Shawn opened his eyes as his body turned to flame. Surprisingly, the process did not hurt. He formed an arm of fire and shook it in front of his face. A deep streak of gold wiggled through his flame arm, catching his attention. The helmet Heiki had given him had somehow transformed him into the form his soul took in his inner world.

Shawn spun around in a circle, observing his surroundings. Just like how his inner world had started, the sky was made out of pure darkness. The only physical object in this reality was an empty field of grass.

In a burst of green 1’s and 0’s a raven burst out of the void and landed on the ground next to him. The bird tilted its head. “Shawn is that you,” the raven said in Heiki’s voice.

“Heiki is that you? Where are we?”

“Our souls have entered the engraving.” Shawn nodded. The motion wasn’t particularly clear because he was a sentient ball of fire at the moment, but Heike understood him well enough.

“What do we do now?” Green numbers flashed through the void and a hole appeared in the ground. The raven jumped into and began pecking around.

“In theory, each part of this world represents an aspect of the engraving. All we have to do is find and destroy the engraving responsible for limiting the number of attempts I have to open it. If we remove the self-destruction aspect of the engraving, I will be able to break it in the outside world."

Shadows stretched from Heiki’s claws, cutting deep into the earth. The world rumbled. Bone white hands burst through the surface of the ground. “Oops, I broke the wrong thing. Let me fix that real quick,” he mumbled to himself.

Numbers flew out of his body, repairing the damage that had been done to the ground. The world stopped shaking and the bone-white hands retreated into the dirt.

“Even though this is the brute force method it will require a large amount of finesse. I’ll have to overwrite reality and delete part of the engraving. If I’m interrupted while attempting to hack reality, this plane will destabilize and we will be kicked back to the real world.” He opened another hole in the ground and began searching once more, though this time he was more careful.

“As you saw, the world doesn’t like it when someone attempts to change it. So, you’ll have to protect me from its defensive measures while I work. It's important you don't let anything slip through, because if we die in here our souls will be shattered, and our physical bodies will enter a comatose-like state. I personally like being able to move my body, so don't let me die,” Heiki said from within the perfectly square hole in the ground. Shawn gulped. Being stuck in a body you where unable to move sounded like a fate worse than death.

Heiki picked up a small piece of amethyst with his beak. “Found it! Are you ready to start?”

Shawn experimentally hopped around. Even though his body was in a new form, he was instinctually able to control it. It made sense. It was his soul, after all, it would be strange if he didn’t instinctively know how to control it. Next, he checked his Qi and was surprised to find he could access it. In his soul form, his Qi was much easier to control than normal, it surged to follow his commands almost before he gave them.

He also felt like he had another source of energy available to him. He could manipulate his flame body at no cost to his Qi, but he felt the intensity of his flames dwindle slightly each time he did so. All things considered, this form felt much more powerful than his human form.

“I’m ready. Stay close, I won’t be able to protect you if you go too far away.” Heiki nodded and flew directly over his head. Green numbers rapidly shot out of his body, causing the amethyst to slightly crack.

The world shook once more. Bright white pillars of bone burst out of the ground, stretching high into the pitch-black sky. Hordes of human-sized skeletons crawled out of the pillars. Without any regard for their lives, they charged Shawn.

Utilizing his new abilities, he formed a large arm of fire and smashed into the ground. Groups of skeletons were smashed to pieces as he played a game of whack-a-mole with their heads. However, no matter how many he destroyed, more would crawl out of the pillars ready to sacrifice their lives to kill him.

The broken bones of fallen skeletons rattled as they reassembled themselves. The reformed skeletons' bones were singed black, but they could still fight at full capacity.

The world shook even more violently, the collateral damage he caused while destroying the skeletons activated more of the engraving's defenses. More pillars burst out of the ground, spawning new types of skeletons. The most dangerous of which he termed as gorilla skeleton. Their bones were denser, requiring multiple hits to break and they moved faster than the normal skeleton.

Shawn exhaled several bursts of fire into the crowd, blackening their bones and smashing them to pieces. His flame dimmed.

Creating a second gigantic arm of fire, he activated [Qi Enhancement] for the first time in the fight and directly struck one of the pillars. It didn’t shatter on impact like the skeletons, but his attack managed to knock the tower over, preventing it from spawning any more enemies.

