“Let me get this straight,” Anda said. “Marcus thinks your ability to be Outside and Inside at the same time could upset the entire balance of modern society, and cause the clans to go to war over who gets to control you?”

“He didn’t put it that way exactly. But yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

Anda looked skeptical. “Really.”

“Something to do with the way Alchemy gets translated to the Outside. Only a sufficiently experienced alchemist would see the possibility, but he was pretty certain.” She shrugged, “The thing is, it doesn’t change anything. If the clans really knew what I can do, and you and Attaboy too, potentially, we would already be a huge source of disruption. Speaking of that, how are you doing with the bone bugs?”

Anda flashed a big smile. “Unbelievable! By the end of the month, I may have completed my little toe!”

“Yeah, it’s going to take a while,” Lilijoy agreed. “It might make more sense for me to build enough for all of us. I can cultivate continuously and make far more than you or Attaboy.”

“Did I hear my name?” Attaboy said. He rolled off the bench seats where he had been stationary for the past few hours. Lilijoy assumed he had been cultivating or Inside. “I like the sound of that. I’ve got way too many bugs to build as it is. That heat limit is brutal.”

Lilijoy had been quite stubborn, refusing to share her Stage Two methods with the others. Anda seemed just as happy to put it off, but Attaboy kept finding ways to express his impatience to Lilijoy, none of them particularly subtle. At times, it seemed as if his dual nature was channeling the worst of Atticus’ sense of entitlement and Attaboy’s stubbornness.

It didn’t matter though. Not when she could move five feet and wrap her arms around her brother. Now that they had finally reunited in person, it had only taken seconds for Lilijoy to verify the biological relationship. It wasn’t any kind of surprise, but it allowed some part of her to relax, to accept the growing differences between them.

“That’s why we’re heading north as soon as we can,” she said in reply to Attaboy’s implied complaint.

“On a blimp. That we don’t have.”

She was pretty sure he insisted on calling their potential transportation a blimp just to get on her nerves. Or possibly Anda’s. He did have a good point about not having one though.

“We’ll get it sorted in Mudport,” Anda said. “The Asian clans use it as their primary hub to the continent, so there's lots of airship activity there. I have someone working on it. In the meantime, we can find a place outside of Guayaquil to settle for a little while.”

They were traveling through the former country of Ecuador, a territory now controlled by the Corp, rather than any particular clan. The city of Guayaquil served as something of a regional headquarters for the organization that ruled the clans, and thus the world, and had become the largest center of trade and diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, that also made it the hub of corruption and black market dealings as well. Anda had told them it was the only truly modern city on the continent and had to be seen to be believed, and then refused to say more.

Mudport was a satellite city of sorts to Guayaquil, a teeming port for oceangoing vessels and enormous airships, post-tribulation construction built on land revealed by the receding oceans. According to Anda, South America was a backwater in the eyes of the Asian clans, but they were always eager to trade for those specialties they were unable to produce themselves.

“How much longer?” Attaboy asked. “I have a few things to take care of Inside.”

“We’re almost through the mountains,” Anda replied. “After that, we’re in neutral territory, and the terrain is nicely graded, so six, maybe seven hours.”

“Perfect,” Attaboy said, moving back to the bench he had occupied for most of the past two days.

“Shouldn’t you be cultivating?” Lilijoy said. “You’ve barely started with the skin bugs.”

Attaboy waved a hand at her. “If someone would help me develop Stage Two, I’d already be done,” he said.

Lilijoy let that slide; she could understand his frustration, and she knew he didn’t, couldn’t, understand what it had been like to have her identity torn, squashed and repeatedly mangled to get to her current status. She could only hope that there would be less traumatic ways available for him when they got to Taos.

All right, little bone bugs, she said to herself. Let’s see what you’ve been doing.

Bone augmentation was fascinating, and tricky. Not only bones needed refinement, but also ligaments and tendon attachment points, plus all the workings of the joints. Fortunately, the bone bugs had the versatility to play many roles programmed into them, and an inherent awareness of their location relative to one another and her body. This meant that she needed to do little more than supervise the initial stages.

The tricky part was determining which parts of the skeleton to augment when. There was a transition period, during which the bugs migrated into the bone tissue and began to replace it, while seeking each other out to form an initial matrix of cross-linked carbon fibers. During this time the bone was extremely weak, and worse, the places where tendons attached were unable to bear any strain. As far as she could tell, it would take a minimum of a day for small bones, up to as much as a week or more for the largest. Never mind the vast number of bugs involved.

Anda had told her that complete skeletal replacement could cost as much as three million credits, requiring hundreds of infusions and years of convalescence. The bone bug market was sprawling and complicated; many clans had learned the formula, but the various Inside resources required were not easy to acquire, with several clans holding virtual monopolies on one ingredient or another. Lilijoy was very grateful she could make her own.

