Hector stared at the vial as if it held all the secrets to the universe.

  “Drink it already,” Caroline sighed.

  He ignored the sage. Why not? He’d just argued with a lord and been rewarded for it. In a single day, he’d interacted with two Arahant sages, a Jinn war barge, and a Xian lord. What illustrious company he kept. And Earth would be saved. Maybe. They still didn’t know the timing of the attack.

  “Shouldn’t you be coordinating troop movements or something?”

  Caroline used her thumb to point over her shoulder at the Jinn clustered around a screen. “The Jinn do most of that work in this army. I’m exactly where I will do the most good.”

  “Convincing me to desecrate the remains of my friend.”

  “The desecration already happened. You can’t expect to walk around this camp with a potent elixir and not have it stolen. Just get this over with, Hector.”

  He had to drink it. A gold psma elixir had brought Volithur to the peak of the third level in body enhancement. What would a ptinum psma elixir do for him? Certainly it would help him endure the toxicity of uncut spirits. Most gold psma elixirs came from beasts with levels between four and six. Even if the elixir in his hands wasn’t any more potent than those, it came from a human body. It would be hundreds of times more compatible than one sourced from a cow. The bio-avaibility of the cosmic energy would be insane.

  “Thank you, Volithur. You may have wanted to be forgotten, but I honor you.” Having said that, Hector unscrewed the metal cap and popped the crumbling cork free. Some cork remnants floated in the fluid, but nothing could make it any more suspect than it already was. This was made from human blood and bone and organ meat. Plus a core that manifested at death. It was the remnants of a body Hector remembered having.

  Quick, without further over-analysis, Hector gulped down the elixir. It barely held any fvor. Just the oily texture with little bits of hard solids that could catch in his teeth. As he sat there, studying the vial, the effects began to make themselves known.

  It came on with the heat that was at once familiar and foreign. Hector passively let the elixir work its magic on him. He needed to create a transit sphere in the near future. The energy reserves he held in his soul were thus already spoken for. He couldn’t invest them back into his body in good conscience.

  His expectation was that his body would be enhanced to a degree and hopefully some portion of the energy would make it inside his soul. The elixir proved far more potent than that. It might have fallen short of the promised level of eight, but it was certainly above level six still. Which was beyond his own paltry four.

  Half an hour saw him rise to the peak of level four in his body enhancement. From none at all to peak level four in one sitting. Then the excess bled into his soul. It didn’t st much longer, but when it ended, Hector found himself at about eighty percent capacity.

  That remaining twenty percent was something he could do in three days of chaos cultivation. Or probably just one day if he sipped at a bottle of uncut spirits. He might as well get started on that. Hector took a tiny sip out of the evil liquor bottle and winced at the horrid chemical burn. The bad burn was followed soon after by the good burn of liberated cosmic energy pouring into his soul.

  “You’re still keeping me company, Caroline?”

  “Interesting things happen around you, Hector. I can’t wait for the next show.”

  “I’m taking a break from the drama. I figure I’ll just hide out inside War Barge Kevin until it’s time to go home.”

  “Then at least entertain me with stories about your dear friend Evelyn.”

  Hector snorted. “Like what?”

  “Tell me something embarrassing about her. Or… does she have any nicknames?”

  “Evie Tricks. That’s the name she uses in her band.”

  “Band? She’s a musician?”

  “Guitar pyer.”

  “Any good?”

  “She’s terrible.”

  “Were the two of you intimate?”

  “That’s a rude question, Caroline.”

  “With the right context, it could be a thoughtful question.”

  “The right context. Sure.”

  “What I’m saying, Hector, is that I don’t want to bed you if that would upset Evie.”

  Hector squinted at the woman across from him suspiciously. He felt a profound distrust for the woman after the way she’d maniputed him during their initial encounter. There was no doubt in his mind that she marched people around an imaginary board like chess pieces, using her gifts as the Sage of Persuasion to ensure they remained compliant. Letting her any deeper into his life would be like inviting a viper into his bed.

  Instead of speaking, he began drinking faster. The cosmic energy came rapidly. Halfway through the bottle, he was at ninety percent capacity. Close enough that he could finish in time strictly using chaos cultivation.

  One of the Jinn guided him to a bunk inside the war barge. It wasn’t very private, but the mattress was soft and he was close to the bathrooms. He let himself rex, truly rex, for the first time in months. He’d done everything he set out to do. Only one thing remained. He had to transit back home. It might be too te. Earth could be nothing but a grave by now. But he’d know that he had done everything he could. Failure at this point would be down to fate conspiring against him.

  Hours ter, the general noise of the vessel drove him from the embrace of sleep. There was no respite from the voices, footsteps, and cnging of hatches. Even beyond that, there were humming air ducts, buzzing light fixtures, and an ever-present high-pitched whine. A war barge was not the pce to get quality rest.

