Day 30, 10:35 AM

  Ultimately, I failed. Like many times in life, when things mattered the most, I didn’t meet my own expectations.

  I pick Initial Mana Sense from my choice of available skills, and check my second level up condition. Fully comprehend a lesson given by your master.

  “What is it?” Edna asks, following my despondent sigh.

  “I leveled up, took Initial Mana Sense, and now I have to fully comprehend a lesson of yours to level up again. But before that, how do I go about sensing mana?”

  “Well, you need to go and hunt down another abomination. Otherwise, there’s no mana for you to sense, other than the ambient, which is flat, and I believe difficult to sense for someone inexperienced.”

  I sigh again. Hunting minor abominations has become a chore. Sure, the creatures are dangerous and aggressive, but they are dumb and predictable. I’m certain even the weakest of my knights could have wiped the floor with them.

  “Edna,” I ask. “What are other tiers of abominations?”

  For the life of me, I can’t say what made me ask such a question. When risking your life and limb, boredom is the greatest blessing, not something you seek to correct.

  “Minor abominations, abominations, greater abominations, elder abominations, and finally wormlords.” Fortunately, she answers mechanically, oblivious of why I asked such a dumb question. “Wormlords are immortal, while elder abominations are nearly unkillable. They are unstoppable engines of destruction, bent on devouring all life before them, seeking to evolve further.”

  I nod. “How did you defeat the final wormlord, then? How did they come into being?”

  “We never even saw the wormlord.” My skin crawls at Edna’s confession. “We were certain one was on the loose, since nothing else could coordinate so many abominations and drive them towards a singular purpose, but there were no confirmed sightings.”

  I gulp. This is a huge bit of information.

  “So, you’re saying there’s a nearly omnipotent, unkillable abomination on the loose and that it can destroy the world whenever it feels like it? Why didn’t it do it already?”

  Edna actually shrugs, stunning me. “Its fellow monsters are long gone, its minions mostly exterminated—”

  “Edna, if that thing is really an immortal abomination, it’s only a matter of time before it remembers that some two hundred-odd years ago it felt like destroying humanity and decides to give its hobby another go.”

  She gives me a disturbing grin, dripping with schadenfreude. “And how’s any of that my problem?”

  I blink. I do it again. Slower and more intentional this time.

  “Edna,” I gather my wits, “correct me if I’m wrong, but you live on Everrain.”

  She nods, her grimace equally insane.

  “You have no way of getting out of here?”

  “No way.” She shakes her head, smile beaming.

  “And you’re one of those humans that would eventually get destroyed by the wormlord.”

  “Nope.” She shakes her head again. “Mages could have always fled the wormlords. We stayed and fought for the sake of the general population, of our children and students. Should the last wormlord return, I’ll run and keep running. Wormlords are like all abominations, maybe slightly smarter. They want to feed, to grow, and to devour the competition. The best way to stay safe is not to compete. This was impossible for entire civilizations, with the clash of their and the wormlords’ interests, but a lone mage is neither a threat nor worth overturning the entire world to find.”

  “Wait.” Things suddenly aren’t making any sense. Is she demented? Bipolar? Does she suffer from multiple personalities? “You said the Guide and the dungeons have trapped the wormlords a long time ago.”

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  “Thirteen hundred years ago, give or take.”

  That really is ‘a long time ago,’ even by my standards. “But the last wormlord appeared more than a thousand years later? Where was it? Did it escape the dungeon?”

  “No wormlord has ever escaped its dungeon. Our guess is, was, that an elder abomination evolved, becoming a new wormlord.”

  I nod. That guess doesn’t help one bit. It only opens another equally frightening can of worms from where I’m standing. And this world’s worms are frightening indeed.

  “You don’t see a problem with your approach?”

  “I see what you’re trying to say, but why would I care? These people doomed themselves.”

  I look her in the eye. “Edna, listen, dying is merely another beginning, a start of an awful, eons-long journey. You want to stay alive in this comfortable home of yours, frying honeygrubs for as long as possible. Trust me.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve slapped a death-god, so I should be fine.”

  A fair point. Few people probably earned my punishment, and all that have should remember it, otherwise the punishment itself makes no sense.

  I wish to argue, but there’s no point. “I’ll go find another tentacle worm, or horned centipede with seven scorpion stingers or whatever.”

