The problem with his plan, of course, was that Derivan only knew a single glyph of his own design, and that glyph was a shield — not something that could be used to attack. Not as far as he knew, anyway. But it was one of the only tools he had to work with. There was always the chance that he could hurt the Patchers through whatever protection of Health they had, but that method relied on physical damage meaning something.

The System Patchers were an amalgam of limbs patched together with the colors of the system. He wasn't sure that they operated on physical damage at all.

Defense first, in any case.

The glyph completed.

Just like before, mana rushed into the glyph, completing it in a way that was not unlike how runic inscriptions were charged with mana — and yet there was something more. The glyph came to life, the outer edges of the shield collapsing down into the vague form of a book, outlined in shimmering green.

It happened just in time, too. The five Patchers skittered upright, twisting and rotating unnaturally before letting out yet another rippling screech; the air rippled again, struck the barrier of Derivan's spell —

— something strange happened.

The effect was connected to him, first of all; anchored to him much like a real shield would be. When the ripple struck the barrier, Derivan could feel himself being pushed back, and he had to dig his feet into the ground to avoid being forced back by the sheer metaphysical weight behind the attack. There might be something he could do to detach the spell, prevent it from anchoring to him in such a way, but if there was then he didn't know how.

Second was a strange feeling in the mana that he sensed almost as soon as the ripple hit the barrier. Vex sensed it, too, judging by the way the lizardkin perked up and narrowed his eyes; Derivan couldn't quite spare the attention to check on him, though, because the Patchers were beginning to push forward against the barrier. Two of them scattered to the side, trying to go around it while the others pushed dumbly against the magic, and Derivan tried to react —

— Vex reached out and touched his shoulder, the lizardkin's eyes determined. Derivan felt Vex's mana trickle into him the way it did when they were testing his stats, but this time it did something different. Instead of entering and merging with his mana pool, it somehow tangled with the part of his soul that was currently interacting with the spell.

The barrier Derivan was holding on to flexed, somehow, and expanded into a semicircle around them. The two Patchers that had shifted beat their too-long limbs uselessly against the barrier, also too dumb to try to go around it.

"Sev," Vex said, his voice a little tense. "Please get some help."

"Me?" the cleric asked. He opened his mouth, as if to protest — Derivan saw the way he gripped his staff and glanced nervously at them, as though worried they would be hurt and die without him — but then he snapped his mouth shut into a grim, determined line, spun on his heel, and ran.

"You have a plan?" Misa asked. Her voice was terse, and she was watching the Patchers with wariness; Derivan sensed the same thing she did. The barrier wouldn't last forever. Every strike against it drained some of his mana.

"We need magic to fight them," Vex said. There was an oddness in the way his eyes shimmered, and he blinked and shook his head, like he was trying to get rid of something in his eyes. Derivan was starting to get the feeling that Vex had somehow understood a lot more than he had from that strangeness in the mana. "I dunno how to explain. The mana here doesn't... it doesn't know the system. Not really. But it understands reality. It spent a really long time trying to understand reality."

"How do you know this?" Derivan asked.

"I wanna know too." Misa frowned.

"I just... do." Vex hesitated, then pointed at the barrier — at the small, fluttering books that made up its expanded semicircle. They weren't actual books, of course, just impressions in the magic — but the pages flipped and turned with every strike against the barrier, and now that Derivan was paying attention, the armor saw a very faint trace of mana leading back to Vex.

How odd. He'd been the one to cast the spell. Why was Vex receiving information he wasn't?

How was Vex helping him with the spell, for that matter?

Not that Derivan minded. But the Patchers were getting tired of beating uselessly against the shield, and Vex seemed to tense a little bit. "They're going to try something else," he said. "We need to hold them off—"

There was a flutter in reality. A slight change.

A small Shift.

But small as it was, it was one that cascaded, bouncing between the five Patchers and accumulating in strength. Derivan felt it, this time, as the mana tried to compensate and stop them — but they Shifted further and faster, and as much as he tried, Derivan found he couldn't stop what they were doing.

An instant later, they had stepped through the barrier. And yet, something was different — the system-blue of their chitin was slightly burnt and chipped. They didn't seem to care. They screamed again, and the echoes of that rippling Shift didn't reach quite as far as before; it was weak enough that neither Derivan nor Misa had to try to block it before it dissipated, but it left the stone behind it broken and warped.

"I'll take three!" Misa called loudly, before either Vex or Derivan could make any sort of tactical call, and she sprinted forward — it didn't take her that many steps. Three large bounds and she smashed her mace into one of them, the crunch of carapace and limbs loud enough to echo in the building; she spun on her feet almost immediately, launching herself past the scream of a second one to kick and snap one of its lower limbs. Black lightning crackled around her in the form of a [Paralyzing Bash] —

"Misa!" Vex called out, ever so slightly paler beneath his scales. Derivan winced. Vex had said not to use system-given skills, and [Paralyzing Bash] used mana on top of that.

