I tried to move the Slow Mirror thread to the end of my arm next. It felt broken, empty. I couldn't even put mana into it properly, but I was able to wiggle it a little for my Master.

“A dead branch of the Anima-Tree,” Eunice said. “You can fill it with life once again from the lives of the creatures you’ve consumed.”

“What does the Anima-Tree do, Master?” I asked.

“It is the tree of Life,” the high-cendai explained. “If you grow enough Anima-branches you can become a powerful Animancer.”

“Animancer?” I blinked.

Eunice pointed at the gray book next to me. “Does Depictomancy interest you? It is one of many aspects of Animancy.”

“Yes master,” I nodded. “Can I take this book with me? I’d like to finish reading it and figure out how the card within is animated.”

Eunice nodded.

I smiled.

“At its core, Animancy is animating that which is dead, making it alive,” Eunice added.

“So, if I die… I can use it to reanimate myself?” I asked, feeling curious about exactly how the Slow Mirror saved me.

“It can reanimate your injured spirit, yes.” Eunice nodded. “The leaves of the Tree of Life naturally preserve your soul’s imprint in the Still Forest. A big enough Anima-Tree can even heal the physical body. A skilled cendai can use many Anima-Trees in unison to heal the injured soul of her careless monci, for example."

I sighed.

"I saved your life with my Anima-Forest, twice,” she added and snapped her fingers. Ten thousand gold runes flashed all around her. A brilliant flower formed from yellow fire manifested in her hand, fading to green flames as it died away.

“Thank you, Master,” I bowed. “I… appreciate being alive.”

“Make sure to grow some for your trip,” Eunice smirked. “I won’t be there to heal your soul when you get hurt.”

Eunice had no faith in me. I nodded along and ignited my Allure halo.

“The Resonance Branch,” Eunice said as my halo faded. “Learn how to tune it to your will and desire. Grow it bigger and add more melodies to it, more songs.”

“Uhhh,” I blinked. “What kind of melodies?”

“Music that can affect the minds of others. You’ve just played the tone of vanity to me,” Eunice said. “It is effective at striking the hearts of your followers, making you look more appealing, desirable. This song will be useless in the Twisted Forest unless you wish to draw the Folding Seeds to yourself and get eaten.”

“How do I make it play other songs?” I inquired.

“When you grow the branch, force it to obey your desire, attune it with your dreams, sing to it,” the high-cendai stated firmly. “If you are desperate for acceptance, then the Resonance Branch will grow up to play the song of Vanity. Once it is grown, its shape and tone cannot be changed.”

“Oh,” I said.

That was a deep burn, Eunice. I was… I am still bloody desperate for more friendship and acceptance in chimera society!

Having only a single friend that I could talk to was beyond grating after my life as an internet dweller in the urbex community. Urbexers bonded over our mutual dangerous hobby, we shared secrets, stuck together and helped each other out. It was awesome to have best friends in every city I went to. In a way, the Uer forums were a secret society of people from all over the world. The private sections of the Uer forum were accessible only to members that participated in urbex and proved themselves to the admins by going on dangerous expeditions with them.

The very best, superior listings of abandoned treasures were hidden, closed to the public to avoid inexperienced idiots killing themselves or looting everything not nailed down in abandoned estates for example. The Paris Les UX was my favorite chat to hang out in because the French urbexers had copied a detailed map of the catacombs from the Ministry of Communication basement, which they had infiltrated via the underground tunnels. The group added information to it weekly, expanding the map with every dive into the vast ossuary that connected with over 300km of quarry tunnels beneath Paris.

This map was a true masterpiece of urban exploration. The French urbexers had even built an underground movie theater in the catacombs. They had used the map effectively to move beneath Paris to secretly enter various French museums to fix things there for fun. I had planned to do the same in the Odessa catacombs with my Ukrainian friends before my tragic end in Chernobyl.

I missed the internet dearly. I went back to my lesson with a sigh.

“The blessed runes... the banners which keep monsters away from chimera homes… Do they contain Resonance Branch magic?” I asked to confirm my theory.

“Yes,” Eunice nodded. “The right music can bring monsters to you or chase them away.”

“Is there a list of all of the possible tones that I can look up in a book?” I asked, glancing at the library shelves.

“No,” Eunice said, shaking her head. “Do not copy songs from others. Write your own music from the heart.”

I sighed. I didn’t know why I even bothered asking for such. Eunice never provided me with complete or in-depth explanations.

