If there was anywhere Vex hadn't expected to be about an hour from where that battle started, it was being carted around the city in a wagon. Particularly not in a small crawlspace underneath the floorboards of a wagon, lit only by illusion-enhancing ghostflame.

All four of them were being carted around, in fact, piled together in the same cart. A tiny bit of spatial magic gave them just a bit more space than they appeared to have, but it was really only enough to make them fit; not quite enough to make them fit comfortably.

Probably because Derivan's armor was sort of stabby.

Which was a problem they were trying to solve, given they had nothing else to do while pressed together in the wagon. The tarp above them flapped about in the wind, an unpleasant reminder of exactly how flimsy this whole plan appeared.

Hopefully Helix had gotten... a little better at planning since the last time they'd spoken. He'd managed to grow in every other way that was important.

"How much more mana do you need?" Vex asked. He was tucked up against Derivan's chestplate, trying desperately to keep his tone as neutral as possible — a task that he was spectacularly failing at, so he was mostly just trying not to speak. He'd gained confidence lately! But not enough confidence for being trapped pressed against Derivan.

It wasn't that he was being shy. He'd already spoken to Derivan about his feelings. But these particular circumstances —

Anyway.

"About 1500," Derivan said. His slime stat was up to 49; another level would bring it to 50, which would hopefully come with something that would help him mold his armor into something a little more malleable. Golden Geas hadn't given him any bonus passives, but passives with stat milestone requirements weren't a sure thing anyway. They were a function of your accomplishments and understanding more than they were a fixed thing awarded on reaching a milestone. If you accomplished something stat-related, and had enough points in that stat... you would be awarded a passive.

The hope here was that Derivan already had what he needed for a passive except for the stat requirement, and that the passive he got would be something slime-related, and help Derivan dull his spikes somewhat. It was a dim hope, but it wasn't like they had anything else to do.

Vex nodded in response to Derivan. He tried to duck his head, and mostly only succeeded in butting his snout against the armor's chestplate, causing a dull bong to resound in their limited space.

...It was probably a good thing that there was a soundproofing enchantment, built in with the spatial one.

"I feel like I should tell you guys to get a room," Misa said, her back pressed up against the other side of the wagon.

"That's not exactly practical right now," Sev said. His back was pressed against Vex's — awkward, considering Vex had a tail that was taking up more space than either of them wanted — and he was stuck staring at the side of the wagon.

"Shut up, guys," Vex grumbled.

More time passed in silence — none of them really wanted to strain the enchantment on the cart. Derivan's mana slowly ticked up towards the next inevitable stat point. Part of Vex was jealous. The process had so many similarities to what had been done to him, except... Derivan didn't feel any pain. Maybe it was because he had the stat, and the Ashion family was forcing the issue.

Whatever the case was, Derivan's stat tipped over into 50, and something changed. For one thing, Derivan was suddenly a lot more comfortable to press against.

"Whoa," Misa said.

"Did something happen?" Sev asked."I can't see anything. I've been counting the grains in the wood for the past three days."

"Sev, it's been thirty minutes."

"Three days."

"Do I need to be worried about time magic?" Vex paused, distracted, and then refocused. "Wait, no. Deri, you're... soft. Did you—?"

"I have received a passive bonus," Derivan said; there was a touch of wonder in his voice. He flicked out a box to them, and Vex focused quickly on it, ignoring Sev squawking in indignation as the box presumably interfered with his grain-counting.

[Slime Adjacence] [Passive]

You are partially Slime. +50% pliability when choosing to be pliable. +100 units of slime generation per minute when choosing to generate slime. +50% slime-related mana gathering.

Slime can be used to store mana at 10 mana per unit of slime. Your slime is always a part of you.

Vex blinked. "That's... a lot."

"There are so many uses for this," Misa said, her voice vaguely muffled from where her face had sunken slightly into Derivan's back. "Do you think actual slimes have a similar ability?"

"They do, actually," Derivan said. He brought an arm around Vex, seeming to take a moment to absorb the feeling of having the lizardkin pressed against him; for a moment, he was silent, and then he spoke again. "This is... very different from what I am used to feeling."

"Your armor is soft," Vex said, wonderingly.

"It's kinda weird," Misa said, though there was a teasing smile in her voice.

"I feel like I'm missing out here," Sev called, his face still pressed against the side of the wagon.

"I liked you anyway," Vex confessed, a little bit of his shyness creeping back up on him. "But this is... nice? It's nice."

"It is," Derivan agreed. "And I cannot hurt you with my armor anymore, which I am pleased by."

"As long as you choose to be 'pliable'," Misa laughed.

"This is really interesting, though," Vex said. "Can you generate some slime? I feel almost like we should do some testing... I mean, not now. But now I feel like we should've done more testing on slimes in general. There's an obvious link between slimes and mana."

"I can try," Derivan offered; there wasn't a lot of space for him to hold up a hand, but he managed to wriggle an arm free from underneath Vex anyway, and he held it up where there was space. A moment of concentration followed, his light-purple eyes flickering off as he focused —

— and a small wellspring of lilac slime began to emerge from his armor, waving about in the air.

"...That's pretty cool." Vex watched the mini-figurine for a second; the shape of it was slowly changing, resolving itself into something shaped almost like him, down to his frills and a tiny tail. It was a fantastic display of fine control and the instantaneous understanding granted by the system.

It was also very cute.

Mana-sight offered him only a little more in terms of understanding; there was mana in the slime by default, and it was mana that was pre-aligned with an aspect he hadn't seen before. It rang with a certain familiarity, and he spent a moment trying to chase that familiarity down, but the manner of it eluded him; he only knew that it was familiar.

Potential infolock. He noted it down in his notebook—

—Well, no, he couldn't reach his notebook.

