the spark they'd stolen from the dungeon, albeit with some effort.

"It is also what sustains this place, if the system messages are correct," Derivan cautioned.

"It has enough mana," Vex said. "I... I think. It's hard to look at it directly. But the mana levels in it are barely dropping even now. It should be fine. But I don't think it's as easy as calling that mana yours, Misa."

"Quick test?" Misa offered. They tested it.

It did not, unfortunately, count. The skill drained all her mana and then part of her health, and she winced at the strange feeling that flooded through her at the mana loss.

"I might be able to connect my mana pool with it, since I have [Advanced Mana Manipulation], and that would make it 'my' mana. But I don't have any way to share my mana with you." Vex glanced worriedly at the sky again; the meteors were getting closer. Brighter.

Rather than look worried, Misa's face lit up, and she exchanged a glance with her mother. "Gabriel!"

"Gabriel?" Vex asked, puzzled.

"This way. Come on, we need to find him quick," Misa said. Charise seemed to know exactly where to find him, and was veering directly towards a large, portly man. He was staring at the sky, his mouth agape, and trembling; Misa winced. She'd forgotten that not everyone was used to dealing with... all this. "Gabriel," she said.

"Misa." His eyes went wide as he turned to her. "I-I died. Misa, I can't— I died. I'm going to die again."

"You won't," Misa said softly. "But we need your help. Can you help us?"

"I'm going to die," he said empathically, and curled up on himself—

Charise stepped in front of him. "No, you're not," she told him, hauling him to his feet. "You're going to help us all live, do you understand? But we need your help, and we don't have time for you to argue."

"I need you to do a [Trade]," Misa said. "You still have that skill, right? The one that lets you trade resources?"

"I— yes?" Gabriel sounded thoroughly confused, though a part of him seemed to latch on to the conversation like it was a lifeline; anything approaching normal for him. He kept his gaze firmly on the nearby wall, like he could avoid the sight of the meteors that way.

"Vex, connect with the... whatever this thing is. I need you to [Trade] our mana, Gabriel. Can you do that?"

A short silence, and then a hesitant voice. "[Trade] between Vex and Misa. Resource: Mana. Quantity: Custom."

A window popped up in front of both Vex and Misa, and Vex stared at it, surprised.

"I'll explain later," Misa said. She glanced at the meteors; she imagined she could feel the heat of them on her skin already. "Just... trade me that mana for now."

[Trade] complete. 1,000,000 mana has been transferred to Misa Evergreen.

"Good," Misa said.

She'd spent a long time trying to figure out skills, after all, when she was a child. She'd even told her mother about it, not too long ago; reminisced over the childhood that Charise didn't remember. [Trade] had fallen out of use a long time ago. It was far easier to just hand over what you wanted, and the basic degree of trust that people had in one another hadn't been so harmed that the skill was necessary.

But she'd made the strange discovery that 'mana' counted as a resource. She'd tried to trade other, silly things; concepts, stats, levels, health. None of those had worked.

'Mana' had. There were nuances to the trade, and she'd abandoned it as useless when she found that the mana couldn't be used to cast spells or fuel skills in the traditional sense; it 'belonged' to you, but it wasn't a part of you.

Except perhaps in this one very, very specific case, when the cost was applied to mana that belonged to her.

One more quick test, and when the damage pinged off the extra mana instead of her health, she grinned, glanced at the Serpent in the sky, and gave it the finger.

"Fuck you," she said, and activated [To Fall Yet Hold the Line].