“Have you died after I created the tether? Yes? Then the tether has been broken. She has definitely passed on.”

Something was wrong. “You knew the tether would break if I died?” asked Corn.

She shrugged. “Only a tether to the soul would have outlasted death.”

Seeing the soul eater’s lips twitch and hearing her responses made it obvious. They planned it on purpose. For a second he wanted to protest that she should have warned him and that the deal that they made was to help each other. Then he realised that no one had lost a Race counter.

They tricked him. But this was a gang, that’s how they did business. And more importantly there was another tether binding Wall to the living.

So, Corn just left.

He found the fairy standing next to the door of their new vault.

“I want to withdraw an item I placed here.”

“Well bug boy, times are tough. We need the dough to bail our don.”

“Don’t tell me you sold it?!” shouted Corn.

“Let me check,” she said and floated away. She came back quickly with a troll holding a thin metal baton.

“This thing is worthless. Why can’t you store more precious items with us?”

Corn sighed and pocketed it. This was the baton he had taken from BlueEyes. He knew it could be used to control slaves and when Corn first found he wanted nothing more than to bash it to pieces.

Later on, he decided it might be useful. There was no other place that was both secure and somewhere that he had access to. So, he was forced to store it in his gang’s vault.

It had to be tethered to Wall’s ghost.

Care followed him to the vault. “There is no one else who can use mana in the gang. We have to retrieve all the other Devices in the old vault.”

Undeterred Corn asked the fairy, “If I have a way to contribute to the bail, by a significant amount, what kind of payment would I get for my services?”

The fairy spoke into his mind, [For most people I might provide a percentage on the amount, but for you, bug boy, nothing. We had a deal saying you will do your best to see our don freed.]

“I could sell it elsewhere,” argued Corn.

“Is no one listening to me?” asked the soul eater.

The fairy snickered, “Good luck with that. Trying to sell a Device will most likely get you caught and all your counters seized. You could keep it but if you could eat it you already would have.”

Corn was really regretting making his deals on oath paper. When he made them, he thought himself clever. But watching himself get caught in various loopholes made him think that perhaps he wasn’t as clever as he thought.

Besides the fairy was right, he couldn’t eat it and after studying it for hours he’d concluded that its complexity was beyond him. For now, anyway. There was no point risking a Race counter for something that had no tangible benefit for him.

He pulled out the ring and placed it on the counter. The fairy flew nearby and examined it.

“Wasn’t this the ring that Night died for? Good job! I guess you have your uses too. Since Night made the oath to split the profits with the other gangs, we can easily renege the oath. Ah hah! An easy 20 million credits.”

Corn covered the ring. “The books.” Learning Magic was worth more than the 20 million. For someone like him, it was hard to spend that money and harder to find the knowledge he was looking for.

The fairy grit her tiny teeth and said, “Ok.”

“Vile cretins, hear my entreaties,” declared Care.

The fairy and Corn shared a glance. Corn asked, “Is she trying to swear?”

“What would you prefer? Fuck, fuck, fuck, dick, fuck, fuck, cunt, fuck,” recited the soul eater as though reading a grocery list.

No one said anything for half a minute before the fairy finally declared, “I think he’s going with you now.”

The trip to their old base proved uneventful. Along with Care were two other Barren Lords and their lackeys. Corn merely had to punch in the password. Given that he knew he shouldn’t overeat, he swam up and harvested shards of ice for any later meals.

As the others headed back, lugging Devices with them, Corn slipped away inside the office above the reservoir. Once he was sure that he was truly alone, he took out the baton.

It was a metallic cylinder the size of his forearm. Inside, the threads of mana were coiled up tightly but there was no other sign of energy or Stat that Corn could tell. As much as he could identify the Stats individually, in a Device where they were bunched up together, Corn couldn’t always parse them.

He rubbed his neck and inspected the baton even more. He was dragging his feet and he knew it but…

He continued his inspection for a few more minutes and then grit his teeth and forced himself to use the baton. He held it up with his right hand and said, “I command CornWall the ghost to wake up.”

His mouth went dry, and his heart bounced around in his chest. But Wall did not appear.

He tried again, “I c-cc-command C-CornWall the ghost to wake up and app-pear before me.”

Silence hung oppressively in the air like mana from a mana storm.

“You tttttraitor!” rasped out a voice.

Corn let the baton slip from his hands.

The ghost of Wall appeared before him and floated there as if struggling to articulate a thought. Corn had a horrible premonition that she had regained her memories.

Instead, her form flickered, and her widened eyes seemed to blink. The aura of anger, that was palpable earlier, faded away and Wall held her hand to her mouth, stifling a yawn.

“What’s up? Why did you wake me up?” she asked. She seemed to have forgotten all of what she said earlier.

“You were gone for so long. I thought you had passed on.”

She looked around the empty building and yawned again, “Wake me up later ok.”

“Wait,” cried Corn. But it was too late, she had disappeared from his third vision.

He picked up the baton and slipped it in his pocket. He had no idea how someone could sleep inside the Abyss, but he would wake Wall up later.

