The massive lizard broke free of the treeline with a tremendous sound of cracking branches and disturbed foliage. It reared up on its hind legs and roared, its long, narrow snout coming apart to reveal jaws studded with needle-shaped teeth.

{Ibexicon — Level 188 Elite}

"Eh," Ashtoreth said. She fired her cannon, a shockwave ripping through the air around her as her shot streaked forward toward the enemy, a bolt of incandescent light that tore the dinosaur completely in half.

The pieces exploded into hellfire, and within a split-second the dinosaur had become little more than an expanding cone of hellfire that incinerated a swathe of jungle more than thirty meters deep.

"Lame," she said.

"What?" Sadie said from where she was standing next to Ashoreth. "That was awesome! That thing was like a t-rex on steroids and you killed it in one shot!"

"I know," Ashtoreth lamented. "I just want a fight. A nice fight where I get to outsmart somebody, you know? Where I get to prove something." She hung her head.

"Oh," said Sadie, looking at the raging inferno ahead of them. "I dunno, it's still pretty awesome."

Wanderstein didn't have the curved scythe blade to sweep through the air, so instead she just raised and clenched a fist to quench the flames ahead of her. "Yeah, I guess…"

They'd were finally in Primeval Karaz, ready to make the journey to the outer market where they would hopefully buy a soul map for Dazel.

It was an exciting day, but not because of Primeval Karaz. They needed to wait a little while to make sure that Hell hadn't sensed them warping in, and that meant hanging around in a muggy jungle.

Unfortunately, the levels were too low for Ashtoreth. They were even too low for Sadie.

"If we went deeper, it'd be fine," she said. "The beings on primeval worlds settle into a level pyramid quite naturally, is the thing. Somewhere is the middle of this is some huge behemoth monster that's a way higher level than anyone who can travel here. And as you get closer and closer to them, the levels get higher and higher because you're climbing the food chain."

"How do you know all this?" Sadie asked, eyes still fixed on the burnt-away jungle.

Ashtoreth shrugged. "I'm a Monarch. I have to know these things."

"So why can't we just go deeper in and farm a bit while we wait?" Sadie asked.

"Nope," said Frost from where he was sitting on a nearby rock. "Ashtoreth can farm, but not until we have places that Hell doesn't have access to. I think the Eldunar are setting us up."

"Think, he says," said Kylie. She was floating in the air much like someone lying in a hammock might, and she was watching a television show on a tablet that she'd charged before they left.

The show was about lawyers who yelled at each other. The lawyers were very masculine. Ashtoreth wasn't sure it had much to do with actual law, but the men were handsome.

"See, he has to say think," she continued. "Because we don't rightly know anything about what the plan is, do we? Seems a little unreasonable."

"It's operational security," said Frost. "It's not anything unusual. We don't need to know all their plans just to go on a shopping trip."

"But it would be nice to," said Ashtoreth.

"Yeah," said Frost. "But who knows if they've even got a plan at this point? We're looking at a long, slow war as Earth gets a higher and higher level minimum on its restrictions, right? It's not like it's a situation that calls for making immediate plans."

"Yeah still sucks though," said Kylie, not taking her eyes of the tablet this time. "Say Dazel, how long we got?"

Dazel was nearby scratching out runes on the flattest stone they could find. "You could help, you know," he said. "I know you know how to do this."

"You're better at it," Kylie said disinterestedly.

"Then we've got another thirty years left."

"Whatever. I've got like four more seasons and tablets to spare."

Ashtoreth wondered at this as she smiled. "Looking to trade away some human entertainment, huh?"

Most of them had brought a variety of human artefacts that they were hoping to trade at the market in addition to their cores. Kylie's tablets were probably part of her trade goods.

She herself had brought a rather… eclectic collection. Hopefully some of it would be worth something.

"I'd have prefer to trade away the contents of a pharmacy," said Kylie. "Along with some extras. But Dazel talked me out of it."

"I thought I talked you out of it," Frost said.

"You?" Kylie asked. "All you did was lecture me about how becoming an interdimensional drug dealer was bad. Dazel was the one who told me that while of lot of the drugs might still have marketable effects, it'll take too long to figure out which ones." She shrugged. "No good for trading."

"I gave great advice," said Dazel. "And here you are, leaving me in the cold to perform my tests on my lonesome."

But seeing how Frost's expression had darkened, Ashtoreth reached out and privately spoke to him with their telepathy.

Psst.

You don't have to think that noise to get my attention, Ashtoreth. I'm already listening.

I'm pretty sure you really did convince her, Ashtoreth said. She's just being a tough girl about it.

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Frost cocked his head at her.

Trust me.

Frost eyed her for a moment, but seemed to drop it.

At a lull in the conversation, Ashtoreth walked over to where Dazel was handling the runes. "How you doing?" she asked. "You want some help?"

"No, not really," he said. A spark flared just above his forehead, and several runes on the ground glowed.

"You sure?" she said. "I could really use something to do. Something useful."

"The reason I could use Kylie is because her [Magic] is so high," said Dazel. "And I'm pretty sure she'd be better than you anyway at the sustained focus required for these detection spells."

