“‘Therefore, it is believed that new Ether comes from the hearts of Du and Ti, their battle for supremacy continuing even after their deaths and creating new Ether with every clash.’ Well, we know that Ether is much more prevalent than just being on one world, so it can’t come from some creator deities. I guess that it means that we’ll have to take everything with a grain of salt.” Kain stated, closing the cover of Ether Manipulation Essentials: Volume 1. “Other than that, this first chapter has been very uninsightful. Most of it we already knew.” he complained.

Luna giggled as she sat across from him on the couch. “Very insightful… You finally figured out why everything is blue, but you still complain about it being uninsightful.” she joked.

He snorted and put the book away. “It hardly mattered why everything is blue, be it from a high density of Ether or otherwise.” he dismissed. “Though, I guess the whole strengthening versus storage thing was interesting. It’ll help us figure out what the overload limit is for whatever we find.”

“Wait, what was that? I don’t remember there being a section like that.” Luna said.

“Did… Did you forget?” he stuttered. “Whatever, it’s fine. It did seem a bit boring anyway. But the difference is… complicated. The storage of a material is how much Ether something can store before exploding. Strengthening is when a material has had Ether stored inside of it for so long that the Ether integrates with the material, making it stronger. Storing enough Ether to just touch the material’s max makes it go faster, but it said that, as a rule of thumb, an object will always be strengthened proportionally to the environment it is placed in, but it’s color will depend on its Ether density threshold. A very strengthened object with a low Ether density threshold will almost always be blue, while a very strengthened object with a high Ether density threshold will mostly retain its normal color. I’m guessing that our version of that is like how my knife I brought from Earth is slowly becoming stronger. But now that I think about it, the book said that, while a strengthened object won’t lose its strength when put in a lower Ether environment, it will look comparatively blinding in such an environment.” he said.

“So is it like that heat metaphor you were talking about? Like, if you have a red hot stone in a fire, it won’t radiate heat, but if you have it somewhere else you can feel the heat being let off from it? That’s kinda cool. That’ll make it easier to scare bad guys away!” she cheered.

He got up from the couch and Luna followed on her floating skull. “Well, if we waltz back to Earth while, continuing with the metaphor for a minute, being on fire, it’ll cause a lot of panic and bring more problems than we would like. I’ll try to make something that reads the atmospheric Ether density and makes a sort of bubble around us that stops our emissions and projects some standard emissions. Sounds like a tall order, though. I’ll try my best.” he said, smiling. Luna gave an expression similar to a smile and used an Ether limb to open the front door to the apartment. They walked over to the pod with cracked glass and Kain pressed the button with 17 written on it. The door jerked closed and the elevator descended slowly, every so often lurching downwards and giving both of them a scare. Before too long, however, they made their way down to the 17th floor.

They found it entirely identical to the other floors, save for the 23rd floor. Kain grabbed all of the necklaces, making his total reach 174 necklaces. Thinking about it, he realized that he would most likely never need that many, but he decided to grab the other over 400 necklaces. He would rather be safe than sorry. Just as he nodded to himself, Luna flew over to him. “Hey! There’s something going on down there! Come look!” she babbled, flying away before he could say anything. Shrugging to himself, he followed her to the window, he looked out to see a stand off in the street below between two groups of creatures. One group was made up of monkey-like creatures with chitin similar to the material making the walls covering their bodies and an extra arm protruding from the center of their chests. The other group, which seemed to be guarding the area around the building they were in, were giant formless blobs of moss that shifted around and made themselves look bigger and more threatening.

Watching the showdown in the street below, he rubbed his eyes for a moment and turned to Luna. “What the hell are those things?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. Those ones feel weird though.” she mentioned offhandedly, pointing at the chitin-covered monkeys.

“They feel stranger than formless blobs of moss? I don’t get what makes them strange.” he replied.

She eyed him for a moment before responding. “That extra arm serves no real function though. I mean, I guess I could find some use for it, but they are too bulky and heavy for climbing, too heavily armored to care about thrown rocks or whatever, and they don’t really use it menacingly.” she said. As she said that, Kain gazed at the center arm of each chitin-covered monkey. The arm, for most, rested by wrapping around their sides and holding onto their backs, though some slung it over their shoulder. The center arm, now that he looked, was much less armored and much less thick than the other 2 arms on the creatures. On top of that, the arm looked almost boneless, flopping around and bending like a tail would, despite the fact that they already had one. He could think of a few ideas about how the tail could be used, but he couldn’t confirm any of them.

“I don’t exactly see how the limb would be useless. The hand may be small, but that could be a case of them adapting to reaching into small spaces. No, the moss blobs are the more concerning ones to me.” he stated.

She raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“Because they’re defending this building.” he replied.

“And why does tha- Oh! Oh… yeah that’s not good. We’re going to have to get past those things if we want out, won’t we?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, we’ll be able to put some of that boring book’s knowledge to the test! What if we make some sort of Ether wave? Condensing it allows us to change its concept, so doing the opposite should give it a lot of force.” she said.

“You mean like the thing we did when trying to make the portal? It would be effective in a purely physical sense, but sending a wave of Ether would just flood their system with it and give them a serious boost. Although I’m taking the book with a grain of salt, it did say that an animal given large amounts of Ether go berserk and try to kill everything it can. It could work as a distraction, but I wouldn’t throw it out on a whim.” he lectured, receiving a nod from Luna.

“By the way, why does the first chapter of the first volume of a series of books calling themselves the ‘essentials’ have the behavior of animals when given large doses of Ether? It seems kind of irrelevant.” she asked.

Shrugging, Kain looked back down at the street and saw that neither of the packs of animals moved at all. “I don’t know. We don’t know about the customs of those guys. Maybe the Duvalid had some sort of problem with aspiring Ether manipulators testing it on animals, screwing up a spell, and getting mauled to death by a rampaging beast. There are those giant crocodile-turtle things after all, and someone who has run out of Ether is a sitting duck.” he explained.

“What’s a sitting duck? Actually, what’s a duck?” Luna asked.

He laughed. “It’s an expression describing when someone is an easy target. Also, a duck is a type of aquatic bird. Don’t remember if they can fly, though. I never really got into the nature therapy everyone went on and on about.”

“Hmm. Anyway, what’re they doing down there?” she asked.

“I haven’t a clue. Either way, while they are distracted, let’s go and grab every other necklace and find a way out of here.” Kain said, walking toward the elevator. They descended, going to every floor and raiding the rooms for amulets. While Kain did that on every floor, Luna watched the staring contest going on in the street below. Once they had reached the 7th floor and found a total of 454 necklaces, noise erupted from the street. Kain rushed to the window before Luna could even call to him and watched the battle below. They monkeys threw themselves around the street, dodging out of the way of the moss blobs as they charged. The moss blobs were obviously lacking in intelligence, as they never observed their opponents and always charged. The situation became a stalemate, as the blobs charged and the monkeys dodged the charges. “Luna, what happened? Why did they start fighting?” he asked.

Shrugging her shoulders, she moved toward the elevator. “I dunno. One second, they’re just staring at each other, and the next, they’re shuffling around the street. Either way, we should finish with this boring stuff. Once we finish that, we can go fight them down there!” she cheered, rushing to the elevator.

He sighed. “Oh, what happened to the sweet little Luna who just wanted to help!?” he cried sarcastically. “Who has tainted your poor, innocent soul!?” His performance earned a giggle out of Luna. They continued their collecting, going without incident until the fourth floor. Before they even entered the elevator and went to the fourth floor, they saw moss and vines growing upwards in the tube. It almost reached the fifth floor, reaching at the glass part of the tube and seemingly trying to grasp it. “Alright, I have an idea. First, though, I need you to help me with something.” he said, receiving a nod from Luna. He grabbed his fancy axe and used it to cut the glass. Although the axe had the embedded sharpness Ether, it took a second for it to push through the wall. Kain sighed and pulled out a small roll of cloth. “Okay, first, try to light some of that moss on fire.”

Nodding, a floating flame much stronger than the ones she had used in the Duvalid tower appeared above her head. It flew into the tube and rubbed up against some of the moss, causing it to spew out smoke. Before long, the moss lit up like a candle and began to burn. “It works! Well, it is a different type of moss, so it could grow in areas that are dry.” Luna pondered.

Kain slapped himself in the forehead. “I forgot that moss usually grows in wet places. Oh well, at least this thing works.” he remarked, shrugging. He took the small bundle of cloth and set it alight. He threw the burning bundle into the elevator and threw a piece of glass at the button with the number 1 on it. “Well, I don’t think we should stick around. I have a feeling that there’s some sort of trick we haven’t seen yet from this moss, so let’s just cut our losses and leave.” Shrugging, Luna floated over to the window.

“So you want to grab onto my shield or hammer to fly away?” she asked.

“What about your deer skull?”

“You want to?”

“Can I?”

“No. My skull.” she replied, hugging the top of the skull.

“Fine. I’ll take the shield.” he said. The shield she had been keeping around the entire time tilted to allow Kain to sit on it. “See that building over there?” he said, pointing at a three story building nearby.

“Yeah, we’re going there? Alright, let’s go!” she yelled. She used her floating hammer head to smash open the window in front of them as they took flight above the blind melee on the street.