//INITIALIZING PROTOCOL: MISSING.

//CURRENT CORE CANNOT HANDLE WHAT YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO.

//INSTEAD, WHAT YOU HAVE FOUND WILL ACT AS A TRINKET UNTIL THE REQUISITES ARE MET.

//GODSPEED, YOUNG ENVOY.

//THE HAZARDOUS PATH REAPS THE GREATEST REWARDS.

I flinched back at the message that overtook my interface when I tried to identify the thing I held. The pyramid lazily began to turn in the palm of my hand, revealing that the insides had something deep within that I couldn’t quite make out. Something more than what had been there a moment ago–something that felt like the connection I’d instantly had with Mortician. But not with something living this time; with the hazard itself.

The core stared back at me without eyes. A weight settled on my chest–the burden of something far greater than I realized–and I let out a breath that seemed to steal the very life from me.

//MEMORIES OF THE WEEPING DROWNED(CORRUPTED,Entity)

//Core Mastery Requirement for true purpose: Something you don’t have.

//Core Mastery Requirement to equip: Whatever you have.

//The waters of Sotrien beg to be free; to never be consigned to the putrid pools of lifeless slide they call their lakes and oceans. Thraiv has grown complacent. The skies cry out in agony. Everything they fail to change, you stand to gain.

//Clearing a hazard’s hidden clear condition brings you closer to this item’s true purpose. Oil-Soaked Sotr signs in relief. The Floodforest cries out for your return. And the Blasted Ruins of Prophecy is tantalizingly within reach.

//Drown the world and emerge in the safety of familiarity. Turn a gateway into a portal, and return to where you are needed the most.

And now the thing itself was talking to me. Great. I lowered it awkwardly, trying to keep it hovering above my hand all the way down, but it never faltered. No matter how I clenched my fist or twisted my hand the drowning pyramid stayed perfectly in place.

“So? Anything interesting?” Jun asked with curiosity. She leaned in to get a better look at the pyramid, then flinched away when she felt it staring back. “Something just looked at me. Was something supposed to look at me?”

“Well, something looked at me too, so I think so?” I shrugged sheepishly. Was every hazard we tried to clear going to have something strange about it? “The thing told me to go back and clear the floodforest. I guess we’re going to have to do that after we deal with Scalovera.”

Jun nodded and backed away slowly. “We were always going to do that at some point, so it might as well be now. Maybe you can make more of those Endbound items if we can find more of those moss vials.”

I cringed when Jun said the name of my weapon out loud. Unfortunately, I agreed with her.

“We would like to visit the floodforest at some point. Is it possible for us to join in?” Mortician asked eagerly. “Or would it force us to complete the first season to gain access to the season you two are currently on?”

“I bet it’d let you in. Since the system kind of thinks you’re connected to Seb.” Jun theorized, then shrugged. “Even if you have to clear the first season, you won’t have any trouble doing it. We managed it when we were hazard tolerance one and two.”

Mortician nodded and inched closer to the pyramid in my hand. They probed it with a curious finger, then shivered. “It feels like something from the Ossuary. We do not know what it means, but it has to be for you alone, Envoy. Sebastian. Envoy Sebastian.”

They shook their head and sighed. “Our personalities may be merged into one, but apparently our way of referring to you is not quite as unified. A small part of us wants to call you ‘Seb’, as Juniper does, but it does not feel right to the rest of us. You are Sebastian. Our Envoy. And Juniper’s ‘Seb’. All as one, and all just as important.”

To say that Mortician’s little spiel caught me off guard would be an understatement. It felt like they’d peeled away a veil I didn’t know existed, and now that I knew it did, absolutely nothing changed. Mortician was still Mortician. And they were calling me ‘Sebastian’ because they felt that it best described me, not out of some weird power or seniority thing. That thought had only graced my mind once or twice, but I was glad I never had to entertain it again.

“Thank you.” I said seriously. “And you can call me whatever you want. Of those three, I mean. I don’t want to be called… mister Persephonia or mister Cormier.”

Mortician physically recoiled at those suggestions. “We hate the idea of calling you that. It does not fit what you are in the slightest.”

“I know, right?” Jun giggled. “I tried calling him that once, and his face scrunched up like nothing I’d ever seen. I didn’t know human facial features could move like that.”

I smiled and sent the pyramid into my inventory. It hovered in midair for a moment longer than anything else I’d tried to send away, snapping into place so one of its seams could stare at me. A split second later it disappeared, and I could feel it in my inventory like a chunk of cold lead. Even if my interface hadn’t told me there was something wrong with it, I would’ve been able to figure it out.

