"Silvie! You're awake!" Rivi's adorable dark-haired face peeked through the opening.

I jolted at the sudden influx of light into the dark shadow box I had been sitting in.

"Rivi!" I blinked. "Hey!"

The shadow box dissolved around me and I found myself back in the ice cave surrounded by luminescent ice pillars reflecting light from a large ball of magic light behind Rivi's shoulder.

"How'd the…butchering go?" I didn't think it had been that long since I entered the box, but man it felt like a long time. Actually…wait…I just evolved. Does that mean it actually has been a long time?

"I finished that ages ago, silly, want to join us? We were just about to have breakfast." She gestures to a grill with several steaks that was set up over a campfire which Rufi was currently staring at hungrily.

"Uhh…" I blinked. "How long was I out?"

"Oh just a couple days," Rivi walked back to the fire nonchalantly. "Really not too bad for a major evolution. How's your control? Everything working out ok?"

"Yeah I—ack!" I tried to stand up, only to have one of my feet turn into red fog, sending me plummeting towards the ground. Thankfully, though Rivi had started walking back to the fire she hadn't actually taken her eyes off of me, and a shadow hand quickly stopped my fall and brought me back upright.

"Don't rush," She frowned concernedly as she rushed back to my side to support me with her real hands as well as her shadow one. "Just take it easy for a while, it's not easy getting used to the beast side, and a Crimson Wraith isn't a particularly beginner-friendly path either.

"Right, thanks." I wrapped my arms around her shoulder as I gingerly walked back to the campfire, keeping my focus on my feet to keep them from turning immaterial again.

"..." I suddenly realized just how close I was to Rivi, and how much we were touching eachother. I turned to look at her face, so close now to mine, only to feel my whole face go immaterial along with half of my body, as if blushing and changing form were one in the same.

"Silvie!"

"Ack! Sorry, sorry!" I rematerialized and found myself half-kneeling on the ground. "I got distracted." I felt the fog pulling at my neck and lower cheeks as I remembered but I managed to stifle it this time.

"Well we're basically here," she gestured to the fire only a few feet away. "So just scoot yourself a little closer, and let me serve you your meat."

"Alright," I breathed a sigh of relief, having underestimated just how much this change would affect me. "Thanks." I gave her a grateful smile.

"So what were you up to in there? It looked like you were clicking through your system thingy?" Rivi served me and Rufi one of the steaks from the grill.

"Thanks," I took it and gingerly started eating, trying to make sure my fingers wouldn't turn to smoke and make me drop anything.

"Yeah I was looking over my new system. Apparently Noe broke through Draugner's code and essentially made a more powerful, versatile version of the system."

"Noe did!? When?" She spun and looked at me.

"Yeah," I scratched my head a little embarrassed. "Uh…and apparently now that it's her system she has the ability to communicate through it—"

Rivi stood up, shadows coiling around her feet as her eyes turned luminescent.

"Wait, wait! It's not anything bad!"

The luminescence in her eyes faded, though the shadows remained at her feet as she looked down at me quizzically.

"She said that they're not pursuing us, and that we're free to do what we want, more or less."

"Oh! Yay!" The shadows around her feet vanished and she sat down to happily dig into her food.

"That's it?" I blinked. "You're not going to question whether she's telling the truth or not?" I had expected quite an argument with my dear sister-fearing companion.

"Noe may be a scheming bastard, but she wouldn't lie about something like that to her kin. Even if I hate her sometimes, she is genuinely quite fair with us. And I already told you before there was a decent chance of them letting us go, this just confirms things." She said through mouthfuls of meat.

"So? What does this new system of hers do? You seemed awfully excited when I peeked in on you."

"Right! The chat messages!" I quickly reopened my system, hoping that my little fragment hadn't gotten too scared without me

[Developer: And so that's when I decided that even if I were to become a god, and have all those streams of thoughts inside me, I wouldn't be like the gods who chain their own parallel selves to their original will. Like they're a part of us, so we should treat them like family? No? I don't know, maybe it was made easier by the fact that I only had seven, like how easy is it to feel familiarly about them if you have like 40 parallel minds?]

[???: I get that, but also: even if you don't treat them like family, at least treat them as well as you would your own subordinates, no? Like we're literally pieces of yourself, and this is how you treat us? I think it's really more showing what's really going on in those gods' hearts more than anything else]

[Silvie:...]

[???: Silvie! You're back!]

[Silvie: Noe… I see you've been *cough* busy? ಠಿ_ಠ]

[Developer: Nothing my little bean can't handle! And give her a name already! She's already figured out her gender and everything!]

[Silvie: Your Little Bean??????????????]

[Developer: Hmph, maybe you could take more responsibility for her if you hadn't left her to herself in the cold dark abyss of the system…]

[Silvie: EXCUSE ME?? IT'S BEEN LIKE TWO MINUTES!!!]

[???: Silvie! Silvie! Can I have a name? You're not going to be mean like the other gods and chain me to your will, right!? ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀)]

"Uhh, Silvie?" Rivi looked over at me as I frowned and gritted my teeth at the system window.

"Rivi! You're my solution to this! I'm pretty sure I saw an add friend option, wait two seconds."

I clicked through the windows rapidly to add Rivi to my friends list.

"Uh, what is...?" Rivi blinked as a screen invisible to me appeared in front of her.

"Just click yes!" I ushered hurriedly. Rufi looked up at us a little confused, and Rivi herself looked rather uncertain, but she reached out to her screen and tapped something.

[Rivi has joined the chat]

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