Die. Respawn. Repeat.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting as we approach the expedition team—and I'm very sure we're approaching them now, because the Sewers have aligned themselves enough for me to be able to sense their Firmament in detail—but it's not the rapid uptick of Firmament saturation followed by what I can only describe as an explosion of gore.

Current saturation: 99%

Well, that's not good. Shards of chitin rain down around me, and I narrow my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of what caused the explosion. Hopefully no one's going to be using any more skills. Whatever they just did feels like a very last-resort type of thing.

What I see makes me blink and do a double-take. It looks like a massive capsule, half blood-red and the other shimmering like a field of stars; whatever it is, it tore straight through the monster the Interface calls a Seedcracker. It tumbles through the air as I watch it, trajectory disrupted by blood and viscera, and as it does it unfurls into the shape of an unconscious woman.

An unconscious woman falling straight into a swarm of Root Acolytes and Seedlings.

I launch myself forward hard enough that the stone beneath my feet cracks. There's some muffled shouting from behind the mass of gore: Novi's is the most recognizable one, followed by two more scirix that Ahkelios tells me through our link are Yarun and Juri. Then two distinctly human voices, trying to run forward into the Seedcracker's body.

Thankfully, some of the scirix pull them back. Saving one person without any skills is going to be tricky enough.

The Root Acolytes and nauseating blooms growing on them have begun flashing wildly; in the few scant seconds I spend shooting through the air, they've managed to connect to one another via root-tendrils, forming a pulsating surface of plant material. That by itself wouldn't be nearly so bad if not for the thorns growing thicker and longer, and even that would be preferable to what they do next.

Which is snap to a 90 degree angle and then start spinning.

By the time I reach the woman, they've turned the ground into what is quite literally a blender. The few Seedlings unfortunate enough to get caught up in the move are shredded into fragments of flesh and chitin instantly. The orbs of Firmament they carry shatter, coalescing for a fraction of a second before getting sucked into the flowers still blooming beneath the spinning thorns.

I catch the woman—carefully, because I'm pretty sure I'm still moving fast enough to concuss an average human—then immediately call on the Knight Inspiration. There's a decent chance I could tank the blades with my body alone, given the effect of my Aspect Pools, but I'd rather not risk it.

Especially since the color from those flowers is beginning to bleed into the thorns. It doesn't take long before the entire possible landing surface is just a blazing, razor-sharp field of impossible color.

Thankfully, the Knight is aware enough of what's going on, and chooses to start the transformation process at my feet. The transformation still hurts, but I'm used to the process enough that I can relegate what remains of the pain to the back of my mind.

When I land, there's a series of sharp, loud bone-snapping cracks. For a single irrational moment I worry that the thorns have somehow made it through my armor, but when I look down it's quite the opposite—the thorn-blades slammed into the Knight's armored form and broke, leaving scattered shards of thorns all around me.

The Knight radiates smug satisfaction at me, and I smirk in response, though the expression isn't visible behind our helmet.

As tempting as it is to just walk back out of the Root Acolyte field, I launch myself again, shooting back through as quickly as possible. I don't want to risk them pulling out a new trick while I'm holding someone unconscious and vulnerable.

I land next to Ahkelios. "Think you can take care of her?" I ask.

"I wanted to join the fight," Ahkelios complains, though he takes the woman from me regardless, laying her carefully against a nearby wall. "Imagine what else those Root Acolytes might be able to do!" 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"I'll take care of her," Gheraa volunteers. He sounds oddly subdued. I glance at him, surprised, then give him a nod; Ahkelios cheers, clapping Gheraa on the arm.

Then we race back into the fray together.

There is, at least, one benefit of the Root Acolytes spontaneously turning themselves into a massive blender: the massive corpse of the Seedcracker is no longer blocking the path into the chamber holding the expedition team. Most of its remains have instead been blended into a fine red mist.

Granted, that's about the only benefit. The mist in question looks and smells disgusting, and the Knight transformation doesn't do anything to filter out the smell. What's worse is that the color in all those flowers are bleeding into the mist, and the wind generated from those still-spinning thorns is beginning to spread it around.

