The ant-like slyk were repairing the titan. With pieces of the titan. I didn’t know how tossing stone into what was obviously an open wound would help close it, but slyk biology was far beyond my understanding. If it was even considered biology when it was electric oil and rock.

“Well, that’s where we’ll find your sample.” I said, turning to Mortician to judge their reaction. “Can you tell if those carvurch are important enough to count towards your core?”

Mortician studied the slyk’s rhythmic motion for a while, then shook their head. “No, we can’t tell. Though they do have a very high core mastery compared to their stats, which could point towards them being the workers in a world of predators.”

They bent down and waved a hand at the slyk. One of them froze mid-step; its legs mid-stride and its mandibles mid-swing until the other carvurch ran into it. And kept walking as if nothing was wrong, pushing its immobile sibling along without missing a stride.

“Huh. Completely mindless.” I noted. “How’d you make it stop?”

“It was weaker than us.” Mortician said simply. “The razorleaf put up much more resistance, even if it only had core mastery twenty-three. How can they be so much weaker while they have core mastery fifty-five?”

“Good question. And the answer’s pretty simple; you don’t have to fight things to get your core mastery up. You just have to use it a lot.” I explained, tapping on my chest for emphasis. “Even if using all of your armor and core together does give you a whole lot more experience, you can still level up pretty far while staying very weak.”

“Hm. Is the inverse true as well?” Mortician asked.

I shook my head. “Even if you don’t use your core at all, you’ll still get experience. Since your armor manifests from your core, you can’t fight without gaining experience.” I said, then paused. That wasn’t necessarily true. “I guess you could fight without your armor or functions, and maybe that would mean you wouldn’t gain experience, but I’ve never met anyone who tried it.”

“Interesting. Maybe that would come to be in a peaceful world.” Mortician mused. They seemed satisfied by my answer, even if there wasn’t much to be satisfied by, and started sliding down the slash wound. “You do not need to come down with us, Envoy. We will gather the samples ourselves.”

“Alright.” I said with a nod. “Show me what you can do.”

Mortician nodded back and let themselves slide all the way down to the bottom of the slash. They gestured at the slyk and it froze, and before I had the chance to make a comment, they dug their hands down between the slyk’s plates. And ripped.

Oil flew everywhere as half of the slyk went one way and half the other. Mortician snapped one hand out to catch the head-bearing half of the slyk faster than I could process, shoving their fingers deep into the wound and rooting around in its body. They hummed to themselves as they did, until they let out a happy trill and removed a dripping core from the slyk. It was spiny like a chestnut with arcs of electricity running along the spines, and it was flying at my face.

“Gah!” I yelped as I dodged the spiny core, stupidly sending a hand into its path. The spines sunk into my armor as if it were soft sand, and I bit back a cry of pain as I pulled it back to me. “Warn me if you’re going to do that.”

“Sorry!” Mortician called up. “You can have that core for yourself, but we’re taking the other one. Just in case we need to absorb cores from slyk for another yet unrevealed part of making us real.”

“Good thinking.” I said. I gingerly removed the spines from my hand and held the core in front of me, letting it dangle there for a moment before I opened my interface and consumed it. I found myself with one new battery node for Mortician’s troubles. “How did you freeze those slyk like that?”

“Oh, we just slightly shifted the amplitude of their electricity.” Mortician grunted as they bisected the other slyk just as they’d done the first. “It disoritents the stronger ones, and it does this to the weaker ones. Apparently.”

That wasn’t quite what I meant. “How’d you do it without a core or any functions is more what I was asking.”

Mortician pulled out the slyk’s core and stuffed it into their inventory before they stopped to think. “We don’t really know. It could be that our body is attuned to these slyk because of our situation, and that allows us to control their oil to some degree?. No… that doesn’t seem quite right. How did we do that?”

I raised an eyebrow. Some core-less creatures had minimal powers, like the lichenthropes who had changed the shape of the metal they used as shells, but the vast majority of them had biological reasons for how they worked. Vague, hand-wave-y reasons, but reasons nonetheless. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence that Mortician looked like a humanoid slyk, so was it that far-fetched to believe they had a little control over them?

Maybe. Maybe not. It wouldn’t matter for shit when I brought them into the real world.

“Forget about it. Get your samples and come back up here.” I said with a wave of my hand, but Mortician seemed a little more interested in themselves at the moment. They swiped through their interface with one hand as they mumbled to themselves, black screens broken up by the spark of electricity as they tried to get information. “You know you can do that right after you’ve got your samples, right?”