For now, his precious flamethrower was still missing.

The mercenary clinic did not shut down instead it seemed open for the full 24 hours. Corn waited for two days, before acting. Even a flamethrower wasn’t worth true death.

“How can I help you?” asked the receptionist.

“Is Hare in? She isn’t returning my calls, she isn’t responding to my System messages, she isn’t-,” Corn held the desk and ranted endlessly like a jilted lover. Hare was the name of one of the people who used the needle to heal him. He had checked, she was definitely inside.

She held her hands out in a please-stop gesture, “I don’t care, just go inside. Ok? But can you first scan your bracelet-”

Corn had rushed inside. When he saw that no one was following him, he headed towards a storeroom.

The amazing thing about third vision was its three dimensionality. It was very useful for plotting and gaining information in an urban setting. With just one visit he could see and memorise the whole layout of the building.

He pushed aside the brooms and containers of disinfectant and ate into the wall. Crushing concrete and steel in his mouth was disgusting but relatively easy. It took him a few minutes to reach the spell circled mana of the vault. He cleared out a rough circle that he could squeeze through.

Eating through the thick vault, however, took a few more hours and left him very bloated. It would have been easier on his digestive system to go through the front door. But that would be a frontal attack in a clinic full of people who practiced Strength or Speed. It was better to be sneaky.

The first cabinet he reached had a few sheaves of oath paper. Stuffing them in a bag, he cleared the way forward. The vault was divided into cabinets with Screens marking the way. First, he ate the cabinet containing his flamethrower.

Then he examined the remaining cabinets. There wasn’t much here, should he take everything? If he took only his flamethrower, it would be obvious who the culprit was.

So, to cover up his tracks, he had to take everything!

He left the bulky items but shoved the more compact daggers, swords, armour and even a set of mana made jewellery into his bag and left. Slinging his flamethrower on his back, he tightened his hood and stuffed his bag into his shirt to form a potbelly.

Even though there were security guards and Screens on the back entrance, no one was bothered about someone leaving. So, he left easily with his loot.

Corn drew out mana from the node on his left hand. The water gushed out and swirled midair as a tiny ball. Seconds later it fell down the ground and dispelled.

Yes!

The trick had been the flow of the water. It had to be constantly moving, so he kept it swirling in the shape of a ball, instead of trying to control everything. The book the fairy had given him for the ring had been surprisingly useful.

“Was there any purpose to any of that? You’d be hard pressed to kill an ant with that,” said Line.

“I improved my control. That was the point.”

He had finished practicing his forms and sparring for the day and was now tinkering with his Magic.

“But that doesn’t translate at all to combat. You’re better of practicing your ice gauntlet,” argued Line, setting down his Mauled weights.

Corn nodded. These past few days, while Knot had been busy, the two of them had discussed how to improve his close combat skills. For now, he had no way to make himself faster or stronger with mana, but he could cover himself with mana as an armour. And ice was the best source for that.

After wearing a padded set of gloves, not quite thick enough to be boxing gloves, he pushed out ice mana as thin as a thread and formed an empty spell circle around his right forearm. Once the circle was complete, he shaped the ice mana to form a basic glove.

It fit snugly around his hand, clenched into a fist, and reached up to a third of his forearm. He topped the fist with sharp spikes an inch high. Then he repeated the process for his left arm.

He then began practicing his forms with a Mauled dummy. Theoretically, he would also need elbow, knee and shoulder spikes to fully incorporate his martial arts. But the two gauntlets themselves took over two minutes to shape.

They couldn’t be called up readily in a fight, so he’d need to prepare beforehand. Once his punches and blows had thoroughly splintered his ice gauntlets, he stepped back from the dummy.

Line stepped forward and picked up a shard. “Great, it’s seems pretty light and must be strong to scratch a Device. Now practice forming the ice armour whilst sprinting.”

Corn was about to protest at the absurdity of such a request until he realised that Line was right. As a crazie, there was always the chance of surprise attacks.

He broke into a sprint and created a spell circle whilst sprinting. It was one thing to create a spell circle but maintaining and shaping the mana across the same spot whilst running seemed impossible to him.

He had to move the mana and the spell circle with him. But how? Spell circles were usually fixed in place.

Knot always fond of a grand entrance, played music from his mini-screen and danced his way inside the gym.

“I love them abs but enough working out. You can go to sleep now,” he declared, hands on his hips.

Line eyed the nymph and grunted, “You’re back, huh? Where have you been?”

“Got you a present,” replied the nymph and handed a crystal ball to Corn.

Corn examined the Device, turning it over in his hands.

“Since you don’t connect to the System, you can’t measure your progress, right? Well, this will measure your Magic.”

“Perfect. How does it work?”

“I keep forgetting you can’t see letters. It’s written right there ‘Level 1 – 36’,” noted Line.

It clearly didn’t function like a Screen. But only 36 points? He could have sworn he had more.

Line turned to face the nymph,” What? No present for me?”

“Nah, my presence is present enough.” Knot smirked.

“But since you’re awake, why don’t we continue with your training of Desire?” Knot asked Corn.