[Valerianne Yul]

Nox stared at the mech for a bit with a look of self-veneration.

“Really wish the other things I’d built lasted longer,” she said.

Even the normally harmless rainbows cast by the corona behind her head were making my eyes water. I didn’t like being on Magra. Everything was too bright and dusty here. I felt like my mouth was drying out with each breath.

She glanced at the black hole, following the direction of my gaze. “Do you know why it’s radiating all of the colors?”

I shook my head.

“The Void engine was made as a means of stopping entropy. It’s not a regular black hole. It eats cosmic rays and other space radiation cast by other stars and spits out all of the magic affinities, multiplying and magnifying the power that everyone everywhere can use. See? Those aren’t regular rainbows - they’re mana-rich rays.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, not quite understanding what she was talking about.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering to educate a highly misinformed dope like you. I miss June already.” Nox sighed, turned around and grabbed at the ladder leading into the machine. She let go of the ladder and frantically shook her arm, hissing, opening and closing her hand. The metal was very hot, I guessed.

She grabbed at the ladder again, climbing up. Her fox-tail angrily twitched with every step.

I watched as she struggled to open the rust-covered metal door overhead.

The door finally submitted to her pulling and groaned wide open. She climbed inside.

I grabbed at the ladder myself and yelped. It was far hotter than I expected. My own hand burned and also radiated pleasure. I sighed, climbing after her.

The inside of the mech was overbearingly, maddeningly hot. I started to hyperventilate, barely able to take a breath. She turned to me, purple eyes glowing in the dark.

“Do you have Void mana?”

I checked my stats and shook my head. “One Void.”

“Ah, I took it all with me when I went into June,” she said. “I really aught to murder you for your consistent effort of sabotaging all of my amazing progress… but I guess I do need you.”

“Well, thank Gaia for that.” I said, rolling my eyes.

She thrust her sweaty arm at me. “Lick me.”

“Eh? Ew, no.” I shook my head.

“Come on. I’m literally sweating out valuable Void mana over here.”

“I can’t use Void mana,” I shook my head.

“Do you even know a single spell? Or are you an uneducated peasant who just wants to toil in the ground and has no goals for self-improvement?”

“I know one spell - Heal,” I muttered, growing annoyed at this arrogant Goddess. “If I use it with Void mana, things explode.”

“So what? Be smarter! Turn your disadvantages into opportunities! Blow people up with it!” she said.

“I don’t want to blow people up,” I looked at her, feeling concerned with her resolutely malevolent attitude.

“Get off your high horse and face the facts! We’ll never get off this radioactive rock if you limit yourself to healing, hugs and good deeds! Do you know how many people I have exploded recently, how many humans I had already murdered with your body to save June? Over a hundred! If it wasn’t for the death-proof Sextant Void Archmage, I would have decimated their entire armada and taken control of their capital ship!” She boasted.

“Yeah, I read your Quest-rant,” I said. “Also, I’m not a killer.”

“Tsh.” She made a noise at me and suddenly looked a bit embarrassed. “Yeah, okay that is a lot of silly Quests. I was under some stress. Going to delete these right now.”

“What’s with you and blowing things up? Can’t you solve problems without resorting to mass murder and excessive violence? If you didn’t blow up the Convent we wouldn't be in this mess.” I commented as she stuck out her tongue at herself and at me.

“You know, you could criticize me less, make use of my Void-rich sweat and blow up the runes on this obedience collar, and we’d be one step closer to getting off this rock!” she said, tapping her magisteel Sextant collar impatiently.

I looked at her, raising an eyebrow. "What, you want me to free you… so you can do all sorts of dark magic or follow through with your threat and murder me?"

“Okay, you’re right. I do keep threatening you, but that’s only because your behavioral pattern disappoints and agitates me greatly. Your incessantly ill-planned heroism of mindless self-sacrifice really reminds me of my backstabbing White archmages. If it wasn’t for them, none of us would be in this mess." Nox shrugged. "You’d probably explode my neck in half too, since you’re such an incompetent.”

“I’m not an incompetent.”

“Prove me wrong then,” She asserted. “Argh! This damn slave collar is bugging me to get to work. Get into the control system.” She grabbed at me, shoving me towards the middle of the spherical metal room that we were in.

“How do I even…?” I asked, noticing that there were metal rings in the floor and ceiling connected to chains.

“Put these two rings onto your legs and those two on your arms,” she said while smirking.

“How do you know...?” I asked.

“I practically designed these mechs with my Apostles. They’re really basic, test dummy machines. Even an incompetent like yourself can use it.” Nox shoved my arm into one of the rings. “Surprised the damn things lasted as long, but then again this is a dead moon with no rain or acidic agents.”

“Test dummy?”

“Yeah. They’re good for surviving explosions. They are designed to be operated from a distance with these rings, but I guess these morons don’t know how to use them properly. Really wish I had put an air-cooling rune in these things. Bloody hot in here.” She panted.

“Don’t you know a spell for cooling yourself off or something?” I asked.

“I’m a tad too busy trying to keep June alive as it is. Adding cooling to that would distract me from this important job. I’m a Void Goddess and not a freaking healer, okay?”

“You keep saying that you’re a Goddess, yet you’re not very omniscient or all-powerful.” I said.

“Somebody thought it would be a good idea to spend my reserves of eight million Void mana,” Nox glared at me.

“I was just trying to help a forest.” I answered, suddenly realising that the forest didn’t need my help. The forest was using me as a living weapon. All of the forests were in cahoots. A cabal of forests with tits and butts had used me, made me what I am, crafted great and terrible plans for my family and for me. Fucking dryads.