Mortician looked around the room for anything that might have changed. They swept their gaze over every sphere we’d taken out with relative ease, then settled on the instruction manual I’d tossed to the side when things had gone sideways.

“There are far less pages in the manual than before.” They noted as they walked over to it and picked it up. The manual buzzed in their hands the second they touched it, flipped open to a seemingly random page, and began to glow. “And the pages are no longer blank. Is it possible that defeating those creatures born from the spheres populated the contents of the manual?”

They walked back to Jun and I and held the manual out for us to read. I leaned in and squinted at the small lumps of text that weren’t properly centered or formatted for the page–it looked like they’d been cut out of a different book and pasted in with a glue stick. But the contents seemed to be right for the manual.

“Operating and utilizing the summon spheres; a beginner’s guide.” I read aloud, even though it wasn’t necessary. Neither Jun nor Mortician stopped me, though, so I kept reading. “The summon spheres are wirelessly connected to the hazard’s innate battery source by the connectors implanted within the tablets, which function as receivers for commands given from the control room. If you wish to alter what programs are set onto individual tablets, contact the administrator for permission.”

I frowned down at the gap between the paragraph I’d just read and the one that appeared a few inches under it. ‘Contact the administrator’. That had to be part of the ‘secret’ clear condition the pyramid was talking about.

“Spinning the summon sphere while the network is fully operational will start a localized test of the lowest level.” I continued after a short pause. “The creatures summoned by the spheres can vary wildly in hazard rating when summoned outside of the lone mountain, but when summoned inside, they will always be summoned at a hazard rating of five and with a stat spread that adds up to fifty. Experience is needed to create creatures outside of the lone mountain, and can be gathered in multiple ways.”

I gestured for Mortician to flip the page, since the rest of it was filled with strange diagrams and colours that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. And the next page was more of the same, but the one after that had one more out-of-place batch of notes.

“Firstly; the hazard generates a small amount of experience on its own. This should be used to create weak, core-less creatures for the initial combats. When those core-less creatures are killed, it leads into option number two for gathering experience; skimming off those who enter the hazard.”

I frowned down at the sentence I’d just read, and Jun grumbled in the back of her throat.

“Just like what Keratily’s doing.” She muttered. “Do you think she got the idea from here?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” I agreed. “But that just means we could find some way to counter it out here, too, right?”

Jun shrugged. “Okeria already told us how to deal with Keratily; we just have to find a way to destroy those anchor crystals of hers. But I guess the key to that could be here…”

She trailed off and looked down at the summon sphere that sat inert before us. “Actually, I think I’ve got an idea. But finish reading first, just in case the manual says what I’m thinking.”

I nodded and went back to reading. “All that which dies inside of the hazard grants a split of experience; eighty percent to those who killed it and twenty percent back to the hazard. When combined with the efficiency of the summon spheres and the constantly growing experience reserves, it snowballs to the point where core-bearing creatures may be readily summoned after approximately five combats. Placing restrictions on those who fight causes the system to award them more experience for every victory, and as such, is needed to keep up with those who can defeat powerful creatures.”

“Finally, there is one last way to gain experience; defeating those who seek to clear the hazard. If a person uses the ‘recall’ command while inside of a combat, all experience from the monsters they are fighting is withdrawn and converted back to raw experience. It is not efficient, but it is a way to regain experience that would have otherwise been lost in combat.”

The paragraph ended there. It didn’t feel like it should’ve, but it did. And underneath it was a detailed anatomical drawing of a cross-section of a symbiotic seed. It showed a little larva inside of the seed, with annotations in a language the system didn’t translate, but it connected to something bigger. An arrow pointed to an indent inside of one of the tablets, and another arrow connected the tablet to something that looked like a massive chandelier made out of flaming crystals.

“The seeds are the connectors?” I muttered to myself as I flipped through the pages of the manual. There were only a few dozen now–all of which were filled with drawings, diagrams, and other things that meant nothing to me–but there were no more glued-on paragraphs. Maybe we needed to do something else to make more of them appear.

Jun reached down and ejected a tablet. She flipped it over and inspected the back, which was completely blank, then flipped it over again and pressed on the inlaid symbiotic seed.

“I’d bet anything we have to find an empty one of these.” She said with confidence. “The seed was inside of the helmet, and it didn’t want to get corrupted. That has to mean it has a part to play in clearing this hazard.”