His mind felt sluggish. He understood that they were out of danger because they were no longer moving and Dei was alive, so the adrenaline that kept him from falling to unconsciousness disappeared. Without that, there was nothing keeping him sharp. Nothing that drew his attention.

  Blinking slowly and barely breathing, he felt himself drift from one subject to another.

  His body was healing, and fast. He’d be in top shape after only ten minutes or so, physically, but his mind and soul were different.

  When Dei linked to Clever, giving him access to High Mind, he’d borne the brunt of its strain. Whatever Clever had done, it overtaxed Dei and more. He felt like his mind was cooking in its confines, and wouldn’t have complained if someone had cracked it open at this point to let some of the heat out.

  He tried looking around, and felt like he saw a… field. Of sorts. But there was something off about it.

  He opened his eyes, realizing he’d simply blinked and fallen into a dream for a second, but his dreams and reality were blurring together.

  He thought of home, of his parents, and he was there. Standing before them. Two options. Two scenarios played out.

  In one, his parents didn’t recognize him. They rejected him, and he went back to the wilds to live out his life.

  In the other, they knew it was him immediately, and accepted him for who he was.

  A third reality made itself known as a faceless Shaman appeared before him. The Shaman was… distant. There were walls between him and the Shaman, but Dei could see him. He knew he was there, he knew that this Shaman searched for him because his dream told him that they did. No real reasoning, he just knew that the Shaman was looking for him.

  A fourth reality, too, made itself clear. Another Shaman. This one, not trying to kill him, but trying to save him. This one felt closer, and it felt warmer, but it too was faceless.

  The closer Shaman, the one that felt warmer, turned towards him. Through all the stone, through all the walls, the Shaman saw him, but it was no longer a Shaman. It was something else.

  Something reached out towards Dei, feeling familiar and foreign. He tried to dodge its grasp, but was already held within it. He knew the touch of it.

  “Kindness…” he said, slurring his words. His body did not move to speak, but he felt himself say it in another way.

  “Dei” it spoke back, sadness tinging its tone. “Child… I am sorry. You have suffered.”

  “Why…:” he tried saying something, but his mind scattered. It took him a long moment to remember he was talking to something. “Why… manipulate. My… purpose… my Kindness…”

  “You speak of my prioritizing of one creature's life over the other. Of when I tell you to help something, but not another. It is for your sake. All of my children give away pieces of themselves throughout their lives. I give pieces of myself to them. I never wanted this for you. I never wanted you to be forced into the wilds. If you hadn’t fought that Devourer, you would never have suffered through this all. There were people in your party who could have killed it, but they did not want to do so unless threatened. You would have survived. But alas… your good heart got you here. I love you for it, but you are silly for doing so.”

  “Don’t… understand,” he squeezed out. It was too much for his fragile mind.

  “No,” Kindness responded. “But you will. I will not stop manipulating your path, for your sake. When you can prove to me that you are strong enough, I will give you more difficult requests for help. Until then, just stay alive. I cannot lose another… not in your current world.

  “You won’t understand what I’m going to say, but you will soon. Affinities proliferate in a universe based on how many other entities hold that affinity. The more creatures that hold a certain affinity, the more common it is for others to be born with it. Where you are now, Vices reign supreme. Virtues are born naturally, occasionally, but not nearly as much as Vices. Even before that dreadful demon was born in this universe, waves of monsters tore apart the walls of cities day after day, because there is an excess of Vices. Perhaps the excess of Vices created the demon. I need you to become stronger, so that you may show Kindness to others. So that, if the war does end, the people do not go back to tearing one another apart.

  “Even if you do not hold the title… you will always be this universe's Champion of Kindness.”

  Before he could formulate a response, he felt the affinities grip on him go slack, and it drifted away.

  He opened his eyes, once more realizing he’d only blinked. He only managed to get his eyes halfway open before, once again, they closed.

  He appeared above a massive ball now. It shined brightly, but there were cracks all along its crystal surface. Within the ball was Dei’s story. From Levens birth, to Dei’s current moment. In the heart of this ball, a bright pink glow radiated outwards. ‘My soul?’

  The cracks were tied together, sealed, but he did not see thick white stitches, no. He saw a great beast, weaving in and out of his soul. He could not see the head nor the tail, but it was flat, and dark.