  Hector returned to his cultivation, determined to be ready as soon as possible.

  He ter returned to the mess hall for another meal. This time he chose one of the Jinn serving stations. His initial impression was not good. He couldn’t even identify what was in the bowl. It was cubes of various colors and textures in a hearty sauce. So far as he could tell, those cubes were of neither pnt nor animal origin. At a guess, it all came out of a b somewhere.

  Those concerns aside, it was delicious in the way that a candy bar or bag of chips was. The fvors, textures, and temperatures had been scientifically optimized to trigger the pleasure centers of the brain. He simultaneously loved their artificial goop and despised himself for not being above such simple maniputions.

  He returned to the Xian food station to see what they were serving that day. He left with a spicy sausage and a stew almost identical to the one Volithur’s maid used to make. It hit his taste buds a little different, cking some of the nuance that his counterpart would pick up on. They weren’t the same person, after all. Even if there was literally a little bit of Volithur in him.

  Hector remained in the mess hall cultivating long enough that he encountered his Arahant friends. Vivian and Rodrick sat on either side of him while Machi and Zelda sat across the table.

  “Well, you certainly kicked things into motion around here,” Vivian observed.

  “I’m a little surprised myself.”

  Rodrick leaned close as if asking a secret. “Did you really get in a shouting match with the Lord General?”

  “I didn’t shout. At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

  “And he gave you an elixir because you wouldn’t back down?”

  “It was a little different than that.”

  Rodrick stroked his chin. “Because he senses your potential?”

  “He gave me the elixir because it was made from the guy I remember being.”

  Vivian choked on her drink. “You didn’t drink it, did you?”

  “Of course I did. My body enhancement is at level four now.”

  “That’s disgusting, Hector. I’m gd I never have to kiss you again.”

  “Just so you guys know, I hated every moment of being a reality television star.”

  Rodrick cradled his chest as if he’d received a grievous wound to the heart. “We became sworn brothers on television, Hector. Don’t tell me that meant nothing to you.”

  “Of course not, Rod. That part was real.”

  Zelda pushed a slice of cake towards him. “Guess who volunteered for your mission?”

  For a moment, Hector wasn’t sure how to hide how touched he was. The group only expressed any form of honest emotion as calcuted acts before an audience. Their genuine interactions were typically couched in sarcasm. It took a moment for him to realize that he wasn’t a sve to their theatrical scripts any longer. That included the disaffected attitude.

  “All of you are coming?”

  “Confgration is going, so that means I go, too,” Zelda said.

  “We’re just curious about what kind of weird world makes a Hector,” Machi cimed.

  “Hopefully the kind that survives its first brush with monsters.” Hector looked around at the Arahants who’d let him into their group. “It means a lot that you’re coming to help, guys.”

  “Calm down, boy,” Vivian said, “we just want to try the deep fried chicken wings you cim are so good. With the spicy sauce.”

  He cleared his throat. “I might regret asking, but what is Jinn food made out of?”

  “Poop,” Rodrick said.

  Hector rolled his eyes. “No, seriously.”

  Zelda winced. “It’s bacteria and fungus. That grows on poop.”

  “Human poop,” Machi specified.

  “Oh god, I ate some of it.”

  “You also drank person juice elixir,” Rodrick added.

  Zelda pointed. “The cake doesn’t have any poop in it.”

  The cake was delicious.

  He had to leave his friends when he was called to a meeting of the leaders of the task force going to Earth. The Lord General, Confgration, and Persuasion all met in a room inside War Barge Kevin. They rapidly came to a consensus on the general shape of their pn.

  Hector would lead the Lord General to Earth. If there were any monsters around, they’d kill them. Then the Lord General would leave with his forces. War Barge Kevin and the Arahant contingent would remain behind to mop up and retrieve the Sage of Foresight. If there were no monsters yet, the Jinn and Arahant would wait for a time.

  Their approach to it seemed deceptively simple. Surely things wouldn’t be so easy to resolve. Every step of the ‘save the world’ campaign had been harder than expected. He didn’t dare say anything to dissuade the commanders from taking decisive action, though.

  They agreed to leave at first light.

  Hector barely slept. He alternated between imagining all the potential situations he could discover when he returned home and cautiously cultivating until he had to stop. A Jinn got him out of bed and onto the top deck of Kevin an hour ahead of their scheduled departure time.

  The background whine grew louder as Kevin lifted free of the ground. All around him were the various non-Jinn forces going to Earth with him. There were about a hundred Xian, though they would not stay long. Then there were a dozen Arahant. The war barge, of course, was full of Jinn. They didn’t do crazy things like sit in the open when heading into combat, though.

  Then Thrakkar called for him. “Wait until I begin to form my sphere before you travel home. I’ll be able to follow your wake.”

  He watched with his own eyes as the infamous sphere of the Lord General grew into its full proportion. It was time to go home.