Fifteen minutes later, a very disoriented Clutter stumbles out of the meditation chamber. He looks between me and Pearl multiple times, then finally settles his gaze on Jumble. With a small nod, he turns and dry heaves against the wall; luckily for us, we haven't needed to eat in days. So it's just audibly unsettling.

I lean down to rub his back. "You okay?"

He groans. "That stupid quest hurt my brain. I'm surprised you're still here waiting for me."

"Surprised?" I ask. "Clutter, you've been in there for fifteen minutes."

"...Oh. Stupid time dilation." He squeaks. "I was in there for twelve hours just looking for those stupid things. How the heck did you two finish it so quickly while talking so much?"

"Awareness." I say. "Mine and Pearl's.

"One of my skills." Jumble adds.

Clutter groans again and rests his head against the wall. "You'd think a scout would have better information gathering skills. I really need to find more spells."

I let him recover for a few minutes, but by minute three, he's back on his feet thanks to the tower's magical aura. He takes a few shaky breaths to make sure he isn't going to keel over again any time soon, then gives me the thumbs-up to go ahead. Jumble grins in anticipation as staticky words fill her throat but don't spill out into actual spoken words. Clutter hasn't seen her in action yet, but I have a feeling he's expecting another me since she's a Worth Class.

Not sure if he's going to be disappointed or relieved that she's much more of a support.

"So, first order of business; hunt enough stuff so I can go over the threshold for my next clearance." I say as we walk back to the tower through the tunnel. "Unless the twisted paindne are worth next to nothing, then we just hunt enough so I have a few more shields and projectiles to work with."

Clutter nods. "I'm getting pretty close to my next threshold, too, so maybe I'll get there before you. What about you?"

Jumble points at herself. Clutter nods. She breathes through her nose, then shakes her head.

"I'm pretty far away. But I'll definitely help you two out. When we go to sell stuff, what should we keep an eye out for?"

I place my hand against the tower door and shrug. "You'd know better than we would. If there's anything blatantly screaming 'this is for the quest' or 'this is a treasure worth buying', then that's what we go for. Otherwise… good deals on stuff we could still get outside of the quest."

"Got it!" Jumble confirms. "If the shops for uplifted wave one paindne are still here, there's bound to be good stuff in them. Expensive stuff, yeah, but still good."

Clutter grumbles something about stuck up jerks as we walk into the tower, then directly into the room with doors. Click gives us a passing wave without a word, and right before we go through to the first uplifting trial room, I make sure there's a relocation in the tower for all of us. I want to check the room out before the evidence of Dani's group's trial gets too cold, and I also want to see how the outskirts of our district have changed.

Is the border between ours and the next just a flat line, or is it a gradual change? Is our district completely safe now and the others are more dangerous? Or is the change to the other districts something else completely? The horizonguard's going to have his hands full with progress of his own, so right now might be the last time we can relatively safely venture out. After this… paranoia becomes prudent.

Hell, we might not even be safe right now. Every blip of moisture could be an eye.

With that comforting thought, we step out into the hallways. Where cable-roots have spread, but act like decorations instead of parasites. They accent where the walls meet the floor, travel along the ceiling like hanging plants, and snake thin offshoots along the walls in a form of natural art. Pearl whistles at the sight, then clicks her tongue and hurries into her shell.

"It's spread really far." She notes. "I take it this isn't what the place looked like when Jumble was here."

Good question. So much so that I should ask it myself. "This place wasn't so root-filled back when you lived here, right?"

Jumble laughs and shakes her head. "No, definitely not. There was a bunch of actual plant life, but we mostly brought that in from the river. Or bought it from the system. Maybe some districts I'd never been to looked like this, but I'm pretty confident in my no."

"But it could've been?" I ask.

"Well… pretty much anything could've been. I bet I would've seen at least something like this when I was exploring." Jumble frowns and taps her cheek. "Now you've got me unsure of myself. Let's just… um… act like it wasn't here. Because it wasn't. I think. Dang you!"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I laugh and scratch her head, which gets her tail wagging. "I'm here to make you unsure of yourself. Now let's get running. The less time we spend watching the walls go by, the better."

Time flies by with good conversation. Now that they're on the same-ish page, Clutter and Jumble are acting like old friends. Well, no, that's not right–they're acting like new friends. Happily learning about each other as they find out what they both want out of life. Jumble's a famous-ish author, Clutter loves reading, and they're both more than happy to share stories when the other asks.

"You know, it really feels like every paindne we've run into has been nice." Pearl says while we watch Clutter listen enraptured to one of Jumble's stories. "Did the system do that on purpose, or are they just really good judges of character?"

I raise an eyebrow. "Dell?"

