Fabulosa renewed her low-speed chase until I exhausted my mana again. I used my Cassock of Rewind to reset Refresh Mana’s cooldown and reset my mana to full again. When the behemoth finally succumbed to scores of DOTs picking away at its health, Odum rolled from its saddle onto the floor.

  The giant blemmy wasn’t so impressive without his mount, perhaps only eight feet tall. Still, he brought down his flail onto my shoulder.

  I couldn’t stop the incoming 60 damage, which was far higher than a level 24 monster ought to inflict, and its spikes bit through my mithril armor. Despite the sharp pain, I instinctively grabbed onto the chain.

  Odum yanked, but I held fast to the business end of the flail—opening him up to free backstabs from Fabulosa.

  As the realization of his precarious position dawned on our enemy’s face, he blubbered objections.

  “It’s not fair! You belong in my specter collection.

  This is my temple, and I’m supposed to make the rules.

  You must bow down and worship Me like the others!

  Stop this blasphemy at once!”

  Fabulosa crashed into him with her Phantom Blade. Its illusionary afterimages looked like she attacked twice as often. Odum dropped his useless flail to ward off the blows, both real and imaginary.

  I joined the fray, but the fight degraded into a simple race to inflict the most damage. Without a mount or a means to heal, Odum presented no challenge.

  We quickly hacked him down to zero health.

  “And Ding! Level 25!” Fabulosa offered her palm for a high-five, and I smacked it. “Did you see all those DOTs on it at the end? I purchased a tier 1 ability called Thrust to avoid getting singed by the flames. Also, Thrust unlocks an ability called Transpose—which lets me switch my position with an enemy equal to or beneath my weight.”

  “Really? That sounds like a must-have power. Is it a spell or ability?”

  “It’s an ability. Transpose requires Charge, which you already have, and Thrust, which I just picked up.”

  Thrust counted as another ability I wanted, and knowing it unlocked Transpose made it all more tempting. Anything affecting an enemy’s position created powerful swings in battle.

  I sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t take it. Though my partner stayed ahead of me by one level, I’d banked three power points and wanted to save them.

  Green flames died away as Fabulosa flexed. “Yes! Yes! Yes! We killed an orange! And I got two agility and one strength out of it.”

  I smirked at the thought of slaying one boastful monster to replace it with another, but Fabulosa’s verve energized me. Another level gain encouraged me to face Winterbyte.

  We’d entered Odum at level 20, so this side adventure turned out to be very fortunate.

  “I picked up two intelligence and a strength.”

  “Nice!” Fabulosa fist-bumped me. “Let’s see what we have inside this meat bag.” She reached inside the mammoth’s mouth inside its belly and pulled out a green core. “Green is a little weak for a monster this size.”

  I performed a Rest and Mend and watched Fabulosa reach into Odum’s stomach-mouth. She pulled out an orange core.

  The grinion mammoth’s gigantic size made cutting it open quite a chore, but doing so rewarded us with several treasures. First, we found about 200 gold pieces and valuable objects, from decorative scabbards to jewelry.

  We found an elongated pike tucked away in Odum’s kilt.

  This all-or-nothing weapon made for a superb opener in certain situations. If we found a sleeping giant, we could multiply damage with a critical hit and backstabbing to produce ridiculous damage. And it worked perfectly against a gigantic monster in a tight hallway.

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  Activating the Lance of Commitment could land its wielder in trouble. Its wielder had to abandon the weapon if their target moved out of the way. Odum’s mount moved too slowly for charge attacks, so it made sense why he never used the weapon against us.

  As I combed through Odum’s belongings, Fabulosa pulled the candelabras out of the mammoth’s feet. When she saw me grimace, she shrugged. “What? There’s no point in wasting them. We can use these again against something big.”

  I laughed at my assumption that she took them to beautify Hawkhurst. I should have known better.

  We found a scimitar with serrated edges that gave the weapon a wicked look.

  Blood Drinker would be an excellent blade for war or even a sustained series of battles. Its slightly vampiric nature incentivized its owner to kill, and unlike the Lance of Commitment, it listed no limits to its bonus.

  The -12 willpower made me wonder if this sword had an ego. Would it wear its wielder down or whisper homicidal suggestions? I had 17 willpower—so I could take a -12 hit, but I wasn’t too fond of wearing down my will. I would have taken the cursed relic long ago if I didn’t care about losing my identity.

  The next item suited me more.

  Reading this item’s description felt like crossing a finishing line. This device allowed me to convert more than enough mana to destroy the relic.

  If we could return to the sarcophagus and destroy the cursed item, the gnolls, orcs, kobolds, and players fighting over it would go away and stop threatening our settlement. And it laid to rest worries of facing someone supercharged with overpowering arcane magic.

  After I created the rune, the headband offered me some flexibility. It could also give me over 30 health or mana at the cost of draining the other pool. I gave Fabulosa a grin.

  “Go ahead, take it.” She winked.

  “This lets me—”

  “Yeah, yeah—I know. You can destroy the relic and make us both safer. It’s only fair since I’m calling dibs on the last mote in that specter collection.”

  I forgot about the specters and nodded in agreement. After the grinding, the chase through the streets, and the headache-inducing boss fight, Fabulosa deserved a worthy reward.