But there was no runic inscription. It wasn't a spell. Instead, mana briefly enveloped Misa before abruptly beginning to Shifting to the black lightning that was typical in all paralysis skills.

And then Derivan saw why Vex had warned them against using any system-offered skills.

Before Misa's mace could strike the third Patcher — before the Shift into black lightning had even completed, with only half of the mana completing the Shift — the Patcher somehow seized something in that mechanism. Derivan couldn't sense the precise mechanics of what happened, only that something was twisted, and the skill she cast never completed.

Instead, black lightning turned into fire, and Misa screamed.

To her credit, she didn't let it stop her. The scream transformed into something halfway between a growl and a snarl, a sound caught between determination and pain. She completed her blow, smashing her mace into the center of the Patcher that had done this to her and throwing it a good five feet back.

The skill snapped off, and the fire vanished. Misa breathed.

She looked pissed.

And that was all Derivan had the time to see before the two remaining Patchers were among them. Almost instinctively, Derivan tried to step in front of Vex again, but the lizardkin was insistent on not letting Derivan fight alone; he had a dagger in his hand, and he danced backwards with surprising finesse when a Patcher tried to swipe at him, and a second time when it screeched.

...Perhaps Derivan was worrying a little too much about his friend. Even without his magic, Vex was quite capable and nimble, and it was apparently something he'd focused on improving with the levels he'd been recently gaining.

As much as he would've liked to keep watching, the armor diverted his attention to the Patcher that was coming for him. There was a hint of an idea percolating in his mind, related to his recent thoughts on his stats; the fact that save for Physical Empathy, each one of them had been gained through the action of another on or around him.

He'd seen what that Patcher had done to Misa.

Derivan dodged once, as the Patcher swiped at him; the second time he grabbed the limb that was coming for him. This was the Patcher with the thin, sticklike arms, and for a moment he tried to bend them against their joints, to snap them — but it was stronger than he'd expected, and he had to retreat backwards as another screech made the air and ground ripple around it.

Well. He still had his sword.

The next attack skittered off the edge of his sword as Derivan stepped past the Patcher, and the sticklike limb dug into the stone of the floor instead. The armor took a split second to realize exactly how dangerous the limbs were — the moment it stabbed into the floor, the stone around the boxes began to dissolve, fizzing and bubbling — before he stepped out of the way of the next strike.

Safe enough to strike, safe enough to block. Not safe enough to get hit by. Derivan wasn't sure his armor would hold up, and he didn't want to test it. He needed to try his plan. He needed to use a skill —

"Vex!" Misa called out, derailing Derivan's thoughts. Her voice was strained. "Don't get hit by them! Health doesn't shield you!"

Health didn't —

Derivan spared a glance to Misa, and his eyes narrowed in a mixture of worry and trepidation. The burn marks on her skin had stayed after the spell, and there were nasty cuts and bruises in her olive-green skin. She'd clearly used her skill to block more than once, and there were fragments of her potential selves still shifting around her, like the skill hadn't entirely resolved; some of them were more injured than she was.

Vex hissed in pain. Derivan glanced back to see a long gash down one of the lizardkin's arms, and a second attack rearing back to hit him —

— Misa appeared, clearly triggering that block once more, and staggered backwards as the Patchers seemed to try to twist the skill; it struggled, though, the Patcher's own abilities catching on something before failing, and Misa kicked it back. Vex whispered a thanks —

— Derivan needed to deal with his Patcher. They were being spread too thin. Part of him understood why Vex had sent Sev for help; healing was something they needed, but far more crucial was the ability to block an attack that would otherwise be deadly. Something about prevention being better than the cure, he imagined the lizardkin saying...

...It didn't stop him from worrying.

Back to his plan. There was something he could gain here, if he was right about how he gained stats. He narrowed his eyes at the Patcher, and cast a [Barrier] through the system.

Mana began to trickle through the runic inscription that the system created, but before the spell could complete, Derivan engaged the Patcher again; he allowed the spiderlike limbs to crash against his sword, and he felt the Patcher reach into him, trying to twist his cast. Whatever mechanism the system used to create runic inscriptions was manipulated, and he felt one skill transforming into another.

But in the corner of his vision, where he had called up his status to see if he was right, two things had changed.

The text for [Barrier] had glitched, shifting into a different spell called [Void Shards]; he cancelled that spell quickly before he could find out what it would do.

And second, perhaps more important, was the new stat.

Patch: 1