Our eyes snap open to a world left blurry and swirling. Silk clothes soaked in burning acid sticks to our skin, painful but strangely unalarming. As we part our lips merely to breathe, an unreasonable volume of drool escapes our maws. Knots quickly churn in our stomachs and spines. Our razor teeth begin to ache. Starving. Hot. Starving. We begrudingly sit up following a scent in the air, then drag ourselves up to the silhouette of an unexplained, bulging, pitch black mass. We press our weight and clawed nails through a thick layer of crude oil that shields its chitinous skin hiding underneath. A creature? A monster. We carve out burger sized chunks and tear them from its unmoving body. Unpleasant snaps and crunches resound. Oil sticks to our arms like mud. Its flesh is crumbly and smells like gasoline. Still, we sink our fangs into it. Metallic, bittersweet, almost like molasses, we think at first. How quickly it ruins, worsening with each passing second; a gag-inducing horribleness. A flavour that brings to mind the smell of forest decay, long rotting wood. How terrible it is that we can't bring ourselves to spit it out. Our death sense simply won't allow us. Instead, we lose feeling and taste as our backbones are twisted and locked in ice, until all we can taste are the seconds of life being bought with every bite. Mouthfuls of oil. Crumbling, chitinous flesh. It is... very gross. Still, we somehow end up devouring more in volume... than our own bodies combined. We can't seem to grasp just how much time we passed like that, but the ring and grinding of steel is what finally wakes us from our torpor. Breaths, grunts, squeaking steps skittering across ceramic tiles, dancing with the loud pounding cracks of a heavier being over the same ground. An older boy clad in black, dull with grey armour, lagomorph ears and legs, bears his blade with ragged breath. Otto, The Hero, but he seems different somehow. His opponents, not one but two disproportioned suits of black armour, tall with limbs twice as long as they should be, and interiors piloted by masses of dozens, maybe hundreds of individual black globules each with two cute oval eyes. Two thousand blobs in trenchcoats of charcoal steel; glistening cyan. Memorable monsters. Hard to forget these ones. One of the knights then thrusts a ribboned spear at Otto, mechanical in movement. He sidesteps it forward, and slashes upwards between its armor, into the fluid mass of cute blobs. They collectively scream in high pitch, chittering as they each flash red. A visible crimson wave of pain washes over them, out from where they were struck. Heartwrenching. 『『 ... 』』 Where are we now? A long rectangular room... a high ceiling with broken-in stained glass skylights. An ornate black and white ceramic floor, old, crumbling, cracked, and broken. Misaligned pews, more shattered stain glass, elaborate murals, rows of candles... and a dozen or so dead monster bodies line the hall. Is this a church? We've been dining where the alter would have been if so. ...We glance down at ourselves. Arms soaked black, legs splattered obsidian, the fronts of our silks ruined by a shimmering oil sludge. Our snowy knees and tails rest in a thin layer of that viscous fluid, a raven black pool that's spread to over half the raised platform. Ah, as for what exactly we were eating... Well, there's only giblet sized pieces of crumbly black meat left. Pearly shattered bone fragments also appear to be scattered around, perhaps those were a part of its original skeleton? It's unidentifiable in its current state though. Sing picks up a piece of meat and smushes it between her fingers. Dark, tiny, oil covered gears, belts, and springs made of flesh spill out. Mechanical bits of shaped meat. A crumbly mess of tiny parts under pressure. We ate these? We ate these. Blegh. Sing drops the squished meat just as a choir cry rings through the hall. One of the piloted metal suits falls apart before our eyes, prompting its horde of tiny black blobs to scatter as the collective mass hits the ground. The floor is briefly coated with them as they all seek shelter. Some hide under pews and in cracks. Some leap into our oil puddle, flattening themselves under its shallow surface. 『 Cute... 』 Crier says without thinking. 「 ...? 」 Otto turns away from his remaining opponent to glance back at us. We give him a blank stare in turn. ...He is different. Why does he have white highlights in his hair? Some of his fur even? A meticulous gradient with white tips and black roots... Did he just happen to run into a hair stylist down here? What the heck, why didn't he wake us up sooner? They sound pretty cool if they're making a living down here... We simultaneously point back at the last blob golem winding up its next strike, prompting lagomorph boy to refocus his attention on his life-threatening bout. Thank you for your service. ... We wipe the oil off our faces with our side tails. Ah... right, where were we... Let's consider how we got here. After falling into that cyan water, we blacked out. Extremely hot, boiling, and... it still feels scalding actually. Our