"You could be teaching me those Whisper words now, minion," Clover complained in her ear as Jin continued to scan the area around their group. They had been slowly making their way through the swamp for almost an hour now and had already run into more swampy monsters with various Attunements, mostly of the Water and Death variety.

Jin let out an annoyed huff as she quietly replied, "I could, but I won't because we're both supposed to be on the lookout for more monsters, or did you already forget almost getting eaten by that Mirejaw Snapper?"

"I would have been fine," he whined with a roll of his brilliant green eyes. "I have wings, remember? Anyways, if you're not going to teach me, then you can at least tell me more about yourself. The contract I got wasn't exactly specific about your past or personality, though they could have warned me about how grumpy you are."

"I am not grumpy," Jin snapped back.

Clover just raised an eyebrow at her. "I think you just proved my point. Was that Basima girl really that special, or is this just your default grump-face?"

Jin stopped dead in her tracks to glare at the Familiar and angrily retorted, "You didn't know her, so don't talk about her like she's just some footnote on a contract you signed."

"Everything alright, Miss Jin?" Karam asked as the rest of the group turned to look back at her from her outburst. Her anger must have shown on her face since the larger teen took a few steps closer and held out his hand with his palm up as he offered, "King Clover can ride with me for a while if you need time alone."

Pulling on her [Poker Face] again, she shook her head and calmly muttered, "It's fine. Sorry for the distraction. Keep alert; we need to keep moving if we want to find the base sooner rather than later. We haven't even gotten the first ping yet."

Jin glanced down at her bracelet, hoping they weren't wrong about their direction or that the bracelet would still function the same. She looked back up to see Alim tilting his head at her curiously. Instead of trying to explain how she snapped at Clover, she signed, "We should have gotten the ping for our base by now, right?"

He frowned and shook his head as he replied, "If we portaled in on the opposite side of the base, probably not. We also don't know how big this floor is."

It was her turn to tilt her head as she asked in confusion, "Won't it be the same as the last floor?"

"Dimension magic doesn't necessarily care about the container size," he replied with a soft sigh. "We've seen floors in the past that would have taken a Mundane a few days to cross on foot. There's no telling until we've mapped it."

She nodded but huffed in annoyance, feeling on edge despite trying to cling to her Talent's control. She didn't want to think about Basima right now. Didn't want to contemplate what would happen once she was at their new base and trying to fall asleep again…

When she didn't say anything more, Alim simply nodded as if reading her mind and turned to lead them forward again. They only had to backtrack twice as they found themselves blocked by water that Jin couldn't check the full depths of.

It was three hours later when the darkness started to descend, and Jin yanked her spear from the back of a turtle that seemed more like a boulder covered in algae. She didn't even have to bend down to loot it, because its shell alone went up to her waist. She liked getting informed again by her ability about what kind of creature it actually was, though.

Item: Murkshell Turtle Carcass

A monster that only attacks when its nearby nest of eggs is threatened.

Caste: Crystal.

Availability: Rare.

Type: Ingredient, carcass.

Effects:

Can be used for various crafting purposes.

You are able to loot the [Murkshell Turtle Carcass] with your Talent: [Rainy Day].

Do you wish to loot the corpse?

She paused before accepting the prompt as two things caught her attention. Alim was the first to ask as he stood across from her while Karam tended to a gash high on his hip that slipped past his armor and through the Sliksilk beneath, "What's wrong?"

"It's rare," she signed while speaking aloud for the others' benefit, too. "Might be worth spending the built-up essence on. Its description also says it only attacks when its eggs are nearby, so we should probably look for those. If anything, it's breakfast, right?"

Alim's expression morphed from surprise to agitation so fast she almost got whiplash as he furiously signed, "That's not possible. Spawned monsters can't procreate."

"That's not entirely true," Hadia interjected, her gaze already scanning the area as she signed and spoke. "Some monsters that evolve gain the capability. We should look either way. The offspring could be a major problem."

"Evolve?" Jin repeated with a raised brow. "Like Pokémon?"

"I don't know what that is."

"Um, they reach a threshold and get stronger by evolving into something new but similar…" She trailed off as her eyes went wide, thinking about what they had all just gone through during their Ascension to the Crystal Caste. "Oh my god, are we all Pokémon now?"

Hadia rolled her eyes and replied, "No, we're Casters. We ascend when we reach the threshold between Castes, but monsters evolve when they do the same. It's difficult for a monster to accomplish, though, because it requires eating a lot of Casters."

"I guess that explains why they always seem aggressive," she replied with a side eye towards the Murkshell Turtle. "Perhaps that's actually why it attacked and not because there are any eggs. One of you said before that monsters are just copies of other creatures out in the greater cosmos, right?"

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Hadia nodded but stepped away as she continued searching, and Liraz joined her, the large box skittering after her as its tongue lolled out of its mouth.

Karam straightened fully as he slowly signed with his single hand to Alim. "All done. It was pretty deep, though. I'm surprised you're still standing."

With a shrug, Alim replied, "New Talent that gives pain tolerance, remember? That monster also gave me a lot of [Resilience] stacks from [Beaten But Never Broken]. With all that bludgeoning damage, I wasn't expecting it to shoot out those sharp stones when it began spinning like that."

He turned to Jin again and added, "Doing that [Leap] and [Hollow Strike] combo while it was stuck spinning was a good move. Ignoring physical resistance can be stupidly powerful against a heavy armor opponent like that."

She nodded but sighed as she admitted, "I feel like I need a little more versatility still, but I'm liking how the combination abilities work. I think someone mentioned we still have more abilities to unlock, right?"

