277, 2/2, Jane

Jane stood with Candice behind a large boulder on a rocky wasteland. On the other side of the boulder stood the Siphon. It rose into the sky like a demonic screw the size of several skyscrapers, while the land it pierced was riven with cracks and red-colored lightning. Or at least it would be, when the scenario started up.

It wasn’t Malevolence. Only the Wizard controlled that shit, and only in small quantities. The stuff that would fill in those cracks was still Elemental Destruction, though, so getting touched by all that environmental hazard was enough to kill most people. Being anywhere near all of it was enough to kill people, but Jane and Candice were experienced enough in blending into manaspheres and spellwork that they could both survive Elemental Destruction… Most of the time.

It was that aura Jane had gotten from the unicorn that really helped; [Aura of Freedom]. That power went exceedingly well with her [Greater Prismatic Body], allowing her to do both at the same time, because of course she could. Unicorns and their inborn powers existed in the Greater Prism, after all.

All magic did.

Getting to the Siphon would still be a major problem because the Wizard would notice when Jane got within a kilometer of the Siphon, and then the real Destruction would simply appear, through Wizardry, and that wasn’t even counting Elemental Malevolence.

The Wizard only started using Malevolence within 5 kilometers of himself, and that’s when the real danger began. Jane had only ever gotten to the edge of the Siphon itself, and then the Malevolence had started coming down and they ended the Scenario and chucked the Red Wizard into some Destruction. Sitnakov had gotten much further, and then the Wizard started using some True Wizardry, which was why they had needed to end the scenario the last time Sitnakov had tried it. He had only gotten to experience the Red Wizard for 30 seconds; barely any training at all.

Jane could handle herself against Claws and Nothor beasts just fine. She was even pretty good against the Leviathans that had attacked Veird while Erick had been gone. But the actual Wizardry used here was a whole different game. Jane could withstand a lot, thanks to her [Prismatic Domain], but…

Jane was a little worried.

Candice smiled wide as she stretched some, twisting her human body back and forth and limbering up, saying, “What’cha thinkin about?”

“Domains. Power. The unhelpfulness of my Personal Script with regard to giving me all the power in the world—”

“Ha!”

Jane secured her gauntlets as she said, “Like I know how to do some of this stuff that I want the Personal Script to do. Organizing the readout is easy enough. But the original operating system was all like ‘I don’t knooooow. Do yooooooou know how to do it?’ Like yes, bitch, I can probably figure it out, but I wanted to know if you could just do it for me. But then I asked about helping me overcome a threat to the realm and she turned all helpful and white-iridescent.”

Candice smiled. “That’s who I’m working with, too. She presented you with some spell options to pursue, right?”

“I went for [Armor of Protection].”

“Yeah, me too! I’m trying to work it into my resource bars. Have you tried making a spell yet?”

“Nope.”

Candice smiled wider. “You have that [Benevolence Armor] spell, right? You should try making it again, under the influence of the Benevolence Mark. Just— Just—” She had too many words and not enough patience to say them all, so she just blurted, “Try it now!”

Jane chuckled a little, and then she remembered her spell, [Armor of Benevolence]. It was one of the better spells she had made back when the Claws were coming out of the sky and Erasing everyone on Veird that they could touch—

Oh.

Words appeared, but not in any blue box, just in the air. Or rather, just inside Jane’s vision.

Armor of Benevolence, instant, self-range, 100 mana + Variable

Conjure weightless, ethereal armor of Benevolence that wraps around your body and protects you and your things from erasure. <Effectiveness unknown, use with caution> <Primarily works against Red Lightning>

Effect multiplies when acting to help others, or to harm a threat to all.

Creates a barrier of Wizardry upon the user when the threat is great enough.

Normally, Jane could not call up her Status at all outside of the Script, and here inside the Glittering Depths they were very much not inside the Script. And she hadn’t called up her Status at all. She had accessed her Personal Script, somehow, and gotten a for-her-eyes-only readout of a spell in her soul. It read exactly the same as Jane remembered, and with her new Intelligence she was rather secure in knowing what her spell used to say. It had changed when Father had done that Benevolence thing with the fixing of the black boxes inside the descriptions of Benevolence, but everyone’s had done that change.

Jane experienced a new change, at that moment.

