Jack and I found ourselves facing off against some kind of crazy, starfish, eye-thing. Data-sampling said the creature was called a Grudge-Valvatacea. This would be the first deranged-spirit the two of us ever fought. Such creatures were generally much rarer than beasts because they were created, not born. Deranged-spirits were all either alien entities from the space between the worlds. Or they were what you got when a dead person’s core-treasure didn’t dissipate, wasn’t purified and turned into a regular artifact, and thus was able to turn into a monster.

One thing about me that drove Jack crazy was the fact that I didn’t actually like magic all that much. Thanks to my stories, I was quite good at it, but that didn’t mean anything. If I couldn’t manage to get good at magic with the support of my Idle-Clicker System, then I might have to re-think my qualifications as a form of intelligent life. Even a simple wild-dog, with barely any sapience, would be able to become an archmage, with the support of the [Tale of the Arcanist].

Being good at a thing didn’t mean you had to like it. Anyone who'd ever been forced to learn a skill because their parents thought it'd look nice on a resume, or make them "well-rounded", could attest to that. Thanks to my system I was good at a lot of things I had little to no interest in, like the building of torture devices and birdhouses. Torture devices were scary by nature and I was nowhere near creepy, nor kinky enough to have an interest in them, and I, flatly, don’t give a shit about birdhouses. The birds can build their own houses as far as I care. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t some fictional, luddite, barbarian, who was afraid of, or detested, people using unnatural powers. I was perfectly fine using my kinetic-manipulation, energy-manipulation, and matter-manipulation.

I just found proper magic...The stuff that wasn’t just reality-bending...a whole lot more fiddly and finicky than was my taste. Which Jack finds nuts, because to someone who doesn’t know what their doing, or understand the numbers that formed the data...my reality-bending was apparently even more incomprehensible. She maybe has a point there, the various formal systems of magic were invented because not everyone could raw-dog it, when it came to re-rearranging the natural flow of existence.

This is why, whenever Jack and I ran into a foe that was primarily a caster-type, I generally let her take the lead. I could deal with them if I had to, but since Jack was there, I generally didn’t have too. Jack didn’t mind “that” too much. Say what you will about the girl, Jack loved magic duels like fat dudes love fried food. Magic-duels were her jam.

“Come at me, bro!” said Jack. Posturing. One hand behind her back as she used the other hand to gesture to the creature to get it to attack.

The grudge-valvatacea cried out and unleashed an inscrutable, but clearly agitated muttering, that turned the ground beneath our feet into a boiling hot bog. Jack cast a spell that allowed her to levitate. I negated a portion of gravity’s hold on my body and hopped into the air. Jack retaliated against the grudge-valvatacea’s attack by casting a spell that sent spikes of shadow surging towards the deranged-spirit.

While Jack and the grudge-valvatacea dueled. I dealt with the gloom-urchins that were located within the grudge-valvatacea’s lair. The gloom-urchins were prickly, toddler-sized, beasts that could fire poisonous barbs and corrosive slime. I took out some throwing knives that I’d carved from stone, and enchanted to increase their sharpness. Then while staying out of Jack’s way, I used those throwing knives to snipe the gloom-urchins so they wouldn’t become a problem.

Jack’s duel with the grudge-valvatacea ended with her firing a bolt of black lightning that tore through the grudge-valvatacea’s defenses. The creature groaned and cried out as the lightning boiled it away. Then finally it vanished with a poof. Leaving only a giant net behind. No doubt, some lost soul’s core-treasure.

We waited expecting the net to turn into a crystal since in our experience and according to the books we read all monsters had a core...that powered them, and that was generally the most useful, and most magically-potent part of their bodies. Then I realized that for deranged-spirits, the core-treasure served the same function as the core-crystals of beasts. The books we’d read, and the information I’d gained from my stories told me that if we waited long enough, or purified the item, this net would transform into a regular monster-core. However, my [Tale of the Fool] warned that this would be a colossal waste of the core-treasure’s true value.

I hesitated a bit more, but then the [Tale of the Fool] gave me another of its hunches. Giving me a sense of what the wisest move to make at this moment would be.

“Uh...I can’t believe I’m saying this but...Do...Do you want to try seeing if your grimoire can absorb it?” I said.

“Huh? I can do that?! Huh, I guess...Er,...Okay. Yeah, let’s try it,” said Jack. Sounding similarly unsure and reluctant, but quickly amping herself up to giving it a shot.

She fed the fishing net to her grimoire. Jack’s [Immortal Gluttony’s Grimoire] made some unsavory crunching and slurping noises as it swallowed the other core-treasure but soon enough the net was gone. Then Jack began to groan and shiver. Clutching her head. A pair of shadowy horns appeared on her head.

“Are...Are you okay?” I said. Panicking a little wondering if I’d somehow been misled.

“Oof...Wow! Er,...I’m...I’m better than okay, I think...I feel like I could punch the world in half right now...This is bad. This could get really addictive, you know. So um, be careful when it’s your turn,” said Jack. Pulling herself together, but still breathing hard from the influx of spiritual energy.

“What’d you get from that net?” I asked.

“Uh, it looks like I got a massive boost to my resistance to water attacks. A huge jump in my earth and water affinities...and a very decent increase in my total magical capacity,” said Jack.

“Huh…” I said.

“What?” said Jack.

“Nothing,” I said. Inwardly thinking that I’d just seen the exact moment that she might have become an unstoppable destroyer of worlds if her back was pushed against the proverbial wall. Apparently, eating core-treasures gave Jack bigger boosts than eating beast cores did.

My [Tale of the Fool], and my [Tale of the Empty Archivist’s Heir], both told me that “souls” and “spirits” would probably have the same effect on her. Giving Jack massive boosts in power, in exchange for a little pain during the assimilation process. I also wondered if I’d find the effect just as intoxicating when I absorbed my first core-treasure. The Idle-Clicker system’s stories were all weirdly quiet, sensing my reluctance, but urging me to try it anyways.

*************************************************************************************************************

We’d planned on heading back to the cave after that particular hunt, but after a quick skirmish with a pack of velociraptors that had been stalking us, we ended up changing our minds and stopping mid-way at the much closer survivor camp, to catch our breaths and see how everyone was doing. Just as we were entering the camps we felt several presences rushing in our direction. I grabbed Jack and used a space-fold to teleport us out of range of our unknown attackers. Then I realized that I was probably a little too on edge after matching wits with all those clever reptilian beasts out in the wild, because my “unknown attackers” had turned out to be the survivors in the camp, led by Alina and Sigi.

“Er...Hi, guys,” said Jack. Quickly recovering from the awkward atmosphere that I’d created by teleporting, out of the reach of what turned out to be an impromptu group hug.

Alina similarly recovered. Jumping in and displaying the one set of skills that I’d yet to gain from my Idle-Clicker System, social skill. Pulling the atmosphere back together and moving past my little faux-pas like it had never happened.

“We did it! We did it, you wonderful, wonderful, kids!” said Alina. Stepping forward and sweeping both me and Jack up into her arms.

“Huh? Did what?” said Jill. Quickly wriggling out of Alina’s grip like a cat that hadn’t deigned to allow herself to be picked up at the moment.

“We were finally able to make contact with our people on the radio...and they said they finally were able to pick up our beacon signal,” said Sigi. The normally, over-serious, young mercenary was suddenly all smiles. Looking much younger, and much more at ease, than I’d ever seen him look.

“Mhm, alright, we-, well, we just bagged some velociraptors, how about some barbecue as a celebration,” I said. Stealthily bringing a couple of the beasts out of my inventory, and pretending it had been behind me all along.