Keratily met us on top of the trawler, which looked no different than the trawler that Jun and I had explored safe for the yellow markings on its side. This one had a four hour time limit exactly, and it was apparently the one Keratily and Okeria had been waiting for. Or one of the ones they’d been waiting for, but they hadn’t said anything to us that would’ve helped me figure that out.

She greeted us with a nod, then turned and jumped down the hatch. Okeria followed first, and I jumped down right after, with Jun taking up the rear. Once we were all inside, Keratily sealed us inside and gestured at the furniture that had been laid out.

“I’ve cleared out the main level, but the rest of the slyks in here should fuel Seb’s core until we reach the first layover. The only truly safe place is this room, since no slyk oil can infest through these enchantments, so this will be our home for the next few days.” She announced, walking over to a couch and slowly lowering herself down to it. Her knees popped as she did, and she muttered an ‘oh my’ as she sunk into the pillowy cushions. “Did you have to make it so soft, Okeria? Getting up is going to be hard on my knees and hips.”

Okeria grumbled something about an ungrateful old woman, but strode over to the couch nonetheless and pressed his hands to one of the cushions. It seemed to deflate as the patterns in it glowed blue, and Keratily nodded in appreciation.

“Thank you, Grand Warden. Now, Juniper, how far are you from reaching hazard tolerance ten? And the same question to you, Sebastian.”

Jun didn’t open her interface to answer. “I’m already there; the thing Seb just made me and the six-pack of extenders pushed me up one more level. With the three levels the stuff Okeria made us gave me, that makes ten.”

Keratily nodded. “Very good, very good. Now Sebastian, how close are you?”

“I’m only at eight tolerance.” I said with a frown, opening my interface to double-check my own stats. Everything Okeria had made me had only given me one more level of tolerance, and the two loneswarm slyk batteries hadn’t even given me that. “But I have to be really close to nine, since everything else’s only given me one level so far.”

My old life’s experience really was carrying my hazard tolerance, since all of my stats were still so much lower than Jun’s; even with the newly-imposed penalty from //MIMICRY. It would’ve been embarrassing if I didn’t know exactly why we were where we were.

“You’re the only one that can change that now.” Keratily said gravely, looking up at me from the couch with far more intimidation than she should’ve been able to muster. “If you’re looking for somewhere to start, I’d recommend your helmet, chestplate, and weapon. They’re more heavily weighted when your hazard is calculated.”

Huh, that was good to know for the future. I nodded and summoned the strange looking sword Okeria had made for me; an extremely thin blade of silvery steel with blue and pink-gold fractal markings going up one side and down the other, a pink-gold handle with five gouges for my fingers to sit in, and a flowing tassel at the end that bled particles of deep black and light grey that mingled together to form something reminiscent of volcanic ash. It looked extremely flimsy, but the double-sided blade didn’t so much as wobble no matter how violently I swung it or how violently Jun clashed against it with her own much fatter blade.

(Rare,Professional) Gleaming Flow-Steel Edge.

Core Mastery Requirement: 17.

Current Item Mastery(IM) Level: 0.

+7 Speed(+1 every 10 IM levels)

+4 Power(+1 every 15 IM levels)

+1 Recovery(+1 every 20 IM levels)

I took one last look at the weapon, cementing its stats and name in my mind. If Okeria had chosen the name I saw for the sword, then his tastes were about the same as mine had been in middle school. It was also the first non-corrupted item that I’d seen with stats that scaled with item mastery, which confirmed my thought that items with higher core mastery requirements would scale better into the future. But it was still just a bundle of stats, albeit much higher stats than anything I’d found so far in this go-around.

//POTENTIAL COST FOR CORRUPTION: 760.

//OFFER ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: [Y] or [N]?

I pressed N, pulled away the potential, and offered the sword to my core. But when I tried to remove it, something pulled it back. I felt one of the functions contained within my core reach out to touch the weapon, ripping and tearing at the materials until there was absolutely nothing left of the weapon I’d offered it. The materals had been reduced to their lowest forms, and as I was about to speak up at the strangeness, an item from my inventory appeared before me.

A small vial of moss, alive and gleaming with spots of inner light that glowed like eyes. A notification indicated that my copperbound mossblade had just disappeared, along with the crystallized mossrot, and the vial of moss tumbled down into my core.

//MATERIALS CONSUMED; CREATION INITIATED.

//CORRUPTION IN PROCESS… COMPLETE.

//ENDBOUND NULLBLADE(//CORRUPTED, ???)

Core mastery required: N/A.

Current item mastery: 1.

//CHAOTIC: This weapon has no set shape, and is only limited by the bearer’s knowledge. Consume another floodforest key to designate a piece of equipment as //CHAOTIC, and grant it the properties of a ______bound ______weapon.

