My options were strangely limited. The obvious answer was my chestpiece, since it hadn’t gained any levels thanks to wipe-away crystallizing all of my experience, but that wouldn’t make a huge dent in my crystals. The cores were a lot easier to deal with, and I consumed all of them in a few easy motions.

As the nodes trickled in, I assigned the few filled ones I’d gotten to the few ‘stars’ I could make and considered what I should do. My endbound-nullblade, whose name I still didn’t like saying out loud, didn’t seem to get anything from leveling up. It hadn’t even moved from item mastery 1 when I didn’t use wipe-away on my kills. So that was out.

Leaving only my armor, since //endless was only one level away from max. And the cruel world’s partition, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to level anything up that wasn’t corrupted. I could justify bringing my oil-corrupted armor with me as long as I could, since I could always add something more to the corruption, but the shield-trinket just… didn’t matter to me.

I pulled it off my shoulder and set it down on the table. My eyes fell on a smaller crystal that had come from one of the pixies, and after a brief moment of consideration, I grabbed it and pressed it to the trinket. Just before I could make a mistake, though, I activated my lowest cooldown blessing from //endless for the experience boost.

//Cruel World’s Partition: Item Mastery 6→ Item Mastery 17.

A quick look at the item’s description showed me that none of its stats had changed. It gained absolutely nothing from leveling up. And it wouldn’t until it reached level 65, which could cost me all of my experience crystals because it was such a high level item anyway. I couldn’t justify that steep of a cost for something I wasn’t even sure I was going to keep for myself.

I was generous, sure, but I wasn’t that selfless.

“What’s actually worth leveling up?” I mused as I picked up the small trinket. “My armor’s fine, my weapon’s a mystery, and neither of my trinkets are worth the investment. Is there anything else I can work with?”

“Make yourself something new.” Jun suggested without looking up from her work on the bullet. “You’ve got the airlight bauble and the mercurial rebreather. Corrupt them and add some other materials onto them later.”

That was a good idea. I only had two trinkets filling my slots, and room for a whole lot more. The airlight bauble and the mercurial rebreather appeared on the table before me as I nodded thanks to Jun, who was too busy to look up at me.

“I think I’ll do just that, thanks.”

Jun smiled, but said nothing more. She’d started carving another symbol, taking a glacial pace to ensure she made no mistakes whatsoever. I took that as a sign to start my own work, which took the form of placing my hand on each of the trinkets and activating peer-ahead to see what they could become.

//MATERIAL TO BE CONSUMED: AIRLIGHT BAUBLE.

//POTENTIAL COST: MIDDLING.

//INITIATING //PEER-AHEAD…

//INTERVENTION(//CORRUPTED,Crafted)

Core Mastery Requirement: 23

Current item mastery: 1.

//When the bearer takes damage that exceeds 5% of their armor’s maximum integrity, consume 5% of battery, shed all negative effects, and gain absolute invulnerability for 1 second. This effect can only trigger once every 30 minutes.

//Upgrades at item mastery [1]/15/28/46/???

Shed all negative effects. Absolute invulnerability. Those two lines of text set my mouth watering and my mind spinning with possibility; there were things in this world that could be massively abused if I had one of those two things. And that I had abused with my old core’s damage mitigation effect. But to be completely immune to damage while also shedding anything bad… well… let’s just say I wouldn’t miss the airlight bauble too much. I held myself back from corrupting it, though, just in case the mercurial rebreather turned into something much better that cost me so much potential I couldn’t afford to do both.

//MATERIAL TO BE CONSUMED: MERCURIAL REBREATHER.

//POTENTIAL COST: IMMENSE.

//INITIATING //PEER-AHEAD…

//ASCEND(//CORRUPTED,Professional.)

Core Mastery Requirement: 43.

Current Item Mastery: 1.

//For each item–including this one–that the bearer has equipped that has reached its final stage of item mastery, increase all of the bearer’s stats by 10 and all experience gained by 5%.

//Upgrades at item mastery [1]/97/98/99/???

Well. That didn’t seem worth an ‘immense’ cost. Maybe a ‘large’ or ‘middling’ cost, but… no, not even then. This trinket relied on me having items like //endless, which finished getting their upgrades at lower levels, to get stat and experience bonuses. For someone who’d built their armor and core around using low-level gear and getting it to upgrade quickly, it could be worth a whole lot.

The only thing that brought me pause was that item mastery requirement. It literally needed to be upgraded to the highest level to get its final bonus, and the other two were only granted one and two levels before that. It had to be a final build focused trinket; one that wanted me to level up as much trash gear as I could to get the experience boost to level it up as fast as humanly possible.