  Moving closer to one of these stitches, he saw the deep blue of its skin, and reached out to touch it, almost afraid it would snap at him.

  It did not. The body continued to swim beneath his fingers, and it felt rubbery. Like the wings of a manta ray.

  Where the body dipped into his soul, gentle ripples radiated out. Standing atop the water, he looked deep within.

  No longer seeing his own memories, he glanced up to notice he stood upon the surface of a great ocean, before looking back down into the water.

  It was so dense that he could not sink below, bobbing on the top. Beneath him, the dark blue water showed nothing, too murky to see deep.

  He opened his eyes once more, but quickly blinked them shut again. He wanted to finish this dream.

  The waves carried him up and down on the surface, but he could not see into it. He pushed his hand into the dense water. It resisted, wanting to keep him above, but it could not force him to stay on top.

  His hand went below, hardly an inch, when it met resistance. Not of water, but the familiar rubbery texture of a slimy manta ray.

  The feeling was not stagnant though, and he had to pull his hand back as the friction nearly burned him. His eyes widened as he realized the water was not murky at all. The dark blue coloration was a creature.

  Standing up, he looked around him. As far as the eye could see, the ocean was that same navy blue. Perhaps the creature was as large as the ocean entirely.

  He looked back down just in time to see the end of it, and suddenly he could see the shallow sea floor. He barely caught a glimpse of creature dipping below the horizon, faster than anything that large had a right to be, when the water gave out under his feet, and he fell beneath the waves.

  He held his breath and tried to swim up, but the surface was gone. Looking down, the sand and coral were nowhere to be found.

  There was no sunlight, but he could see four tiny glowing white eyes stare at him.

  As they grew larger though, he realized they were only distant, and it rushed towards him. He tried opening his eyes to wake from the dream, but couldn’t.

  Hundreds of sharp teeth coated a great maw as the creature snapped forward.

  Rather than swallowing him though, he felt the vibration of its terrible bite reverberate through him as it closed its jaw mere inches from his face.

  “Do you know what I am, child?”

  “You are… Connection? My Skill?” he tried answering by feel, his mind rapidly healing from its haze. He had no idea how long he’d slept by this point.

  It rumbled with a grating tectonic laughter. “There are two ends to every Connection. Pray the other side does not pull you below the waves before you learn to swim.”

  Dei opened his eyes, deactivating his trance-like Skill and turning his body to the side.

  He tried to cough, violently ejecting seawater from his lungs and onto the red grass.

  When most of it was out, he threw up his dinner. Just for good measure. His muscles, too weak to hold himself up, failed. He almost collapsed into the puddle when Fendrascora pulled on his back, lifting him up and away from the mess.

  Groaning, he tried to move himself or fully wake up, but his hibernation-like Skill took a long time to fully wear off. The only reason he was able to turn himself onto his side was the shock of waking up drowning. Now that he wasn’t actively dying, his muscles felt weak. Unresponsive.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  More than that, he was tired. Whatever his new Skill did, it wasn’t exactly sleep or wakefulness. Now that it was off, he felt his body trying to rebalance, and struggling to do so. Suddenly, he remembered that Fendrascora still had his Homeostasis Skill, preventing him from adapting quickly.

  Revoking her access to it, he needed only to give it time to help bring him back to full working condition.

  Giving away his Homeostasis Skill didn’t remove his body’s ability to balance itself out, only the supernatural speed at which it could balance itself out. And right now, he was facing a supernatural problem, as he worked his way out from self-induced pseudo death.

  Fendrascora, Clever, and Fang were trying to talk to him now that they saw he was awake, but he didn’t understand any of it in his current transitory state. Closing his eyes once more, he fell into a nightmare-filled sleep of screaming monsters and grinning Shamans.

  * * *

  The disconnected shapes and images slowly fell away as his mind sputtered to life, still exhausted despite however long he’d slept. His eyes fluttered open to the dim scenery around him, made clearer by his Darkvision. It was clearly night though, as the crystal in the ceiling had hardly brightened

  It was a familiar little cave, the one he’d first seen his reflection in. He rested against the stone wall, semi-close to the pond, while Fendrascora’s peripheral body sat on the far side of the room, spreading out across the field. He sensed the usual resonance of Fang right in front of the entrance as well, so he knew she was here. Clever, though, was nowhere to be found.

