"Shit!" Misa leapt out of the way, dragging Sev with her; she didn't want to risk another block. Not with their system skills apparently being on the fritz. The Soulblossom didn't move that fast, at least—that was the one advantage they had over the monster that was over two thousand levels currently trying to eat them.

At least, she was pretty sure that was what it was trying to do. It was a little hard to tell with most of her focus dedicated to staying alive. Sev's eyes were already closed, and his hands were clasped together in a form of prayer; she could only assume he was working on casting another heal of some kind to take care of this second Soulblossom.

She couldn't do what she did before again. Probably. She was physically capable of doing so, but despite Sev's healing, something inside of her still seemed to ache. Misa doubted she'd be able to pull off that stunt a second time, and with a Soulblossom nearly twice as strong, she could only imagine the effects would be twice as bad.

She triggered [Me, Myself, and I], and even the usage of that skill nearly sent her stumbling. She gritted her teeth. There was something pulling at her, and using the skill was like some kind of trigger: it made her vulnerable in a way she wasn't usually vulnerable.

More specifically, it seemed to open up some part of her soul—and while it wasn't by any deliberate action on the Soulblossom's part, the sheer weight of its existence was enough to tear away at her the moment she tried to use a skill.

But it was fine. This was fine. She'd managed to bring five other copies of herself into existence, and each of them tore away in a different direction, using every last drop of their power to distract the Soulblossom. The worm roared and spun from one to the other, confused, trying to decide on a target.

"Please tell me this thing isn't interfering with your spell," Misa hissed under her breath. She dove into the grass, her heart pounding, one hand covering for Sev while she used her duplicates to make sure the worm wasn't targeting them—it wasn't. Whatever mechanism it used to choose its victims, it evidently wasn't the number of nearby souls, or it would've targeted the two of them already.

"It is," Sev said grimly. "But I can get around it, same way as last time. I just need a bit of time. This thing is so strong it's actually taking over some of the divinity in the area—I can't cast as effectively as I could otherwise."

"Shit," Misa cursed again. "Anything I can do? Besides play as the distraction."

"Keep an eye on your system for me," Sev said. "This thing's doing something to destabilize it, and you have a whole reality anchor attached to you. The Prime Anchor is in this dungeon, for crying out loud—if it can have an impact on us, it can have an impact on the Anderstahl Prime Anchor. Maybe the thing isn't degrading at all. Maybe it's just this thing slowly ripping it apart, even if it is by accident."

Misa snorted. "As if we'd be that lucky," she said, drawing a breathless chuckle from Sev. She pulled up her system screen and stared at it, watching as the boundaries fuzzed in and out of existence. The reality anchor tied to her, at least, didn't seem to be degrading any faster from the Soulblossom's presence—which was proof against Sev's theory.

Unfortunately. It would've been convenient if all they needed to do to repair Anderstahl's Prime Anchor was to take this down.

"It won't take me nearly as long to connect this time," Sev muttered. Misa saw the way his eyes moved beneath his eyelids, almost like he was trying to rapidly read something. His hands moved like he was tugging on an invisible rope, and Misa suddenly felt a presence coalesce around them, almost like Sev had cast another Blessing.

Then a surge of divine power burst out of him again. Healing energy flooded through Misa, giving her a burst of relief; it raced through the nearby Soulblossom, causing roots to retract and clumps of earth to fall away from the body of the worm.

The worm turned around and roared once more. It was a silent roar, and the sight of it sent chills down Misa's spine; clumps of rock rained down on them as its mouth split open, and yet it was utterly silent.

"Uh, Sev," she said. "I don't think we got it."

"I noticed," Sev said tersely.

"And it knows exactly where we are and is coming straight for us." Misa didn't wait for Sev to respond—she grabbed him by the back of his robe and started hauling him away from the worm's path. This time, it wasn't distracted by anything her duplicates did, no matter how they approached it. Arrow didn't work, nor did physical blows with her mace... "If you've got any bright ideas, now's the time!"

"Aurum!" Sev called. Misa flinched and let go of Sev as he glowed bright with power—she could almost feel the sudden change in the air. There was an abrupt density around her there hadn't been before.

And then Sev wasn't quite Sev.

Misa felt more than she saw the power of Aurum as the God of Gold made his presence known; Sev became a conduit, a channel for Aurum's power. Divine power crept its way into every facet of the Soulbloom Station and the fields surrounding it, so intense Misa thought she could see cracks forming in the air as reality strained under the weight of it.

A [Divine Mantle]. It was a skill she'd heard about but never seen. As far as she knew, it existed only in myth and legend. The theory behind it was simple—gods couldn't manifest themselves in the physical plane without an extreme cost associated with it, but if they had a conduit, someone who could channel their power for them...

