“Celly... Quit screwing with me. Come on. Tardigradas are unkillable! I saw you get arrowed right through the lung and live!” I gripped her body. She did not wake, did not bite my hand.

“You know what? Fine. Sleep. Relax. Maybe you just need time... time to recover,” I couldn't stop babbling desperately as tears flowed from my eyes, couldn't stop being terrified that I lost Celes forever. Absolute despair overwhelmed me and I disconnected away from reality, folded away into a deep corner of my mind, where the death echoes danced whisper-singing of murder and vengeance.

As Ash completely broke down emotionally from the potential loss of her first real friend, I took complete control of the situation with my rational, analytical mind. I had already lost everything with the collapse of my civilization and I didn’t want to lose Celes either. However, for my Pharmacist-self, the entire situation was more akin to a surreal dungeon and dragons game.

I’ve even contemplated how all of us would join the Adventurers Guild, buy some nice tools and armour and delve into the deep to discover innumerable alien worlds and bring back fantastic or quirky treasures. In terms of a dungeon party Mr. Murr would be our tank and Celes - the singing bard. I would take the position of a wizard and wear a silly hat and Ariana would be our morally dubious rogue.

Alas, my excellent dungeon-delving plans have been derailed by the fact that this was real life and we needed to gain power before our dangerous enemies ground us into dust. Maybe I could finally go on some exciting dungeoneering after the Deathstorm Convergence? Not that being a Baroness of the Gold city wasn’t an exciting prospect of opportunities - I simply disliked the potential social traps it would present to me. I really wasn’t a social creature and preferred to lurk in the background at parties, clinging to the nearest available cat or hiding behind my phone screen. Internet friends were a lot easier to deal with.

Getting back to the present, I decided to examine Celes for signs of life. Biologically she didn’t have a pulse and she wasn’t breathing, but that likely didn’t mean much when she was a creature from planet Dune or whatever. I pushed Qi into my eyes, peering across her body. There was no Qi at all in Celes, at least not on the outside. Her Dantian was completely torn away by whatever the hell the blasted poison dart contained. It was like the Celesteel Kiss curse, but far worse. I opened her mouth and looked inside. Her tongue and teeth had no Qi either. Damnation.

From what I understood, the real Celes - the core, Tardigrada part of her, was sleeping somewhere deep inside the currently dead organic shell. I wiped tears away from my face and turned to field medic Lazarus.

“Do you have a steel knife?”

Lazarus nodded.

“Give it to me,” I ordered. The surgeon was quick to respond, handing me a knife from his bag. I was impressed with how the knife looked. It was a relatively-modern scalpel! Damn. The Barbers really were using, replicating select knowledge from the dead city.

The next issue I had to consider was where to cut Celes to find the Tardigrada. I had no idea how big the creature was and where it was located. For all I knew, the Tardigrada could have been inside the brain of Celes or her chest - both of these spots were relatively safe in terms of being surrounded by bones. I thought about how a parasite could control an entire human realistically in terms of anatomy and how the Magistrate asked Copperpenny to cut off Celes’ neck to end her.

It had to be attached to the spine! I pulled the celesteel armour off Celes, turned my geisha friend over and made an incision at the 3rd cervical vertebrae. I sliced through the muscles on her neck without fear, I knew that she could repair these without an issue simply by sucking out my Dantian.

There!

Beneath the semispinalis and splenius capitis, instead of the red muscles and white tendons sat something completely alien - strands of pure, matted darkness. In the year 2014 Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom invented Vantablack, a class of super-black coating that absorbed 99.96% of visible light. It was a coating made up of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays. Whatever alien composition the Tardigrada was made from, it was akin to Vantablack carbon nanotube arrays, perfect camouflage for being absolutely invisible in dark places.

I peered at the alien strands with my all-scanning eyes. The Qi in them was even darker! I had no idea how it was possible, but thanks to the fractal array inside of my brain I was able to discern black Qi within the pure black exoskeleton structure that made up the Tardigrada.

Unlike my own Qi which sang, danced and flared with brilliant color and life, the Qi of the Tardigrada was black and still. It was there, but it didn’t seem like it was moving at all. Celes was alive, just asleep, suspended. At least... the Tardigrada part of her was. I touched the pure-black strand with my finger and poured my Qi into it.

The rainbow of life-energy flooding into the black strand made it come alive. The exoskeleton bit suddenly moved, instantaneously wrapped itself around my finger like a little worm. It felt cold, not an icy cold but… otherworldly. I couldn't even begin to describe the texture of the thing that touched my finger. It was akin to a void in Qi, an inversion of it into the otherness.

I understood it then. The vibration wave of Qi inside of the Tardigrada was incredibly wide, like the most extremely low-frequency radiation. If I had to evaluate it scientifically, it was at an oscillation wavelength far, far below that of radio waves… a 100 million times the normal wavelength range of human Qi that existed on Lord Boundless.

I knew that generating long wavelength EM was trivially easy. Detecting them, however, was extraordinarily difficult, as the energy had to be proportional to the frequency. Detecting something of very low frequency required extremely sensitive equipment. I knew that the theoretical limit for long wavelengths was the size of the universe itself.

