Theo shivered, even with his cloak wrapped around him. They’d stopped in the next chamber, just beyond the black pool, and made a small fire. He warmed himself around it and ate some of their jerky. Slowly, the vitality returned to him. Shapeshifting always made him feel shaky and weak, and exploding a giant squid from within only made it worse. It was like the bear had taken over once he’d transformed, ripping and tearing at the corpse of the squid. After they’d defeated it, Theo received a notification:

You have defeated One-eyed Giant Squid! Some of this creature’s universal power has been transferred to you.

Path of Evolution Ability Activated: You have learned [Ink Squirt (Remedial)] from One-eyed Giant Squid!

Congratulations! You have reached level 3.4

Congratulations! You have reached level 3.5

New skills available!

He watched the notifications flash. Had he ever gotten new skills at a half level before? Also, it just seemed to be taking way longer to level up. Now sub levels seemed to be coming at the same rate that fulls levels once came at. He wondered if they were exponential. If that was the case, leveling would continue to get harder and harder as he progressed. For some reason that made him irritated. He’d learned to like the feeling of leveling — crave it, even. The rush of levels was like a drug, almost, and more… the pleasure of the drug, but followed by real power. The notion frightened him a little — he was starting to think about levels more and more often, about ways he could gain them. The system seemed to make no sense, or if it did, it was beholden to some formula he couldn’t understand. If it took him killing a giant squid to get from level 3.3 to level 3.5, how long would it take him to get from level 9 to level 10? How high did the levels even go?

He shook his head. There was nothing he could do about that now. The basic mechanics of the game seemed simple: kill something, take its power. That’s all he needed to know. But then again… how much was he willing to kill?

He moved to the skill tree, excited to see what new abilities were going to be offered to him. But to his surprise, only one option was available. It was the first node on the branch of the Evolution skill tree:

Path of Evolution (I): Increases the rarity of skills you are able to gain from your Path of Evolution ability.

He frowned. So there was the catch with the Path of Evolution. It seemed overpowered at first; if he could take skills from other people/creatures, and still maintain his regular progression of druid skills, he’d quickly outpace the other members of his party. But if he was restricted to taking skills from other beings, then that leveled the playing field a little bit. Not to mention, he’d killed all those fish and only gained an upgraded swimming ability. Not that it was useless — it was certainly very helpful for the environment — but it wasn’t exactly a game changing ability. If the Path of Evolution slowly allowed him to take on better and better abilities, however, that would definitely still become powerful in time — potentially without a cap. Still, nothing in the game seemed to come without a catch. Power had a price, and the Great Game reflected that.

He moved to his spell selection panel and explored the options. He found a new spell nestled at the very bottom: Ink Squirt. Seemed like a very squid like ability, even if it didn’t have the catchiest name. Maybe it would be useful. He equipped the spell, but no mana swarmed to his hands, which he thought was odd.

He stood, dismissing his menu, and moved to the far wall. The small circular chamber in which they sat was surrounded by statues of Finfolk, their heads each the shape of a different fish: shark, eel, angler fish, barracuda. He stood across from the eel finfolk, which dripped with moisture from the air. Then he pulled on his mana, and cast Ink Squirt.

At first, nothing happened. He just felt the mana swell, and then felt a rumbling in his stomach. Then, a kind of queasy pain filled his abdomen. “Uh-oh,” he said, but it was too late. As he spoke, black ichor erupted out of his mouth, spraying across the room like a fire hose. The ink hit the Finfolk statue, splattering across the thing’s face, then spraying over the entire room. Ink kept pouring from his mouth, a torrent of slimy, briny black liquid the taste of fish. He gagged on it, but it just kept going, a cannon with no off switch.

Blake and Alice began to yell as ink sprayed them, staining their clothes, skin, and hair. It pooled on the floor, smelling of the sea.

Finally, Theo managed to close his mouth and stop the spray of ink. He collapsed to the floor, gagging on the taste of it.

When he looked up, Alice and Blake were staring at him, covering in inky sludge.