  Quickly putting one foot against the ground to use Tremor Sense, a spike of pain from sensory overload fully jarred him awake. He ignored the agony though, he had to make sure that Clever was okay.

  Luckily, he simply sensed the small Korgonda atop Fendrascora’s body, lazing on a rock and likely asleep.

  Fendrascora didn’t respond to his movement, so she must be in her version of sleep. Clever, as well, was obviously asleep. That must mean that Fang was on duty to watch.

  Lying his head back against the stone, he was about ready to fall back to sleep when he felt Fang connect with him, trying to communicate. If she initiated the communication though, he usually didn’t understand it, as his [Identify] had a natural translation ability, and her talking was expressed in plant concepts. Not suitable for Dei’s mind. Still, he got the gist of it. She wanted to talk.

  Opening up a line of communication for her to speak through, she jumped straight to her point.

  “Do you plan to continue collecting Aloran’s armor pieces?”

  “No,” he said truthfully. While he really wanted a happy ending to their story now… it was clear that it might get him and his friends killed. The pieces themselves were not terribly dangerous or lethal, but he hadn’t considered that they were magical artifacts. Creatures would siphon off whatever concepts they could from such powerful-yet-immobile creatures.

  “Good. I was going to ask you to leave me behind if you said yes,” Fang responded.

  He said nothing to that, content to leave the conversation there.

  Fang, though, wasn’t. He felt her emotions bubbling to the surface, tinges of it travelling down the connection between them.

  He said nothing, understanding that he would only add fuel to the flame if he did.

  “What is wrong with you?!” She started her next sentence. “You nearly got me killed, for nothing. More than that, you know it is worth nothing. You aren’t willing to fight and finish what you started! You’re… fleeting! You’re a fleeting, idiotic, suicidal fool. Despite not even undergoing your first evolution, you jump into dangerous situations like you’re immortal! You run around, helping people and things you don’t know and aren’t involved with, for no reason! I just don’t get it.

  “It would even be excusable, if it was your own life, but no, you drag others with you too! That Wrath mana from the cursed helmet could have killed Fendrascora if she touched it in her fragile state, who is still trapped directly next to where you’ve stored it. Now, you’ve risked us all for something you don’t feel strongly enough about to finish. Just why?”

  Dei let her finish her rant, taking in her points. She didn’t seem mad about only him risking her life, but even about him not continuing to risk her life. She saw him as weak-willed, and that irritated her as much as almost dying.

  “I didn’t say that I intend to give up on Aloran and his group, only that I’m not going straight back to try and get Amaya. I do want to finish rounding up all four pieces of Alorans set, but I can’t right now. I can't properly fight off whatever guardians have placed themselves around Amaya and Moren. When I’m stronger, I will help them, but if I throw myself into the problem right now, I’ll just die. And if I die, then they’ll never be back together again. No, I’ll wait, and come back later.

  “As for risking myself and all of you, I don’t think I have. Not as deeply as you think at least. With Fendrascora, I left a sub-mind behind specifically to cut the connection between Lani and I if the energy became too chaotic for my body to contain. Fendrascora was never in any real danger, only a scary situation which I admit, was selfish of me to jump straight into. More than that, I guarantee that there is no chance of the curse escaping, my Skill is far, far stronger than the curse itself, and it fails to even make the walls of its containment quiver.

  “Lastly, I haven’t been throwing myself into unnecessary danger. Everything is dangerous. Everywhere I go, around every corner, there are monsters to try and kill me. I’m picking my fights, because I will need to face some eventually, and will need to be strong enough to face those I can't avoid. I approached Fendrascora with the same caution that I approached Lani, the cursed object as you called him. From both Fendrascora and Lani, I was able to gain a measure of power, and the situations worked out well. In both instances, you said nothing at the time, and don’t attempt to lie by saying you thought they were stupid.

  “I know you didn’t care one way or the other both times. With Lani, you only cared after the fact, when I was going to carry his curse around with me. You even stopped caring about the curse when I never showed any indication of it harming me.

