I swept my hands across one of the tables and frowned. There was something really, really strange about this place. No experience meant we couldn’t use these things to grind out levels, but we could theoretically get infinite nodes and stats out of it. That just didn’t make sense. I walked over to the sphere the creature had hatched from and glared down at it.

It had already closed up. The materials inside shuddered ever so slightly on the bottom of the plastic sphere, as if they were still warm from the thing they had summoned. I tapped the tablet-eating machine and ejected the thing, which hissed open and spat something out at me that looked like it would melt at any second.

“Well, that’s just strange.” Jun noted inquisitively. “It doesn’t look like summoning the monster used anything up at all, but it made it hot. So it has to be consuming something to work. What could that be?”

“Experience.” Mortician said confidently. “None of us gained anything from the death of that creature, aside from the core it dropped. It would stand to reason that the reason for that absence is that something else is taking it; just as Keratily is taking from the people of Rainbow Basin.”

Somehow, I had a feeling Mortician was right. I swiped open my interface and checked how many empty nodes the core had given me, and stalled at the strange number that hovered before my eyes. It was… shifting. Between 0 and 1. Just like the filled node; it waffled between saying I’d gained one of them and that I hadn’t gained any.

“Looks like you’re right. This thing might’ve given us a core, but the core itself looks like it was completely and utterly empty. Probably because it didn’t have enough experience to make something real.” I tilted my head and gently tapped the still-molten tablet. The plastic bent under my insistence, then bounced back like gelatin the moment my finger left it. “So how does this matter? Is there something else we’re supposed to do here?”

Mortician shrugged. “We do not know. We supplied the theory, so now it is someone else’s turn to be intelligent.”

Snarky. I didn’t have to wonder who they learned that from. “Alright, let’s see if we can get any of the other spheres to summon things. Maybe they’ll give us a better idea about what we’re supposed to do here.”

A much smaller version of the vine-monster that had summoned a deluge of sapmarrow to fight us shrieked out a pathetic little gurgle and died. I thumped my shield against the floor as Jun flipped open her gun’s cylinder and reloaded the spent bullets, her gaze nowhere close to focused on the task at hand.

I couldn’t blame her. All of the things we’d fought had either been baby versions of other things we’d fought or baby versions of things I assumed we hadn’t fought yet. A few of them had put up a mediocre resistance; the pixy had proved to be almost as much of an annoyance as its larger relatives, that was for sure. But none of them had been… dangerous. The first thing we’d fought had been by far the most deadly of the bunch, but even that hadn’t done anything but focus a beam on me while Jun obliterated the hell out of it.

My shield shifted back into a simple blade that I tapped against my side as I summoned the core created by //CREATION into my hand. Just like all the others, it was a simple shape with multiple sides. Specifically a pyramid in this case. I pressed my fingers against it and tried to crush it without activating the universal function that would consume it, but just as I’d expected, the core held strong. Terrifyingly strong.

“They’re real cores, all right.” I sighed. That had been Jun’s theory, and even though we’d disproved it a dozen times over, I had a feeling that she was right. Even if it couldn’t prove it at all. “Weak, almost useless, and single-minded, but still cores. How’s everyone’s item masteries looking?”

Jun shook her head. “No change at all. Whatever these things are, they’re giving us literally nothing. Unless you count target practice as something, I guess.”

“We do not.” Mortician flipped through their book without looking up. “You could achieve the same result by attaching rocks to some of Okeria’s drones. That is not worth venturing into a hidden compartment in a hazard for.”

I was in complete agreement with Mortician. This part of the hazard was strangely useless. Like we’d stumbled into something that we were never supposed to see, not some great hidden secret that would reveal the hazard’s true purpose.

That made me pause. What was this hazard’s true purpose? Was this room important because we were supposed to solve it, or was it important because someone else worked with it? Someone with a lot more power than we had, or at least with a lot more experience under their belt? If someone worked in this room, and they had some sort of function that could put the experience we assumed they gathered into these spheres, then where were they?

Dull walls and a single flat roof gave me no easy clues. But the voice of this hazard had talked to us. It seemed to be just as sentient as Mortician was, which was something I’d seen exactly twice now, and they’d been talking to something. Or listening to something. If this was really their control room, why was it connected to our safe room?

Sighing, I shook my head and stepped forward to collect the little vine monster’s real core. Nothing happened when I touched it, nothing happened when I yanked it out, and nothing happened when I tossed it to Mortician. These cores were just plain useless.