Other words appeared.

Power recognized as suitable for Benevolence overhaul in the face of absolute danger. Current environs suitable crucible for growth.

Quest coherence at 95%.

Applying Quest: [Armor of Protection] to [Armor of Benevolence].

Spell is now mutable.

Face your enemies and learn and grow in the face of absolute destruction!

Jane felt power thrum through her soul and a question form in her mind. Was this okay? Did she want this? Was she willing to accept this help with this spell in her soul? Jane smiled a little bit as she recognized those questions were not her own.

She mentally agreed to whatever was going to happen—

A crystal cracked and became unstable; ice became water.

And then that water poured out into the world, to wrap around Jane like a close friend. Glittering white iridescence billowed from her soul into her skin, her clothes, her armor, and her weapons, and then it settled down, to simply be a glow on the underside of her clothes, invisible to all else who might be looking.

Quest Begin: Survive a full attack from the Fake Red Wizard

Difficulty: Archmage+

Complication: Constant mana drain while adjusting [Armor of Benevolence]

Reward: [Armor of Protection]

Mp: 113,480/114,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Mana costs doubled]

Hp: 59,789/60,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Health costs doubled]

Pp: 18,991/19,000, ↑↓ [Quest Active. Psyche costs doubled]

The words vanished as Jane read them.

This all seemed… pretty great, actually?

Doubling her resource costs was a big fucking hit, but… if it actually worked? Would it work? Could it really take one of her already-made spells and then adjust it in her soul, like how Dad worked his own soul crystals on his own?

… Oh shit. That’s exactly what was happening, wasn’t it.

Jane looked at Candice, at the iridescence soaking into her body and armor, too, and at her smile. “You’ve doubled mana health whatever costs, too, don’t you.”

“Yup!” Candice pulled her sword out from its sheath and her smile turned absolutely feral. “Made this whole thing twice as dangerous! It’s fantastic!”

Jane kinda loved Candice’s kill-kill-kill attitude, so she teased, “Crazy Candice.”

Candice’s feral grin turned a little subdued. “We’re going to be in a real battle soon, Jane. Today is an experiment, but next week is… Well I hope it’s killing Oozy Stormcaller. That fucker rubs me wrong. Also his boss, you know, but that leviathan is ancient and evil. Oozy… We might be actually going up against Red Reflections of the Pantheon, too…” She looked at Jane. “You ever wondered if you could take Kirginatharp in a real fight? How about Kromolok? How about Dad? Or even a god, like Phagar?”

Jane’s heart beat hard. “No.”

Yes.

Candice nodded. “I get it. It’s dangerous to think like that. Self harmful. I get it. So don’t worry about that stuff, because I’m going to be doing that. Dad’ll be the one killing the actual Red Gods, though. I’m not that much of a fucking nutter.”

A moment passed after the declaration of Candice.

Jane and her sister got their heads in the game.

Jane breathed deep, and then she let it out, and put a hand on the hilt of her sword. She closed her eyes, and then she opened them. Game face, on. Battle ready, go. [Hunter’s Instincts] burning low, rippling her muscles with power and filling her sights and ears with deadly clarity. Helmet, on. [Greater Prismatic Body] at low power; mostly Elemental Mystical to make it cost less.

All of this gear was trash gear, because this was not an experiment with gear; it was an experiment with power versus power. Jane and Candice weren’t even spiders right now; they were just a pair of young adventurers, hands to their swords, eyes focused, ready for blood—

Wizardry Resistance: 2%

The number had ticked up.

Why?

Jane flicked her attentions to her Status and adjusted it all to the sides and away, out of her sight. It changed while she was in the middle of moving it, the numbers swirling and adding resons to the list.

MP: 99% / HP: 99% / PP: 99% / <Res: 98 / WR: 2%>

There was something going on between resons and Wizardry Resistance.

Jane would keep an eye on it.

“Ready?” Jane asked Candice.

Candice slammed down the visor on her helmet, her orange eyes glittering brightly in the slit. She hissed, whispered, “Let’s fucking go.”

Jane announced to the sky, “Ready!”

The air was still. The void overhead unmoving in the silence preceding the scenario. The boulders all around were simply where they were; resting in the wasteland. And then, beyond the boulder next to Jane and Candice, something squealed loud as fuck and shattered the chill of the desolation.

