The construct twitches, blinks, then dissolves into a fine grey mist. A low rumble emanates from the orb for a moment before it too vaporizes, along with the pool we left behind. I dumbly pull out my Class Card to check the reservoir, and sure enough, that's suddenly empty too. Though it still says I can only put construct fluid in it.

Jumble audibly swallows. "What the heck was that?"

I slowly shake my head as my fingers wrap around the tooth. "It took freedom way differently than the others did."

"Everyone's different." Pearl states flatly. "But this… something went really wrong. What did you do, Shelby?"

"Me?" I laugh shakily. "I get why you'd think that, but I have absolutely no idea why the hell that just happened. Did the system just get exactly what it wanted from us?"

"I sure hope not." Pearl chuckles. "I… honestly don't know why that happened. It was already pretty sentient. Did… did that mess with things?"

I grimace and stare down at the tooth that's digging into my fingers. Whatever just happened… I have no logical explanation for it. All I can come up with is defeatist ideas of how the system and the quest just got something they wanted from me… but if that's true… then what the hell is the grey message? Is this just the beginning?

Jumble flicks her wrist and sends her tooth away. "Well, whatever that was, we're still alive. If it was the system acting directly, I really doubt that'd be true. So it must be the quest just bending a defined rule enough to get… what? One single hexagonal coin from Shelby? But if you two found that mess of fake shellraisers under the city, then why would the system want to take the coin? Isn't it less useful to it than the raw materials?"

"We can't assume anything." I say grimly. "But we just lost our host for this subquest. If those grey messages can't lead us out of here, we have absolutely no way to complete this. Even more so now."

The reality of the situation settles on us like a raggedy old blanket. It's full of holes, stinks like something unidentifiable, and can't cover much of anything without something poking through. But it's still there. No matter how damn confusing all of this has been.

I run my hand through my hair and send the construct tooth to my inventory. "Even in the best case scenario, the last thing I need is a fanatical Fleur."

"Well… it did say it was going to help free us. Maybe that wasn't a lie?" Jumble half-asks hopefully. "Anyone? No? Yeah, that sounds a little too far-fetched for me too. It'd sure be nice, though."

Nice? I'm not so sure; my experience with twist fate dragging me along like a puppet in the name of the best outcome puts a damper on that possibility. Leaving the decision of what's best for me in anyone but my own hands is something I'm probably never going to do again. At least not while I can help it.

"Pearl, keep your awareness peeled for any sign of that construct. Even after we leave, we can't trust that it'll leave us alone."

She nods. "I'll keep myself aware at all times."

"Good. Jumble, make sure everyone else knows to stay away from any puddles or grey mists they find from now on." I glance over at her, and she's already tapping away at her messenger. "If this thing turns out to be an ally, harmless, or anything in between we can't risk any assumptions. All we have to go on is what it told us, showed us, and the fact that this place was reworked after we saved Click. Don't approach it, don't run from it, and be ready to message me the moment it turns hostile."

Jumble quietly repeats everything I said to herself, then looks up from the messenger once she has it all written down. "What do we want the emergency message to be?"

I hold up one finger. "Any one single letter, number, character or symbol. It has to be quick enough that someone could send it in a heartbeat."

"One… thing. Sent." Jumble waves her Class Card away. "So, um, weird question; what if we somehow screwed up the construct's personality by giving it a coin? Is that possible?"

"Very." Pearl confirms. "The artificial shellraisers the system made might not have a personality of its own, but we've seen that the system can program a fake personality using it. And… imprint a dead person's mind onto a construct that it has control over."

"Technically, we don't know how it did that. Just that it 'made a construct' using the data from a brain that… well… you know." Jumble summons a tube with one of the corpses from the apartment, then sends it away. "I hope we didn't just accidentally overwrite a helpful personality with a messed up one."

So do I, Jumble. So do I. And I'm going to ignore the fact that you still have those corpses in your inventory for now. Because otherwise I'd have to ask questions about system possession that I really don't want answered–iike why the constructs that are made from these dead people's minds aren't in possession of their own damn bodies.

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I… nope, can't get sidetracked. Constructs are messed up. Rules obviously don't apply to them the same way as everything else. Let's just accept that as the truth for now and grill Jumble and Click about it later. …C'mon, grey message. Come in so I don't have to think about this shit for a minute longer.

My messenger chimes, but not the hard 'plink' of a grey one. I pull up my Class Card and take a look, along with Jumble and Pearl on each of my shoulders. It's from Dani, and he's not pleased.

