“The choice may be harder for Maud, but I think I’m already sold on this Combat Rogue. I’ve been eying it since the moment Mel identified it anyway. Mixing that with my courier css is going to do wonders for my battlefield mobility,” Glorp said as he looked at the list of css orbs we had avaible. The final count was a little over six hundred identified and a few strange ones that Mel had set aside for ter examination. He didn’t want anyone risking touching those yet.

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty good pairing for ya. What kind of mana orb are ya thinking?” Mel asked as he bobbed around my garage. Following the bunkhouse Trolke’s next job was going to be building this out more, getting us room to really py around with different combinations of orbs as well as space for me to run my experiments. Eventually, I would want a clean room with some very strongly reinforced walls as well.

  “What I really want, I don’t think we have any, at least I haven’t seen anything listed, so I guess for now I’ll settle for a body-enhancing orb,” he answered, sounding slightly disappointed with the choice.

  “We can always get you some socket swap reserve equipment ter, though that’s likely to be pretty far down the line before we can afford anything like that. We might be able to get a crafter before we can afford anything on the open market. I’ll look into that,” Pryte said, seeming to also pick up on Glorp’s mood.

  “What kind of mana orb were you hoping for, Glorp?” Sanquar asked.

  “Well, it’s not so much a specific orb itself. I think a few would do it, but I wanted something to py around with the friction of the ground,” he answered. I could easily see how powerful something like that could be, and I already understood how it would py into his build. Instant boosts of speed or quick moments of traction while he rocketed around the battlefield. Considering he was already hard to see now, that would make him nearly unstoppable.

  “Oh, ya wanna control the battlefield, do ya?” Mel asked, also catching on.

  “Yep, That seemed like a big missing part from the group,” Glorp answered.

  “Well, kid, I’ve got some good news for ya,” Mel said as he produced a light grey mana orb that I had forgotten about from his System storage. “It took me damn near forever ta figure just what this thing was. Ain’t never seen its like before. It’s a cy mana orb, one of the weirder environmental ones. Honestly no clue where it came from, haven’t even heard of it before, and sure as hell ain’t seen it used in the Arena, but as far as I can tell, it lets ya mess around with the dirt composition. That should cause quite a bit of chaos as ya learn to use it.”

  “Huh, interesting. I’m not sure if it’s exactly what I had in mind, but it sounds close. I’ll take it,” Glorp said with a giant smile, the earlier disappointment having completely vanished as Mel handed over the orb.

  “Environmental mana orbs are always so strange and so oddly specialized to the pce they were created, but yes, as far as I can remember, I’ve also never seen a cy one. This should be very interesting, Glorp,” Sanquar agreed.

  “That was easy enough. How do you feel now, Glorp?” I asked.

  “Excited. I know potentially everything might go very bad for us in the future, but right now this is one of the best moments I’ve had in a long time. My family is here, Cecile and Elody are working on treating my sister for free, there’s plenty of food and now I can even start thinking about my own future. I kind of just figured I’d always be taking care of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love them. It’s just I feel free in a way I don’t think I have since my parents died,” he answered, his smile faltering as the sad memories surfaced.

  “Aww,” Maud said, reaching out and pulling him into a hug.

  “This brings us to Maud, which is actually going to require a bit more testing,” Pryte said as he produced a whole table from his System storage. Could I pce things bigger than I could pick up into it? I hadn’t tried it yet, but it was something to remember. The table looked simir to the setup I had had back in my room in the archives.

  “Ah, a full System interface, was wondering if we got one before or after the floor ten,” Mel said, agreeing with my observation.

  “After, but I called in a few favors. This was originally just going to be so I could get an early start on the needs for our headquarters, but it’s a good thing I have it since we need to test if Maud can even use this yet,” Pryte expined.

  “What do I do?” Maud asked, finally releasing Glorp from her hug.

  “Assuming it works like it did for me, pull up a chair and sit down in front of it. It should bring a menu like you’re in virtual reality. It’s a very jarring sensation at first,” I answered, giving her a warning I hadn’t had.

  “Okay. Sitting is one of the things I am great at!” she said grabbing a nearby chair and pulling it up to the table before pcing herself into it and immediately yelling in excitement.