I felt the cyan-tinted threads that held onto my Mana Battery and Generator and moved the two back and forth, looking at the high-cendai.

“A Root and the Fruit of Power,” Eunice said. “With more of these you’ll be able to make your crystalline core stronger and do more magic.”

I nodded and waited for her to add any other commentary. When she didn’t I wiggled the stub of my burned out Luck tree.

“The Branch of Destiny,” the high-cendai said. “If you grow enough of these and combine other branches with it and you’ll be able to survive truly impossible odds, step away from death itself at the cost of a single branch."

“...I can combine branches with branches?” I blinked.

“Yes. Two different branches can be fused together to greater effect,” Eunice said.

“Such as?”

“That is something that you can find out for yourself, monchi,” The high-cendai smiled. “If you impress me I will gift you… a useful artifact.”

I groaned, feeling frustrated. She really wasn’t making this easy for me. Whatever. I moved on by sliding my Calculator thread up and down.

“The Mind Branch,” Eunice stated. “With more of these you can memorize the ways in the labyrinth of Folding Trees. Even if the paths get longer, some details do not change."

“Is Chimera Ancestral Chorus… a type of innate Mind Branch magic?” I asked.

The high-cendai nodded. No further advice followed so I showed off my last thread. It was the treacherous magenta-colored Wisdom thread that had doomed me to three years of magic-lessness.

“The Seeking Branch,” Eunice commented. “It is able to retrieve things from the Still Forest and define things for you. If it gets big enough, it can help find answers, clues and solutions. If you get lost in the green labyrinth, the Seeking branch can help you find a way home. It's only flaw is that it is also dangerous to use because the phantoms can latch onto it with ease."

I nodded. This stuff would have been really nice to know three years ago!

“You are hereby permitted to Still your body in this library to guide the growth of your Soul Tree as you desire. If we do not see each other again, good luck hunting in the Twisted Forest, my monchi,” Eunice said. “If you do not return from it in… thirty days time, I shall send a hunting party to rescue you.”

“How will they find me?” I asked.

“I will give them an artifact that is able to track your soul,” Eunice said. “You left more than enough of an imprint in this room over the years for me. I can find you anywhere on Andross, no matter how far away you are.”

I bowed one more time as my Master departed and shuddered.

Even if I ran away from Eunice, she would be able to find and send her minions after me. I would not be able to escape from my Master, since she possessed tracking artifacts.

It seemed that the high-cendai was basically the biggest local monster, a villain. She kept the tribe ignorant like little sheep waiting for the slaughter, granting magic to only a select few like herself. She made her monwai depend on her, taught them how to take over human bodies and consumed all thirty-three year old chimera to live forever. In this manner, she was no better than a Still Forest phantom herself.

What if she’s been lying to everyone? How old could chimera live if they didn’t step through the End-gate at thirty tree or perhaps… used Anima-Branch magic to rewind themselves and their families?

I put aside my bitterness, sat in a lotus pose in the middle of the high-cendai’s library and stilled my body, slowing my heart, crystalizing my flesh.

“System, level me up,” I hummed in Ukrainian just as my heart stopped beating.

. . .

Nothing. Darkness. Emptiness. A void. No celestial, otherworldly music. No blinding pleasure or all-consuming pain. No level-up.

Shit.

Hello?

System?

Stats?

I’d like to level up, please?

Chernobyl didn't show up, the System wasn't responding to me. I demanded stats in all the languages I knew, tried to summon up my numbers with my will, tried to imagine them being there, tried to visualize Chernobyl.

Nothing.

I despaired, feeling lost.

For an indeterminately long time, I floated in nothingness, trying to grasp at my stats, trying to visualize myself, trying to force my soul to evolve, to grow.

It wasn't working. Nothing I attempted worked! I had no idea what to do and Eunice had given me no clues whatsoever as to how to grow my Soul-Tree. Like everyone here, she undoubtedly thought I was moving ahead far too quickly for my age.

I growled mentally and focused my awareness of my entire soul, attempting to arrive at a solution.

What did the level up provide exactly? Maybe there was something else that I could use to jump-start whatever connection my soul had with the System before, force the level up somehow.

I pondered over various lines in my menu.

Experience points! Of course!

Experience points were the magic and life of the Chasm monsters I had killed and consumed over the past three years. I felt for them, reaching out for the power they’ve represented.

It was suddenly all around me, circling me like a supercell storm woven from cloudy, pearlescent energy. I didn’t really see it visually, but I felt that it was there, accessible to me. I mentally recalled, remembering the various creatures I had killed over the past three years.