clothes are soaked in this acid stuff. Otto's fabrics still look a little wet too... so why isn't he in writhing agony? He should feel like his skin is being cooked still, like us. Mm, well, if we also consider he didn't seem to feel hot as we were free-falling earlier... it might be okay to conclude only we feel like this liquid is burning us. Which... could mean one of two things. The first is, both the air and water here is holy aspected- No, wait, that's not it. That stuff would actually burn us to death probably. This liquid just hurts, it doesn't seem to be doing any actual damage. Then it's very probably the second thing. The air and water here are dense and concentrated mana respectively. This burning feeling on our skin is then the same kind of burning felt when you try to fire a spell from your hand and feel it searing during the cast time. That burning is caused by mana across your body concentrating in one place. We're snowflake special though and have ruptured mana pools, so us just touching dense mana at all allows it in, likely eliciting the same burning sensation. That's our starting hypothesis. Not bad huh? 「 Kuh! 」 Otto is blown back trying to emergency block the knight's swing. He manages to stay on his feet but slides far across the floor. Dried black ink paints a third of his face and one of his eyes. Oil splatter from an earlier fight? Either way... we... should just let him handle this. Um... Solving... this problem would just open us up to receiving new ones, yeah? That's... how the event director in this world works? The Goddess? Paris... made that pretty clear... ... Mm... I'm... we're fine. Really. That stuff Paris said about us... it's... whatever, you know? Probably just said that stuff to... um... create a managable problem for us. I mean, if you think about it, isn't it miraculous we didn't bump into that boss monster as we fell? Maybe that's why she... did and said all that... Made herself into the villain of this story suddenly... Just to ensure that... something worse wouldn't happen... So that's why... it's fine. It doesn't bother us. We press our inky hands into our chests. Ah... a-anyway- Why we... woke up so hungry remains unanswered. Did we really just go that long without eating? Kind of hard to believe... Sure some time must have passed. After all, Otto recovered us, untied us, brought us here, and probably even fought some of these monsters but, ours and his clothes are still wet. It can't have been even a day, right? 「 Franz...! 」 We raise our eyes back to the fight, just in time to watch the final enemy falling to its knees at Otto's hands. The failing blob mass, as it crumbles apart, struggles as it speaks its last words in mournful, choired, high-pitched unison. 「 Franz will... save us... 」 Its words become more jumbled at the end as each blob falls out of sync. Inevitably, they all resume being individuals, scattering to preserve their own lives. All that's left behind is a suit of black armour no one can wear, and a stilled bio-mechanical heart drained of magic. 「 ... 」 Otto towers over the scrap pile with his back to us. He lowers his head and blade there. 「 ▯▯▯▯▯…Ｆｒａｎｚ… 」 ...Hm? Otto picked out the name from that monster's other dying words. Did he... understand what that enemy said just now? Was it auto-translated into his own language? That's... that's pretty cool if so... That means he'll get to experience the story of this place for the first time. Ah... so lucky... we're a little jealous... ...He steps forward and crouches down over the metallic remains. It seems like he's seriously investigating. He doesn't seem the least bit phased by all the adorable blobs running away. Suppose he's not in the mood, huh... Wonder... what his expression right now is like... Sing cups her hands into the oil slick, capturing a flattened blob. It perks up as she raises it out, realizing its cover is gone. Quickly, it turns up to look its abductor in the eyes, and immidiately it begins to shiver in fear. Very precious. 『 ... 』 Soon after, Sing picks it up between her fingers, and gently she pinches and squeezes its roundness. It's... very smooth, elastic, wiggly, warm, and squishy. Its eyes spin into cartoony swirls as it's toyed with. I missed these things. Bwimmifers. Bwimmies. Bwimms? Bwimm? Don't actually remember the canon plural for them, people used too many. I... didn't like them at first, these creatures whose sole designed purpose is to be cute and clumsy... But it turns out they can do some pretty cool things working together. They've earned my respect, so I can also appreciate their cuteness. Ah... I used to- Used to... I... 「 So you've sided with them...! 」 「 ▯▯＇▯ ▯ ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯ 。」 ... We shake our heads, gasping out of our daze. Pain spikes in our spines. Just ahead, Otto is holding firm his blade towards the far end of the hall. There, we find a contingent of four black and cyan armoured monsters gathering. Humanoid. One short, hovering telekinetically just above the ground, arcing electricity. Two medium-sized adults, well armoured for combat. The last, a mechanical knight identical to the two from before, piloted by Bwimmifers. 