“What the fuck was that,”Alice said. She wiped the ink off her mouth, then screamed in frustration. Blake just blinked.

Theo spoke through each heaving gag. “New… spell?”

“That was a spell?” Alice said, “it looked more the god damn Exorcist.”

“Wait,” Blake said, “like squid ink? Why did you get a squid themed spell.”

Theo frowned. He hadn’t told them about his choice of Path. “It’s an ability I have. If I kill something, I take one of their powers.”

“So when we killed that squid… you chose to spray ink everywhere?” Alice asked.

“I don’t get to choose. It’s random, based on how many skill points I get and how advanced my ability is. So at the lower levels…”

“You get stuck with squid ink,” Blake said. Theo could see him calculating, mulling over the possibilities.

“That’s a pretty insane power, Theo,” Blake said, “if you can take on the abilities of anything you kill, you’ll advance exponentially. What are the drawbacks?”

Theo shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Right now the abilities aren’t very good. I don’t know why Ink Squirt couldn’t come from my hands instead of my mouth.”

“What other abilities have you gotten?” Blake asked.

Theo paused for a moment, not wanting to give anything away… but he needed to trust his friend. “Just an expert swimming ability. That one is more useful.”

“Hm. We’ll watch it closely. We should probably keep each other updated on our skills and abilities. It will make working as a team easier,” Blake said.

Theo and Alice looked to each other, then nodded. It made sense; Theo hadn’t known about Alice’s flaming arrows, and that had made a huge impact on the fight. So, after Theo used Minor Magic to remove some of the ink from Alice and Blake, they sat down to exchange information.

Alice went first. Rogues seemed to be a fairly broad class, encompassing many speed-focused subgroups. Theo was surprised to learn that even within the Speed group, Alice had been able to choose Fighter or Monk as well, just with a Speed rather than strength focus. He supposed that made sense, as a Monk could use Wisdom as their main ability as well. From the Rogue subgroup, Alice had chosen Assassin. Assassins focused on stealth and ranged attacks, but also had a proclivity for poisons and shadow magic. Her current spells and abilities were a mishmash of archetypes. She had an advanced stealth ability and knew a few fighting styles: archery, knife throwing, and hand-to-hand. If she wanted to progress further, she knew she should focus on one or two of them — likely archery and knives. She didn’t know which, but she could summon new arrows and knives using mana, so she would never run out. Her most recent ability came from the School she’d chosen, which sounded a lot like Druidic Paths. She’d chosen the School of the Arcane Assassin, which focused on combining spellcraft with murder. Sounded terrifying, and Theo was glad Alice was on his side.

Her bow seemed more powerful, but her knives were handy and good for close quarters. Eventually, the bow became impractical. Luckily, she’d never be without her knives and need to use hand to hand. Stealth archer was a classic powerful build, so Theo and Blake so no issues with it, and suggested she continue following that course.

Blake followed. His initial idea had been to follow the Spellsword route, but his enthusiasm was quickly waning. “Anyone can swing a sword,” he said, “this world lets us do magic. Do you think the gods got to where they are by pure muscle? No. Magic is the thing that separates the weak from the strong. Understanding it means understanding how this new universe works. I don’t care about the sword anymore.”

Blake had chosen a School of magic called the School of the Endless Dimensions. Dimensional magic encompassed the topics of conjuration, teleportation, and abjuration. He explained how in some senses, Dimensional magic could be used to explain evocation as well, and that summoned matter had to come from somewhere — likely, another dimension entirely. The whole Multiverse was dependent on Dimensional magic, and great Dimensional magicians knew its secrets more deeply than any other school. Hearing about the School, Theo was actually jealous. It sounded powerful, and beyond that, it sounded like it would only increase in power as Blake leveled.

“Okay, but how is understanding the multiverse going to like, get me out of this dungeon?” Alice asked.

Blake frowned, then raised his hand. In his palm, a black sphere appeared, about the size of marble. It appeared to be glowing with a white aura, but more than that, light seemed to bend around it. In fact, it seemed as though the air around the black marble was drawn into, making Blake’s red hair float towards it like it was a drain. A hole in the very fabric of reality.

