Chris felt Sarah’s hand in his, he clutched it desperately like a lifeline, then loosened it when he heard a hiss of pain behind him. Oh, right. He had superhuman strength, and Sarah had diddlysquat.

“Sorry,” he said reflexively, then clammed his mouth shut. Don’t breathe.

The world rippled around him, like walking through a soap bubble.

Indescribable smells surrounded him—literally otherworldly. He had no reference for them, no ability to comprehend them, except for the unflinching knowledge that they were there, that they were.

He heard the Thaumic Strata shifting in the distance, knew that the waterfall of birdsong—so far away—was the sound of a volatile world spinning and slamming together like soap suds in a whirlwind, mixing like oil, water, and gasoline into something that defied sense and convention.

In places the horizon plunged suddenly upward, waterfalls of landmass lifting like living ribbons through the air, curling and curving in mad orbits around globes of swirling terrain and pulsing balls of spiked energy. Whether the land was created or destroyed from those points, he had no clue, no ability to reference the way in which the world moved—only the ability to comprehend his inability to understand.

In other places, the Thaumic Strata fell away, beyond sight and reason, descending to depths he could not fathom if he wanted to—to a churning sea of unrelenting geography and probability that cascaded together.

Then he gasped. Mana began to seep from his skin, pulling from pores and dripping from the raised hairs of his arms and face like gravity-defying sweat. The mana passed through his armor and abruptly dissipated into the air like golden motes of dust captured by a questing sunbeam.

The feeling was not painful, but it was intense. The drain was manageable, at least for a while, but it was noticeable.

The gasp came with an inrush of air; he tasted sweetness along with… something else? It was weird, but it wasn’t indescribable, more like synesthesia. Was that rush hour in a chess game with three right turns and hanging a left into the metaphysical abstractions of a mongoose?

He seemed none the worse for wear despite knowing what the metaphysical abstractions of a mongoose tasted like—which was always a good thing—so he turned to give Sarah a thumbs up.

It was then that the cat—waiting patiently on the top of the arch of the Thaumic Gate chose to leap atop his head. Chris reeled back, his hand—inordinately strong—ripped free of Sarah’s own. He landed on his ass, a cat’s claws wrapped around his face, too weak to deal damage, but unappreciated all the same. At least it was just a cat, not some Lovecraftian nightmare. And at least the cat had already peed. That would have been... awkward.

The cat caught a stray strand of hair in its claws, tugging it free as it sprang back off his face with a startled meow—glaring at Chris, who was obviously to blame.

It sat down, two feet away from him, licking at its paws with the universal studious detachment that can be attributed to cats, and which roughly translates to ‘Fuck you, I’m a cat’. The strand of hair torn free morphed into a necktie that knotted itself around the animal’s neck, and somehow stretch and entire one and half feet vertically, without ever touching the ground that lay several inches below the animal’s head.

“You okay in there?” Sarah called from outside.

Chris blinked. She could hear him? That was helpful, he supposed. “All good.”

Just as well. He had, maybe, ten to fifteen minutes before his mana depleted fully. Time for some tests, then.

Sid seemed to be happy in the Thaumic Strata, so Chris focused on his arm first—with his back to Sarah of course.

He pushed some mana close to the surface of his right arm, but it failed to leave, despite something definitely entering, no matter how he morphed it, nothing happen. He strode over to the Thaumic Gate and shoved the arm back through. His rate of mana drain didn’t slow—rising off him like a heat haze over a desert road. Sid wasn’t creating extra mana for him.

Sarah gripped his hand as he held it through the gate; she looked confused.

“No, just testing something out, all good.” Sarah let go.

Surprisingly, everything was good. The air was even breathable, which was a good thing. He really had to get some environmental adaptation skill at some point. Come to think of it, that was extremely strange. Earth, the tutorial, Xal, and the Thaumic Strata all had an atmosphere conducive to humans. Was it a fluke, or had human physiology been changed during induction?

It was a thought for another time.

He walked away from the Thaumic Gate and turned his back to Sarah, then had Sid slide over his shoulder to cover a patch of completely human skin.

His mana loss hiccupped and then continued at a lower rate. Interesting. Slime was resistant to mana loss.

He tried to move the Slime farther over his body, but maintaining his hand while covering himself appropriately was too much of a task for him. Best to quit while he was ahead and Sarah thought he was still entirely human. His rate of mana loss had slowed, though.