//WIPE-AWAY: Designate an enemy, draining battery while an enemy is designated. The designated enemy constantly loses 1% of the bearer’s maximum stats every ten seconds, and the bearer’s stats are increased by 50% of the stats drained in this way. Battery drain is (3) per second for the first designated enemy, (4.5) per second for the second enemy, (6) for the third, and so on.

//CLAIM-THE-LOST: An enemy who falls under the effects of //WIPE-AWAY has a greater chance to forfeit stat-filled nodes, and drops the experience their death would grant as a solid object.

Upgrades at mastery [1/???/???/???/???]

Somehow, I always managed to make things that Jun would be able to take infinitely more advantage of than I could. But she didn’t need more hazard tolerance now, so she could deal with her un-corrupted gear for a little longer. I looked over the description once more, and as I did, the //CHAOTIC part of the description faded away and disappeared. I summoned the blade into my hands, feeling the strange amalgamation of the weapon Okeria had created and the copperbound mossblade against my palms.

Yet it looked like neither of them. It had no runes, no blemishes, and barely a form to focus on whatsoever. The one-sided blade seemed primitive compared to the other two weapons; like a long plain rectangle with a wedge cut out of it at the top that had been sharpened. I spun it in my hands, trying to get a better feel for the balance of the weapon, but no matter how I moved it, it never felt like I was holding much of anything. The sword was far too light, but it also somehow dragged my hand down until it was resting exactly where I preferred it to rest when I moved into a defensive stance.

“That’s one strange sword you’ve got there.” Okeria noted, leaning in and pressing his fingertips to the blade. He slid them up the sharp edge, then nodded to himself. “It’s good and sharp, but I can’t get much of a feeling from the thing. Almost like it’s made of nothing at all.”

That pretty much fit my own experience, but that didn’t explain why the sword’s handle fit so perfectly in my hands. I shifted so I was holding the sword by its blade and raised the hilt closer to my face, and for the first few seconds, I couldn’t make out much of anything. But as my eyes adjusted, the seemingly solid hilt revealed that it wasn’t quite as solid as I’d imagined. In fact, it seemed to be made of threads woven so tightly together that it looked like a solid object from nearly every conceivable angle.

When I noticed that, everything about the weapon changed. The threads shifted and shimmied to reveal a void within the handle; a void that contained only a single vial of liquid. Connected to the top of that vial were countless silken threads of shifting blue and white, spinning out and away from the liquid to form the weapon around it. As I stared into the white and blue milky liquid of the vial, countless eyes stared back at me, watching my every move and staring so deep into my mind that it felt like they knew what I was about to think before I thought it.

My weapon unfurled and shifted, transforming into a single small dagger that fit perfectly in my hand. The transformation had come at the exact same moment that I’d considered trying to change the sword into a dagger, and it felt like a massively more powerful version of what I’d been doing with the floodforest weapons up until now. I opened my interface to see if the physical transformation had changed any of the weapon’s properties, but the only thing out of place was the weapon’s name. //ENDBOUND NULLKNIFE.

“I am never saying that out loud.” I muttered to myself, pressing my dagger to my hip as I scrolled through my interface. “I still need one more hazard tolerance if we’re getting out of here, but I’m running low on potential. If the next thing I make doesn’t put me up one more level, I won’t have enough to make a third.”

“Fourth.” Keratily corrected, glancing at Jun’s new neck-hugging trinket. “How much more do you think you’ll need? Will one more slyk core be enough?”

I hemmed and hawed, then shook my head. “The last slyk you brought us only gave me six nodes, so another one will probably give me even less now. If you know where to find more, I’d say two would be enough.”

Keratily grabbed Okeria by the arm and began leading him back to the hatch, despite his obvious unwillingness. “I gathered a few more powerful slyk just in case something like this happened. And stop struggling, Okeria. If we don’t get him those cores, we’ll have to wait for another trawler to come by that leads to the main nexus. And you know how rare these are.”

“Yeah, I know.” Okeria grumbled, then shot a longing look down past Jun and I. He wanted a head start at whatever was down there. That tracked with what I’d learned about him. “Fine; let’s get this over with already. I’ve got a hot date with the big slyk that calls this place home, and I don’t want ta be late.”

Okeria unsealed the hatch and lept out, and was swiftly followed by Keratily after she waved goodbye to us. Jun waved back, but her grandma was already gone. She sighed, then turned to look at me with a questioning tilt of her head.

“I saw that thing in the handle of your sword. How’d the key from the floodforest end up in your new sword?”

I didn’t really know myself, especially since the last time I’d tried to corrupt my floodforest gear it had told me I didn’t have enough potential or materials for that. Maybe it was because the moss key had weaseled itself into this transformation? I told Jun as much, and she didn’t have any better ideas.

“After we’re done with all this, and we’re sure Endra isn’t coming after us at every twist and turn, we’re going back to the floodforest.” Jun decreed, glancing from the knife on my hip to the ribbons of //ENDLESS on my shoulder. “There’s no way we both got sent there without a reason, and I want to find out what that is.”