Blake pressed his hand forward, towards the back wall. The black orb shot across the room like a bullet, colliding with the eel-head statue Theo had puked on earlier. The black marble slammed into the statue’s chest, and Theo heard a crunching sound, like stone breaking. Then the statue began to crumble, breaking into pieces, and vanishing into the black sphere. It was like the stone was being shoved into two small of an opening, dissolving into sand before their very eyes.

In a flash and crack of stone, the statue was gone. The last stray rubble was sucked into the black sphere, which then vanished in a flash of light.

“Well that’s one way to clean up the mess,” Theo said, “what was that thing?”

“Mini black hole,” Blake said, smirking, “opens up a tiny gate to void dimension. Anything it touches gets sucked through.”

“Yikes,” Theo said, “that’s pretty gruesome. Will it work on anything?”

“Don’t know,” Blake said, “but it’s my most powerful spell, so I have to use it sparingly. I can’t just spam them like fireballs.”

“Well, save it for the end, then. I’d bet Kal’ech is going to take more than a few fireballs to kill,” Theo said.

Blake nodded, then continued on his list of abilities. He could charge his sword with any spell he knew, but he wasn’t sure if he could charge it with his Void Gate spell, or how that would even work. He could shock things with electricity from his hands, and create fireballs. His contraption cantrip allowed him to create small tools, and he’d just upgraded it, so it could now create more advanced items. Beyond that, he had learned a basic shockwave spell, capable of emitting a wave of force not unlike Tiberius’ howl. It wasn’t very lethal, but it was a low-mana spell that could send a small enemy flying or at least slow them down.

Theo went over Tiberius’ abilities as well: his Resounding Howl and Warging. Blake mentioned that Warging might be good for scouting ahead, but Theo wasn’t going to put Tiberius in danger.

They didn’t find any obvious synergies within their group. None of their spells or abilities seemed to compound in interesting ways, or present an obvious course of action. Still, they settled on a simple split: Tiberius and Theo would go in first, since they had the highest Durability, and Theo’s staff skills made him a formidable close-quarters fighter. Alice and Blake would stay back and pepper the enemy with ranged attacks. If Blake was low on mana, or Alice was out of arrows, they’d jump into the melee with his sword or her knives.

Theo didn’t love the idea of being the first line of defense — he certainly wasn’t a tank — but he did have higher Durability than the other two. If he could use his bear form, he’d be a lot safer, but he’d already used that once that day. They’d need to wait another twelve hours to use that ability again.

When they’d decided on a course of action, Theo extinguished the campfire with a wave of his hand and they set off down the next hall. They checked for traps along the way, but nothing triggered. Instead, it was just the endless halls and stairways, diving deeper into the earth.

Finally, they came to a larger chamber. On the far wall was a huge head of stone in the shape of a finfolk. Theo recognized it as Kal’ech; his facial fins drooped almost like a mustache and beard, and he wore a simple tiara with a gleaming turquoise stone at the center. The stone head was the size of the whole room, and there was no other entry or exit other than the stairs they came from.

“Dead end,” Alice said.

“Is it?” Theo said. He moved into the center of the room, raising his staff high. Green light poured from it, illuminating a series of runes carved into the stone above them. They circled the whole room, each rune spaced apart, written in Universal. The strange runes shifted and changed until Theo could read their meaning.

I touch your face, I’m in your hair, you see me not, but I am there. Without me you cannot be, and I cannot be beneath the sea. What am I?

Alice moved around the edge of the room, prodding the stone walls with her knives. “No door,” she said, “just this creepy fish head. Let’s go back up. We must have taken a wrong turn.”

Theo looked around the room. He couldn’t see a door either, but he knew exactly what the room was.

“No. It’s a puzzle room. If we want to move forward, we need to solve it.”

“Solve what?” Blake said, stepping forward.

Theo gestured to the runes about them. “The riddle.”