He toggled off [Qi Enhancement] and went back to sending massive bursts of flame into the crowd of enemies. His flames flickered as they dimmed once more, repeated use taking its toll. Enough though he had no lungs, he panted for air.

If he didn’t stop the towers from spawning more enemies, it wouldn’t be possible for him to hold on much longer. “Heiki, how much longer is this going to take,” he said as he smashed two gorilla skeletons into each other. Shawn spared a moment to glance upward, green numbers still flashed in the air around him, but it looked like he hadn’t made much progress. Another slight crack had appeared in the gemstone, but other than that it was in good condition.

“It’s harder than I thought, I’ll need a couple more minutes.” Shawn cursed, with the current rate new enemies were spawning, lasting a couple more minutes sounded impossible. However, if he could reduce the rate at which they spawned, he may be able to hold on.

Shawn activated [Minor Aerokinesis], spending 42 points of Qi to grab a hold of a large chunk of air. He smirked as the mental connection between him and the air solidified. “Watch out. I’m about to make a big explosion.”

Shawn retracted his flame arms and let his enemies approach him. Hundreds of skeletons limped towards him from all sides, but he didn’t care. It was easy to beat enemies of this level with the power of his soul. He chuckled as his flames roared in intensity. If he was in his human body there was no way he would be able to beat the skeletons.

His body crackled with power as he exhaled a large blast of fire. He then used all the wind he had taken control of to boost the power of the flames. A fiery tornado of pure destruction tore through the skeletons and knocked some of the bone pillars down. His body flickered wildly. It wasn’t enough yet. He shot several more balls of fire into the tornado.

With a final grunt of exertion, he used his control over the wind to condense the flames into a tight ball. When the pressure had built and he was no longer able to contain the flames he let them go. A giant explosion of fire rocked the ground knocking over the rest of the bone pillars.

“Watch where you’re exploding things, you almost blew me up.”

Shawn laid down as his form shrank to a third of its previous size. That attack had taken a lot out of him, but it had managed to destroy all of his enemies, so it was worth it. He brought his hand up to his face and was shocked to discover that the gold portion of his flame body had grown immensely. Before, only about 5% of his normally white flame body had been gold, but now the percentage had increased to almost 30%.

He quickly ran through a mantra of facts about his life to ground his sense of self, but found it wasn’t needed. Ever since he had stepped into this world he had been able to think clearly. Here he was unaffected by Etar and Green’s memories.

As if drawn together by a magnet, every shattered bone on the ground, including the pillars flew into the air and formed a ball. Lightning crackled around the ball of bone as a massive airplane-sized arm burst forth in a shower of bone shrapnel. “Shit,” Shawn muttered. He was running low on Qi and his flames had lost their intensity. There wasn't much he could do against an enemy that size at the moment.

The pitch-black arm dragged the rest of its body out of the ball. The behemoth let forth a soundless roar that shook the air. “Stall it for another minute! I’m almost done,” Heiki shouted, his entire body encapsulated by a dome of numbers.

Shawn psyched himself up, finding it harder to charge into battle without the animals’ memories influencing him. He didn’t have to win, he just had to survive. But, the prospect was made difficult as he realized he couldn’t dodge. Heiki could not move while he attempted to delete the engraving, meaning he would have to stop the skeleton from approaching by going on the offensive.

The skeleton took a single step forward, leaving an indent in the ground taller than Shawn’s body. He sighed and activated [Qi Enhancement], there was nowhere to go except forward. Shawn floated forward, his body surprisingly nimble.

Using its arm like a hammer, the skeleton smashed it against the ground. Shawn somehow managed to dodge the attack, but the shockwave of force the skeleton had generated when it had hit the ground sent him flying.

Shawn tumbled across the grass, his flame body losing a moderate amount of size. Before he could even get up, the skeleton brought its hand down once again. The same thing happened as last time, he dodged the attack, but the shockwave sent him flying.

This same process repeated itself seven more times as he found himself on the ground in front of Heiki. He had nowhere left to dodge. It wasn't like he could even if he wanted to. He had run out of Qi. Without his [Qi Enhancement] active he simply wasn’t fast enough to dodge the skeletons punches.

