Five grueling hours passed by in near constant combat. The annoyance of reduced regeneration reared its ugly head around hour four, when we finally managed to take down the last of the biggest monsters, and the remaining time was spent trying to kill the now-useless pixies. If they’d been able to heal each other things would’ve been different, but it seemed that whatever was in control of this hazard wasn’t a complete sadist.

The ground had dried up from the sapmarrow a long while ago, but all the spires and ripples that had hardened from it remained. Two quick gunshots heralded the end of the final annoyance, and I tapped my sword to my back with a sigh that could’ve woken up the dead.

“God almighty, that was the worst.” I groaned and stretched out my back. I was actually starting to feel the strain from fighting, which meant I was dangerously low on battery. “How are both of your battery levels doing?”

Jun shook her head. “Not great, but not bad either. I’m about a third full.”

“We are not faring so well.” Mortician wheezed. They looked like they were a few minutes from collapsing, and if we hadn’t finished the pixies when we had, they probably would’ve. “Our battery has dipped to below ten percent. And that is with the constant breaks you gave us from supporting you. If time allows it, we would be grateful for a full rest and rejuvenation.”

Time was the least of our worries. I’d thought we could go through this hazard, gain a few levels on our gear to prepare ourselves to fight Scalovera, and maybe ambush a few of his mercenaries in the process. Now I wasn’t sure we could even clear the fifteenth combat, since we’d have the restriction from this one along with a much more difficult fight. And that wasn’t even counting the third restriction we’d get when we initiated it.

“It looks like we’re going to get stuck at combat fourteen.” I eventually said, to nods of agreement from Jun and Mortician. “So we might as well make the most of the time we have in complete safety. Mortician, is there anything else you can work on? Like making another treasure, or finding another page of your book?”

They didn’t instantly answer, and when they did, it was with uncertainty and reluctance. “We know how to make more of our treasures, but it comes at a very heavy cost; we can exchange a certain amount of experience from consuming a core for a treasure. As of this moment, it is not worth sacrificing the progress we could be making towards unlocking the power of another slyk titan for a small increase in strength.”

“Oh, and we will receive another function from our book when we gain that slyk titan’s power.” They quickly added. “So that too would be delayed if we were to create a treasure.”

Well, that answered that for me. We needed to get stronger, but we needed to fight for that strength. Or at least I thought we did. “Actually, I have an idea. But let's get to safety first.”

I sat across from Mortician at the stone table sans my helmet and gauntlets, while they were just in their street clothes. Jun sat to my right trying to etch all of her inscriptions onto her bullets, and from the pile of failures next to her, it looked like it was going to be a long and arduous process. Luckily for her, we had all the time in the world. Mortician needed to get a little more powerful, and that could start with their core mastery.

“When we were in the oilsea, you were powerful. Whatever happened to pull you into reality made you a lot weaker, and we need to fix that. I’ve got a pretty good amount of crystallized experience on me, and if you think it’ll get you to the threshold to unlock the abilities of another slyk titan, I can give it to you.”

Experience crystals materialized onto the table with a thunk for emphasis. Mortician didn’t move to touch them. “We appreciate the gesture, and would happily accept the experience, but we do not wish to hamper your progress for our own.”

There was no problem with that. I had a good amount of bonus experience from //endless, and even more from some unknown source that I couldn’t pinpoint. It was probably Mortician’s core’s doing, but it meant I’d almost doubled what I was supposed to have.

“Then take half. Pushing you up to another threshold is a lot more important than me getting a few item levels.” I pushed the experience towards Mortician insistently. “You don’t know how it works, so it’s better if we have more time to deal with it.”

“...Okay. We will accept your gift.” Mortician said with a slight bow. They tapped their hand to the largest crystal, which had come from one of the big monsters. It disappeared in a burst of light. “That crystal granted us one core mastery level. We assume we will not be granted a slyk titan’s insight until we reach core mastery twenty-five, which is now four levels away. If this does not bring us there, we sincerely apologize.”

I shook my head. “Don’t apologize. I have more experience you can take if you need it. How long will it take for your body to process it?”

Mortician opened their interface as they consumed another crystal. “We currently have a debuff called ‘experience fatigue’ that lasts for three hours. It reads as: ‘all experience gained will be granted over the duration of this debuff instead of immediately. Refreshes upon experience gain.’ So if we consume all of the experience you granted us immediately, we will know how many levels of core mastery we have gained at the end of three hours.”

