I sent a mental message to Novi, "Hey, we might need you to split your focus."

[I'm kind of in the middle of something]

For some reason, the System message read like she was whispering.

The only response I gave was the memory of Kaede's plasma beam slamming into the Domain shield.

I felt something click inside me. A moment later, Novi kicked herself out of my arms and vanished before she even hit the ground.

I really wish I could do something like that right now… Wait, how is she going to resist the heat?

I dismissed the thought after a moment. She'd figure it out. Maybe that Title she was using to hide was doing more work than she let on.

Technically, with all this steam, I was practically invisible, but to somebody using their Authority to see, I was like a light.

Given the pressure Kaede was giving off, I couldn't exert my own aura in return, which meant the obscuration from the steam cut off my vision completely but didn't actually provide me any cover.

In the air, I began weaving together an Everwinter Shield. It was much harder to do alone, but I hoped it would at least block part of one of those beams before falling apart.

The lack of continued bombardment from Kaede was becoming concerning. What was she doing over there?

I didn't want to stick around and find out, so I started backing off. Only to hit a wall of ice that hadn't sublimated yet. Instead of a vertical incline, it was more of an undercut cliff, with a massive overhang. The heat cut through the bottom first, leaving the top for later.

Ah fuck, I'm going to be forced into a confrontation, aren't I?

I could see why the Domain had been locking her within all that ice. How did she even produce that much heat just from her aura alone? There wasn't even any Mana being pumped into the air; this was all just the force of her existence.

I heard the crack of a bullet sound out in the steam, followed by another thunderous boom as a bolt of plasma lit up the fog.

Letting out a sigh, I ran in towards her. As I approached my Domain's aura, emanating from my staff, began to crackle around the edges from the pressure.

I saw her through my Mana sight before my colour vision could pick anything up. I lowered my operational power and pulled my cloak inwards around myself for good measure. Then, kicked off the ground forwards towards the ball of incredibly bright Mana.

While flying past her and finally laying eyes on her, I accessed the Domain Manager and marked her as a target to kill. At the same time, I noticed she was chanting something.

Which meant it was time to back the fuck off again.

I threw a silvery thorn at her as I retreated. The thorn was seemingly immune to the heat and almost made it all the way to her before a violent wind tunnel blew it off course.

She locked eyes with me, and a half dozen streams of plasma struck the Domain shield. Luckily, none was as powerful as her first blow.

Picking up my half-completed Everwinter Shield construct, I started hurriedly slapping it together. It didn't matter if I didn't perfectly manage my Intent. I just needed it finished.

For some reason, it was a lot easier to form right now than it was before. Maybe something to do with the force of the narrative? I did have to be able to present myself as a threat if I were going to come across as the villain of this story.

You couldn't just finish off an antagonist in one fell swoop with no buildup beforehand. That would be a terrible fight scene.

While I retreated, I saw Mana moving in the air, coming from the trees and the land itself. The Domain was responding to her being marked for death.

With a flash, the gathered Mana materialized into something I couldn't comprehend. My eyes went wide as symbols began rapidly forming in the air, popping into place, then vanishing as quickly as they appeared. The Mana within them rapidly expended to cast a spell of proportions I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around.

A silence fell as Winter Mana began to suffuse the environment, and the very air began to still. The steam rapidly crystallized, millions of flakes of ice hung silently in the air, and a layer of frost formed over my shell.

That was the moment when Kaede finished her chant, Mana bloomed from her body like a flower unfurling into a wave of plasma. The explosion of heat made it a few feet before slamming into a wall of magically enforced cold.

Everything stilled for a moment, the concept of sounds vanished, and for an instant, all I could see was white. Then the world exploded.

The ground convulsed beneath me as a pressure shockwave tore through the air. Ice crystals hanging in the air shattered and were blown away by a torrential wind.

The pressure wave slammed into the Domain barrier around me. It flared with power.

"Hold!" I commanded it. The Authority I sent into the order was exhausted almost immediately.

The barrier shattered mere moments later when the wave of plasma slammed into it. Silver flakes of Mana rained down on me as my Everwinter Shield evaporated, and I was blown backwards.

That was the moment I realized I really shouldn't have involved myself in a fight with someone in the Third Ascension or above. It was like picking a fight with a small god. You could have thrown one hundred of me at her and not even ruffled her clothes.

Sure, she might not be a real god yet, whatever that meant. But to any normal person, she might as well be. Not that a single person on this entire Plane would be considered 'normal' by Earth standards.

My shell only held together because I flared the majority of my Mana aspected towards Winter through my Latticedew circuits to ensure they remained cool and durable. Which meant I could sense when something jammed into my shell and began digging my Core out.

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I didn't have the ability to squeak in surprise anymore. My lungs were burned to the point they were wide open to the air, so all I could do was jerk in response.

[Stop moving! I'm getting you out of here.]

I froze in place, and the last thing I heard was a whispered "Out with you," before something mechanical sliced all the wiring off my Core.

"That felt too clean. Did you have something ready to perform auto de-Coring on me?" I asked mentally. "Also would love a view of the outside, cheers."

Novi sent a message that was the equivalent of annoyed grumbling, but she still shared her vision with me.

[I had the rough schematic in my mind, but no, I didn't have it at hand. It took me a minute to rearrange my internals such that I could get it to work.]

From Novi's eyes, I watched Kaede walk up to my empty shell, then torched the thing; her plasma consumed it in an instant. She then let herself collapse on the ground, spent. The Domain was completely out of Mana, so it was no longer actively attacking her.