Rebecca’s voice sounded through the red-sparking air, “Scenario starting in 5, 4, 3…”

She went silent.

And the world beyond the boulder, around the Siphon so very large and dangerous, ripped to life. The world broke in that ripping. The ground shook violently. Boulders, which were just sitting there, vibrated into the air, and then they remained hovering in the air. The Siphon Battle took place in a land of suspended gravity, because even the gravity was being drawn into the Siphon and fed to the world overhead.

This was an asteroid field and the Siphon was a gravity well in the center.

Jane held onto the air with shadows, hiding behind the boulder they had started near. Candice held on to the other side.

The Siphon churned to full life.

It was one of the loudest things that Jane had ever heard, and then that sound was dwarfed by the crackle of bright red lightning; Elemental Destruction masquerading as Malevolence.

Jane chanced a peek out from behind the boulder.

The Siphon was a 10 kilometer tall monstrosity of metal that twisted into the ground, digging the ground up and tossing the ground into the air. The broken ground fell into crushing compartments in the base of the Siphon, where Elemental Destruction played the part of Malevolence, consuming the stone and transforming it into mana. That mana flowed up through the Siphon, where it hit a whole bunch of stuff inside and then became a softer scream of red that shot into the sky, across the heavens, to the planet beyond.

Jane had thought it was an amazing thing to witness, but her bar for amazing things was rapidly rising these days—

There, at the top of the Siphon.

A red dot floated around the top, orbiting around the lightning fountain. That was the Red Wizard.

What lay between Jane and the Siphon might have looked like a floating doomscape of ripping red lightning and boulders, with only small ways to traverse the land by hopping from rock to rock, but it was actually certain death for anyone not capable of hiding in the shadows and erasing their presence completely. The Red Wizard was in full view right now, and he could see Jane and Candice at this very moment.

Even when he floated beyond the Siphon, he was still in full view of the entire land around this space. Just a little less so. Enough to sneak past without being seen, but only because of the parameters of the scenario.

Candice charged ahead anyway, well before the Red Wizard passed out of sight, becoming a shadow that extended tiny streamers of blackness that she made purposefully jagged, to mimic the breaking of the land. She hopped under her own jagged blackness like that, and she made it to the next boulder. The Red Wizard didn’t blast her to dust with a flicker of Red from 22-ish kilometers away like he usually did to obviously magical effects within his line of sight.

So that still worked.

Candice had improved her hiding capability, eh?

Jane and Candice were 20 kilometers from the base of the Siphon, so hiding usually worked, but that tactic stopped working altogether at around 5 kilometers to the silver drill. The Red Wizard had absolute vantage over his entire domain, but the stimuli that he responded to reached a threshold that Jane and Candice simply couldn’t hide under once they got close enough. If they managed to make it all the way, hidden the whole time, then they had successfully evaded a Wizard’s senses, which was quite an accomplishment in itself.

In a real battle, they likely wouldn’t be hiding at all, but they needed all the training they could get against this Red Wizard, because once this scenario was used once, it was scrapped. They didn’t want to deal with some tragic person, after all.

Jane followed alongside Candice, making her own way through the floating field of boulders, her tendrils of shadow turning absolutely jagged. The two of them practically jolted to the undersides of floating boulder after boulder. Both of their shadows matched the general shapes of the Elemental Destruction ripping through the land below. Soon, Jane switched to [Greater Prismatic Body] and disguised herself with actual Elemental Destruction. Candice did the same. Rapidly, Jane and Candice matched pace with the red lightning ripping up the land below, following it forward.

Ten kilometers passed in about a minute.

Jane almost never glanced at her Status inside a dungeon, instead relying on the senses of self and environment that she had honed over many years of this sort of job. Also, dungeons usually didn’t have the capability to show off a Status, so that made not caring about her Status real easy, and checking one’s own core for the ‘feel’ of the mana inside was a better indicator of what was left in the tank, anyway.

Jane’s core felt fine, but she had a Status now, right there, just beyond her vision.