I couldn’t lie to myself; I wanted to see what would happen if I fully upgraded that trinket. But even if I made it, I couldn’t equip it for a few more levels. And those levels were coming slower and slower thanks to the mounting experience cost as the levels got higher. With a heavy heart and my curiosity taking a backseat to reason, I sent the mercurial rebreather into my inventory with a mental note to corrupt it when I had a high enough core mastery. And a few more items that it could take advantage of.

Which left me with //intervention. I pushed potential into my core and filled the space with the airlight bauble, felt it churn and mix into something new, and grabbed the mass of strange glowing material my core spit out. It dripped through my fingers and splattered to the table below, staining both my hands and the rock with luminescent blue-white goo. I donned my armor and mentally commanded it to equip //intervention.

A strange feeling, like jumping into cold water after taking a cold shower, spread over my body as //intervention took hold. I looked down at my hands and saw that they’d been painted with a matte pattern that invoked a sense of fight and protection. It didn’t look like it at all; just a mess of straight lines mashed together that somehow gave a sense of… something. It ended at my shoulders, not reaching up to my chestpiece, and flowed into endless’ ribbons on my right shoulder.

I flexed my fingers, then pushed experience into //intervention until it hit item mastery 34. It took pretty much all of my experience, and it seemed like it was going to be a real annoyance to level up any further than that. The rest of the experience went into my chestpiece. I opened my interface and swiped over to my equipment screen, hoping for some good upgrades for all that experience I’d just invested in it.

//INTERVENTION(//CORRUPTED,Crafted)

Core Mastery Requirement: 23

Current item mastery: 34.

//When the bearer takes damage that exceeds 5% of their armor’s maximum integrity, consume 5% of battery, shed all negative effects, and gain absolute invulnerability for 1 second. This effect can only trigger once every 30 minutes.

//Mastery 15 upgrade: Increases the duration of this trinket by 1 second and reduces its cooldown by 10 minutes.

//Mastery 28 upgrade: When this trinket triggers, the bearer gains a 100% increase to all of their stats for the duration of the invulnerability.

//Upgrades at item mastery 1/15/[28]/46/???

Those upgrades were… a little less than I’d hoped. Sure, the bonuses were absurdly huge, but they also lasted for such a short duration that it didn’t really matter. Maybe I could retaliate against an enemy that just damaged me, though a two second window was so small that it literally had to be on top of me. And that wasn’t even considering that having my speed change so drastically could actually be a negative…

I shook my head. I just had to get used to it. Two seconds of absolute invulnerability and a cleanse of all debuffs was worth it alone; the rest was just the cherries on top of the cake that was //INTERVENTION. And if I couldn’t find some way to abuse that 100% increase just as hard as I could the other parts of it, then it was my own damn fault.

With a flick of my wrist I summoned a random dagger I’d found to my hand and drove it through my forearm. I winced at the pain for a moment, then shuddered as the sudden chill returned. My stats surged for the two seconds it lasted as the dagger was forced out of my arm, then returned to normal and set a strange icon in the top right of my vision; a feather drawn out of only straight lines. It grew ever so slightly white as time ticked away, but there was no timer to be seen. I’d have to gauge how much of the cooldown was left by sight alone.

“Did you make something that involves hurting yourself?” Jun asked, completely unfazed by what I’d just done. From what I’d seen, she hadn’t even looked up when my knife scraped through my armor and flesh. She was now, though, but it was in curiosity. “That pattern on your arms shone white right after you stabbed yourself, then went away like two seconds later.”

“Well. That’s blatantly obvious.” I laughed, then turned my interface so Jun could see //intervention’s description.

She read it over carefully, then leaned back with what I could only describe as being perfectly whelmed. “So you get two seconds of invulnerability when you take a little damage. But if you take a huge hit, does it stop the damage that’s more than five percent? Or do you take all the damage, then become invulnerable after?”

“I’ve had it for less than two minutes, Jun.” I pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah, but you’re the ‘somehow knows way too much’ guy, remember?” She teased, leaning in for a hug and motioning for me to drop my armor. I did as she requested, then happily accepted her embrace. “What did you corrupt for it? The bauble or the rebreather?”

I pulled out the rebreather to answer her question. “This one will corrupt into something that’ll be useful when I hit core mastery forty-three.”

“Cool. Maybe we can get you there before we have to take Scalovera down.” Jun sighed with content. “Then all we have to deal with is Endra, Keratily, and the threat of the other Embodiments who might’ve followed–or who plan on following–in Endra’s wake.”

“Not much at all.” I chuckled sarcastically.

Jun smiled up at me, then nuzzled in further. “Not much at all.”