“Well, time for the nuclear option.” I declared. Jun and Mortician both nodded at the plan we’d worked out a few murdered little monsters ago, and backed away just in case. Mortician coated me in a golden barrier then ducked behind a table, but Jun simply stood there with her hand on her gun and her eyes locked on me.

It was beyond comforting to know how thoroughly she had my back. I nodded to her and opened my core’s sunscreen, then activated //CREATION and shoved the core at it.

//ERROR

//PRESENTED MATERIAL IS CURRENTLY OWNED BY //////////////////////////////

//CORRUPTION IS IMPOSSIBLE.

//INCOMING TRANSMISSION… BLOCKED.

//PERMISSION GAINED TO CORRUPT MATERIALS.

//WORKING…

My core function blocked something’s transmission. But it still gave me permission to corrupt this dinky little core. I frowned and pushed potential into it, since it hadn’t told me how much I needed for the corruption. Then I pushed some more. And even more. The little core stole potential from me in gluttonous gasps, and before my very eyes, I watched it transform.

The sides of the pyramid slowly split at the seams with a wet slurp of a watery seal being removed. Brilliant blue bled out from the inside of it like a waterfall for a half dozen inches, then simply disappeared. The liquid continued to flow, creating a roiling curtain at the sudden cutoff, but nothing splattered to the ground. The pieces continued to drift slightly further apart, attached only by sinewy strands of oily white that shivered and shook but never detached.

Marrow from hollowed bones spilling onto the floor to be greedily lapped up by shuddering dogs. The waters of life drying up to nothing but a remnant of prosperity. Four siblings, locked in a perpetual struggle that consumed the very realm and left only one of them ruling over the blasted remains. She wished for death. She wished for The End.

Eyes stared back at me from inside of the pyramid. They weren’t hers. She had not met her end, so I had no sway over her. The others, however, so long forgotten and buried under millennia of dust and strife. I shuddered at their gazes as their eyes closed for the final time, relief at their ultimate end brought forth by the Envoy.

I staggered back as the deluge of images and feelings washed away. My throat was dry. My arm shook under the weight of the thing that now hovered just above my palm, dripping water that looked like it belonged in a painting onto my hand that disappeared moments later. Why did all the Staura hazards have such histories? Or… did all of them have histories, and I’d never had the power to learn them in my old life?

“Seb? Are you alright?” Jun asked worriedly, her gun pointed at the thing that hovered above my palm. “That… it looks like a core.”

“It is a–” Mortician began.

“Not that way. You know what I mean.” Jun cut them off, but not impolitely. Both her and Mortician’s body language spoke of nothing but concern for my health, and Mortician simply nodded at Jun’s worried words. “Seb? Can you hear me?”

Right. I had to speak out loud. “...Yeah, I can hear you. This place… it has a history. Nothing like the oilsea, but a history nonetheless. Is there a Staura legend about four siblings that destroyed the world?”

Jun lowered her weapon, yet her suspicion only grew. “Yes, there is. But it’s more a… doomsday prophecy than a legend. When all of our gods fall, and only four remain, they will destroy the world in their pursuit to rule what their fallen siblings once reigned over.”

She glanced back at where we’d come from. I could tell she was considering where we were.

“This hazard… it’s that legend, isn’t it? One of our gods eventually killed all the others, but it destroyed the world in the process. And now we have to fight forever to get to the only bastion of hope that remains.” She nodded to herself and snapped her gun onto her thigh. “That makes way too much sense. And it’s… pretty drowned terrifying if I think about it too hard.”

I chuckled weakly in agreement. “Well, now all three of us know what the end of our worlds look like.”

“Yes, though our world ended and was reborn. So there could be an argument made that we do not belong in that group.” Mortician snapped their book closed with a quiet, nasally laugh. “Though semantics is not something we enjoy using as a tool to exclude others, so we will happily accept our invitation to the group.”

Chills crept up my spine. I felt something settle on me, thought it didn’t feel hateful or monstrous. It felt more akin to the curious eye of some massive animal. As if it were in the middle of deciding whether we were allies, enemies, or food. And then it shifted. Now it felt more like a distant relative’s new significant at a family gathering; unsure, a little nervous, and absolutely certain that it didn’t know anyone there.

I shook the feeling off and raised the pyramid to eye level. Something was about to happen. But I wanted to see what my new thing actually was before it did.