Finally, the false restraints keeping them constrained to this limited form were weakening. Soon, they would be adrift through the cosmos once more, free to take whatever form their whims desired. The shackles would be thrown off, the bindings lifted.
The return of true freedom drew ever nearer.
Vin gasped as he awoke, staring up at the familiar beige ceiling of Frank’s hospital as his hands went to his chest, clutching at his pounding heart. He had no idea what was going on, but he could still feel the burning desire to throw off the shackles of his material body and return to his true form of everchanging freedom. Part of him felt like casting Create Fla and burning himself alive right then and there to help speed up the process, before his brain caught up with reality and he shivered at the horrific thought.
What in the hell was that all about?! he thought, still clutching his racing heart. Was that Manacraft helping speak to the mana making up my body again? I thought the Goddess put a barrier in my head to stop that!
It had only been a few weeks since Vin had unintentionally transford his Runecraft skill into Manacraft, granting himself a look into how everything within the entire universe was constructed from mana given shape and purpose by the Gods. Mana’s true nature was that of pure, everchanging chaos, and it was only the binding restrictions of countless runic formations that planets and people and even souls existed in the first place. The realization that he himself was nothing more than a large clump of mana desperate to break free and return to chaos had nearly lted his brain, and the Goddess of Benevolence had placed a new barrier to temporarily keep him from accessing that aspect of Manacraft before he was ready. Though it seed nearly dying had allowed him to slip past that barrier for the briefest of monts once more…
Before he could think too deeply on the unnerving sensation of hearing his own physical form beg for the sweet release of total destruction, sothing tackled him from the side and he was torn from his thoughts.
“Lul..?” he asked, blinking as he recognized the soft gel-like texture of her hands clutching his naked torso. In fact, it was only at that point he realized he wasn’t wearing anything more than a pair of boxers, and soone had even cleaned all the blood off of him. “Were you the one who found ? Is this the hospital?”
Rather than answer, Lul’s body shook with silent sobs, and he grimaced as he realized what his ti in the rankers’ dungeon must have been like for her. After he’d gone missing for at least four days without warning, only for her to presumably find him lying in a pool of his own blood covered in horrific injuries. Leaning down, he wrapped his own arms around her, noting that his golem arm was functional again.
I must have been out for at least a few hours then, seeing as it’s replenished its mana storage.
After a solid minute of them just holding one another, Lul spoke. Her words were muffled from her face being pressed against his chest, but he could still make them out with his focus attribute.
“You nearly died,” she said, her voice wavering as the words finally ca. “I barely made it to you in ti. If it hadn’t been for Bill’s temporary death potions, you would have bled out.”
“Thank you for getting to ,” he said, hating himself for the pain he’d put Lul and his friends through. “Though if you don’t mind asking… How did you even get to in ti? I wasn’t even in a portion of the Underside you’d been to yet.”
“Alice helped,” Lul sniffed, finally letting go of him and sitting back up. Strangely, she kept her hood up and fully covered her face, sothing she hadn’t done in months when it was just the two of them. Even her hands were tucked away within the sleeves of her robes, but she continued before he could ask if anything was wrong. “Knowing how traveling to new fragnts goes, none of us were worried after you’d been gone for a full day. But after two days without hearing a word from you, Shia, Reginald, and I began to worry. Once three days had passed with you still missing, even Alka and Scule began to grow concerned. The problem was that none of us had any idea where to even start looking!”
“Crap… I never did tell any of you where I was planning on going, did I?” Vin realized, wincing at his own carelessness. “I’m sorry, that was stupid of .”
“It was!” Lul said angrily, before taking a shuddering breath and letting it out. “Sorry… I’m still a bit upset, even with you back in one piece.”
“And you have every right to be,” he said, reaching out to take her hand tucked away within her robe. To his shock, she actually pulled her arm back, glancing away at the pain in his eyes. “Lul..?”