It was interesting, Slime seemed to be capable of resisting the draining effects of the Thaumic Strata. Maybe as an insulating layer.

There certainly wasn’t any mana here. In the tutorial it had been omnipresent, felt but not seen. Here it glowed gold before it winked out of existence, swallowed by something invisible that filled the strange air.

Next up was trying to manifest a Beast Soul Weapon. He was about to summon his Beastblade, but reconsidered when confronted with the prospect that it might disappear forever if he did so. Something disposable… or… yes, that was perfect.

He ran his troll Cultivation Technique through his body, but nothing happened, he solidified the palm of his right hand, but it failed to benefit from the increase in hardness that the cultivation technique typically provided. He let a trickle of mana ebb from his fingers, some of it was sucked back inside him, and for a moment, as the golden motes sank back into him, his palm became denser and more solid—but most of the mana was ripped away. Interesting.

The Cultivation Technique was internal, though. Next up, he manifested his Beast Soul javelin. It steamed with mana, continuously draining him and filling the air with golden light until he tossed the weapon.

The javelin promptly stopped stealing mana from him, instead, it left a trail of golden sparks as it flew through the air and embedded itself in the colorful, semi-crystalline earth. The cat leapt toward it—capricious as only a cat could be—then it drew back, hissing, as it tried to swat at a golden spark. Its black paw turned to charcoal, which crumbled into powder in the ground at its feet, spat out mana, then rose up as ghouls of smoke and ash that cackled and howled as they ascended into the air and whatever lay above.

Mana was poison to beings of this realm, got it. It also seemed that anything converted by the Thaumic Strata didn’t survive reversion.

The cat, mewling, darted away from the spear, disappearing, three-legged, into the distance.

The spear had already vanished, quicker than it should have—probably due to its composition being compromised by the nature of the Thaumic Strata.

Tentatively, he pushed the crystalized form of the Beast Soul javelin out of his body—he could always get one when he returned to Hartshire, and the residents already knew that the stones could be found inside corpses. That did remind him, though. It was essential to remove the Soul Gems first, he doubted the shop paid an increased rate for them. Oops.

He was certain the Gnolls had Soul Gems inside them—they were relatively frequent, unlike with the demons, from which he’d never gained a single Gem.

Either way, he was getting off track in his musings about the System being stingy. The Soul Gem. He set it down on the ground. It steamed and mana rose from it. He winced at the prospect of seeing the weapon destroyed, but such was the cost of advancing his knowledge.

The mana drain from the Soul Gem ceased. The Soul Gem remained. Unchanged.

Chris frowned. What the heck?

He absorbed it back into his arm. It returned without issue. The Soul Gem felt weird, not empty, but filled with something else—and not that glass half full of water, half full of air bullshit, genuinely something else. Not mana, but something he couldn’t detect. Odd. It didn’t seem to be doing anything detrimental, but he’d leave it like that for a while, just in case. He tried to summon the javelin. Nothing. As expected.

Honestly, being able to summon the Beast Soul Weapon after that was too good to be true. But at least the Gem had survived… probably. Who knew what would happen when he pushed out whatever was inside it.

His time was running out, however, his experiments had cost him mana—that meant that he’d spent five of his fifteen minutes on experimentation, and another five on the resources for performing them. Five left. One more experiment, then time to go. No point in risking things. And anyway, the birdsong waterfall of the Thaumic Strata rearranging was getting louder, getting closer. He suspected the Thaumic Gate’s connection would collapse once it got too close—or turn him into chunky salsa if he passed through at the wrong moment.

His final test was to try moving his center toward his Slime arm. He wasn’t certain what would happen, so he moved to put the side of the gate’s arch between him and Sarah—that way, even if she walked around, she’d not see him. Then he pushed his center toward his right arm. If Slime was insulative, his loss of mana would reduce, wouldn’t it?

Moving his center was a weird experience. It was more lacking location, but the action seemed to move his mana accordingly, so he didn’t pay it all too much heed.

The mana loss at the left side of his body slowed as flow to it decreased, and that on his right increased slightly, before abruptly ending where Slime met flesh in earnest. Chris smiled.

Why was there a color-changing, chameleon-like napkin crawling out of his nose?

He fell forward and everything went black.