I woke up, not to a sense of opening my eyes, but as a chat window grabbed my sleeping brain, pulling my perception directly towards it.

  I did my best to ignore the chat window and try to force my brain back into a state of sleep. I wasn’t sure if I ever fully accomplished it or not. Time seemed hard to judge from here, but I did feel my eyes open as the smell of cooking eggs hit me. That seemed like a good sign.

  “Well, Dave’s awake. That’s one of them, at least,” Glorp said, pushing a plate of food onto my chest. While it smelled great, the return to consciousness had brought back a lot of the pain of the previous event. I tried and, with some difficulty, managed to switch to my life orb, turning on pain management. A new pathway, without any safety switches, blazed to life as both core mana and soul mana flowed into the orb. The soul mana continued across the new deeply broken mana channels, filling all of my orbs and quickly draining what little I had regenerated. That was going to be a giant problem. How the hell was I going to regulate this now?

  I disabled all my passive mana skills, even pain management, drastically slowing the drain but not stopping it entirely. It was still flowing to Corey, and I didn’t have an easy way to shut that off. Luckily, the little it was using was currently less than my soul was producing, but I had no way of fighting like this. If I used a single orb, the soul mana would rush across all the channels at once, mixing itself through the orbs, with incredibly unpredictable results. Dammit, we didn’t have time for me to suddenly become this much of a burden.

  I forced myself to sit up, careful not to spill the plate. “Thank you,” I said, my voice still hoarse as I dug into the food. At least this should help recharge me. I’d discuss the new problems with everyone once they woke up. There was no reason to worry them now with something that couldn’t easily be fixed.

  “How are you feeling?” Alex asked.

  “I’m okay, mostly, kind of feel like a truck hit me, but it’ll pass. Who all are still out?” I asked, scanning the room and spotting Timon and Mel laid out on the floor, with Elody propped against the wall, sipping something from a cup.

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  “These two obviously, and Maud is also unconscious on the bed. Connie and Rabyn are both awake but still recovering,” Alex explained, lines of worry creasing her face.

  “She should be fine, probably waking up soon herself,” I said, remembering her sudden appearance in the chat window.

  “How do you know that?” Elody said, setting down her drink as she joined the conversation.

  I finished a bite of egg and set my fork down on the plate with a clink. “She’s able to access the chat window I have with Corey and the other being now. I’m guessing it has something to do with the way we’ve all been bonded together, thanks to the design of my core.”

  “Fascinating. I wonder if she’ll be able to level yet or not, since we're here on Earth. She isn’t officially registered with the System, but she might technically be through the connection to you,” Elody replied, sounding intensely interested in the results of what had happened. Her top two eyes were darting about the room.

  “She hit level one, I know that much. Whether she can continue beyond that, I’m not sure. What I am nearly sure about, though, is that I ignited my soul this time, and that’s going to come with a whole host of extra problems we can discuss later, but are the creatures gone? Is everyone going to be okay?” I asked, trying to relieve some of the growing pressure on my chest.

  “They’ll all be fine. It’s going to wreak havoc with Mel’s timetable, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now,” Elody answered while the brothers nodded along.

  “I’ve been checking on everyone. You’re all reading pretty healthy, you just need to let your energies build back up. Especially Mel, he didn’t really have a core built for this at all, but Elody needed everything available that second,” Cecile explained, plopping down on the couch next to me with a giant plate of food for both of them.

  “Do you think Maud wants to come along to the Arena? We’ve got so many mana and class orbs now I bet we could find her something nice,” Glorp said excitedly, probably happy to have someone closer to his skill level potentially in the squad.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to discuss that with Mel and Pryte. Speaking of, is Pryte still not back?” I asked, suddenly growing worried again. He shouldn’t have been gone this long.

  “He’ll be back tomorrow. He dropped in a few days back to check in on our progress, but he had a lead on some other things,” Elicec answered, placating some of my anxiety for the moment. Hopefully that lead was Glorp’s family. I’d be glad if we could take that weight off the kid’s shoulders as soon as possible.

  “Holy shit! Can I do magic now?!” Maud screamed her question loud enough to be heard in every room in the house. In reply, there was a clattering of dishes as John ran past the living room to the bedroom, still wearing an apron and an oven mitt.

  “Maud, are you okay?” he asked the moment the door swung open.

  “I feel great, well, kind of. My chest hurts a lot, but I feel more alive than usual. Dave, was that dream real?” Maud asked as she sprinted into the room, grinning ear to ear.

  “Yes, it was. As for magic, no, not until you get a mana orb, but before we do anything else, we need to discuss that new core of yours. Elody is extremely interested in it, which means we don’t know enough about it yet to do anything safely,” I explained gently. I didn’t want to spoil her mood. Forming a core was certainly something to be thrilled about. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been. Hell, I’d gone off like an idiot and nearly destroyed my body almost immediately after doing so.

  “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I think. What happened anyway? Why did you need to shove whatever it was into my chest?” Maud asked, turning to Elody. While her voice calmed slightly, the grin plastered across her face made no such change.

  “I was capturing all the energy Dave was expelling into an inert dungeon core. They can be useful in defending against soul-enhanced attacks, and I assumed the one in my possession would work well enough here. What I didn’t understand until far too late was just how powerful Dave’s soul has grown. I should have predicted that considering the soulhunters involvement, but there is so little information on them that I didn’t consider it,” Elody explained, her face looking sunken in a way I’d never seen from her. In contrast to her near-constant chipper demeanor, she looked disappointed. Possibly in herself?

  “Hey, don’t blame yourself here. I’m the one with all the stupid mysteries that keep screwing us all. Why did the core have to go into Maud, though? I feel like I’m still missing something,” I asked, giving her a smile, trying to convey that I didn’t blame her at all for any of this.

  “The dungeon core ignited a soul-core reaction within itself and began to go critical. With the amount of soul energy it contained, it was incredibly likely to have destroyed a large portion of land, us, and possibly even the soulhunters. The only way I knew to safely contain the reaction was to give it a body to regulate it. Thankfully, Maud was willing. Had she not, and no one else volunteered, I’d have contained it within myself,” Elody answered, taking a long drink from her cup afterward.

  “I assume that wouldn’t have been great for your health?” I asked, trying to keep my phrasing lighthearted. She looked miserable enough already.

  “No, it would not have been,” she answered.

  “Good, you’re all awake. I know you feel terrible, I do too, but we need to discuss the next floor because we are going to have to do that sooner rather than later,” Rabyn said, slowly walking into the room. His face was paler than it had been.

  “Wait, can I come?” Maud asked, her smile somehow growing bigger.

  None of the exploration ships in the area of chaotic space known as the Leviathan’s Gauntlet have returned in several millennia, and for the last few hundred years, no faction has been willing to send another vessel out there despite the great resources found within. This has all but dried up the supply of true radiant shadowstone to the spiral. The few mines left are now firmly in control of a conglomerate of trading federations working to keep their own true identities secret. Shell corporations are stacked on shell corporations, and those who may know the identities at the top are not willing to share.

  Material Science, Rare Spiral Minerals by Ignium Volcinitus

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