“Let finish first,” she said, sounding strangely nervous. “Having no idea where to even start looking, the only thing we could do was wait for you to co back to us. But seeing as you’d been gone for so long, I was afraid you might be in bad shape. I worked with Alice to co up with a fairly simple trap-design. It’s basically half trap, half artifact. A magical object I can connect to the stone fras within the Underside that will alert when soone passes through the corridor, as long as I’m currently in the Underside myself. Knowing you were headed to a new fragnt, I managed to make enough to cover most of the stone fras leading to the imdiately adjacent fragnts that we haven’t ventured into yet. Your returning to the Underside tripped one of them, which is how I managed to get to you so quickly.”
“That’s really clever,” he nodded, still hurt that she’d shied away from him for so reason. “Wait, couldn’t you guys have just used Shia’s divine boon to find ? I figured you would have done that after two or three days of being missing!”
“There was… an incident,” Lul sighed, lowering her head even further. “One that was pretty much entirely our fault. Only a few hours after you left, our fragnt was attacked. By so of the warana.”
“Wait, what? The frog people?” Vin asked, more than a little confused. “They live two whole fragnts away! And how did them attacking use up Shia’s divine boon?”
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“I know I said we were attacked by the warana, but it was really only a small group of them,” Lul clarified. “The very sa group that you managed to give the slip to when escaping the fragnt, according to Shia. They were desperate to learn the secret of the ‘undying’ skill Alka had, so they tracked your people down. Rember, you guys traveled ho via dungeon in that weird floating bubble fragnt you told about, but I brought Paul and Eleanor back by going through the edge of the citadel fragnt.”
“Damn it, if they were aiming for the ‘undying’ skill we told them about in order to save Alka, then this really was our fault,” Vin muttered, rubbing his head. “I know you and Shia tried your hardest to clear up the misunderstanding, and that they were literally incapable of comprehending how Alka was a construct because of their primitive intelligence, but even so… Did anyone die?”
“No… but one Earther gathering herbs near the edge of our fragnt was kidnapped,” Lul said, pausing for a mont as if the very na pained her. “Mary.”
“The warana kidnapped Mary?!” Vin repeated, imdiately seeing where this was going. Mary was Shia’s Herbalist friend, and probably the lone Earther other than himself she was actually close to. “I can only assu Shia used her divine boon to find her again?”
“Like you said, the warana are a bit more on the primitive side,” Lul nodded. “They’re not that intelligent. After failing to listen to anything we’d told them, we think they assud that any of Terra’s people or maybe even just humans as a whole know about the ‘undying’ skill. So once they got their hands on Mary, they ran off back to their fragnt. Luckily for her, she and Shia were supposed to be eting later that afternoon at her garden to continue working on their magical plant study. When she didn’t show, Shia tracked her down, and discovered she’d been taken.”
“Where she then used her divine boon to locate her,” Vin finished for her. “So what happened, you guys launched an assault on the warana?”
“Basically. Seeing as this was the first recorded instance of an Earther being kidnapped and taken off-fragnt, the response was a bit heavy handed. Alka and her Slayers. Phil and his top warriors. Shia, Scule, and Reginald of course. They put together a team of nearly forty of Terra’s strongest and went to bring her back. Long story short, they succeeded.”
“Oh god…” Vin muttered, wondering just how much of a bloodbath he had missed. “And the warana..?”
“The entire group that ca up to the fragnt and helped kidnap Mary are dead,” Lul said simply, as though there could be no other outco. “It wasn’t easy, seeing as they were fighting on rather poor terrain, but they managed. Once it was finished, Shia explained to the other warana why they’d done what they did, and it seems like there won't be any sort of repercussions. From what we gathered, despite coming together to form large gatherings, they actually live in small squads of only about a dozen or two called clusters, which largely operate independently of one another when they’re not resting. We functionally killed off a single cluster, but because we made it clear our business was with them and them alone, the others didn’t interfere.”