The skeleton raised its foot, its shadow covering the whole plane of grass then it stomped downward. Shawn forced his exhausted body to move, however, in his rush to escape he lost track of his surrondings. Unbeknownst to him, a claw of bone had burst through the ground to grab a hold of him. His momentum halted, he crashed into the ground.

He watched in disappointment as the skeleton's foot rushed towards his face. He should have done better. If he fought smarter, if he hadn’t wasted his power, he could have won this fight.

The power this form had contained had been his downfall, it made him overconfident. A purple wisp of light shot out of his flickering flame body. In a split second, the wisp transformed into a many-eyed fly. Before the foot could smash him to paste, the fly dragged him out of the way.

Rock shot forward impaling the purple fly, making it fade into the mist. The fly had saved his life, but it hadn’t been fast enough to escape the blast radius. Shawn tumbled through the air as he caught a glimpse of a blue screen.

Wisp Lost: Many eyes of the Lesser Fly. Perception -3.

“Done!” The world dissolved into 1’s and 0’s and he found himself back in the casino. Shawn gasped for breath as he tore his helmet off. He didn’t want there to be any chance of him getting sent back to that virtual world.

“Did it work?” He gripped his head as his senses weakened, his vision becoming less clear by the second. He wasn’t sure what had happened, he hadn’t commanded the wisp to leave his body. He didn’t even know that the wisps retained their form after he absorbed them.

There were two possibilities. Either, the wisp had acted on its own. Or the child-like voice in his inner world had sent the wisp out to save him. He wasn’t sure which option was worse. Either sounded like they could be potentially disastrous.

“It worked. I didn’t think we were going to survive when that big skeleton showed up, but you did it. You held the behemoth off,” Heiki said as he smiled at Shawn. Shawn smiled back feeling like he had known the man for years despite literally meeting less than an hour ago. Life and death battles had a way of forging bonds quickly. He was confident that he would be friends with Heiki for the rest of his life. After what they had gone through together, he considered the man a brother.

Heiki moved the information jade to a different machine. A blank holographic screen appeared. Shawn waited with bated breath. “The information will appear on the screen as I unlock it.” Heiki cracked his knuckles and pulled out a pen with a glowing tip.

He drew symbols on the jade, each one specifically designed to counter a single engraving. Slowly, Heiki unlocked the jade, causing its hidden information to populate the holographic screen.

The letters C and T slowly typed themselves out across the screen. Shawn held his breath in anticipation.

Hundreds of lines of numbers rapidly filled the screen, but no more words appeared. He scratched his head in confusion, that hadn’t been what he was expecting.

Once the information jade had been fully unlocked the screen displayed:

C.T:

21.2435, 14.8924, -1

21.2435, 14.8924, 7

4.45645, -100, 8.544 x3

97.2345, 11.3452, 7 x5

81.0132, 97,3454, 7

-99.340, -30.3509, -2 x3

50.239, 42.0469, 8

The list continued on, but he didn’t bother reading further, it was all gibberish to him. “Is it in code,” Shawn asked? It didn’t make sense to him to encode the text of such a heavily defended information jade. But, Dorian struck him as a particularly paranoid type of person so it was possible.

Heiki’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he entered the numbers into various databases and algorithms. His eyes darted back and forth as he quickly scrolled through multiple screens of information at once. “No, there is no pattern that would point towards the numbers representing letters. It’s not encoded. The numbers must represent something else.” He smiled reassuringly at him. "Don't worry, we'll figure it out."

Screens rapidly opened and closed as Heiki searched for the truth. “Oh,” he muttered in shock. "Oh,” he repeated again. “Shit.”

Shawn moved closer to see what the man had discovered, but he quickly closed the tab. All Shawn got a glimpse of was a collection of buildings with purple and yellow glass. “I’m sorry.” A spear of shadows impacted the wall where his head had been a second ago, causing him to flinch. If he hadn’t instinctively moved his head, he would have died. Power coursed through his veins as he prepared to activate [Qi Enhancement]. However, before he could act the spear exploded into a cloud of shadows, blocking his vision.

The door slammed shut as he stumbled out of the cloud. His heart hammered in his chest, the jade was gone. Heiki had stolen it.

Shawn took off like a rocket, running as fast as he could without activating [Qi Enhancement]. Just as Shawn burst out of the kitchen door of the strip club, he spotted Heiki dash out the front door. He followed, shoving people out of the way. He left a stream of spilt drinks, shattered glass and angry customers in his wake. The music ground to a halt as the club security noticed the distrubance he was making.

