Jun and I sat motionless in the final frame of Nia’s lesson for a short while, taking in the woman who was frozen in agony and the hazard she occupied. I didn’t really know what to say, seeing as everything we’d just seen was only a small snippet of Nia’s life, but the woman before us felt so different to the Nia we’d known.

“Do you know how long ago this was?” Jun asked, crawling forward until her hand caught on the edge of our movable zone.

I swiped my hand across the control interface, and the scene bled away. We were back on the switchport, our backs to the slightly shattered slyk and the trawler absolutely shaking as the sounds of battle bled out from it. I ignored everything for a few seconds, swiping through Nia’s inheritance for a date, and pursed my lips at what I found.

This lesson was recorded six years and two months after the memory I’d watched. And it was the second oldest thing in Nia’s inheritance. “Thirty-five-ish years ago, which leaves a six year dark spot in Nia’s inheritance.” I swiped to the left, and saw that there was at least one entry in Nia’s inheritance per year after this lesson. “So we won’t get to actually see how Nia met Inopsy.”

“Huh. I don’t know if that’s strange or not, honestly; how much do people normally put in their inheritances? Back on Sotrien, it was mostly just possessions and a few key memories.” Jun mused, then shook her head. “We’ll just ask Inopsy the next time we see him. Anyway, how many lessons are there? And do you have to do them in order, or can you open them at any time?”

Another question I didn’t know the answer to, but one that could be easily fixed. I swiped over to the lessons screen and pressed on a symbol that looked like the flower Nia’s core had unfolded into, but was met with a message that stopped that option in its tracks.

“This lesson’s locked until I’m core mastery fifteen.” I said with a frown, pressing on all the other lessons in turn and getting a similar message from each of them. “Twenty two, twenty nine, and so on. It looks like I get one lesson for every seven core mastery increases.”

“Boo. Fair, but boo.” Jun laughed, pushing herself to her feet as she returned to the slyk. “Maybe one of them will tell us how to get more stat nodes without having to kill everything with a core that we see.”

“Oh, we can get stat nodes from other places. A lot of hazards give them out as completion rewards, or from hidden puzzles and boss battles.” I said with a wave of my hand, bracing myself against the slyk for Jun to resume her demolition. When nothing came, I turned to look over the rock and saw her leaning on my hammer with her head cocked to the side. “What?”

Jun sighed and shook her head. “Remember when you said we could farm stat nodes from the lichenthropes back in the floodforest? And then we spent days killing them without getting a single one to drop? Is this going to be like that?”

Ah, that. I’d wrongly assumed that the lichenthropes would count as core-bearing enemies, even if I’d never seen a core in any of them. “That was my mistake, not a world-shattering change. The stat nodes should still be attainable just from doing hazards, even if we don’t go killing everything we see.”

Jun hefted my hammer over her shoulder and shrugged. “Okay, I’ll trust you. Not like there’s any other choice, but I really hope you’re right. I want to do the thing Nia taught us as soon as possible.”

“Same here, same here.” I agreed, returning to my position against the slyk. “Hammer away whenever you’re ready.”

Jun resumed brutalizing the helpless slyk with revitalized vigor, more and more shards flying from the boulder by the minute. The sounds of Okeria fighting inside the trawler didn’t let up for the thirty minutes that Jun took her turn, and I was halfway through my own thirty minute shift when the second trawler pulled in right next to the first.

The pull of having to keep two trawlers at bay had a palpable effect on the Switchport’s Stilling. I felt a haze I hadn’t noticed before lift ever so slightly, and the electricity within the slyk crackled to life like the last dying embers of a bonfire. I quickly checked to see if it was about to wake up, but my interface told me that it was still completely subjugated by the hazard. So I hefted my hammer once again, and swung true.

My breathing was beyond heavy from exertion, and I stood hunched over while leaning on my hammer for support. If it wasn’t there, I would have toppled over at the slightest breeze. Jun had retreated to the main building a handful of minutes ago to get away from the din of Okeria’s increasingly grating battle, one that I had hoped would end after the first massive explosion rocked the trawler and left a hole in the side that constantly spilled thick oil like a bleeding waterfall. And after the second explosion on the other side of the trawler, and a third near the bottom, I knew Okeria wasn’t just fighting the massive slyk. He was completely clearing out the trawler in his search for… whatever he was looking for. I couldn't care in my current state, as the progress we’d made on the slyk was just as exciting as the work to get to it was exhausting.