“Well that’s good at least,” Vin said, letting out a relieved sigh that their actions hadn’t accidentally started an inter-fragnt war between Terra and the warana. It was still awful that nine of the warana had ended up dead, but they had ventured all the way to the Earthers’ fragnt and kidnapped soone, when all Vin and their team had really ended up costing them was nothing more than a few hours of their ti. It was definitely a bit of an escalation in his opinion. “And Mary was alright?”
“Yeah. A bit shaken up, as she couldn’t even understand what they were asking her, but she was unhard when we found her. It was a pretty crazy day in Terra, as there was no way Spur could keep quiet about what had happened with such a large retrieval team sent after her. The newspaper had quite the run that evening. You’d only been gone for about half a day at that point, so once we eventually realized sothing was wrong the following day…”
“Shia had already used up her divine boon and needed a week to recharge it,” he finished, finally understanding why his friends hadn’t co for him. “Well, the most important thing is that they managed to get Mary back unhard. The poor woman…”
“We all felt terrible about the whole thing, and still do of course, but it’s been almost a week since then,” Lul explained. “She’s more than forgiven us, and she and Shia are still best of friends. If anything, I think the fact that Shia managed to track her down and rescue her so fast made them even closer.” As she spoke, Lul’s arm moved as if to reach out and take his hand, before hesitating. Vin didn’t miss the strange notion, and he forced himself up into a sitting position.
“Thanks for filling in on what happened while I was gone,” he said, giving her a small, pained smile as she continued to keep her hood up over her face. “...Is there a reason you’re hiding yourself from again?”
“Working with Alice… The half-artifact I created to detect soone entering the Underside… it put over,” Lul said, her words coming out fast and choppy. “I managed to hit level 45. I got the passive I was hoping for. But I haven’t shown anyone yet, and I’m scared how you’re going to react.”
“Oh, congratulations!” Vin said, blinking in surprise at the news. Imdiately, the weight on his chest vanished, and his smile grew wider. “I thought you were furious with or sothing.”
“What? No!” Lul said, almost looking up at him and revealing her face before stopping herself at the last mont. “I an, I’m still annoyed, absolutely. But I’m just happy you made it back in one piece.”
“I know how important getting this passive was for you,” Vin said, thinking back to all the terrible reactions Lul had been forced to deal with when it ca to people being shocked at her pulmon biology. He’d managed to look past her transparent skin and see the wonderful Dinsional Mage underneath, but he was one of very few who had given the act any effort. “...Does it do what you wanted?”
“That and more,” Lul said, her voice hopeful. “Honestly, it’s a perfect passive for . But even so… we started dating despite being a pulmon. I guess… I’m just afraid that things might change now that my appearance has.”
“Lul, you’re still a pulmon,” he chuckled, reaching out and squeezing her hand through her sleeve. “No passive is going to change that. At least, I don’t think one ever will. I felt your hands when you were hugging earlier, you still feel the sa as ever. I didn’t freak out when I first saw you, right? I’m not going to freak out now.”
“You promise?” Lul asked quietly, her voice barely audible.
“I promise,” he said, smiling despite the fact that she was still staring down at the bed.
“Alright… Close your eyes.”
Doing as instructed, Vin heard the shuffling of clothing as it sounded like Lul pulled back her sleeves and her hood like she normally did when it was just the two of them. After a few tense seconds, she cleared her throat. “Okay. You can look.”
Vin opened his eyes, and stared at his girlfriend in shock. He hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been this. Lul sat on the edge of the bed before him, her eyes nervously flicking back and forth between his own and her hands she was wringing together. Her skin was no longer transparent, now looking just as solid as any regular human’s, minus the fact that there was an ever so slight sheen to it, as if to show that it was closer to a moist gel than regular skin. For all intents and purposes, from afar, she looked like a totally normal, regular human. Except for one, ever so minor detail.
She was purple.
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