"Uh, excuse me—"

"I don't want you to move your boon around," said Dazel. "You have decent [Magic] with a good weapon out, but it's probably not worth it to have you try."

Ashtoreth sighed.

"Sorry," Dazel said. "But you said you wanted to do something useful. You're not useful."

She sat down next to him and poked a patch of moss.

"Oh. Sorry," Dazel said, sounding more sincere now. "I didn't mean generally. I meant for this."

"I know."

"Look. I just… you're useful, okay boss? Even when we're not facing problems that are obviously Ashtoreth-coded."

"Like killable monsters."

"Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I meant there. But you have other uses… just, I don't know, think of the effect that you have on party morale."

"I improve your morale?"

"I said the party."

"So not you."

Dazel sighed. "Do we have to do this now?"

"No."

Dazel paused to look over at her. "All right, boss. Fine, you improve my morale."

"Great!" Ashtoreth said. "Because, I mean, lately? Your morale has been terrible."

Dazel groaned.

"You know what I think it is?" she asked.

"What?"

"I think you're mentally ill!" she said cheerfully, putting her hands on her hips.

"...What?"

"I think you're mentally ill," she said again.

Dazel cocked his head and peered at her for a moment. "I'd tell you to fuck yourself, but it's sort of obvious that you don't really get that you're insulting me."

"Pfft." Ashtoreth waved a hand. "You know I don't mean it that way. If someone's leaking mana to constantly reconstitute a piece of their form, you say they've probably got soulfray, right?"

"Sure," Dazel said. "But… that's an actual condition. It's not the same."

"Why not?" Ashtoreth said. "I think it makes sense. I was reading all these mental health things—that's what they call it, not psychic health—and humans basically believe they get brainsick. They have defective brains sometimes, see. But they wouldn't usually call it that—they'd call it nice things to be nice to the people who are brainsick."

Dazel seemed to debate whether to answer her for a moment, then looked up from his runes. "Yeah, Ashtoreth, I have some idea of how all this works. I studied up on the same human weaknesses that you did."

"Maybe you should read about some of their disorders, though!" she said. "Honestly it's really interesting even if you're not trying to help yourself."

"Reading about human mental health issues is not going to help me with any of my goals or desires, boss."

"Oh really?" she asked, face spreading into a broader smile. "Maybe you're right, but maybe you're just pathologically oriented toward telling yourself stories about how any given action will result in a bad outcome, locking yourself into inaction in the face of any problem and depriving yourself of any individual's greatest asset—their agency!" After a pause, she added, "You know, because you're depressed or something."

Dazel groaned. "I don't like this conversation, boss. And I'm pretty sure humans just have all those narratives to make themselves more comfortable about solving problems like that with drugs."

"Uh-huh—sometimes they use medications!" she said, grinning. "Just like they sometimes use glasses to correct their poor eyesight!"

"I should've known better," Dazel said plaintively.

"What?"

"If you've got comparisons like that in your back pocket, you've clearly come ready for a fight."

"When am I not ready for a fight?" she asked. Then she sighed. "Goodness… I could really use a fight."

"Poor girl is starving."

"Starving!" she cried. "Anyway, lets keep considering your potential mental illness."

Dazel groaned. "Okay, boss. I might really put my foot down on this, because I hate this talk."

She shrugged. "Okay."

He looked around at the others. Frost was paying them no heed as he spoke to Hunter and Sadie. Kylie was still floating in the air watching her show.

"...And anyway," Dazel continued. "I don't know if you remember, but I'm basically a living embodiment of the cosmos's biggest mistake. And I've spent millenia living in Hell. If I have low self-esteem and a penchant for expecting the worst, doesn't that mean that I've still got a brain in my head?"

"In Hell, maybe," Ashtoreth said, grinning. "But did you know that mental illness is a social construct? I read about this."

"Hold up," he said. "Why exactly are you reading about this, again?"

"Because I was feeling very bad and trying to be proactive about it," she said. "And I mean, I'm not going to outright say that my attitude is definitely way better than yours, but…"

"But you are, in fact, just going to say it?" he asked.

"—My point about the social construct thing, though," Ashtoreth continued, "is that a lot of the very sensible attitudes from Hell get treated as pathological on Earth. But that's just because they're very different places."

"Earth has become a lot more like Hell since those manuals were written," Dazel said pointedly. "The reverse is not even a little bit true."

Ashtoreth shrugged. "But which would you rather have, Dazel? Earth tells you that your negative attitude is something you can conquer—that you can be more that what you think! Hell tells you that your every doubt and worry points to the truth, paralyzing you into paranoid inaction!"

"I want whichever one is true, Ashtoreth. And I'm not nearly naive enough to believe it's the Earth half instead of the Hell half." He shook his head. "But that's it, all right? I'm done with this talk. Don't act like I'm mentally ill again."

"Sure, Dazel. Sorry if I struck a nerve."

"You didn't," he said. "It's just a completely pointless conversation, is all."

"...Okay."

"Anyway, I'm done." He rose into the air. "We can leave."

Above them, Kylie let out an exasperated sigh. "Finally."

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