MP: 97% / HP: 99% / PP: 99% / <Res: 98 / WR: 3%>

Yeah. That tracked. It was about 3,000 mana to work [Greater Prismatic Body] for a single minute, without taking Elemental Mystical into the equation to cheapen costs, and Jane was running double costs thanks to this Benevolent Mark Quest, so that about canceled each other out. Adding to that, Jane had about 500 mana coming in per minute from her Darkness. So she had around 110,500 Mana left.

… This was so much different than normal.

Jane kinda wanted to gasp at how much different.

Usually, she came into a dungeon with 10,000 mana, since that’s what she could hold onto in her core. Since she was disconnected from the Script, that would be all she would have, except for what she naturally regenerated herself; so 500 mana per minute. She would have to ration her resources a lot, usually between [Greater Prismatic Body] and [Prismatic Domain], manually casting all of her magic and being as conservative as possible. She’d be weaving a lot of Elemental Mystical into her workings, too, to make everything cheaper. That’s how it normally went.

But this was a test experiment for the Personal Script, too, and the Personal Script said she had 97% resources, at over 110,000 mana remaining, and she was regaining 8.3 per second, because she had stuffed all her regen into Mana…

And it was all working exactly as it said it was working.

Holy shit.

Her father had really multiplied her mana pool by over 10. By eleven-ish, actually. Jane didn’t really believe it until that moment right there, when she was in battle and on any other normal day, she’d have been down to 6500 mana left, out of 10,000 starting.

If that was literally all that the Personal Script did, then it would already be a miracle. But it did more than that.

In that realization, Jane felt something.

She felt it.

Here on the edge.

Here, between Destruction and Wizards, Jane felt a path forward that did not exist, and which still didn’t exist, but she had been given a sword when all she had ever been able to make herself was a knife. And now, she would create. Carving, cutting. Slashing. Slaying.

She wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

They were five kilometers from the Siphon.

It was a metal Yggdrasil-trunk and the top was a burning conflagration of Red. The Red Wizard was a dot in the sky, like a star orbiting a geyser.

Candice broke cover first, experiencing the same thing Jane was. She turned from red Destruction into a flying woman with arms wide open, laughing at the enemy, flying straight up and for the Red Wizard. She roared, “Hey, loser! Come and hi—”

The world Ended in Malevolence where Candice had stood, t-posing at the enemy.

A hole drilled through everything.

And then the Ending moved, slashing back and forth, erasing the rocks and dust and even the Red Elemental Destruction that flowed through all that ground. The Ending trailed up and right and then flashed down, like it was chasing something. And it was. Jane saw it now. Spots of White among the void, like gathering sparks—

Wild, free laughter filled the air as Candice reformed out of white light in front of the erasure, like sparks coming together and becoming flesh, revealing that all her armor and clothes and weapons were gone. What remained was a woman wreathed in orange brilliance. She had been Unmade, and then she wasn’t.

And then she stopped running and her sword shone like the sun. With a great swing she batted away the erasure— And her sword absolutely crumbled and she almost muttered ‘oh shit’ but she didn’t have time for that. She kept running, dodging sudden erasures here and there, dodging something that she could see and that no one else could even envision. She pulled out a shield—

She angled her shield and then batted away something—

Brilliant, black-Red lightning splashed away like scattered molten metal, sparking in the air as it dissipated into infinity. Its presence sent an illumination across the land, like the brief reveal of a spotlight, revealing ten thousand more [Red Bolt]s coming for her. They had been invisible, and perhaps they hadn’t really existed at all until that moment. But now Jane saw the Wizardry-based attacks of the Red Wizard.

Jane wasn’t about to let herself be upstaged that easily, and Candice needed some breathing room.

Jane lifted from the tumble of Elemental Destruction and rock and pulling gravity, facing death head on, and telling it, “Take your best shot, you fucking bas—”

Red.

Jane somehow found herself holding back the world with all her strength, [Prismatic Domain] empowering [Greater Prismatic Body] empowering [Prismatic Domain] in a churning rush of all the colors of the rainbow, but especially white. Iridescent white glittered, forming a prow against the power flowing at Jane, allowing her to do something that she had never been able to do before. Survive. The Red was filled with the demand that Jane not exist anymore, but Jane understood that demand, and told it to fuck off.

Somehow, Jane had been reduced to her core and her desire to live, and that was it.

Jane had no eyes to see, no senses to feel, but she saw words anyway.