「 ▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯ ▯▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯！」 Otto shouts at them, apparently not knowing human-like monsters are still monsters and can't conversate. Only the unique one-of-a-kind enemies do, even then only sometimes. So... really our only choices now are to fight, to think of a way to glitch them, or run. Ah... We should have done or said something after Otto defeated that last wave of enemies. Of course something like this is going to happen if we're just idling peacefully. Um... well... Otto probably can't win this one without getting seriously hurt... and nothing is coming to mind with how we would go about glitching them... So... how should we communicate retreating? Carefully, we stand up from the muck. 『『 Otto. 』』 「 ... 」 We see the boy's rabbit ears perk up. ...He probably still thinks we're divine in some way, since we revived his friend. We have to be careful not to let him think he can win just because we're on his side. All of those monsters are fully capable of killing us in a single hit. 『『 Let's run. 』』 We say, gracefully stepping down to the main floor. We don't wait for his response, we just immediately begin scurrying between the pews towards the nearest shadowed archway branching off the side of the church. It takes a second for him to notice, but once he does he immediately bolts after us. 「 You can't do this to us... 」 A quiet, gentle voice mutters from across the room. This is an attack tell. We duck a little and cover our heads as we run. The hum of static works its way into the air. Otto picks us up the instant he catches up with us, squeezing us under one arm. Secured, he quickly throws himself into a forward shoulder roll. A boulder promptly whooshes by just overhead, followed by a near crash of crumbling stone and ceramic. Another smaller boulder is sent hurtling. It crashes into a pew, lagging behind its sprinting target. One more boulder, this time a lead shot. Otto brakes. It whizzes by just ahead of us. The metal footfalls of the other monsters start to close in. The way cleared, Otto briefly crouches, then breaks back into sprint. Smoothly, we slide through the dark archway unscathed, revealing a large spiralling stairwell barely lit by its passages and cracked ceiling. After glancing in both directions, he decides up, and begins bounding the stairs three steps at a time. A dark archway, a cyan one, darker, then bright. Those are the four choices, four flights leading up to the top of the stairwell. We pass the first, and then notice Otto's gaze appears to be fixed on the highest. Perhaps... he considers the rooftops safer? Almost on cue, a six blade-limbed automaton begins hovering in through that very same archway. Immidiately he digs his boot into the stone steps and sharply turns out the nearest exit. The one with... cyan light streaming out of it. We find ourselves running down a middle-sized straight corridor. The ceiling of this hall is curved and comprised of cyan stained glass. Where its broken or cracked, faintly glowing cyan puddles have also formed below. The long result of light drizzle plucking and plinking across the passage's length. The way light refracts in here... gives off the impression of being underwater. Suddenly, far ahead of us, the liquid in those puddles start to converge, "standing up" into two black goopy silhouettes whose edges hold their cyan glow. Their form becomes more refined with each passing second until we can make out vaguely humanoid legs, arms, and heads. Those two liquid silhouettes... soon begin running in our direction. Were there... enemies that looked like this in Black Star Brook? We hear armour jostling behind us still... we can't turn around either way. Otto grits his teeth. As we near, he readies and raises his blade, winding up to strike first. One of the silhouettes then shout. 「 Why?! Why is this happening...?! 」 We flinch. It's... a garbled voice, muffled by its own liquid form. Otto freezes his arm and slows to a stop allowing the harmless silhouette civillians to run past us. 「 I... I don't know! What good is it asking me that now?! 」 「 My home... my father... h-he... 」 The two silhouettes stop shortly behind us. Past them, we catch those monsters just entering the hall. We can't stay here to listen -- but Otto does so anyway. 「 Look. I'm... sorry I yelled, okay? Just keep it together a little while longer. 「 We're almost there. Evacuate first... mourn after. 」 Otto's grip around us tightens, it starts to hurt. 『『 Otto. 』』 ...He lets out a quick frustrated breath, relaxing his grip, before running again. We're a little curious now... about how many voicelines he's heard so far. He's definitely been awake longer than we have, so... Maybe he's a lot more aware of the situation here than we think? ...We look back one more time. The ghostly silhouettes are gone. Just monsters now. ...That was, um... not something that happened... in the original Black Star Brook. We mean, there were civilians that spoke those lines, sure, but they were, you know... solid -- alive. Not these weird... liquid apparitions that formed out of puddles... Ahaha... that was just a little bit spooky. Just a little bit. Caught us off guard... hearing their voices garbled as if... they were drowning... ... Otto reaches the next room. A large two story foyer. We can hear a robotic voice chirping from the floor below. 