I’d hit a vein of extremely thick oil a handful of minutes ago, the black stuff so thick that it hadn’t dripped down even as I’d broken away the rock under it. The further I went, the more the oil part of the slyk reminded me of those models people had made of anthills by pouring molten metal down them. The slyk really had infested this rock, sneaking in through the tiny pores strewn about it, and had coagulated into this mass. Ripples of electricity coursed through the slyk’s main body every now and again, and they were growing more frequent by the minute. That had to be a sign that another trawler was coming through.

“Shit.” I panted. We were running out of time, and I’d only managed to expose a sixth of the slyk. I needed to find some other way to kill this thing that didn’t involve exposing it entirely. “Can you hear me, Jun?”

Silence.

{We need to find another way to kill this thing.} I messaged moments later, my mind a little slower than usual from the exertion. {If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.}

Jun’s message popped onto my interface a dozen seconds later. {I found a closet that was sealed shut with boards painted yellow, and I’m working on prying them off right now. Maybe there’ll be something we can use.}

The yellow was supposed to lead us to clear the hazard, so I sent Jun encouragement and waited for her to come back. I would’ve gone to help, but my legs weren’t exactly listening to what I wanted them to do. My arms, I knew exactly why they hurt so much, but I hadn’t expected everything else to go along with them.

Another trawler crushed through the rocks as it came to port. We were seriously running out of time, and if the switchport’s protection suddenly blinked off, Jun and I would be utterly fucked. I just knew Endra was still sitting outside the gate that led us here, waiting for Jun and I to get kicked out so she could extract whatever she was looking for from me. It felt like something more than revenge, but I was too tired to begin thinking about what else she could be after me for.

I looked up, blinked the exhaustion from my eyes, and squinted as I counted the trawlers that I could see. There was the one Okeria was in, leaking oil from its holes, and the second one that had nothing written on its side for the moment, since it would be here until we let the first one go out. And that was it. No third trawler, and no spray of rocks to denote that one was in the process of breaching the ground. So what had–

“Oh, dear, you look exhausted. Let me help you.”

Vitality surged through me as a hand that was both unbearably hot and numbingly cold at the same time pressed down on my armored shoulder. Neither my battery nor my armor’s integrity went up, but the Sebastian inside of it felt a million times better. It was a strange feeling; like being on a caffeine high combined with the system shock of diving into freezing water.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Jun’s grandma was finally here. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Anything for my granddaughter’s partner.” Keratily said with a smile in her voice, her voice nowhere near as old as I knew she was. “Where is Juniper, if I may ask? I have news on Endra that all three of you need to hear.”

“You’re not going to ask where Okeria is?” I asked.

Jun’s grandma pointed up at the trawler that was leaking oil. “Unless you and Juniper were hiding your powers from me, I think he’s in there. And knowing that scamp, he has a little watcher here looking over you. He knows I’m here, and he’ll be out when he's good and done getting the materials for more living technology.”

An image of those silver balls floating around Okeria’s wrist popped into my mind, along with the electrical currents that made up the slyk. Had he weaponized these creatures?

“Alright, well, Jun is somewhere in the main building right there.” I said, thumbing at the building behind me for emphasis. “We’re trying to kill this thing, but it’s one tough motherfucker.”

“Mm, yes, they are. And they’re too high a hazard for you to be dealing with, aren’t they? Okeria must expect me to help him fix that, but I’ve given that boy far too much. What if I chose to be a stubborn old oak this time, then what would he do? You and Juniper would be trapped here with Endra outside impatiently waiting for you to pop out.”

“That’s not a very nice picture you’re painting.” I chuckled nervously.

“Oh, I’m just rambling, little seed. I would never do anything to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, even if it means letting myself be manipulated a little by someone who thinks he’s just that clever.” Jun’s grandma chuckled right back, then shook her head. “I’ll be sure to scare the daylights out of him when we’re alone, but he knows I don’t mean it. My mother is friends with his children’s mother, so I know him a little better than I think I’d like to.”

Jun walked out of the main building with glass cylinders overflowing from her arms, most of which were empty, but a single one had a flickering flame suspended perfectly in the middle. Her head was down, and she stepped carefully on unsteady feet so she didn’t drop and shatter her findings.

“These were in the room, all plugged into different tubes that went off into the floor somewhere. I think we can use the fire to burn up the slyk, but maybe we can multiply it into the other empty tubes first somehow–” She said, then looked up and stopped mid-stride. “Rootia? When did you get here?”

Jun’s grandma’s armor melted away, revealing the sort of smile I associated with kindly grandmothers. The sort of smile that had a lifetime of experiences behind it, and was hard set on enjoying every moment they had left. “Ah, Juniper, how good it is to see you. Maybe now we’ll have some time to talk about your role in the family.”