Jun slammed a bullet down on the table. Mortician and I snapped to look at her with concern. She looked between us with frustration that slowly bled away into sheepishness as she realized what she’d just done.

“Sorry. This is a lot harder than I thought it’d be.” She apologized. “Keep… keep doing whatever you were doing. Sorry. Yeah.”

“We just finished what we were doing.” Mortician informed her. “And we will now be lying down in the bed to consult ourselves for the best way to continue forward.” They pushed themselves to their feet and nodded to me. “Thank you for the experience, Sebastian.”

I waved off Mortician’s thanks. “No problem. The stronger you get, the better it is for all of us.”

“What he said.” Jun echoed with a nod. “Good luck talking to yourself.”

“We hope we do not need it, but we know how we can be!” Mortician chuckled as they laid down and turned away from us. The sound of quiet, rhythmic breathing followed soon after.

Jun sighed and leaned back while she stared at the bullet between her fingers. “I might have to get Okeria to do this for me. I don’t have anything that can carve into this accurately enough, while also being strong enough to scratch it.”

I summoned my weapon and shifted it into a tiny needle. Or at least I meant to shift into a single tiny needle, but about two dozen of the things spilled onto my lap. The one I’d intended on creating was still between my fingers, and I offered it to Jun as she stared at me with a barely restrained smirk.

“I definitely knew that would happen.” I said defensively, which got a laugh out of Jun.

“Right, right, of course you did.” She said with a bright smile. She set the scratched bullet down and pulled a fresh one from //ad-infinitum, then set upon it with my needle.

I watched her work in silence for a few minutes, scraping away the metal on the bullet itself little by little until I could make out a small twice-eye about the size of a grain of sand. She let out a long breath, as if she’d been holding it in the entire time she’d been working, and held the bullet out before her with pride.

The twice-eye glowed, and another bullet fell to the table right next to it. Casing and all. Jun pumped her fist in success, then turned and hugged me tight.

“Skies above, I never thought I’d get that to work.” She sighed right next to my ear, which sent a little shiver down my spine. I saw her smile turn coy as she noticed, but we both had enough control to not do anything while we should be doing other things. Just… barely, though.

She pushed away with a twinkle of something in her eye. “Take whatever you want from the gifts Mortician already ripped open. I didn’t see anything that I could obviously use, but if you think something there’s good for me, I’m not going to say no. I’m going to go carve the rest of my inscriptions into this thing, then replace the bullet in ad-infinitum with a fully inscribed one.”

“Don’t forget to keep one un-inscribed bullet. Just in case.” I reminded her, to which she waved a bullet at me. It disappeared into her inventory a moment later. “Alright, you already thought of that. Good to know my fiancee is more competent than I am.”

Jun rolled her eyes and leaned in for a kiss. “Flatterer.”

I reciprocated for a little longer than was probably necessary, and from the look in Jun’s eyes, she agreed with me. But in the ‘that was dangerous’ way, not the ‘that was too long’ way. She sighed and shook her head, then leaned over her bullet with my needle between her fingers. Leaving me as the only one who wasn’t in the process of doing something productive.

A glance over at the boxes didn’t elicit much of any emotion. There wasn’t some strange piece like the rusted helmet and the seed; just a strange trinket that was probably meant to be used later in the hazard. It wasn’t strong enough for anything on its own, but I leaned over and grabbed it anyway. The thing was a small square of metal wrapped in bone, with an inscription of three small stacked half-circles on top of an upside-down triangle.

//(Rare, Crafted) Passage Token.

//Core Mastery requirement: 24.

//All costs are reduced by 5%.

I flipped it over in my fingers, noted that the backside had the exact same image carved into it, and sent it to my inventory. At the absolute worst, Jun might be able to use the symbol on it as inspiration for a new god-pen inscription. But at best, we might get lucky enough and find wherever we were supposed to use the token. That thought alone kept me from corrupting the token on the spot.

With nothing left to occupy me, I set out the cores and crystallized experience I had tucked away in my inventory and stared down at the banquet that awaited me. There definitely wasn’t enough to push another piece of equipment up to level 99, which left me with a question I didn’t have a good answer to.

What the hell was I supposed to focus on leveling up?