「 The nearest evacuation point from here is: Fremont Academia Annex. 」 Holding us tightly, he vaults over the railing, landing in the line of sight of a machine. A small songbird, a clockwork swallow with obvious visual clues to such. It hops in place in the middle of the floor, turning to acknowledge us. 「 We are a pro-bono guild. Please do not offer us tips or recompense. 」 「 ... 」 Otto picks a random door, barges through it, and continues on. 「 The nearest evacuation point from here is... 」 The automaton bird's voice trails off as we descend a dimly lit hall. It's windowless here, but there are a couple glowing stones embedded within lighting instruments lining the floor. Faintly, they illuminate pathways throughout the labryinth building, but due to damage, many remain still blacked out. The sound of armoured suits is fainter now, but, they're definitely still tracking us. We need more distance still. Otto slows his pace to a jog, and picks random walkways to turn down. He occasionally tries doors we run across but most are either locked or misaligned in such a way that they've become barricades. He doesn't try to open any rooms he can't see into, and after a bit, he slows to a walk. We later find stairs to climb up and down. We find railings to peek over on high walkways. We find towering ornate lounges from which we look up into blackness. We soon conclude... that this building serves no purpose but to get its inhabitants lost. Or have we passed through several completely different buildings without knowing? Who can tell at this point, we can barely see... At the very least, we can be certain we've gotten away now. Having to walk aimlessly through all this darkness... it's... not actually... that bad. Save for the thump of Otto's boots on the ceramic... it's quiet, peaceful- He suddenly flinches. His fuzzy ears flicker, prompting him to dart his head around. We re-survey the hall... then focus on our spines for warning pain but... none comes. Well, specifically, we don't feel any spikes. Our death sense is idling at about ten. He resumes walking forward, tilting his head occasionally. It seems as though he's hearing something we can't. Maybe he's found a way out? It takes a few more minutes of walking for us to faintly hear it too. It almost sounds like... sobbing. Ah. You know, our gut says this is just a jump scare waiting to happen, but our spines are also saying nothing is wrong... Wonder... if we should be worried or not... ...Regardless of what it will end up being, Otto's decided to very decisively move towards it, even going so far as to walk through unlit corridors to do so. These are just the kinds of people who get the The Hero title we suppose... 「 ...It's... n... fa...r... 」 ...Hm? 「 ...I don't ...wanna evacuate... 」 We hold our breath a little bit and listen. Otto's steps quicken as the voice gets clearer. 「 ...I don't ...hic ...I won't... 」 Wait -- this kid? Why is this kid in here? You're supposed to... run into him after the first boss fight... Ah... the order of things is messed up... But... considering the state of the city and how we got here... we suppose that shouldn't be very surprising... We can't even see the streets. Otto dashes up a flight of steps, following the voice. There, at the top, he hurriedly pivots around a corner, where he meets -- a drippy silhouette boy sitting next to a glowy lantern. A cyan puddle is spread around him. He has a face but it's... very minimal. He very much looks like a ghost barely holding shape, and his voice is... also garbled and muffled like the two we met before... 「 ▯▯▯… ▯▯▯▯▯… 」 The drippy boy looks up at Otto who gently sets us down on the ground along with his blade. 「 ▯▯＇▯ ▯▯▯▯… 」 「 No... I... I want... 」 「 ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯？ 」 「 ...I want to fight with Franz! 」 「 … 」 Otto's lips part. He wears a now blank expression, a head emptied of thought after being given a completely unexpected response. It's not a wholly new expression by any means but... it's something. We suppose it's reasonable... 「 I... I want to protect mister Franz too... so why... 「 am I being sent away...? Do they hate me? They do, right...?」 「 ▯… ▯＇▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯＇▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯… 」 「 Mister Franz is the nicest... he takes care of everyone... 「 and works harder than anyone... so why... are bad guys trying to hurt him...? 」 「 … 」 「 It's... not fair...! 」 ...Otto shuffles closer to the boy, working onto his own face a soft smile, before raising his gloved hand to pat the kid on the head. 