"Um." Vex paused, trying to figure out how to phrase his request. "Deri, can you get my notebook for me? I can't reach."

"Of course." The little mini-Vex standing in Derivan's palm shivered for a moment, then abruptly extended into a tendril of goo, slithering down towards Vex's tailbag; the lizardkin kept himself as still as possible as it slowly pulled the clasp open, then the bag itself, and managed to navigate to his notebook.

"You're really good with that thing," Vex noted.

"It is... rather intuitive to use." Derivan brought Vex's notebook up to his hands, and gently placed it there; the tendril retracting didn't leave even a trace of lilac slime on the notebook. "Perhaps because the stat is already so high to begin with."

"It's not too weird, if you think about it," Misa said. "Some higher-level slimes can do that kind of thing."

"I still can't see any of what you're talking about," Sev complained.

"Well, you agreed to this plan, so deal with it."

"Bah."

"Shhh." Vex's tone was lightly reprimanding as Derivan handed him his quill and he made a quick note; the familiarity of slime-aspect mana. He had a suspicion about it, even. Slime was related to mana capacity, and the whole Principle of House Ashion was about mana capacity. Maybe there was more to mana than just system stats...

The cart they were in shook to a stop, and there was the sound of a tarp being pulled off; Vex stilled himself, trying not to move, even though he knew it wouldn't make a difference. They wouldn't see anything even if he did. He'd tested the illusion spells on the wagon himself, as one of their many contingencies. He felt his anxiety spike a bit anyway, not quite used to being trapped in a small space and unable to act.

Outside, they heard the sounds of a soldier discussing something with Helix, who had schooled his voice into something monotone and emotionless. Vex had to admit, Helix was... surprisingly good at acting, now. It wasn't something he would have expected of his brother.

It didn't take long before the cart began to move again, and Vex sighed a small sigh of relief; the soldier hadn't noticed anything untoward.

"Worried about the illusion spell?" Sev asked.

"I'm just worried we're going to have to fight." Vex's voice was softer than it had to be, and he saw Derivan looking down at him in concern. "My family's... more involved than I thought they would be. If a fight breaks out..."

"You're worried someone's going to get hurt," Misa said. She sounded sympathetic, and a hand reached over Derivan to pat him on the head; Vex, not expecting it, almost flinched away from the touch before he realized that the hand descending on him was just Misa's.

"I am," the lizardkin admitted.

"I believe it will not come to that," Derivan said. "Or I suppose I hope that it will not."

"It'll help once we're in the dungeon," Misa offered. "Right now our presence here is... disruptive? So that kinda fuckin' sucks. But without us—"

"There's still going to be a fight," Sev said, his voice slightly muffled from echoing against the wall. "They've been gearing up for one. The food problem is just pushing existing tensions over the edge; they're not coming back from this without some kind of rebellion, which means a fight, which means that some people are going to get hurt. I could heal them—"

"Sev," Misa said, a note of warning in her voice. Vex only made a small sound of hurt, and Sev sighed.

"...It's probably a good thing I have you guys," he said after a moment.

"Damn straight," Misa said. She squirmed a bit, flailing an arm, and then spoke again, this time her voice slightly muffled against Derivan's armor. "Pretend I just punched you in the shoulder. I can't reach."

"Agh," Sev said, his voice completely deadpan. "I think you broke my shoulder."

"...Thanks, Sev."

"You're welcome."

Vex smiled a little bit at the banter, though his attention was still focused on the idea of the slime stat; Derivan was still playing around with a single tendril of the stuff, making it dance and coil around in his hand with wonder. Every so often he would make it take the shape of a glyph, forming that glyph almost instantaneously — and Vex could see tiny particles of mana begin to move towards that glyph almost the moment it formed.

It looked almost like Teque's form of casting — like the way they could just carve glyphs into objects and have the mana come to it, instead of having to use [Mana Manipulation] to start the effect. They didn't have an active mana river flowing through the world, but mana had acted on its own before; on the painting of the [Starry Night] skill, primarily, but also whenever it moved away from the activation of a rune, or when it went gathered around the residents of Fendal, as they had their agency taken away...

Vex wondered, briefly, if the mana had been trying to warn them.

Every time, Derivan changed the shape of the slime before the mana finished trying to gather into the glyph and cast a spell — probably because he saw the same mana-gathering phenomenon, and wanted to avoid bringing attention to them.

"You'll be able to cast glyph spells faster, now," Vex noted.

"I believe so," Derivan agreed. "Though I am unsure if casting it in such a way will change the effect... Perhaps we can find out, when we are in the bonus room. We will have time to examine things then."

"I need to start testing out these glyph combinations." Vex paused. "Or, well, I told Ingress about the glyphs already, and it sounds like they're going to explore a lot of the basic combinations. We can let the rebels focus on the majority of the basic combinations. I want to discover more glyphs, and figure out combinations for those."

"We do not yet have a way to discover new glyphs," Derivan noted.

"Anton didn't have much for us there," Vex sighed. "I tried asking, but they haven't discovered a new glyph in ages, and all the old ones are just recorded in their libraries. If I just had a way to find new ones..."

As he spoke, the wagon rolled to a stop. Vex heard the sound of the tarp getting yanked off — and then the floorboards being pulled open, yanked out of place rather frantically. Helix's face appeared above them, vaguely worried, though his expression schooled itself into one of relief when he saw them.

"Oh, good," he said. "I was worried you fell through the bottom."

"...You what?" Vex blinked, staring at his brother.

"I forgot to check the bottom of the wagon," Helix said. "It's fine! Don't worry about it. We're all safe. And we're here now, too! Look."

Vex... decided not to question it.

Instead, he stared out at the familiar sight of the Elyran dungeon. He'd been here before, though he'd never been inside.

Now it seemed he would be — sooner than he'd expected, even.