Combat began with a tidal wave of marrow. I clenched my teeth and shifted my weapon into a shield as the surge of disgusting liquid flooded towards me, slammed it to the ground to create a platform of petal-scales, then threw it at Mortician to protect them. Jun jumped on my platform and grabbed me around the waist to keep steady as I raised it above the flood, just as Mortician disappeared into a sphere of tightly interlocked petal-scales.

“That was a lot quicker than before.” Jun noted as she cracked a trio of shots into one of the big bastards. Cracks spread through it like a windshield that’d just been hit by a rock, and instead of destroying them right away, Jun watched it struggle. It almost seemed to sag under its own weight, and as the other two slowly encroached upon us, it lagged behind.

She gestured at it with an empty hand. “I thought something was off; it looks like none of these monsters were built to have their health reduced.”

I couldn’t argue with what was right before my eyes. “Can you amplify the health reduction effect with your core?”

“Unfortunately not. It’d take eight-hundred percent of my battery to increase it by one more.” She replied with a shake of her head. “Things that are more impactful take a lot more battery to increase or decrease, and apparently ‘health’ is just a little too impactful for my level.”

“Probably because it scales hard depending on who you use it on.” I theorized with a gesture off to the side. The platform followed my command and zipped out of the way as a massive arm cleaved the space we’d just been occupying. “Losing twenty-something health at level fifty is actually worse for you than losing that much health at level ten. And unless the system can alter the cost based on who you’re using it on, it’ll just make it cost a shit ton.”

Six more echoing shots gave the other two big bastards their own struggles. Jun lowered her gun and flipped it open, reloading it with ammo she pulled from ad-infinitum. “Then I’ll just have to get enough battery to use it. So how do you want to do this? Mortician has your shield, we’ve got their little buff, and it looks like we can’t stand on the ground any more.”

I looked down at a sea of sapmarrow and found myself agreeing with Jun’s assessment. The pixy-like things flitted around the much bigger monsters like flies on a carrion, shedding a dust that almost looked like bonemeal as they went. As it touched the big bastards Jun’s cracks closed up ever so slightly, shrinking down from massive spider-webbed things to the kind of damage a small pebble could do.

“Great. Those things are healers.” I groaned, gesturing madly with my finger to keep us from getting smacked down into the sapmarrow. The monstrous limbs all fell as one, creating massive splashes in the sapmarrow that hardened into bony spires instead of falling. “And these things have more tools in their arsenal. How the f… hell is this one step up from fighting A SINGLE pixy-thing?”

Jun chuckled humourlessly and fired off a few shots to reopen the cracks that had been closing. “You heard what the system said. It did something to the first nine combats for some reason, and now we’re experiencing what the real hazard is like. Can you get us to the other side of these things?”

“No problem.” I flicked my finger towards an opening between two of the creatures, ducked so I didn’t get my head taken off by a swing the right one attempted to stop us, and spun my finger in a circle to turn us around once we were through.

“Thanks.” Jun said with a nod. She placed her hand on the top of her gun and fired off a single large shot, swept her hand down the barrel, fired off three more small shots, then swept it back and fired a final large bullet. Both of the middle creature’s arms fell into the marrow with a mighty splash, creating two more ripples of bony protrusions that hampered the creatures’s movements a lot more than ours.

She lowered her gun and gestured for me to get us moving. “This is probably the only way we can fight these things. Unless you have any better ideas?”

I got us moving as I tried to think of my own plan. Jun continued to fire off volleys of small, echoing bullets as I wove us through the increasingly dangerous combat arena, leaning on me with one leg hooked through mine for support. I summoned a few more scales to lock that one foot to the ground, leaving her with one leg to pivot with, and glanced down at the bubble with Mortician inside of it.

{You doing okay in there, buddy?} I asked through Okeria’s communicator. Just because he wasn’t here, and they didn’t reach outside of the hazard, there was no reason they shouldn’t work for us inside of the hazard. Actually, that was a pretty good reason for why they wouldn’t work.