  Fabulosa gestured toward the other magic weapons. “What about this other stuff? Blood Drinker looks interesting, although the lance might be good for some situations.”

  I didn’t want the willpower-killing scimitar. “You want Blood Drinker? I’ll take the lance.”

  “Yeah, my Phantom Blade is situational. We keep fighting beasts and monsters that don’t use weapons. All the phony attacks do nothing but confuse me.”

  “The -12 willpower doesn’t bother you?”

  “I’ve over 12 willpower, but I wouldn’t use it as my main weapon. I’m still trying to make Phantom Blade work. Blood Drinker might pay off if we need to fight vargs or hunt gigglers. I get all the kill shots anyway.”

  I smiled at her tease. “Sounds good. Do you mind if we save the orange core for a building?”

  Fabulosa intoned in a mock-innocent tone. “You don’t think we should use it for armor? I can think of someone who’s both dominant and vain?” She batted her eyelashes.

  “Dominance and vanity become you, my dear, but the crustacean’s core will make better armor.”

  Fabulosa admired her new blade. “You probably want to see what a vain castle looks like.”

  Odum stopped glowing when he died, and with the green fire subsided, Presence and the glow stones lashed to Fabulosa’s armor served as our only sources of illumination. When we emerged from the temple, it surprised me to see a soft green aura in the center of town.

  I held my arms out. “We’ll be in trouble if this shrinking doesn’t wear off.” The duration of our shrink debuff, Until Odum Deems Otherwise, hadn’t changed.

  Fabulosa snapped her fingers. “I bet I know how to end it.”

  I followed my partner to the center of town and saw no signs of blemmies.

  The green mote rested in the arena. I tied a rope around one of the wrought iron spears ringing the gladiator pit, and we climbed down.

  On the white sand, the green glow of the mote looked to be the same as Odum’s statue.

  Fabulosa pointed. “You see? The arena is supposed to be Odum’s eye. All those weird little spears overhanging the arena—those are eyelashes.

  “What was Odum trying to do? Add us to his specter collection, or change us into blemmies?

  Fabulosa shook her head. “Nope. We became the motes in his eye. If we clear out the motes from the arena, the buff goes away.”

  I grunted at the stretch of logic.

  Fabulosa picked up the green essence left behind by the final specter. She became transparent, spun to me, and wiggled her fingers. “Boo!”

  She startled me, and I stepped back, immediately regretting my reaction as she laughed.

  Fabulosa dipped one of her toes through the white sandy floor of the arena—her boot didn’t part the sand—it went beneath it. She seemed pleased and turned to explain. “When I activated the collection, I got a new item called Odum’s Spectrometer.”

  “Not to be confused with the Spectral Odometer—which measures the distance to the nearest ghost.”

  Fabulosa grinned, but not at my joke. “It lets me become incorporeal for ten seconds a day. I can split it up, too. I can become immaterial for one second ten times or over one long duration. It affects my gear, too. I don’t have to dodge if someone targets me with an arrow. And there’s a little interface timer that keeps track.”

  She became transparent.

  “Can you walk when you’re incorporeal?”

  Fabulosa extended the tips of her feet into the ground and pulled them out. “Oh, rats. No. The ground is material, so I can’t push off anything. I can’t even Slipstream.”

  “You better make sure not to get caught inside a rock when your timer runs out.”

  Fabulosa materialized, and her feet sticking into the ground moved upwards when she solidified. “No, I’m good. I just tested it. I don’t need to worry about melding into anything when I reconstitute. When I cancel the effect, it repels me away from solids. Neat, huh?”

  “Between your Phantom Blade and your Spectrometer, you’re becoming quite the ghost.”

  Fabulosa wiggled her fingers and made a spooky moan while winking in and out of existence.

  She cracked herself up, but a little voice warned me about how powerful it made her. The same paranoia haunted me at the beginning of the game before I made friends. If she mastered the Phantom Blade, she would be a formidable opponent.

  While I spent all my power points on survival utilities like Refresh Mana, she invested everything in melee moves and direct damage spells. I wondered if she’d already spent her level 24 power point. Her arms and weapons somewhat reduced her spell damage, but it unsettled me how she’d optimized herself for combat. By spending her points, it always rested on me to save us with situational mechanics. Who could blame her for playing smart?

  My robe offered terrific versatility, and my trident and Creeper worked underwater or in the dark, but they didn’t have the potential of Blood Drinker or the Phantom Blade. I had the Divine Bow, but its tracking ability and +1 intelligence weren’t a difference-maker in combat. It led me to a conclusion about my kit—my weapons needed a little pepper.

  I looked around for changes in the room. “So if the mote is gone, why haven’t we returned to our normal size?”

  Fabulosa began climbing up the rope. “Because we’re still in the arena. We’re motes as far as Odum is concerned. After we hoist ourselves out, Odum will no longer have motes in his eyes, and I bet it breaks the spell.”

  Once out of the pit, as predicted, Fabulosa returned to life-size.

  After I followed, the Mote in Odum’s Eye debuff disappeared, and I grew to my regular height. The dome over the diorama brightened as the range of Presence returned to normalcy.

  Fabulosa and I retrieved our glow stones. It made no sense to leave behind something so valuable in this forsaken city.