WR: 4%

WR: 12%

WR: 17%

WR: 38%

WR: 78%

MP: 88% / HP: 94% / PP: 97% / <Res: 63 / WR: 100%>

When Wizardry Resistance hit 100% the Red cleared from her vision and Jane found what remained of herself several kilometers away from where she had taken the first hit. She was a glittering white core. Less than a body, more of an idea. Her aura still held around herself, prismatic power forming a prow that pushed back on the Red, but that prow was shredded in turn. Those shreds formed white sparks that folded around her core, like white fireflies returning home. Power filled her, and Jane pulled her body together herself, right in front of the oncoming Red.

She could see the attack now. She already knew what she was going to see, because she knew how this battle program worked and they were still at low levels of variance from the Red Wizard, but she was still surprised to be able to actually see. Wizardry made the attack impossible to parse, but now Jane had some sort of Wizardry of her own.

The attack was a thin Beam of Red, not even as thick as three fingers. A ‘simple’ [Malevolent Destruction Beam] spell wreathed in Wizardry that made the Wizard’s call to Destruction simply how the world was; that Jane was harried by this magic and unable to do anything about it. That was how the Red Wizard ‘Erased’ people with a simple flick of his fingers.

They were in a dungeon, though, and the dungeon rules overrode the real danger of Erasure down here—

Words appeared. Jane read them without reading them, for she felt their effects a lot more than words could convey.

[Armor of Protection] achieved!

Armor of Protection.

You are you.

Automatic activation upon experiencing hostile Wizardry. Upon achieving 100% Wizardry Resistance, Armor of Protection fully activates for a minimum of 5 mana per second, protecting you against Wizardry-based attacks. Indirect protection is less expensive than direct combat. Will drain Resons if Mana is insufficient. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

A chime sounded and Jane was still getting run down by the Red Beam, but then dark blue armor layered across her entire body and a sword of the same material appeared in her right hand. A shield appeared in her left. Everything glittered bright white and also blue. She slammed her shield into the beam and the beam Broke like so much ended Wizardry.

Bright white letters appeared in her sight.

Bonus Quest: Survive

Difficulty: Wizard

Complication: Constant mana drain while adjusting [Armor of Benevolence]

Reward: [???]

Candice was already flying forward, through the sky like a tracer round, aiming at the top of the silver Siphon, while darker Red lights swarmed her like angry bees. She batted the Red bees away, splashing them apart like so many Red-Spark-filled water balloons—

The Red Wizard pulsed at the top of the Siphon, like a supernova released from a distant star. Red crashed outward in a thick wave of power. Candice stood her ground and she did her best to deflect the Red Bolts that swarmed, but she was overwhelmed. The Bolts struck at her shield because she whipped around fast enough to do that, but that shield began to crumble. Her sword broke three times, getting shorter and shorter as she slashed away three Bolts.

Jane moved to her side, barely getting there before the Red Wave, using her sword to slash through the remaining Bolts attacking Candice—

Jane realized a few things in that moment of slashing apart the Red Bolts, in preparation to weather the Wave with Candice. The Red Wizard had broken containment when no one was looking, because those Bolts were not particularly strong, and yet they were wrecking her sword. They had already wrecked Candice’s protections. They were not simple Wizardry. Jane’s contact with the Beam that had been attacking her was nothing like what was attacking Candice.

These ‘Bolts’ were works of magical art.

[Dispel], [Anti-Force] Tricking Magic, Elemental Destruction, some sort of shredding intent and anti-Metal magics. Yes, there was Wizardry in there to tie it all together —somehow Jane could sense it through contact with her sword— but it was way, way beyond what the Red Wizard should have been capable of doing.

And then the Red Wave was there.

Jane and Candice huddled together, reaching into the Red with dual auras and Domains, forming a prow. All of Jane’s senses turned White as the thin Wave became a deep ocean, completely surrounding Jane and Candice, ripping at their Domains and their Prismatic power. [Greater Prismatic Body] did what it did best. It transformed as needed, becoming what it needed to be in order to survive and thrive in the coming apocalypse, but Jane and Candice both still needed to direct it.

It seemed that the Intelligence Stat was working well, though.