  A new skill is ready and waiting for me to test it out. The conversation so far was disturbing enough that another discussion on morality and analyzing Edna can wait until I get a hang of my skill. But there are questions I need to answer. I’m not of this world, nor a member of this human-ish species, I don’t plan on having children, nor letting anyone grow too close to me. Too much pain and centuries of suffering lay that way.

  But am I really fine condemning humanity? Gila and Lucy seemed nice. Edna’s all right in her own demented way, and even Jarrol, the chatty inquisitor is kind of all right, for a man whose job entails burning innocent people because somebody told him to do it. Fred… Fred is a dick, though.

  If I ignore him, I could find a group of people I like, maybe build a community if the doomsday scenario comes to pass. Yes, that seems like a decent idea. And until the day we all tremble and despair, I should try to level anarchist. But to do that, I need to integrate myself into the community, find an innocent person wrongfully accused by the authorities and sacrifice everything I have to save them.

  A horrible prospect. I have no idea who is behind BSD and the insane level up conditions it has cooked up. I rub my chin, missing my stubble, Batsy II is slung across my shoulder as I stalk towards the next abomination I have set my sights on.

  The creature is a moth-cricket-thing, its baleful dirge driving everything away from its territory as it munches on the mutated octopus trees and tulip-tongue bushes.

  I follow the maddening song, my extraordinary willpower the only thing keeping me sane and on track as the creature grates its wings together. Edna explained the damned thing’s physiology after I killed one. The grating of the wings not only makes the ungodly noise but also spreads the hallucinogenic moth scale-dandruff-stuff all over the woods.

  I draw close, and the forest looks like it’s covered in brown-gray snow. Each step disturbs a puff of tiny scales, which dance around my feet and rise into the air. I tie a cloth around my mouth and nose. My physique of twenty-five is enough to handle the drug, but it itches, probably because I have a super-sensitive nose.

  The haunting melody grows louder, and I peek out from a licky bush. Three dozen yards away, I see it. The cricket is ten feet long, its wings vibrate as they touch each other. The creature’s maw is utterly bizarre, resembling rows of circular saw blades aligned in such a way as to mill whatever the moth-cricket is eating.

  Based on my experience of one, hypno-moth-crickets are troublesome creatures because they flee. If they spot you, they take off into the trees, and shake their wings at you until you drop intoxicated for them to eat. Or in my case, until I draw my trusty sling and pierce a hole through their tiny brain, after which they drop dead to the ground.

  The tactic serves me just fine this round as well. The moth-cricket flees, but stays close, greedy to devour me. The poor choice dooms it, and three minutes later I’m sitting atop its corpse.

  “Close your eyes. It’s easier to sense mana that way.”

  I do as Edna says, no longer surprised she was right behind me even though I sensed nothing.

  I close my eyes, and in the darkness, the world swirls with color. A thin mist of green surrounds me, but beneath my feet a yellow geyser gushes out of the moth-cricket.

  I look down, and I can see the monster in all its glory. Unlike its real dull gray-browns, the mana suffusing it is golden. Its wings are brilliant, ablaze with mana, as are its creepy eyes and fluffy antenna.

  Its limbs and torso are the least magical.

  “Edna, is it normal for mana to be out of balance in a body?”

  “Naturally,” she replies, and I turn to face her.

  She’s a rainbow of colors, swirling in a human-shaped nebula, constantly flowing, shifting and mixing. I watch as green heading down her neck dissolves into yellow and blue. The blue converges with a smidgeon of red above her left breast and flows downward as violet.

  She looks like a random explosion of color, yet none of them leave her body, they are trapped in the constant flow, without a whiff seeping away.

  I look at my own hand, and it’s a greenish haze, slightly darker than the faint mist permeating the air, but unlike Edna, mana constantly evaporates from my body.

  I open my mouth, but there are too many questions to ask, too many things to process with a whole new sense at my disposal.

  “Take your time, sensing mana for the first time is usually overwhelming.”

  I nod. I don’t feel particularly overwhelmed by what I’m seeing, but I agree that I should take things slowly.

  The yellow mana gushing from the moth-cricket has a mesmerizing quality, and I enjoy the play of colors as they slowly grow sharper.