The static buzz of an open line proved me both wrong and right. {We are perfectly fine, thank you for asking. Though it is frustrating that we cannot tell how you are faring. Is the shield sufficient for now, or would you prefer the offensive buff? Or the combination we have still yet to use?}

I didn’t even have to think about my answer. {The combination, please. Unless it takes too much out of you, of course.}

{No, no, it barely takes more than using either of the individual words. The only true drawback to it is that it has a cooldown, whereas the others only have the requirement that they cannot both be active at once.} Mortician explained. {We are about to grant you the combination buff. Please tell Juniper so that she is not surprised.}

“Jun, Mortician’s about to buff us.” I said with a tap on her shoulder. She nodded with a grunt of effort in response, shooting fruitlessly at an armored plate of sapmarrow that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

{We’re ready whenever you are.}

Silence crackled over the communicator for a moment, broken only by the sound of turning pages. Mortician cleared their throat and tapped their book, then spoke with a commanding voice unlike anything I’d heard out of them.

It reminded me of when the Stingprey had spoken through their body.

{Breathless words of Oil-Slykened Gold, ravage our minds with your cries of vengeful inspiration!} They decreed, and the gold around us shifted to be swirled with oily black. A new buff appeared in the corner of my eye, overwriting the Gospel of Molten Gold for a new, more powerful verse.

//BUFF GAINED: Oil-Soaked Sotr’s Gilded Testament. Allies within range of the source of this buff gain a protective barrier that also grants all of their attacks bonus electric damage while it has at least one health. The barrier’s regeneration rate and total duration is based on the source’s recovery, and its health and bonus damage are based on the source’s power.

Current Shield Strength: 36.

Current Shield Duration: 301/301 seconds.

Current Electric Damage: 21.

Cooldown between instances of Electric Damage: 0.5 second(s).

Those were some strange numbers. As if they’d all been boosted by one. But Jun’s core shouldn’t apply to me, even if the buff also applied to her. And when I thought about it, the Gospel of Molten Gold had also given me an eleven point shield, not ten…

{Mortician, can you tell me what bonuses this function gives? Not the buff’s description, but what it actually says in your book, please.}

I swerved through a field of spikes that had erupted just moments ago, pulled Jun close to just barely move her out of the way of a bone spire that would’ve impaled her head, and made as much distance as I possibly could. All in the time between my question and Mortician’s reply.

{Of course.} Mortician said with their normal voice, the commanding presence from earlier completely washed away. {The bonuses it grants are: a shield of strength thirty-two and a duration of two-hundred and thirty-one seconds. While that shield holds, it grants nineteen electric damage on an internal cooldown of one-point-five seconds. How… strange. Those are not the bonuses it has granted to us.}

I looked at Jun and nodded, even though she had her head turned away from me. Her core had affected the way Mortician’s stats influenced their function because it was pointed at her. At us. That was a huge revelation, and gave me a little more insight into just how monstrously powerful her core actually was. Not that I wasn’t aware of its power already, just that it kept finding new ways to surprise me.

“What happens if you use one of your inscriptions on a bullet?” I asked as I swatted aside one of the pixies. If they ever got hostile, things would get infinitely more complicated. “Can you use the twice-eye to make it so two bullets get empowered by breaking the cracks?”

“I haven’t tried anything with that one yet.” Jun ground out through her concentration. “There hasn’t been anything strong enough worth testing on. But it looks like that is changing, doesn’t it?”

“Definitely.” I agreed. Another pixie flew by my head, and almost by instinct, I snapped my hand out and grabbed it by the wings and designated it with wipe-away. I tapped Jun on the shoulder and held it out while it struggled to escape, and a dozen bullets later, it was dead as hell. “Can you carve one of your symbols into a bullet while we’re flying?”

She shook her head without pausing to think. “It’d take too much time, and I can’t let up on these things. But that’s definitely what I’m going to do when we get to the safe room.”

I gestured wildly to avoid a barrage of hardening sapmarrow and the spires it left behind, then designated the big bastard in the middle with wipe-away. “Take down the one in the middle first. Then we’ll move on to the others.”

Jun nodded in understanding and aimed her gun at the monster in the middle. “At least this will finally be worth some good experience.”