'The construct just said something about you being a god and disappeared. I asked you to make sure it was ready not… evangelize it! What did you do!?'

I clench my jaw and type back a quick reply. Dani and the others still don't know about the shellraisers, so I make up a lie about using some of Click's body in an attempt to turn the liquid construct to our side. There's a grain of truth in there, just with different methods. Another message pops in moments after I hit send.

'You… why would you DO that!? The construct just needed a little emotional encouragement, not a complete personality overhaul!'

Pearl sighs. "He's not completely wrong."

"He's not right, either." Jumble grumbles. "The only way he'd care about the construct is if he wanted something from it. He's just mad that you screwed up whatever deal or agreement he was trying to make."

Somehow, I agree with both their sentiments. I guess they're not mutually exclusive, though. Dani messaging me was completely out of character. He must've done it to circumvent Jumble somehow, but I can't imagine him thinking I wouldn't eventually tell her he messaged me. So… whatever he was trying to do must've been an almost instant deal.

Shit, was he trying to gain power from the construct somehow? What happened with the other group that'd even make him think of trying that?

Plink.

My muscles tense as one worry is shoved out of the way by another. This construct shit… it has to take the backburner until we get the hell out of here. Even if I'm more directly worried about Dani and the construct that thinks I'm a god, we can't just sit back and twiddle our thumbs while the horizonguard clears the damn quest. There'll be plenty of time for panic later.

I breathe through my nose and close Dani's message to watch the grey creep in.

'Fill pool 11037.'

And… that's it. Two words, one number, and no explanation whatsoever. I grit my teeth and hand my Class Card to Jumble, who squints and brings it closer to her face to try and make something of the unbelievably unhelpful text.

She pushes it far away when the closeness reveals nothing. "How are we supposed to know what number the pools are?"

"I have no damn idea." I hiss. "Why can't anything just be straightforward in this place! You're helping us escape your own subquest screwup! The least you can do is not be cryptic about it!"

"Maybe the others have more info." Pearl suggests. "It did say we'd have to cooperate for this in the message before this."

Jumble shakes her head, two Class Cards now filling her hands. "Sawyer just sent me a message. All they got were instructions to block off pipes 225, 11, and 83, then to flood each of the pipes surrounding the ones they blocked off. Except they don't know how the pipes are numbered. That seems like a really bad oversight on our mystery sender's part."

"It's the system." Pearl says grimly. "It gave us everything we needed to clear this quest. All we have to do now is waste hours and hours trying everything out until we find the right combinations."

Which means it's not technically preventing us from finishing the subquest–which would be illegal. It's just making it take as long as physically possible. And if the way to progress the main quest is actually by clearing all the trials-turned-subquests… then we're stuck here. Either until we find the right combination of needles in haystacks or the horizonguard pushes the main quest to the next stage.

"If the construct was still here, this would be easy." Pearl mutters. "There's no way it doesn't know how all the pools and pipes are numbered. And if it alone knew how, then there doesn't have to be any written legend anywhere. Because it's all in the database."

Jumble sighs and hands my Class Card back. "They aren't numbered on either of our maps, at least. Do we really just have to flood this entire place to be sure?"

That's a pretty extreme solution to jump to, but… I mean… if it works. Though it'd only work for us. Everyone on the water side has a much more complicated task that seems almost impossible to brute force. Three hundred-ish different pipes–at least–and three need to be clogged at the same time. Even if we circumvent the flooding part by flooding every single other pipe… how long is that going to take? Shit, how long would we have to wait to see if we made the right choices?

Ten seconds?

A minute?

Hell, ten minutes per attempt means we could be here for weeks. There has to be a smarter way to do this. Without knowing exactly what the other side looks like, though, I can't even start theorizing. And the only people in the subquest with relocations I can teleport to are stuck in the pool side with me. Maybe… I can teleport out of here, prepare some coins, and meet up with either Sawyer or Gnash to talk strategy. We only need one person to complete the subquest, after all.

But… is even that too risky? Who's to say the system didn't set some hidden requirement that everyone who got pulled into the subquest has to finish it? I just can't risk it. If we mess up now that the construct is gone, we might not have any way back into the subquest. Locked out for good while the horizonguard has free reign over the main quest.

As I reach up to mess up my hair in frustration, another notification pings onto my Class Card. But this one isn't a message. It's a quest notification. Dread bubbles up from the pit of my stomach as Jumble swipes over to look at her own notification that's going to be the exact same as mine. I almost look away in fear.

Because the only reason for this kind of notification is quest progress.

Progress we aren't making.

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