Mortician looked up at me as realization spread through their face. “Oh! Right!” They said and closed their interface, then fell to their knees and scooped out two handfuls of oil from the wound. “Sorry! We’ll be… right… oh, my. This is strange.”

Strange? I leaned down, ready to help Mortician if that ‘strange’ was dangerous. “What’s wrong?”

“The carvurch oil wasn’t considered to be important enough, and the stingprey oil was not accepted either.” Mortician said warily, shooting a glance at the pool. “It says that the oil is tainted and dead. And it insists… the oil be from a fresh wound. Or a fresh kill.”

“Well, one of those isn’t happening. And that’s exactly what it told you? The oil has to be from a fresh wound or kill?” I asked.

“Yes, that is exactly what I am reading.” Mortician confirmed. “That will be a problem.”

“It most certainly will.” I groaned. But there was an inconsistency in that; the loneswarm oil and the signaleech oil were both not exactly ‘fresh’ kills. I could only assume that my inventory kept them fresh just like anything else. “I’ve gotta message Okeria about this. Maybe he’s got more oil stored away than he let on.”

“We will stay down here while you send the message. There is something strange about these slyk that we can’t quite pin down.” Mortician said. “Tell us when you are ready to… move to whatever our next step is.”

I nodded down to Mortician as I pulled up my interface and opened the shared communications window. {How many different slyk oils do you have, Okeria?}

{...Five on me at the moment, two of which ya already know; signaleech and loneswarm} Okeria replied, and I could feel the reluctance in his words. He had a feeling where I was about to go with this; I just knew he did. {Please tell me ya don’t need ‘em. My stock’s running dangerously low.}

{Don’t listen to him.} Jun cut in. {He’s got more than enough to share, he just doesn’t want to. As usual.}

{Snitch.}

{Miser.}

I took special notice of those last two words. The fact that Jun and Okeria sent those insults through the chat meant that they couldn’t say them to each others’ faces. They had to be separated for some reason, and hopefully it was a good one. Or at least a safe one.

{I need you to send me samples of the other three oils. And if you’ve got oil from a signaleech that wasn’t the one we fought, send that too. I need to test something with Mortician.} I typed, but didn’t send quite yet. I wanted to minimize the potential cost that would come with multiple deliveries. {If you’ve found more of the pod slyk, send those my way too, please.}

{As soon as I’m back at our hole-up, I’ll do just that.} Okeria sent. {Juniper’s distracting Keratily while I’m out here scrounging for those buggers you’re looking for. Give me an hour and we’ll have it all sent your way.}

{What he said.} Jun echoed. {Oh, and we haven’t found the right trawler yet. But if you’re looking for different slyk oils, we should probably be checking each of the ones that come through.}

{Abyss below, you’re right. Get Keratily ta agree ta that somehow.} Okeria sent. {If ya can’t, then you’ll have ta keep placating her. And I know it ain’t a pleasant job.}

{No, no it is not.} Jun agreed.

Jun and Okeria’s conversation continued for a little while longer, messages coming in far too quickly for me to cut in. Apparently placating Keratily was getting to be difficult, but neither of them spoke of the reason why. The slyk waves had slowed down slightly, but in return, the strength of each individual slyk had gone up slightly. And not once had a slyk come through that Okeria considered important enough to extract oil or materials from. Which was interesting enough for me to so rudely interrupt.

{Okeria, do you know which of the slyk are considered ‘important’? There should be twenty-two of them.}

{I don’t know twenty-two important slyk, but I do know seventeen. I’ll send a list of ‘em out so the two of ya know what ta look out for.} Okeria sent, which was quickly followed by a list of seventeen names. Three of which I recognized: loneswarm, signaleech, and razorleaf. All the others were new to me, and the stingprey was suspiciously absent. On the list of seventeen names, which was five less than Mortician needed.

So Okeria didn’t know about the titans, nor whatever commanded, birthed, and crafted the slyk. That was a revelation I wanted to see their faces for, so I kept it to myself for the time being.

{Thanks for the list. If you find anything except for what you already have, save some of it to send my way. Seb out.}

I closed my interface before another message could draw me in, then looked down to see Mortician huddled over a bone-dry pool of nothing. They were looking around in confusion, and when they eventually looked my way, they gestured wildly for me to come down and join them.

Something was up, and from the frantic look on Mortician’s face, it wasn’t anything good.