Pearl frowns. "Hm. Good point. But Clutter seems like he knows, and there's something else. You know, I'm going to just pretend that they're not pointlessly nice. It makes me feel way better that way."

The system wouldn't make all paindne pointlessly nice. Pearl's forgetting that I kind of… smell different thanks to Illumisia. Makes all this feel a little wrong, but I'm almost over it. Not quite yet, but almost. Just have to meet some asshole paindne that hates me regardless and I'll be convinced that it isn't just Illumisia's influence.

"Oh, we're here." Jumble points to the district change sign. "Um, 'to be continued', then."

Clutter's expression falls. "No! You were just getting to another good part!"

Jumble smiles with a shallow bow. "I'll remember exactly where we left off for later. There's more important stuff now, right?"

She looks to me for confirmation. I shrug halfheartedly, but from the scenery, I'm not so sure. The cable-roots mostly end before the sign, though there's a few little offshoots trailing out of our district and into this one. Clutter pulls out his Class Card to check the map, but I already know what he's going to see. Nothing different yet.

Not until we actually witness the changes.

"Nothing's attacked us yet." He says and sends his Class Card away. "Is that a good sign?"

"It's a sign that our district's much safer now. Even the construct people are stretched damn close to the border." I look over my shoulder at the constructs in the distance. Not close, but visible. "I bet they're our sign of a safe zone. Constructs yes, twisted paindne no."

Jumble doesn't seem convinced. "The system doesn't care about the constructs enough. We shouldn't let our guard down."

Clutter nods in agreement. "Anything that tries to kill you two just for existing would definitely put random constructs in the line of danger. Do you want me to go stealth mode now?"

It's my turn to nod. "Kill as many as you safely can. I'll get the rest."

"Well, we have to find them first." Jumble points out as Clutter melts into the shadows. "Have you fought anything other than the weird, meaty versions of us?"

Both Clutter and I shake our heads. "Unless you count the stain, no."

"Hm. Then this is going to be pretty boring." She leans in and latches onto my arm. "Mind if I take this spot?"

I shrug my other shoulder as we walk into the other district. No notifications pop up, no enemies burst out of nowhere, and the horizonguard's still nowhere to be seen. Unless something new pops up, we're well prepared enough to deal with the twisted paindne in our sleep.

So I really hope there's something new. Still haven't gotten used to the tiny heart attack that comes with the damn things appearing.

Hours fly by as we move through the seemingly unchanged district, mowing down twisted paindne after twisted paindne. None of them leave behind heretic body parts, but each group we kill does drop some bones that feel magical enough to sell. Jumble suggests scooping up the blood-meat slurry to try and sell, but a lack of containers and the utter disgust of it all kills that idea quick.

When it's finally time to start heading back, all we have to show for it is a few hours' worth of twisted paindne bones. Whatever the new classification for this district is, it isn't showing up on the map or in any of our explorations. Didn't find out how we're supposed to claim this for our tower, either, so aside from the loot this really was a total bust.

Clutter puffs out his chest and groans. "Ooggh… I don't feel so good…"

He makes a guttural noise deep in his chest, then heaves over and starts coughing. I lean over to pat him on the back, but an almost musical clattering stops me in my tracks. Bones fall out of his shirt one by one as he makes noises like he's the one throwing them up.

"Eeurgh…" He pushes the last out from his shirt, then wipes his mouth on his sleeve with the goofiest grin. "I feel better now."

I sigh and shake my head. "Dumbass. I was worried for a second."

"No, you weren't." He laughs and leans down to pick up the bones.

"I was!" Jumble interjects. "How was I supposed to know you were making a joke?"

Clutter snorts. "Situational awareness. Kind of like what the other two have."

Jumble huffs and crosses her arms, her portion of the bones safely in her inventory. Clutter and me, though, we're stuck with using some of his cloth as impromptu sacks. Now that we've got a good amount of the stuff, though, it's time to find the nearest store and make some exchanges. Luckily for us, we had the foresight to turn back around halfway through the trek and fight the twisted paindne on our way back instead of just going in a straight line. So it takes us all of five minutes to get back to our district and find a store.

A construct looks up at us as we walk in, it's detail-less visage shifting upwards as it stands from behind a counter. Absolutely nothing lines its shelves, but whispers of magic say that there are things there. Just not that we can access for some reason.

"We're here to sell." Jumble says with a motion to me and Clutter. "We have plenty of bones. What's your going rate?"

The construct makes a noise like rusting leaves, then gestures a mitten of a hand up at a sign that appears out of nowhere. Jumble takes a step back to read it, a frown planting itself in the bottom half of her expression as she does.

"That's just dumb." She mutters. "You don't even have stuff on the shelves and all you're offering is store credit?"

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