  “With my decision to help Amaya, you had no input. The only real thing you questioned was why I did it at all. Now, though, you’re criticising my decision making because it didn’t work out, but that’s life. Not everything works out. I’m not saying that my reasoning was perfectly logical, but it’s not as outlandish as you make it seem.

  “Nonetheless, you aren’t completely wrong either. I have thought ahead about my decisions, but not far enough ahead. I think…” he was going to say “That I should make Clever the leader” but there were a few issues with that.

  Firstly, Dei wasn’t sure if he was the leader in the first place, he just kind of assumed that everyone else thought he was because they didn’t oppose his decisions. Second, while Clever was smart, he had little life experience. It would do nobody good for Clever to become the decision maker just because Dei felt guilty for almost getting them all killed. Instead, he decided for a halfway point.

  “... That I should begin actively asking the three of you for input. It’s clear that if we go by just my priorities, we’ll miss the bigger picture. We can all talk about our next move when the other two wake up, because I haven’t been guiding us in an exactly correct direction, just one with my own interest in mind. And for that… I’m sorry, Fang. I’m sorry that I was selfish. I never meant to be, and was blinded by what I thought was the right thing to do, but that doesn’t excuse it. I may not look it, but I am still just over a year old. I’m trying to figure out how to do things, how life works, and what my purpose is. I hope… I hope that I can receive your guidance as well. I never considered it before, but you’re over level three hundred, and probably know a lot more about the world than I do. I could have been leaning on your experience this entire time, but failed to do so. Sorry.”

  He finished saying the last part, feeling utterly chastised. He explained why he did what he did, but honestly, his thinking was still flawed. Twenty years of a previous, peaceful life didn’t fully translate to “successful” experience here. He wasn’t stupid, but there were some things he simply did not consider, such as ginormous beasts hiding between folds in reality to avoid his Tremor Sense. The Accipere was far too large to actually hide itself within Amaya, so he hadn’t seen it as an option. Stupid. He forgot where he was, a literal spatially-manipulated area. Dei guessed that the Anchor was something of a pocket dimension that could store things, and the Accipere used this space to hide its main body, sending Echoes to go out and hunt things while avoiding any of the larger predators that might end up killing it.

  He remembered the Accipere from a long time ago, back when he briefly tried hunting bugs for experience. Back then, he entered a closed-off cave that contained the rotting corpse of a monster, coated in decomposers. He recalled the description he’d Identified from the Accipere now.

  [Trudging Accipere of Dominance Echo - Level 336

  The Accipere is a type of hive mind parasitic worm specialized in assimilating foreign flesh into its mass. The Trudging Accipere is a slow, creeping threat, lying dormant until its host meets certain conditions. The Dominance Accipere has successfully assimilated multiple other Acciperes, granting it the ability to split some of its sub-minds into more mobile forms and fetch more flesh for its mass. This is an Echo, one of the sub-minds that has been disconnected from the main mass, and only has a small selection of the originals abilities

  Physical:121

  Mental:63

  Spiritual:87

  Magical:92]

  From this description Dei could guess that the Accipere didn’t even send its main body to hunt them, relying on its tried and true tactic of Echo hunting.

  Setting aside his quick recall of the Accipere and focusing back on the conversation, he felt that Fang's emotions had continued to boil, until he apologized and started talking about all his mistakes too. By the time he spoke of relying on her experience, the anger she felt was gone entirely, like he’d taken the wind from her sails. It was hard to criticize him, when Dei was bringing up mistakes he’d made that Fang hadn’t considered either.

  He felt mental grumblings that failed to coalesce into real words. Eventually, she sighed and said “That's… reasonable. And excusable. When I was only a year old, I was not particularly smart either. Very well. I forgive your lunacy.”

  Lapsing into awkward silence, Dei thought about how Fang was the only one in the group willing to really criticize him, which was a dangerous thing. If Fang really did leave the group, as she was bound to do eventually, he was afraid it might become something of an echo chamber to himself. He needed someone to call him out more often than not.

  There wasn’t much he could do to remedy that right now though, he’d simply have to be on the lookout for another friend that could fill the role.

  Finally, he slumped back down the stone wall. He still had a lot of sleep to catch up on.