I wondered if the Tardigrada’s Qi oscillation was the size of the multiverse. Perhaps it was limitless. Maybe there was a multiverse of distant worlds within Lord Boundless all tied together like an impossible knot. Could I cut this multiverse gordian knot apart, end a god? Did I want to break everything, deprive our world of magic, of alien life like Celes?

No.

I pulled Qi from Lazarus and Glendaria and poured it into my Tardigrada. I heard them choke and turned my head in their direction. I dispassionately observed their Dantians turning gray as I reaped life out of the traitors and gave it to my friend. Qi poured into the void Dantian of the tardigrada, disappearing within. Celes did not wake, her heart did not restart.

I needed more power. I couldn't let go of the cold, limp body of my friend as the Tardigrada’s vantablack tendril clung to my finger, eating at my Qi and refusing to let go. It was time to reap more lives.

“Ari, take my ring and bring me more men. It’s time to make more oaths!” I commanded my fiancee. Arianna nodded, grabbed the Citadel Key off me and walked off with determination.

. . .

One princess, seven servants, one bodyguard, one Magistrate and thirty three Citadel garrison warriors. Forty three people were now permanently bound to me by their Dantians. It would be very hard for them to escape this oath, difficult to redirect it without my notice… since the Pharmacist kept track of where they were and what they were doing.

I glanced at my hand.

[Ash Sparks-Manning] [Baroness LV 2]

[42 drones] [1 mate]

[Observer LV 15]

[Dantian Devourer LV 5]

[Human female spawn] - [Age - 16.48 years old]

[1st weapon - Ocular Scanning LV 19]

[2nd weapon - Death Filter LV 9]

[3rd weapon - Servitor Phantom Pharmacist LV 9]

Hum. I was experiencing explosive growth by consuming the Dantains of my fellow men. I had definitely found a big loophole in the system, an ever-growing parabola of power. Cultivators had to murder countless beasts and meditate away for hundreds of years to get results! All I did was halfway fake-marry a bunch of people. I wonder if this added to my list of horrible sins against the cult mandates and made me extra-cursed or something.

I noticed a new addition next to my regal title. Drones, eh? I wondered if the System decided to perceive me as some sort of a Queen bee. It wasn’t exactly wrong. I did command my ‘drones’ to do my bidding as Baroness. I subtracted the “weapons” numbering line away because it seemed pointless.

The Mate line obviously referred to Arianna. She was technically my co-queen bee aka the apoidea executive of our lovely Citadel hive, since she could draw Qi from me and I could draw power from the drones. My system stats would definitely grow as I learned to scan myself better.

Drawing power from all forty two of my ‘drones’ and pushing it into the Tardigrada still didn’t manage to wake up Celes. I was starting to get irate with her slowness. I wondered if the name Tardigrada came from the system and then my mind clicked as I translated the title into English and back again into Aeiiznunmmnkk.

Of course! How did I miss this earlier? Tardigradum aka "slow walker" was a name given to the microscopic ‘water bear’ or ‘moss piglets’, an eight-legged, segmented, micro-animal discovered by a German zoologist sometime around 1777.

The microscopic water bears are a fascinating species since they are able to survive complete global mass extinction events such as gamma-ray bursts or large meteorite impacts. It’s a species that's able to endure ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, extremely cold temperatures close to absolute zero and the vacuum of outer space. It made sense that the System’s gibberish fractals translated into the name ‘Tardigrada’!

The Qi I poured into my beastly friend didn’t stay within her alien body. It started to dance around it, above the pure-black, nearly static Qi. I saw as muscles, ligaments and millions of other cells around the void-colored exoskeleton of the Tardigrada became saturated with Qi. The little black strand let go of my finger and the cut fused itself shut. I exhaled. Success.

“Celes?” I whispered.

No response. Argh! Whatever. Maybe she really does need a nap.

I looked back at my new, small army.

“Captain, I want my men armoured and armed with celesteel. Raid the storage areas and the catacombs.”

“You know, it’s called a noble metal for a reason. The guards aren’t allowed to bear it,” Arianna commented.

I squinted at her. “Do you think I care?”

“It is tradition…” She muttered.

I turned to my men. “I declare you all as my personal guard. From this moment each of you is ennobled with the title of the Radiant Knights of Serenity! Celesteel yourselves up.”

“There might not be enough for everyone,” Arianna said.

I rolled my eyes. “If there’s not enough, divide it amongst yourselves.”

“What’s even the point? There’s a reason why this type of armour use was discontinued six centuries ago. It’s bulky and will get in the way of the transformations.” She added.

“What transformation? We’ve cut off all of their servitors,” I replied, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Ah, right. My bad.” Arianna tiredly rubbed her broken wrist.

“Lazarus - collect the beast core shards for me in a pouch. I’m going to need them.” I ordered. My field medic went off to pick up the beast core shards from the floor.

“Is it not wise to get them repaired?” Arianna blinked. “Our warriors are stronger when they are transformed into their beastly forms.”

“In the long term… sure, but we do not have the time. I have a war to win, today.” I explained. “This isn’t a war of attrition, Ari. We have exactly 20 C-beats to take the city and we need to make a lot of unexpected, quick moves. I believe it’s time for some good old Blitzkrieg.”

“Say what now?” The ginger princess blinked, not understanding the world.

“Glendaria! Pick up Celes,” I commanded, ignoring Arianna’s confused look. “Let's go check on our esteemed Magistrate.”