I imagined that their ghosts, memories, soul-shards were spinning all around me, a macabre carousel, a spiral of monsters, my own little Still Forest within me.

I wanted to discern each one. Did they have thoughts? Desires? Needs? Did I need to apologize to them before I turned them into personal power? I tried to listen to them, stilling my soul as much as possible.

It took me a long time, but I got there in the end. Heard their growls and hisses, saw what they once had seen.

“Kill, consume, breed, feast, kill,” the abominations of the Chasm sung in a discordant chorus not of words, but of memories, ideas, feelings. “Rip and tear, breed, feast, survive, hide, consume.”

It was not a nice sensation. These creatures operated on base instincts and did not deserve my apologies for killing and eating them.

I spun the spiral of monsters around me faster, squeezing the abominations together into a thin line, compressing them, turning them into a brilliant, multilayered ring as if I was planet Saturn.

As I compressed the monsters, I discovered that another layer of power was there, one made up of plants. It was thinner, but I definitely felt it too.

Chasm plant life gave my soul power when I ate them! The plants, roots and berries had life experience too, power that they’ve absorbed from the Chasm’s currents of magic. It was different… weaker than the monsters, moved slower, but it was still there.

I listened to them too.

“Grow, thrive, multiply, energy, warm, reach out, grow,” the plants sang to me in a chorus of their slow, simple lives, reaching out for nutrients in the ground and the sun overhead via photosynthesis.

None of them were truly alive or sentient, but there had to be smart plants out there if the Folding Seeds could evolve into anything, extracting experience from other beasts. I wondered if I too could figure out how to slowly, completely digest a single creature’s experience in such a manner that I could take on its innate element. It was an interesting thing to consider as the ring of power rapidly spun around me.

What was leveling up exactly? A conversion of the experience of other creatures into… me. A release of power, an explosion of magic… a singularity! Of course!

I crushed, compressed the ring as much as possible, trying to make a singularity from it. When I could push it no further, I released it and the power detonated, washed over me, igniting the darkness all around.

The voices of the beasts and plants merged together sounded like… alien music, cascading tones that washed over my soul like summer rain. My soul had absorbed it all and blossomed, becoming infused with the power I’ve taken. It burned within me, my soul aching from pain and pleasure that the creatures had experienced once, their entire lives merged together into a singular moment that washed over me.

I opened my eyes. A new universe was born in my mind, colorful stars and constellations floating about, twinkling amidst the darkness.

The stars coalesced into discernible detail, specific shapes. I recognized what I was seeing almost immediately and smiled.

The vision of Chernobyl’s control room was there, but it was torn up, discordant, missing segments. Parts of panels floated between empty spaces, all the dials and numbers torn, skewed and twisted, completely unreadable. It looked like a tornado had gone through the desolate control room, tearing pieces of everything and rearranging them at random.

Freakish veins made up from pulsating cracks shimmered with impossible colors and hung in the void behind the shattered panels like some kind of unsettling, twisted auroras. The whole place looked wrong, broken, sliced up and rearranged like the shards of a mirror broken into a thousand pieces, like a crystal that had been exploded, its lattices now floating through space.

The text on the control panels was an unreadable mess made from shifting static.

“Well… this place has seen better days,” I said looking around. "Not that it was new and sparkling before, mind you."

Nobody replied to me.

I sighed and closed my eyes, ignoring the discordant chaotic mess around me. If chimera cendai grew their soul-trees without support of the System, without numbers simply by intuition alone... then so could I.

I dove deeper into my meditation trance, emptying my mind from everything, clearing away stray thoughts except for what I already knew, except for the ten threads that were already there.

When I opened my eyes I saw nine lit dials colored with what I felt were my essential skills. The dials were all over the place, torn out of the panels, but I knew where they were now.

The letters next to the dials were a completely unreadable mess. If I was a computer designer like my grandfather then maybe I could have mathematically figured out a pattern to the chaos, written a formula that simplified it and granted it order. Alas, I was a mechanic and a hobbyist armorer, not a mathematician.

Technically… I didn't require a translation of the messed up text. I remembered what it represented.

If my first level up gave me 5 points to spend and second one 10, then the third one would most likely give me 15 new threads of power, 15 new branches for my Soul Tree.

I mulled over the ideas presented to me by the high-cendai.

What would be the most useful thing in the Twisted Forest? Which branches could I combine to create something completely new that would help me survive in the labyrinth of trees filled with their hungry seeds?