I raised my eyes at Nox. My comment had cut deep. She looked a bit uncertain herself, for once. “I forgot a lot of stuff, okay?” She muttered. “... and I can’t do external magic with this collar on. There’s blocker runes all over it.” She pointed at her neck.

“Right.” I said. For a second I contemplated licking her arm and helping her with the collar, but then decided against it. I could not trust her. If she was indeed their All-mother, then she was just like the dryads if not worse. Letting her be free, unrestrained was dangerous. I would be of no use to her if she could do magic in June's body. Nothing would stop her from killing me. If there were indeed weapons of great power buried here, then she could use them against humanity and end all life!

With a deep sense of foreboding I understood why the dryads had put Nox into me and not into a bird. Inside of a bird she would be an unkillable, flying machine!

I shuddered, visualizing Nox as a parakeet of the apocalypse and attached the last ring to my leg. The rings on me lit up and as I moved my arm, one of the arms outside mirrored my movements with a groan. Pretty neat.

“Here we go. Try casting a spell by drawing power from the mech to make a healing circle,” she said. “The mechs harvest energy from the radiation and magic in the environment converting it into a pure, unaffiliated-type battery. You should be able to use unaffiliated mana for any spells. It’s the same as using any external mana source, so I hope you’re not completely incompetent.”

“Hmmm… okay…” I said pointing a hand at her. A healing circle formed in front of me. It worked! The mech moved its arm up, copying my motion.

"This isn't some trick to get mana, right?" I asked.

"No," she sighed. "I need your help to fix June. Her organs and tissues are out of place. It's very inconvenient."

"Why are June's organs out of place?"

"I moved them around to make room for extra organs, okay?"

"E-extra organs? What? How? How is that body functioning?" I blinked.

"Her blood was incompatible with yours so I copied your organs into her body using half of your blood! Stop asking dumb questions and heal June, damn it!" She hissed.

"You stole half of my blood?" I raised an eyebrow. "To make more organs inside of June?"

"Yes. To save her!"

"No wonder I feel like crap." I muttered.

"You're a healer. Do your job, damn it!" Nox said exasperatedly.

“Heal!” I shot the spell at her, praying that she wasn't lying.

“Well. I’m dying marginally less from the heat now and that eased part of my burden of keeping June alive.” She sighed and smiled a little. “Guess we’re stuck with basic healing magic as the only way to avoid death from a heat stroke.”

I cast a heal on myself. I wasn’t expecting much based on Nox’s lack of praise for the effect it had on her, but I had hoped to recover at least some missing blood. The ever present fatigue and light-headedness could piss off. I did feel slightly cooler, though. Nox climbed a ladder on a side wall. It led to a seat that was hanging above me.

“I see that the Sextants have made some modifications to my test dummies. There wasn’t a gun here.” Nox pointed at the machine that she was facing.

The voice of the Sextant chavalier resounded from a box in the wall. “I see you've figured out how to control it, are you done standing there like an idiot with your arm raised? March the mech over to me.”

I sighed, walking forward. The section of the floor that I was standing on slid beneath me as I walked. The mech replicated my motions moving forward. I saw the Sextant chavalier standing in the white desert and stopped in front of him.

“Good. Very good. Patrol the camp till nightfall. If you see a monster, shoot it.” His voice crackled from the box. “If you require food or water there’s a storage box with rations on your left and a rune that produces water. There’s enough for the two of you for one day.”

The speaker fell silent, a gemstone on its surface darkening.

Nox sighed from above. “Damn Sextants think they can boss me around.”

She stuck her tongue at me and my status menu dinged.

Quest: Escape from Sextant Camp.

Reward: 1000 points.

“Did you just give me a Quest?” I asked.

“Damn right I did. Pretend you’re patrolling and then walk us out of here really quick-like.”

“Right. But what’s the plan after? What happens when we run out of rations?”

“I dunno. We’ll figure something out. There’s a lot of dangerous weapons buried around here. Dangerous and theoretically useful for us.”

“This isn’t very encouraging. I don’t like making decisions on your theoretical knowledge of something that’s six thousand years old.”

“You want to work as a slave for the Sextants the rest of your life? They’ll notice eventually that the control runes are damaged and covered up in blood and then they’ll replace your collar.”

“Fine.” I said. “We’ll…” I looked up at her and saw that she was sticking out her tongue at herself.

“What are you doing?” I asked curiously.

“Giving myself a quest to murder everything in our path too. Reward: 100-10000 points per murder, depending on opponent level. You already have a similar murder Quest, I gave you one yesterday. You better not cancel it, if you know what’s good for you. Lots of nightmarish things here that might eat a little healer idiot.”

“Umm… Exactly what kind of monsters are out here?”

“No clue. I haven’t been here in a while. Loads of bioweapons are stored within the Void dungeons and plenty of things that I was testing and blowing up. Some of them might have survived no doubt!” She said with a shrug.

“Great.” I sighed and started to walk the mech forward, not feeling too happy.

“Keep those healing spells going.” She added. “I’m freaking melting up here!”

I raised my hand up and shot a healing spell at her butt.

"Umm..." I said. "You don't find it suspicious that the Sextant chavalier didn't make you practice firing the gun or anything?"

"Nah. He clearly saw that I'm not a tit like you." Nox replied. "This is normal."

I didn't think that it was normal. Somebody was planning terrible things. If anything, the dryads had made me extremely paranoid forever.