「 ▯▯▯▯＇▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ー 」 But the moment his hand touches him, the boy evaporates into a black mist; falling slowly, it gradually assimilates into the cyan puddle pooling at his feet. ...Otto's body locks in place, his expression slowly sinking into one of pained realization. 『『 ... 』』 You're normally supposed to be given a choice with... how you want to deal or not deal with this kid... Um... it's not... supposed to be this... cruel. ...His head lowers a bit as he slowly, rhythmically, thumps the side of his fist against the wall. Ah... we feel kind of bad... Otto seems like the kind of guy that just wants to help people... But if every civilian in this place has been substituted by these... liquid mana ghosts... then it's probably just going to be torturous for him the longer he spends down here. ...Mm. Okay. We've decided. We'll work off of this. No more surprise monsters or twists. This will be the base for our "created problem" to deal with. We'll find out here for sure if Paris's inference was correct. Whether these sudden pop-up problems can really be pre-mitigated... We start by huddling together, and beginning to exaggerate our breaths. Slow and steady... 『『 Ott...o... 』』 He wakes from his deep thought and turns to face us. Sat on the cold floor with our arms crossed, we rub our forearms as if for warmth. We shiver with our eyes shut, leaning our heads against one another. Freezing. Fever. We go for that kind of feeling. 「 …! 」 He rushes over to us and scoops us up in his arms. Carefully, yet firmly, he holds us. The way his gloved fingers curl into our skin... feels almost desperate all of a sudden. Hey... don't say it's cruel for us to do this, okay? None of these civilians are real, he'll never be able to help them. We're real though, and he does seem to care about us at least a little bit so... creating a problem we can allow him to solve at any time should both make him feel a bit better, as well as properly test Paris's conclusion. At best, he'll be happier, and we'll all be a little safer than before. At worst, he still feels bad, and we're at the same amount of risk. The answer seems pretty clear to us. We curl up more into his arms and focus on our ragged breaths, making them as convincing as possible. Actually not as hard as we thought it'd be. It's just mimicking how we were back in the real world, you know? ... Is he... buying it, though? ... Ah... ... Why is he just holding us while staying completely still... Our eyes are shut so we can't read his expression or anything... There's no way he saw through our act that quickly, right? It's impossible. It's flawless. It could fool even a doctor probably! The nerve of this guy to think we're faking this! How dare he- 『 ...! 』 He rests the back of his bare hand against Crier's forehead. 『 ... 』 Oh. This is it. The jig is up. He's going to find out we're not divine at all and have just been pretending. This is where it happens. This is where our house of cards all comes crumbling down. How could we have been so foolish. Such a critical miscalculation. ...We feel our cheeks burning up. Blushing. 「 … 」 We slowly crack open our eyes, just the smallest most miniscule amount. Just enough to catch his expression, a soft one, worry with a solemn apologetic smile, accenting a lightly scarred face, dirtied from constant fighti- Our hearts thump. Ah. We shut our eyes again. Aya. That was close. After sliding his sword back into his sheath, he carefully stands up with both of us tucked in his arms. With no known directions to hesitate between, he simply starts walking forward. Continuing through the building's seemingly endless shadowed passages until hopefully coming across somewhere he wants to be. ...Hopefully, The Goddess will take it a little easier on him with this. Ah... did he ever get time to recover from his earlier wounds? Maybe he had a healing potion on him, or found one... It's unacceptable for the person carrying us around to have easily treatable injuries, is all... ... Wonder... if Setsuna is doing okay too... Wonder if... she's still... Our eyes snap open as we're suddenly placed on the cold ground again. Did we... fall asleep? Eh? Where is... Click. Creaaaaaak.... We glance up at Otto opening a large treasure chest, then scan the rest of the room. It's too dark, we can't really see most of the interior but we notice tables and chairs? Much more interestingly, however, is the stone archway next to us letting in light. Here, we can finally get a good look at the strange, shadowy, rolling cloud sky, as well as the mesmerizing refracted light it shines over the sides of the city's towering buildings. Dim and gloomy, but... also soothing in its motions... The light rainy drizzle also... It's... it's too peaceful. We should... We have to do something again. 『『 ... 