Like Anda, she had started with her little toe, to get a feeling for how the process would unfold before starting anything more vital. The connection between her system and the bone bugs was simple, even crude, and Lilijoy could already tell that she would work on upgrading that aspect before progressing further. At the moment, she could tell that the distal phalanx, the bone at the very tip of her toe, had completed the initial stage, structural scaffolding, and was in the process of filling in. Depending on her desires, she could opt for more or less density, resiliency and so forth. The internals of the bone, the marrow, could be maintained or discarded as she willed.

She was still mulling how best to document her progress, though for the time being, she had settled on a simple percentage scale, which she could break down into body regions and individual bones if she chose. She had been thinking quite a bit about her personalized system for tracking her system and its subsidiaries, spurred on by the fact that both Anda and Attaboy now had access to all of the same bugs she did, and that it might not be long before others did as well. She thought it might be good if they all used the same metrics and procedures, and she knew that Taos facilities wouldn’t be any help at all with that, as the body augmenting bugs she was integrating hadn’t existed back then, though there are plenty of signs Henry had something like that in mind in his designs.

She had streamlined her system status reports, and added explanations she herself didn’t need any more. She couldn’t help thinking of how to make the journey more intelligible to someone like Maria, to give her the information Lilijoy would have appreciated so much when she was figuring things out the hard way. What she really wanted to include though, were valid benchmarks based on the Corp’s ranking system. She had been using her best guess up to this point, but in reality she didn’t know if her sensory augmentation would be considered level ten, or eight, or twelve. She assumed there must be some kind of standards body that would adjust the one-to-ten scale according to new advances.

That would be a horrible job, she thought.

“Hey Anda, how does the Corp decide the rankings of various bugs?” she asked.

“I only know about the Rank Five skin bugs,” he replied, “Since my former clan was somewhat obsessed with the subject. But I assume it’s broadly the same for the other Ranks. Each Rank has a Corp committee, and they hold tests and trials every decade or so, though only if some clan or other thinks they deserve re-evaluation. They look at the state of the field, and if necessary, adjust the benchmarks and ratings. There hasn’t been much change for the past fifty years, as I understand it, so the ratings within each Rank have been quite stable.”

“Is there somewhere I could look up the details?”

Anda let out a sharp laugh. “There’s no such thing as public information when there’s no such thing as a public,” he said. “Everyone who isn’t part of a clan isn’t anyone. There are various information brokers you could try going to, gray market folks. Renaissance probably has the data, but I’m not in a position to ask for it at the moment.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I don’t know why I keep falling into the trap that things are like they were before Guardian.”

Probably because virtually everything I know about the world comes from that time period. It’s more real to me than actual reality. Though I’m in better shape than Attaboy.

Her brother-- still getting used to that! – was a time traveler, for all intents and purposes, plucked from the end of the twenty-first century and plopped down in a strange future like some hapless isekai protagonist. Fortunately, most of the things she loved about the Attaboy she had grown up with were still there, but given the abject ignorance of their background he was almost entirely Atticus when it came to worldly knowledge. His rough start to the Trial was a typical Atticus moment, which he still, largely, refused to discuss, though she had been able to pry from him that he ‘took the wrong door’.

Since then, however, his levels had skyrocketed, even with Dean Reunification doing her best to keep him studious. Or maybe it was because of that; Lilijoy wouldn’t be surprised either way. She assumed hers would have done the same, had Rosemallow not been hoarding her experience points for her. Of course, now her levels were going up twice as fast as they would have. That, combined with getting experience for her actions and insights on the Outside made her feel like she could level just by blowing her nose.

Thinking of levels reminded Lilijoy to assign the free points from reaching level twenty-four. She put them in the usual places, and then pulled up her sheet, wondering if it was time to shift her allocation strategy.

Name: Emily Level: 24

Defender of the Young

Dark Lady of the Thorns

Blessed of Nandi

Awakener

Free Points: 33* (13+ 20 Direct)

HP: 110

Natural Traits

STR: 23 (47 effective)

END: 59

SPD: 57 (194 effective)

KA: 152

Magical Traits

POW: 21 (+105% STR)

INV: 49

VIT: 28

FLASH: 48 (+240% SPD)

MW: 169

MG: 10%/100 Sec.

Elemental Affinities/Immunities

Fire: 33

Earth: 65

Water: 30

Air: 28

Charm:

People: 34

Plants: 78

Animals: 67

Abilities

Scan III (Universal)

Echolocation IV (Uncommon)

Infrared Vision III (Uncommon)

Low Light Vision II (Common)

Two Minds One Self (-) (Unique)

Earthen Sense I (Very Rare)

Mana Manipulation (Rare)

Skills (VP)

Nature: Animals: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Nature: Plants: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Unarmed Combat: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Acrobatics: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Meditation: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Medical/Healing: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Manipulation: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Stealth: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Weapons: Blade: Short: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Weapons: Blunt: Club: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Weapons: Projectile: Sling: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Climbing: Upgraded Apprentice (6)

Deception: Augmented Apprentice (6)

Hand Weaving: Upgraded Apprentice (6)