Before the security could stop him, he burst out of the club into the casino. Heiki was nowhere to be seen, but he spotted a group of security guards running to the left, so he decided to follow them. Shawn wove his way through crowds, the chaotic sounds of the casino drowning out the noise of his movements.

Spurred on by his distraction, a fragment of Etar's identity poked through to the surface of his mind. He shook his head and recentered his sense of self, blocking the fragment out of his mind.

As Etar's influence faded, it whispered ways of tracking the man in his ear. Without any better ideas, he listened to its suggestions. With his keen perception that was almost seven times as powerful as the average man on Earth, he tracked Heiki’s scent like a bloodhound.

Bursting out of the casino, he saw Heiki dash into the car valet circle and steal a car. Shawn’s anger rose as Heiki shoved a young woman out of her car and slammed the door. Not willing to be left behind, Shawn also stole a car from the valet circle right in front of its owners.

Shawn fumbled with the controls for a moment, before slamming on the accelerator, he could figure it out as he went. The steering wheel popped out, allowing him to move it in every direction. He swerved through traffic, somehow keeping with Heiki despite his total lack of experience with flying cars.

The red car stayed low to the ground, in hopes of shaking him off. Heiki began to execute increasingly risky maneuvers in an attempt to shake Shawn off of his tail. Shawn wasn't easily dettered and stuck to him like glue, ignoring the danger.

Driving like a madman, Heiki wove through massive colored bursts of water in a water fountain. With no choice in the matter, Shawn followed him.

Shawn navigated through the water with increasing confidence, his skill with maneuvering a flying car increasing. A massive ring of water shot out of the fountain, complety blocking his vision, and making him lose track of Heiki's red car.

His engine roared with as he accerated straight into the obstacle. Water droplets splattered against his windshield further blocking his vison, but offer than that he had sustained no damage from his reckless manuever. His vision had only been blocked for a couple seconds, but Heiki had been able to use that time to escape. Shawn frantically looked around, and after a moment of suspense, spotted his red car climbing straight up into the air.

He pushed the pedal to the medal and followed him. Reckless driving quickly shortned the gap between the two till Shawn was mere feet behind him. If he accelerated a bit more, he could bump into the other man's car and knock him out of the air. Heiki hit the brakes mid-air, causing Shawn to shoot past him. “Fuck.” He turned around and plummeted through the air at full speed, trying to catch up to him as fast as possible.

The duo weaved the cityscape narrowly avoiding buildings. Sweat ran down Shawn’s brow as he focused. This cat and mouse game of theirs couldn’t continue forever. Eventually, one of them would crash.

A train's horn blared loud enough that he could hear it hundreds of feet in the air. Shawn gulped as he saw Heiki drive straight towards it. The train ran over a bridge, at most ten feet tall. Directly under the bridge, there was a wide tunnel that was only accessible by going under it.

Heiki accelerated on a collision course with the train. It looked like if they kept their current speed they would crash into the train. They both sped up, approaching 200 miles per hour.

Shawn gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white, he wouldn’t lose. No matter what. He accelerated further, bumping his car up against Heiki’s. Not to be outdone, Heiki increased his speed even more, reaching a point where even with their cultivation enhanced dexterity they were unable to fully control the cars movements.

Passing so close that they shook the windows of the train, they narrowly avoided it and continued racing towards the underground tunnel. However, Heiki made a mistake and misangled his steering wheel for a fraction of a second, causing him to crash into the wall of the tunnel.

Shawn immediately stopped his car and raced to the wreck. The car had impacted the concrete wall so hard that it had cracked. Smoke wafted off the car as Shawn carefully approached it, unsure if it was going to explode.

When he determined that there was no fire, he opened the car door, revealing Heiki’s mangled body. A solid rod of steel pierced his chest, causing him to rapidly lose blood. All his anger faded away as he saw Heiki’s broken form. To think that he had called the man a friend, how had things ended up like this? It all escalated so quickly.

Heiki smiled at him, blood running down his lips. “You understand, right? This is what we’re all here for.”

A tear ran down Shawn’s cheek. “I don’t understand.”

Heiki did not respond, his heart had stopped beating.