』』 Should we... go with that shivering act this time too? He left us on the floor again, though... does it not worry him anymore, or is he just careless? Ah, no, we probably stopped shivering once we fell asleep. Tch. ...Okay, let's try something new then. We stand up quietly and stroll over to the archway. Otto's too preoccupied being a loot goblin to notice us... how careless. Everyone was like that in Myriad Worlds though, it can't be helped. Treasure chests are an exciting world of new gear and fancy trinkets... Maybe he'll find something nice in there. ...Hm? No, we're not going to sneak away or anything. Well, we could, but... we wanted to test something unrelated first. The rain. Our clothes have dried mostly and aren't really burning us anymore. If we reach out and touch one of those little falling droplets though... then... will our MP go up? Will it phase through us, get absorbed, or rest on our skin? It's pretty important we figure this out now rather than later because... we don't ...actually know why we blacked out back then. So... science! Sing slowly stretches out her hand towards the rolling sky. It takes some seconds, but eventually a speck lands square on her knuckle. It hurts, badly. Stinging, burning, as the drop not only slides down her wrist leaving behind a long thin trail of acid, but it also slowly sinks into her skin. Even as the dark liquid vanishes completely the path it took still burns. Our pain tolerance is such that we don't even flinch though. ...Ah. Crier's wrist is burning too? Did she get splashed without us realizing? We should have been paying more attention... Hm? Why aren't we using «Identify»? Dummy! Be patient! We were just about to! We just can't have Otto notice us until we're ready... Okay, um... where were we... Ah... how are normal people supposed to react to this kind of pain again...? Sing takes a few steps back to stand behind Crier, allowing her twin sister to reach her hand out to the sky next. Mmm... something like... A droplet lands square in the center of Crier's palm. 『 Ah-! 』 『 «Identify» 』 Immidiately she yelps and pulls her hand back. Clenching it into a fist, she buries it tightly in her chest. Her voice mutes into pained squeaks as she stumbles backwards. Sing catches and holds her by her shoulders as her breath borders erratic. Otto's head shoots up, carelessly thumping into the chest lid. He mutters as he hurries over to us to see what happened. Sing looks up at him with wide focused eyes as he approaches. His expression shifts a bit, just a little bit of fear creeps in as he moves in front of Crier whose eyes are clenched shut, whose face is desperately trying to hold its composure. 「 Ａｌｐｈａｅｚａｉ？Ｃｒｉｅｒ？ 「 ▯▯▯… ▯▯▯▯＇▯ ▯▯▯▯▯？」 His eyes scan her, and seem to catch on to her buried fist. 「 ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯。▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯？ 」 Hesitantly, Crier peeks open her eyes to glance at him. He nods for whatever reason. ...She turns her pained gaze downward in turn, watching carefully her own hand as she pulls it out and unfurls it. There, we're just barely in time to catch the last remnants of the droplet vanishing into her skin, leaving no trace. Otto gently pinches the sides of her hand, bringing his face closer to examine its disappearance. 「 ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯… ▯▯▯▯？▯▯▯▯▯？ 」 His brow furrows. His blue eyes meet with Crier's. She averts her own gaze, turning her head. 「 … 」 He looks up at the cloudy undulating sky. His lips part slightly in thought. 「 ▯ ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯…？」 On cue, a droplet splashes off of his face, causing tiny prickling needles from its splatter to land upon Crier's wrist. 『 Nnh...! 』 Even such a tiny amount... still burns and absorbs through her skin. She tries to pull her hand away, but Otto just holds on tighter, at least, until it occurs to him what just happened. 「 ▯▯ ▯ー▯▯▯▯▯！」 He stammers, letting her go. She quickly clings to Sing, burying her face into her shoulder. Sing, whose eyes remain locked on Otto, unchanging, unrevealing. 「 … 」 Otto's face... ah... what an expression of guilt. He genuinely feels as though he did something wrong... He's too nice... showing us such an honest and rare expression... We wonder... what kind of conclusion he'll come to from this. ...He slowly stands up, bringing a finger to his chin in thought. The gears seem to be turning in his head, at least. Once he seems to figure something out, he glances back to us, then lowers his head as he hurries back inside. Immediately, he goes back to the treasure chest. Sing, in the meantime, pulls Crier further indoors. She picks an ornate round table with a singular leg, and sits under it, leaning her back against its metal pillar while Crier rests in her arms. It's kind of like there's friction between us like this, right? Unforgivable! Hurting my sister! You're a dangerous person after all! A play kind of like that? ...We have Sing keep her eyes locked on the stone bridge through the archway though. We think this homemade problem is decent, but... you never know... The Goddess might just end up thinking it's boring. Well... until Otto finishes doing whatever he's doing, here's what Sing observed with her whispered «Identify». ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.1 ▬ Crier '' Streya

ᵈᵢBlack-Lamb Pure-Demon Chimera

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