Gliding/Flight: Upgraded Initiate (4)

Paper Making: Natural Apprentice(3)

Teaching: Natural Initiate (2)

Leather Working: Natural Initiate (2)

Jewelry Crafting: Natural Initiate (2)

Swimming: Natural Initiate (2)

Disguise: Natural Novice (1)

Dance: Natural Novice (1)

Pottery: Natural Novice (1)

Glass Working: Natural Novice (1)

Magic

Source:

Clade:

Class: Fused

Spell:

She had been adding points to Invulnerability, Vitality, Flash and expanding her Mana Well with every level, and using the excess to raise the magi portion of any useful skill when she could. The rest she was tucking away in the hope that someday she might find a Source for Earth Magic. She had even started raising her Earth affinity, in the hopes that it would make finding a Source more likely.

Attaboy had often expressed his bemusement at how slow the progress was, compared to the old games from Atticus’ memories, and she couldn’t help but agree. Her own experiences fighting those with levels far higher than hers had shown her just how difficult it was to create a meaningful power differential with stats alone, aside from those who could leverage high natural traits. Attaboy’s observation was that you could get a somewhat accurate power comparison by dividing levels by ten. For him, it was much easier to wrap his head around a level one defeating a level three that a ten defeating a thirty, and Lilijoy could hardly argue with that.

The other issue she was struggling with was the skills bottleneck. Lilijoy had yet to raise a skill to the Expert level, which she found both entirely reasonable and incredibly frustrating. It seemed to her that true power on the Inside was about high skill levels more than stats, due to the way the multipliers followed the Fibonacci sequence. Obviously though, it was possible to be out of balance in either direction, as Mr. Sennit had demonstrated; his Illuminated Master level skill had been severely hampered by a small Mana Well.

The question in front of her was whether it made sense for her to keep nudging up magical traits like Vitality and Invulnerability, or to start building a bigger stockpile of reserve points for a hypothetical future when she would need to raise skills to Illustrious or even Illuminated. It cost eight for the former, and thirteen for the latter, and she had six skills sitting at Enhanced already. She knew it would be very aggravating to find herself unable to raise a magi skill at some point in the future, and she highly doubted an extra four points in Vitality, say, would be worth it.

That’s it, she decided. Vitality can stay where it is. Rosemallow did call it a crap stat, back in the day, and I’m beginning to understand her perspective. It just doesn’t seem to be worth the opportunity cost. I like Invulnerability way too much to stop raising that one, but do I really need more Flash at this point? Most Outsiders can’t use it any higher than twenty; their systems just can’t keep up. Mana Well may be higher than I need now, but there’s not really such a thing as too much Mana, so that one stays.

Satisfied with her plans, she closed her sheet and put her attention to the Inside, more specifically to her Trial Space.

How did I manage to lose an entire person? she asked herself for about the hundredth time.

She had last seen Lowly two days ago, curled up and sleeping on the floor of her storage cavern. At the time, she had almost convinced herself that he would stay that way, that perhaps transporting him to the Trial Space had put him to sleep, like some kind of suspended animation. So it was an unpleasant surprise to find he had disappeared the next time she thought to check on him.

After several minutes of searching, she had found the tiny crevice hidden within the natural formations of one of the chamber’s many nooks. Initially, she had discounted it as an explanation for Lowly’s absence. The narrow opening was encrusted with rows of sharp mineral formations, many of them spanning the gap entirely, giving it the appearance of a sealed mouth struggling to open. But her continued search revealed no other possibilities, so she had sent her viewpoint down the crevice.

Unfortunately, it branched, and those branches branched, until even Lilijoy, with her near perfect memory and spatial awareness, was forced to admit it might take her days to survey the entirety. She had wanted to use her Earthen Sense to hasten the project, but hadn’t yet figured out where she would need to attach her diamond thread. Eyes and ears were obvious connections for the senses involved, but Earthen Sense was less specific. Reaching her hand through to touch the sides of the tiny tunnels hadn’t done it, so she was stumped.

That left her with rushing her point of view through the chaotic mess of passages, only to find that many of them had dead ends, and a few reached larger passages of the primary cave complex. Though she found a variety of hazards and deadly creatures, and a few mysteries she mentally bookmarked for later exploration, she found no sign of Lowly.

She felt frustrated, and more than a little guilty. The Trial Space was supposed to be her domain, or so she thought. Yet she couldn’t do more than bring things in and out, and even that was a fickle process with various limitations. It felt like part of a larger trend, the sense that she had great potential powers but lacked the final… something, to pull it all together.

It was true of her Mana Manipulation ability, her soul vortex, Nandi’s boon, plant manipulation… the list went on. There was no… depth. It was, she speculated, another hazard of her path, the joy and excitement of discovery, the rush of anticipation that led her to dabble, to gain one skill after another without developing them to their true potential.

Level Up! 2500 EXP Reached: Level 25 (10 more free points available)

You’ve got to be kidding me.