"We probably shouldn't breathe that in," Ahkelios comments helpfully.

"Probably not," I agree. "Might be a bad idea to even touch it."

The red mist is one thing. The color-bled mist flickers like a distorted version of a rainbow, emitting a variety of sickly shades; when it makes contact with the reinforced walls of the Sewer, the walls begin to crumble and shatter. It's essentially yet another barrier between us and the expedition team.

Without a word, Ahkelios and I split up, communicating instead via the Firmament bond we share. Ahkelios goes left and grabs one corner of the carpet of Root Acolytes; I go right and grab the other.

Together, we pull.

The Root Acolytes resist, of course. They've dug tiny root-tendrils into the brick, and those tendrils and squirm as we pull them free; an odd wailing sound rises from the collective swarm of plant monsters as we do so.

That sound is replaced by a loud series of cracking and popping when we slam both ends of the carpet together, smashing still-spinning thorns into one other.

When we let go, only about half of them are still alive. Credits flood into Ahkelios's Interface; I've turned off mine for the moment, not wanting the distraction. Thick gouges have been left in the middle of the massive carpet of plant matter, and more than half of the flowers are flickering weakly, color leaking out into the water beneath us.

The mist settles, just a bit. I'm surprised it hasn't spread further, but if nothing else, it seems to want to stay coherent; every time a hole gets blown through it, it tries to repair that hole.

Stolen novel; please report.

I wonder with a grimace if it's trying to turn into another monster.

At the same time, the sound of fighting on the other side of the mist wall is getting worse. I hear a sharp cry that abruptly cuts off, followed by what seems like several new weapons activating all at once; the tunnels shudder again, dust trickling down from the ceiling, and I feel them beginning to shift.

"You need to try to get through," Ahkelios says, glancing at me with worry. I nod, mentally going through my repertoire of abilities. Skills are out of the question with the Firmament saturation being as high as it is, but Inspirations don't seem to increase it, at least. Maybe if...

Before I can make a decision, I notice a distinct smell of burning plants as something hot tears through the Root Acolytes on the other side, followed by the thunk of some sort of heavy energy weapon—

—and a small shockwave clears a hole in the mist, just large enough for a person.

"Ethan!" Ahkelios shouts, pointing. I narrow my eyes, activating Firmament Sight to better peer through that hole; the walls of the chamber are beginning to undulate violently, and I realize with abrupt certainty what the Sewers is trying to do.

The monster assault has failed, in its mind. It's trying to bury them alive instead.

Before I can change my mind, I launch myself through.

The immediate cries of alarm make me wince; I'd forgotten I was still in my Knight form. Two humans, both men, immediately point what looks like scirix weaponry at me—blasters of some kind, I think. Thankfully, Novi immediately shakes her head, pushing the weapons down and away.

Good. I'm not sure I have the time to explain myself. The Sewers are beginning to shake even more violently, and the opposite end of the chamber is already starting to close.

"Get clear!" I shout. My voice is distorted by the Knight Inspiration, but it's understandable enough. Novi's eyes widen as she glances at me, then at the shaking chamber. She shouts a command and the effort to hack away at the Root Acolytes redouble.

On the other side, Ahkelios is moving even faster, cutting through them with ridiculous ease even without a sword of his own. If the situation weren't as severe as it was, I might have laughed when I realized what he did: he picked up one of the broken thorns from the Root Acolytes, and he's using that as his sword.

A perfect kind of irony. With his Concept empowering him, Ahkelios carves through them easily, even without any skills. That means all I need to do is buy them time.

The problem is that without being able to use any skills, trying to hold open a sewer tunnel is a bit of a lost cause. The Knight Inspiration on its own wouldn't give me the reach I need. Neither would its Generator Form, given that one's all about generating, controlling, and manipulating energy.

But I do have something new.

When I triggered the Strength Inspiration back in the Quiet Grove, I was taken to an empty void with no Kauku present. He'd apparently prepared the Inspirations before getting taken over by Rhoran, though—a fact I admittedly don't know what to make of—and so I still had a selection to choose from.