[Dispel]s were met with Elemental Destruction of Jane and Candice’s own. Tricking Magic was tricked into splashing against Tricking Magic of its own. Elemental Lava melted Elemental Metal, and Armor of Protection wreathed everything in White, from Jane and Candice’s combined prow, to their blue and orange armors.

And then Jane roared and shoved her shield into the Red—

The ocean parted—

A horn blared.

Jane felt her father’s presence before he actually moved. She looked up at the Red Wizard.

And then White lightning arced out of nowhere and slagged the top three kilometers of the Siphon, along with the Red Wizard.

White flashed, and all the Red drained from the world.

Words appeared writ large across the sky.

SCENARIO ENDED

“Fuck!” Candice said, scowling at the sky, wielding a sword in her hand larger than her entire body. “Come on! We could have taken him, Dad!”

Not fast enough, though, Jane thought, as the Siphon continued to melt from the White Lightning strike.

Metal splashed across the wasteland.

Dad’s voice carried on the void, “I’m not about to commit a crime against civilization by letting a malevolent Wizard be created —even if he would supposedly be instantly depowered— and you both got double advancements of that armor thing you got going on anyway. The experiment was a success, and decoupling the Wizard from the Dungeon wasn’t working. He reached 65% coherence.”

Candice groaned out, “FUCK!”

Jane said, “Then that means you get to poke at us with Wizardry, Dad.”

Candice yelled at the sky, “Yeah!”

Silence stretched across the inert Third Floor of the Glittering Depths.

And then Erick’s voice came back, “… Fine.”

Candice whooped.

Dad said, “We’ll do, like, forced eye-color changes, or something, and you can try to resist them.”

Candice called out, “Don’t want to strain yourself! I understand. You’re just too busy.”

Dad appeared in the air in front of Candice, saying, “Pink.”

Candice turned the most vibrant colors of Pink that Jane had ever seen.

For a moment, there was silence.

And then Candice looked at herself. She looked at her hands, her armor, her fingernails. All was brightest pink. And then she focused inward and her [Greater Prismatic Aura] was trying to come out, but it was also brightest pink… and kinda rainbowy. Candice scoffed. “What the—” She went stone-faced serious. “I can solve this.”

Dad smiled. “I have complete faith in you. Here, let me help you learn more: Chartreuse.”

Candice turned shit green.

“SHIT GREEN?!” Candice exclaimed.

Jane tried not to snort.

While Dad and Candice reenacted the fairys of Sleeping Beauty scene all on their own, Jane glanced at the readout from her Status.

Quest Complete!

[???] achieved!

[Armor of Protection] → [Regalia of Protection]

You are you.

Stolen story; please report.

Always active in the background. Always at 100% Wizardry Resistance. Regalia of Protection drains 1 mana per second upkeep. Automatic negation of Wizardry below <Store Manager> level. You will take damage to your Mana before you take damage to yourself to protect yourself from Wizardry. Summon your full Regalia for 100 mana to mitigate even more damage. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

It felt pretty good. Great, even. But also fucking exhausting. That tiny bit of a ‘battle’ had proven 10 times over why Jane had needed something more in order to hang with the big boys, and she had gotten it. All it had cost her was… Ouch. That Status, tho.

MP: 51% / HP: 58% / PP: 58% / <Res: 0 / WR: 100%>

Jane switched to the normal view, and got more accurate information.

Mp: 58,761/114,000, ↑↓ [+8.3, -1 <Regalia Upkeep>]

Hp: 35,361/60,000, ↑↓ [+0,-0]

Pp: 11,177/19,000, ↑↓ [+0,-0]

Resons: 0/100

Oh yeah. Jane saw the problem. When the Personal Script first initialized Jane had felt like absolute shit until she had gotten a few resons under the belt. That ‘0’ right there is why she felt so damned tired. Defending against the Wizard had really taken that much out of her? Shit.

Jane adjusted her Status to fund all of her regen into resons, and as soon as 3 seconds passed, she had generated 25-ish mana which made 2 resons, with another one almost fully generated in that third second. Jane breathed out, relieved, and then she adjusted her Status back to how it had been originally.

Mp: 58,807/114,000, ↑↓ [+4.9, -1 <Regalia Upkeep>]

Hp: 35,364/60,000, ↑ [+2.5, -0]

Pp: 11,179/19,000, ↑ [+1.5, -0]

Resons: 3/100 [+.1 = +.01, -0]

Candice, floating in radiant brown armor, asked Jane, “I got [Armaments of Protection]. How about you?”