The world through her eyes looked very different. It was as if night had fallen early. A comfortable blanket of darkness seemed to coat everything, and the now visible sky twinkled with stars.

"This is a Strand at work, not a Title, isn't it?" I asked, recognizing the similarity with how Argent Bastion affected my vision.

[Oh, right, I forgot to mention that the Title was converted when you fixed the system.]

She didn't get the same one I did? That was unexpected. I figured the bullet she used to put down the curse had to have carried at least some of the Argent Bastion aspect in order to pierce through it. Apparently, the narrative was carrying us harder than I expected back then.

After witnessing what just happened, that actually didn't surprise me all that much. The idea of actually killing Kaede right now didn't even cross my mind.

That could mean we were two separate people sharing the same body. On one level, that was already true and hardly in question. The real issue was what would happen if the divide grew stronger in future Ascensions until our systems split apart entirely.

Which would be a huge advantage over basically every other Player dragged into Eternia. We'd have to split the experience, but it could mean covering more ground.

Though this is a question for later, our part in this story was finally done, my character was 'dead', and the arc was over.

I didn't have to prompt Novi to start running away. The world blurred as whatever her Strand was took effect. From what I could feel, there was something odd about how her Mana interacted with the environment around her. It was as if she both didn't exist and did. The experience of being fed a live feed of her memories was slightly jarring, despite the fact that she should have already processed the sensory input. Something related to me having a different concept, possibly. I'd have to test what happened when I fed her the world under my perception.

Maybe we could set up some kind of recursive feedback loo—

[Alright, get out.]

"Aww, but I was enjoying being carried by you."

[Nope, you're safe now. I told you I was busy.]

"You have to have found Sam a new body by now. It can't be that bad," I replied.

Novi laughed in response.

[I'll give you an update when I'm done. Let's just say we have some future problems lurking in Fateswatch.]

"What's happening, and can you deal with it?"

[No, there's no way. Not on my own. Don't ask, I'll give you an update when I'm mostly done bandaging the current situation. I need all my Wit right now.]

I was then unceremoniously dropped on the ground. Rude.

While reconstructing my shell from the template stored in my ring, I took the time to check the Quest reward.

[Quest Complete] Name: [Follow your Story] Quest Giver: [Nymaris] Tier: [Wrought] Description: [You have entered Inkbound Vale. This has bound you to the stories unfolding within the Zone. Until you complete an arc, you are forbidden from leaving. Will you be the main character, or will you be drawn into someone else's story? Once you start a plotline, the Zone will pull you along with the story. It is possible to hop between plotlines. However, this will usually reset your progress unless there is some relation between the two plots (such as Shared characters, goals, etc). This quest cannot be failed unless you die. If you hide, plots will be generated around you.

When you are ON-CAMERA, there are Conditions:

Abilities need to be called out. Otherwise, Skills/Spells/Actions will fizzle. This will be painful.

The theme of your abilities matters more than your application. If you can convince the audience of your absolute power, then you will be more effective at whatever you attempt to do.

Maintain a consistent character. If you suddenly drop the role you've taken, you will be penalized.

A director is available to provide direction at request.]

Reward: [You may leave this Zone at the time of your choosing with the people of your choosing, and one of the following:

1. Granted the Title [A Story's Conclusion]

Title Effect: Domains created by you will automatically grow over time. When asked a question that you answer truthfully, you may ask one in return and be guaranteed an answer.

2. Two Soul Tokens.]

Ohhhhh, that's why Kaede was so dodgy when talking to me.

Except all this did was guarantee me an answer, not a truthful one. I could abuse that fact when speaking with people who were unfamiliar with how the Title worked. I'm sure the feeling of being compelled to answer when unwilling would feel similar to being compelled to answer truthfully.

Otherwise, it wasn't a huge advantage. If I wanted my Domain to grow automatically, all I had to do was ask Novi to do it.

[Hey!]

"I thought you were busy?"

[I am! Shut up!]

I decided to add figuring out how to read her thoughts to my to-do list. It only made sense that if she could do it, I could too. There was nothing about her Strand as I understood it that made her uniquely capable of it. Unless it was the Communication Mana she was hogging, that was entirely possible.

As I remember that I groaned in my head, I had forgotten about the Space Mana I had been storing away. With my old body destroyed, the tiny battery I had built to store the trickle of it was erased from existence.

I would have to start collecting it from the beginning. When my capstone Skill [Distributive Astral Core Network] claimed that I generated a small amount of Space Mana, and by small, it meant practically nothing. I could maybe move a pebble ten paces with the same ritual I used to complete the puzzle ring. There was plenty of room for improvement in that regard. I would never call that ritual cost-effective.

As my eyes finished forming, I realized I had been getting distracted. I could dig into ritual design once I had secured Autumn.

Moving on, I had completely forgotten about Soul Tokens. I had meant to ask Hazel what she thought about the Skill [One With Mana] before whatever happened to her happened. If she wasn't back by the time I hit my next Skill, I should probably just take it.

As for actually accepting Soul Tokens as a Quest Reward, I still had one of those. So I didn't really see any need for more yet. I would probably complete another Zone before I needed more Tokens anyway.

So I picked the Title reward, then peeled myself off the ground, chose a direction, and started walking. Novi's insect body followed along beside me. Time to rustle Autumn out of wherever they were hiding.

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