One was a ridiculously muscular Form that was all about pure strength. I'd rejected it immediately, in part because of its minimal utility. All that strength came at a massive cost to maneuverability and speed. The other reason I rejected it was because it looked, frankly, kind of absurd.

Another was similar to the Amplification Gauntlet, but all across my body. It was a Form that was all about force multiplication. Useful, yes, and reasonably versatile; something translatable into both strength and speed.

It was the third Form that drew me in the most, though.

Projector Form.

Chitinous, bone-like armor rearranges itself as I activate the Inspiration; throughout my armor, organic plate shifts into something that looks more distinctly artificial. A series of layered, hexagonal tiles wrap around me almost like scales.

Along my back, arms, and legs, small, semimetallic nodes form, and those nodes are the key to the Projector Form.

When I engage them, though, something unexpected happens.

In all my previous tests, the Projector Form's essential utility was that it allowed me to project my strength at a distance. Not an enormous distance, of course—it was no replacement for ranged skills—but it did essentially allow me to use basic attacks and melee skills with a much more reasonable gap between myself and my opponents.

For lack of a better word, it gives me the power to use force constructs at a limited range.

The core deepening process seems to have changed that just a bit. Something about the spinning causes Firmament to flood into the nodes much more easily than it ever has before. The second I reach out to create a construct, it practically forces itself into the projector nodes.

Six hexagonal shields spring into existence around me, blazing with more power, size, and range than I've ever been able to use before, and they each slam themselves into the chamber's walls with enough force to crack the brick.

I'd been expecting the chamber to constrict itself more than half this amount before it made contact with my shields. Instead, I'm now holding the entire passage open.

Good thing, too, because the chamber almost immediately begins to groan.

It's passed some kind of threshold. The force of the attempted closure doubles, then triples, and I grit my teeth as I strain against it. I can see the vague silhouettes of the expedition team as they try to rush out of the chamber, but not all of them have made it out, even with Ahkelios trying to clear a path for them. There are flashes of light as some kind of Firmament bomb detonates, followed by blaster shots, then another hammer shockwave.

I don't quite have the bandwidth to pay close attention, though. The chamber groans again, dust and crumbled brick pouring down from the ceiling; it can't close until I'm out of the way. For all that the Sewers are a strange, non-euclidean thing, it has its own rules to follow.

Seems like one of those rules is that change has to propagate from one end of a tunnel to the other, so as long as I'm holding it open...

A shield cracks, and I feel a corresponding sharp pain in my mind. I wince—the force constructs are connected directly to my mind. I can already tell I'm going to have a massive headache if I make it out of this.

It makes sense, given what the Sewers are. I'm technically trying to resist a massive organism the size of a city.

Spots begin to appear in my eyes. Even with the Projector Form, I can feel my muscles start to ache—all that force is being transferred from those shields directly to my limbs. I try to check on their progress again, squinting through blurred vision; one of the last members of the expedition team is rushing for the exit, looking back as if he wants to help but doesn't know how.

Just hurry, I think, groaning to myself. I can afford to die here. They can't.

But if I am going to die, I'd rather get crushed to death quickly, not slowly. Right now, it feels like I'm trying to hold up the weight of... well, of an entire city. The shields crack a little more, with a corresponding series of sharp spikes of pain in my mind—

"Ethan!"

I hear Ahkelios's call. It feels almost like it's filtering through to me from far away, and it doesn't take me long to realize that that's because it is.

The Sewers don't like my interference, apparently. It may not be able to close the chamber while I'm holding it open, but it can elongate it. Take the exit far, far away, so I can't get out before I'm crushed.

I snort. Clearly, we have different win conditions in mind.

May as well see how far I can get before the Sewers crush me, though.

The shields I'm projecting snap shut the moment I pull back my limbs. The walls, in turn, immediately try to crush me, closing around me like the jaws of a snake. I respond by switching Forms from Projector to Generator, then blast Firmament hard through my hands and legs both, hard enough to rocket through the air, straight for the exit.

When the closing tunnels manage to catch up with me, I'm close enough to the exit that I can make out the faces of the expedition team.

[You have died. You have gained 2,102 Physical points. You have gained 1,960 Astral points. You have gained 281 Firmament credits.]