Dad must have moved on.

“[Regalia of Protection]. So slightly different.” Jane mentally commanded her newest spell to fill the air in front of her… Which took 1 mana, according to her Status. “It takes a mana to display Status?”

Candice didn’t answer. She was reading, her eyes going wide as she giggled semi-maniacally. “This is great! Mine is basically the same.”

[Armaments of Protection]

You are you.

Always active in the background. Always at 100% Wizardry Resistance. Armaments of Protection drains 1 mana per second upkeep. Automatic negation of Wizardry below <New Hire> level. You will take damage to your Mana before you take damage to yourself to protect yourself from Wizardry. Summon your full Armaments for 100 mana, and gain an edge that cuts through Wizardry. Will break if you have nothing left to give.

Jane tried to pull the description into herself, like she could with any blue box from the Script, and nothing happened, as she asked, “It cost you a mana to display that, too, right?”

Candice paused and then she looked in the air as she conjured a good hundred spell descriptions and other junk, filling the air with brown-colored words. “Oh yeah. That’s a mana a pop. I never noticed that.” She wiped a hand through the mess of glowing words, ignoring them as she asked Jane, “Do you think we can make more stuff like this? I want [Absolute Annihilation]— or [Wizard Beam]!”

“I don’t know… But…”

Jane felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since she had come to Veird and first experienced the Script, full of unknown possibilities. Not since the first time she had stepped into her first dungeon. It had been a long time since either of those events, and even longer since she had picked up a stick as a kid and pretended it was a sword.

Jane had learned almost everything she could through experimentation and Dungeons, always struggling to keep up with her father’s power, always falling short and needing to explore side avenues of strength in order to find the way forward once again.

But this Personal Script…

Jane floated in the absent gravity of the Third Floor of the Glittering Depths, surrounded by scattering, molten metal that floated in the sky like a million tiny suns, her body surrounded by blue [Conjure Armor] that wasn’t [Conjure Armor] at all, and she saw the path forward to the future. A small glimpse. A chink in an impossible wall, an impossible crack opened that she could walk through, if she kept her wits about her, and leveraged every strength she already knew to widen that gap even further.

It was a gap that she could use to save the world.

Words appeared.

Reson cap improved!

100→ 276

Jane chuckled at that.

Candice asked, “What?”

“We’re going to save this world, Candice.” Jane said, “Us. You and me and the others. Dad is going to be involved, but we’re going to be the ones to kill Red gods and Red archliches, and copies of ourselves that were twisted to Malevolence, that are going to try and tear us down in ways we cannot imagine.”

Candice’s wild enthusiasm burned hotter, and deeper, as her wild grin turned to a quiet smirk. “Yeah. We are—” She glanced at the air. “Oh! My reson cap went up!”

Jane smiled. And then she teased, “Still got a shit-brown mana-color.”

“I’m working on it!”

– – – –

Half-asleep, Jane opened her eyes to a white room, with a white hologram of herself standing before her.

Benevolence said, “Great job! That worked out very well. What can I help you with?”

“I want answers. A lot of them. And maybe an adjustment to [Regalia of Protection].”

Benevolence nodded. “I can help you with questions and answers. Be forewarned that my answers will attempt to lead you down a path toward the greatest good for all and every individual. If you are good with that, then we can proceed, otherwise I would suggest you return to the Conglomeration version of myself. Your Regalia can be altered by me as needed, as I deem necessary. Your Regalia can be altered by you, however you wish, if you can alter it and not have it collapse upon you.” She added, “I am afraid, though, that I have done as much as I can for you at this time with regard to spellwork. Would you like to see your [Regalia of Protection] spell?”

“… Sure.”

Benevolence lifted a hand and a cluster crystal of light and power and rainbows coalesced. It was a confusing jumble of angles and planes and edges and softer curves, all of which seemed both frozen in time with itself and constantly moving inward and outward. It almost hurt to look at, but this was a space inside Jane’s soul, so it actually just hurt to be around. That pain was nothing that Jane couldn’t handle, but she did have to struggle to stay within the half-dream—

Jane blinked, and she realized she was fully awake.