_____HP ▐ 15/15 _____MP ▐ 94 _____SP ▐ 21/21

__P.ATK ▐ 1

__P.DEF ▐ 102

__M.ATK ▐ 0

__M.DEF ▐ 101

Effects ▐ ◈ ᵈᵢⓈ∞

________▐ ◈ Suppressed Demonic Miasma

________▐ ◈ Pure Demonic Blood

________▐ ◈ ᵈᵢMana Proselytizer

________▐ Eldritch Serendipity[LV.9]

Titles ▐ 「 Prophet of Joy 」「 Feral 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chimera An additional racial tag. Mostly bad, but can be good. It's the disincentive to carrying around too many passive racial bonuses. ...Are we carrying too many? Frost demon legs, heat-resistant burn scars, something involving our shark teeth... Maybe something to do with our digestion? Our Pure-Demon stuff... Can we count that ᵈᵢBlack-Lamb tag too...? Um... Even taking all of those into account though, we're still one short of being chimeras. Then... did we adapt in some way without knowing...? Maybe when we blacked out? Mm... It would explain the ungodly hunger when we woke up... but the question then is... what exactly changed? Negative adaptations are rare but they can happen too. __MP ▐ 94 Mana gain from the raindrops. As expected, it's draining. ◈ ᵈᵢMana Proselytizer And this thing. It seems to have taken the place of ◈ Ruptured Mana Pool. Ah... what does... "Proselytizer" mean? Could someone pull out a dictionary? This thing probably has something to do with our mystery adaptation... but that second word might as well be in a different language. Well, at least the "ᵈᵢ" might explain why Sing's hand felt burning when it was Crier's hand getting splashed with mana droplets, and vice versa. We saw that prefix in action on those weird twinning items from before. Maybe our mana pools are connected now? Shared? Duplicated? 『 ...«Identify» 』 Mm... no, doing this doesn't help. Sing has MP too but, we're not sure if that's lingering from the old droplet or from Crier's dose. It kind of seems like the lower our MP is down here, the slower it decays too. That would be different behaviour from how it was out of the canyon... Ah... this is getting a lot more complex... This world probably has a whole field of science revolving around this stuff... Agehatate even said mana is basically alive, with preferences and favorites... Bweh. We wouldn't have to deal with this if we just had normal mana pools. 「 Ａｌｐｈａｅｚａｉ。」 Hum? That's us, right? Otto parts from the treasure chest and crouches down near us, giving us plenty of space to move out. There's something in his hands. 「 ▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯。」 『『 ... 』』 Sing stares at him. We probably shouldn't make this easy. ...What is he even holding? 「 ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯。」 He unfurls one of the large fabric-like things in his hands. Quickly he reveals that it's... some kind of blanket? No, a hooded cloak? It's kind of hard to tell- Ah. Is that -- the cable Paris tied us up with before? He kept it? Did he use them just now to prepare these make-shift cloaks? They definitely don't look like anything that would come out of a chest... Um. H-How are we supposed to feel about this... 「 ▯▯ ▯▯▯… ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯？」 Aaah, his expression is becoming gloomy... Well, we've been wanting a cloak for a while now anyway... These silks have been nice but they've... also taken on some wear and tear. It's actually a little surprising how well they've held up until now... Still... maybe... it's fine for us to accept these. Mm... it should be fine. We can always come up with a new problem to solve. ...We have Sing shake her sleepy sister awake. 『 ...? 』 Hey, hey, Crier, look. Otto made us cloaks to wear. What do you think, huh? Want to? ...After rubbing one of her eyes, she takes a good look at the cloaks. Simple, white, with no patterns of any kind. The tied cable that turns them from simple sheets into cloaks is a tarnished grey-black, just as before. 『 ... 』 Sleepily, she crawls out from under the table and... grabs one of the fabrics. The black oil residue on her hand paints it a little, but not much, it's dried a bit. Smooth... it could probably repel the rain, but it's not very thick... also not very heavy. It wouldn't keep us warm, and wouldn't do much against wind. Pretty much only rain. ...That's fine. Crier takes a cloak and cautiously stands up. Sing closes her eyes and sighs. As she too gets out from under the table, Otto takes the cloak back from Crier and puts it on for her, throwing it over her head and shoulders. She could have put it on herself you know... We have Crier turn around to face Sing so we can see how it looks. 『 ... 』 Mm. It's... good, we guess. It doesn't look bad at all. ...Huh? What's that coy grin on Otto's face for? Idiot. You know this just means The Goddess will make something bad happen, right? Hmph. 「 ▯＇▯… ▯▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯ ▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯。」 ...He speaks at the ground, where his eyes promptly fall. There's... some kind of sudden melancholy, or sadness washing into his voice. 「 ▯＇▯ ▯▯▯▯。▯＇▯ ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯ ▯▯▯▯▯ 「 ▯▯ ▯▯▯ ▯▯▯ Ｂｒａｎｄｒ ▯▯。」 ...He mentioned Brandr, that brother-friend we revived for him. That... elf person we unintentionally gave the Apostle of Death title to. Is he confiding to us right now? Those are a lot of words we can't understand... Um... what do we do about this... Ah... 『 ...Hey. 』 He looks up at Sing, who walks over to him gracefully. Immidiately she stretches out her arm and pokes him in the forehead. 『 Stop being sad, Otto. 』 He looks at her with that completely blank expression, that same one he wore for that drippy ghost boy who vanished. 『 Did you hear me? 』 ...His face suddenly lifts. He cracks a smile. Some breath escapes his mouth as he stifles a chuckle. We can't possibly imagine what's going through his head, but at least he... seems a bit happier-? Suddenly he grabs Sing's hand with both of his. 『 ... 』 He formally gets down on one knee and lowers his head. His rough hands grip tightly, one over the other... sort of like... back then when he... 「 Thank you. 」 ....prayed to us. His voice echoes in our head, translated but still accented. It's hard to read the emotion in it but we can understand him. Just like before, but... 「 I promise... I'll repay everything you've given to me and more. 」 The overly formal, archaic dialect is gone. He... actually sounds... like a normal person now... Ah... this is... really weird. Suddenly understanding him... ...Sing swallows a breath. ...Can we ...respond? Last time we had to learn how to do it through a shrine, we had to imagine our message as if it was going through it... Can we... do this without one? He's praying to us successfully without it, so... Maybe... if we just... 『 ...Why? 』 We concentrate with our full attention on sending that directly to him. ...But. A minute passes, and eventually he lets go of her hand. He takes the cloak in his arms and throws it over Sing, putting it on for her. He closes the treasure chest after picking out an engraved short-sword, and then walks to the stone archway, where he waits for us... who haven't moved since. ...Guess he ...didn't get it, huh? We press our lips together a little bit. That'd be too easy, we suppose... After blinking a few times, we follow after him. He turns and leads the way, onto the baroque bridge connecting this building and another, one of probably hundreds around. There's no wind, just drizzling rain, plucking and plinking off the top of our hoods. ...Suddenly, a light appears in the sky. We peer out from under our veils. Otto too, has stopped to gaze up at that light. A bright shimmer, sparkling as it falls. A shooting star? No way, not down here. It's prismatic, white, but flickers with hues like a diamond. It's... not Paris... and not Setsuna. It's a different person... or monster. Crier looks down at her cloak and grips it a bit. ...Were these cloaks that expensive? Those few minutes of peace... Is this what they cost? Sing, still looking up, is hit with a raindrop in the eye. She winces and looks down also. 『 Cruel. 』 She whispers at the ground. SING CRIER CH.39 Weltschmerz [END] 「 Excuse me sir or madam. 」 「 ...? 」 「 Would you be willing to share the current day, month, and year? 」 「 ... 」 「 Ähm... I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself first. My name is Käthlyn. 」 「 ...Hello, Käthlyn. 」 「 Hi! So, äh... 」 「 Tenth day of the fourth month, twenty-seven hundred fourteen... post World Fall. 」 「 Oh... World Fall... I see... 」 「 ... 」 「 I'm... dead then? This would be the after-life? 」 「 You could say that, yes. 」 「 Then, are you... 」 「 No one special. 」 「 ... 」 「 ...You may call me Fae'larias, if you wish. Just someone... passing through. 」 「 Äh, a traveller? Adventurer? We used to get lots of those around here you know. 」 「 Mm... it's not my first time in Machstein. 」 「 Oh! Do you like it here? I mean, did you... before... 」 「 Yes... I loved it in fact. It was my favourite place to revisit. 「 The songs, stories, designs, and characters here... influenced my life greatly. 」 「 That means a great deal coming from a well-travelled lady like yourself. 「 You must have all sorts of experiences and knowledge to compare. 」 「 ...I suppose so. 」 「 Ähm, would you... mind if I sat and talked with you a little more? 」 「 ... 」 「 I'm not quite ready to move on, and no other responds to me. 「 A-Actually, it's fine if you don't wish to talk! Simply sitting is-! 」 「 If you're not ready... don't sit. Not if you haven't already done so. 「 Any new thing you have yet to try here... could cause you to disappear. 「 Even continuing to talk to me... carries some risk. Do you understand that? 」 「 ...I ...I do. Still, I wish to talk to you. 」 「 Then... do as you please. 」 「 ... 」 「 ... 」 「 May I... ask some questions about you, perhaps? 」 「 As I said... do you as please. 」 「 Sorry, ähm...! Let's see... 「 Where are you... headed exactly, Fae'larias? 」 「 Nowhere... in particular. I simply have to be here for reasons beyond me, 「 and in doing so... I also hope to remove two thorns from my side. 」 「 Oh? Thorns? I was a nurse, maybe I can- 」 「 They are... not the kind of thorns that can be removed by a friend, I'm afraid... 」

「 ...only an enemy, the most genuine kind. 」