  “I… believe that means it worked,” Pryte said.

  “Huh, my stats are kind of boring, gonna need to pump those up! Can I see the quests next, oh, interesting. Wonder how I do that.” Every time Maud said one of these things she paused and then continued speaking. I was sure it was just the System speaking back to her, though this did give me a new idea to try after we finished with Maud. What would happen if Sanquar tried to interact with the System?

  “Odd, I wouldn’t expect her to have quests without the world being integrated yet,” Pryte said.

  “I had quests,” I replied, I, in fact, had a lot of them, several that still needed to be completed.

  “Yes, but the System saw you as an outsider, which usually happens to help acquaint them with their new reality, not that it’s a common sight anymore. Remind me to have a conversation with you about System expansion ter. I guess it’s possible it’s seeing Maud the same way, which could be very interesting,” Pryte expined.

  The noise of the chair sliding back from the table alerted us Maud had finished before her voice did. “Um, I have two quests. One says to save a weird pnet designation, but that was just clearly Earth, easy enough to figure out. The other one says it’s a chain of quests for a special css orb.”

  “I have the same quest to save the pnet. I wonder if any humans would just get the same at this point. Are there any details for the css quest?” I asked. It was possible there weren’t any. One of my quests was cssified still, and it had been there for awhile now.

  “Uh, one second, I’ll read you exactly what it says,” She said, scooting her chair back toward the table. “Inheritor Css. Speak to the Jritotle.”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say Inheritor css?” Elody said, speaking up for the first time since we had begun.

  “Yep, is it like a turtle? It sounds like a turtle,” Maud asked, standing up and stretching her legs.

  “The Jritotle is the st of his kind, an ancient mana beast. As for the Inheritor css, that is a soul mana-based css and generally only given out as secondary csses, not primary,” Elody said.

  “You’re going to have to fill us all in more, as I’ve never heard of an Inheritor css before,” Pryte said, turning toward Elody.

  “You likely wouldn’t. It’s almost always only a csspath that padins find themselves on. For whatever reason, though, the System has decided that Maud should gain an aspect of the Jritotle, and the implications of that worry me,” Elody said, pulling several books from her storage space and pcing them on the nearby table.

  “So is this generally just a path on a padin css, or is this its own css?” Pryte asked, his eyebrows raised, looking both confused and interested.

  “Inheritor csses are often created through padin csspaths as a way to pass on their knowledge to those entering the order. It grants initiates aspects of the padins that came before them. You can, of course, directly become a padin css as well, but starting out as an Inheritor helps to guide those on the path. I suspect Maud’s quest may involve the creation of a new padin order,” Elody expined, now flipping through books with half of her eyes focused on that task.

  “That sounds cool, um, why the worry though? Am I going to die?” Maud asked, frowning.

  “No, one moment,” Elody said, rapidly flipping more pages. “Ah, here, I knew I had read something before. Often, at times before catastrophic faction wars the System seemingly begins to give out more lost and rare csses. It’s been theorized that it is an attempt by the System to control the damage it predicts is coming. If we consider everything here, including Dave’s faction, that would suggest a path we are barreling toward.”

  “We were already heading that way long before the rediscovery of Sanquar. It has been too long since any major expansion. All the rge factions are about ready to burst at their seams. What do you do when there are millions of princes demanding their own nds and nothing to give them?” Pryte asked, shrugging as he spoke.

  “Yeah, this ain’t that surprising to me either. Shit’s been getting pretty bad for a while now,” Mel added.

  “We aren’t in any position to fight a war, are you guys really expecting that,” I said, looking from face to face, trying to ignore the newest pressure building on my chest.

  “Yes, but we won’t be the center of that. Hell, it likely will barely involve us. There’s nothing here anyone wants besides some old grudge against Sanquar. Why the people Korl represents even care this much is beyond me at this point. Honestly, while a faction war could be devastating for the Spiral, it might help us,” Pryte said, relieving some, but not all, of the pressure. I wasn’t really sure anything could help all of it anymore.

  Fifth awakening in the season of the Grand Walrus. The exact statement of the Jritotle is copied below.

  DUAMROTIREHNIGNIRB

  Official Scribe of the Jritotle’s Words