"Once we find some Spirit Gems," Alim confirmed with a nod. "Go ahead and use your essence on the rare spawn, though. Hopefully, we get something exceptionally useful. Maybe even one of those Spirit Gems."

Jin agreed and mentally accepted the original prompt to loot it, then got another little hologram in its place.

You have reserved loot essence available.

Do you wish to use this essence to increase the quality of loot?

She nodded but was momentarily confused when the monster began to dissolve into white ash, and nothing appeared at her feet like it normally would. Before she could ask Alim what happened or complain that her ability glitched out, Hadia called over to them.

"Hey! I found the eggs, but you all should probably come look at these!"

Jin translated for Alim, signing what was said, and led them towards an area hidden among tall reeds that were about as tall as the Murkshell Turtle was. There was a large nest made of grass, moss, and mud that held three massive golden eggs at its center. They appeared to glow with a dim light, and Jin blinked a few times before asking all of them, "Those are definitely magic, right?"

"I don't think those are actually monster eggs," Hadia said as she bent down to get a closer look at them. "We've seen them a couple of times during past Season recordings. None of them overtly glowed like this. They seemed like normal eggs, if bigger. Not all of the evolved monsters that could reproduce laid eggs, though." She glanced back up at Jin and asked, "What does your Talent say about them? You don't need to touch them anymore to read them with your Aura, so now might be a good time to practice that."

Jin nodded and focused on her [Poker Face] Talent that fed her information in addition to keeping her emotions hidden. A simple hologram display appeared floating just above the trio of eggs for her to read with both her eyes and her Aura, which was an odd sensation that reminded her of learning something from a skillbook. It was like the information was imprinted directly into her mind.

Item: Divine Tower Egg

A magical item infused with Covenant magic and bonded to the Tower of Polarity.

Caste: Crystal.

Availability: Uncommon.

Type: Ingredient.

Effects:

Unknown.

Jin blinked at the display before narrowing her eyes at it and grumbling, "Well, that's obnoxious. My ability says its effects are unknown, but it's some kind of ingredient that's bonded to the Tower." She glanced between the others and asked, "Does that mean anything to any of you?"

"Probably part of the floor challenge somehow," Alim signed, tilting his head as he analyzed the eggs. "Can you put them in your [Treasure Hoard] or in Liraz's [Slime Gateway]?"

"Yeah, I'll take two and Li can take one," Jin replied. "She's still carrying most of our stuff from the last base."

"Oh! Let me!" Clover said, perking up from his place on her shoulder, where he had been sulking for most of the time between fights. "I've been waiting for this!" he happily added as he leaped from her and flapped his wings a few times before landing on one of the eggs that was bigger than the tiny dragon himself.

The next time they blinked, Clover and the egg were gone. "What the fuck?" Hadia asked in shock as she looked from the vanished egg and Familiar to the area around them.

Jin had to focus on her [Treasure Hoard] Talent instead to see the internal space overlaid on the world. That's when she saw Clover again, tail and claws wrapped around the egg as he flapped his wings harder and tried moving it onto one of the semi-transparent shelves in her dimensional storage.

She moved forward and grabbed one of the remaining eggs, the dimensional space staying where she had mentally conjured it as she moved to help. Placing her egg next to where Clover was wrangling his, she finished helping him move it into place and tried to tease the little dragon, "I'm not sure how I feel about you having access to this space. How do I know you'll stay out of any future snacks?"

"The snacks are obviously for me, minion," Clover said with a feral little grin. Then he placed a hand over his heart as he puffed out his chest and added, "If you must, consider them payment for keeping this hoard actually organized for us."

"Organized?" she asked with a raised brow, looking around at the mostly empty shelves and noticing her hair had changed color again to the soft green jade. "Wait, are you merged when in my storage like this?"

"Of course. It's not like I can just turn invisible, silly." He then scratched a single claw against the shelf below the egg and wrote out "Magic Tower Egg - Emergency Rations Only."

"You are not eating this even in an emergency," Jin said with a flat look.

"But that's why it says emergency," Clover pointed out, rolling his eyes, then flapping his wings again to launch into the air and soar over to another shelf.

Jin didn't see anything at first until she moved closer and read what he was scratching into that shelf: "Spirit Gems." Glancing down on the shelf, she saw two small gems about the size of her thumb, both a different color and shape, but both polished like a cut jewel and sparkling with a soft inner light.

She picked one up to observe it closely and read the little informational hologram for it.

Item: Shell Spirit Gem

A magical gem containing the spiritual concept of shells made manifest.

Caste: Crystal.

Availability: Rare.

Type: Consumable, ingredient.

Requirements: Crystal Caste with less than 5 unlocked Class abilities.

Effect: Unlocks a random Class ability weighted towards a suitable Aspect.

You are able to use [Shell Spirit Gem] with your Talent: [Aetheric Transmigrator].

Do you wish to unlock a Class ability infused with the Shell concept?

She declined the prompt, wanting to discuss it with the others first, and checked the other gem to discover it was a Territory Spirit Gem. She placed them back down where Clover had labelled and turned to go back to the others when the movement was apparently enough to trigger what they had been waiting for. A high-pitched pinging sound came from Jin's bracelet and vibrated slightly before tugging her further east.

Jin grinned as the others' faces seemed to light up with hope, except for Alim's, who looked confused for a moment by everyone else turning to look at her. With a shake of her head, she signed for him, "Looks like our new home is that way." She pointed eastward and held out a hand for Clover to climb up as she added to her little Familiar, "When we get there, we can talk more about who you never got to meet."

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