...Come to think of it, though, hadn't her projection of Sev done something similar, back when she had to defend J'rokksur against a [Meteor Swarm]?

Misa supposed she shouldn't have been surprised.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Aurum reached out, and Misa felt the weight of reality dragging along with even that tiny movement. It was easy to forget how much power the gods really held. All this time, she'd been helping to fight againt their slow erasure as they were dragged into the Void and used as fuel for the anchors.

In that way, she saw them as victims—as people in need of help. But even with Sev constantly channeling their power for incredible feats of divine magic right in front of her, she'd forgotten what they were capable of when their power was wielded directly.

Or perhaps she'd simply never known it at all. After all, how many clerics could wield a [Divine Mantle]?

Just the one she knew.

Aurum's fingers brushed against a single dangling root of the Soulblossom, turning its entire body into gold.

"It's not dead," Sev said. He felt exhausted. Every drop of power had been wrung out from his body. He was suddenly intimately familiar with the idea of soul exhaustion, and that had only ever been a theory he'd read about. There wasn't much literature on it simply because there weren't that many ways to strain the soul. The development of the system had been the furthest they'd ever gone down that route, as far as he remembered, and the system was fundamentally not able to stress the soul that much.

By design, mostly. The amount of power that was needed to do such a thing was not trivial, and if skills drew directly on the soul then what they created would not have been sustainable. People would wind up hurting themselves more as they accumulated more power.

But that didn't mean it was impossible. This was only true for system skills—the ones that relied on Shift to generate their effects. Spells and divine magic were a whole other category that didn't begin to touch on the methods the system used to cast its ideas into reality; with those, soul exhaustion was possible, if unlikely enough that he hadn't experienced it until now.

He supposed if he had to experience it for anything, then experiencing it to defeat a monster that was over two thousand levels was probably a worthwhile tradeoff.

"Are you sure?" Misa asked skeptically. She glanced up at the Soulblossom, and Sev followed her gaze, grimacing slightly. Every single part of it had been turned to gold, up to and including the petals of the flower.

"It's not," Sev insisted, though he was briefly worried. A quick [Triage] assuaged that worry—the system still registered the Soulblossom as a living entity. "It's just, uh... petrified."

"I hope that doesn't mean all those souls are stuck in there," Misa said.

"It... shouldn't." Sev hesitated, then walked up to the now-massive golden statue of the Soulblossom and the massive wormlike body it had formed out of its roots. He placed a hand against it. It was surprisingly warm, and it was warm in a way that disturbed him. He could almost feel it pulsing beneath his skin.

It was still alive, after all. He'd requested that Aurum keep it alive. Now it was a form of living gold, sustaining the souls within it, along with the life of the Soulblossom itself.

"It's a form of stasis," Sev said. "The spell I used healed it, but there's too much to heal all at once—the system isn't fully effective, and divine magic can't completely penetrate this mass of souls either. So somewhere in there, my healing is still working its way through."

"You just froze it so the healing would have time to finish." Misa sounded a little relieved as she said it. "Well, good. I'm glad we're not just leaving this thing here."

Sev paused. "I mean, we kind of are," he said awkwardly. "Who knows how long it's going to take for the heal to get all the way through?"

"Not too long, I hope," Misa said. "But as long as we're not just leaving it to rot, I'm fine with it." She glanced up into the air, and Sev saw her gesture as if she was bringing up the system. "I think the system's starting to work properly again."

"You think so?" Sev tried to bring up his own copy of the system, but winced as a sharp pain ran through him; Misa ran over to him and caught him as he suddenly stumbled, and he gave her a weak smile. "Whoops. Think I overdid it a little."

"Oh, come on," Misa grumbled. She picked him up and slung him over her shoulder, and Sev made a squawk of protest as he was folded rather uncomfortably in half. Not that he was in much of a mind to protest—he found he was a little dizzy. "You could channel multiple gods back in J'rokksur!"

It took a moment for Sev to figure out what Misa was talking about. "That wasn't me!" he protested. "That was your projection of me!"

"Same thing," Misa grunted. To his relief, she shifted his grip on him, adjusting so that half the blood in his body wasn't flowing to his head. Her voice was teasing, and she shook her head in mock disappointment. "Why can't you channel three gods at once yet, Sev? Vex can turn into a dragon."

"Okay, first of all, I think channeling one god is more impressive than turning into a dragon," Sev said, laughing. "And second, I can stop time! I feel like that's pretty impressive."

"That is pretty cool," Misa admitted. Sev felt her gait change as they hit the smooth tiling of Soulbloom Station once more. Cool air blew over the two of them. Misa carefully placed him back down on the ground, holding him by the shoulders to make sure he was steady. "You good?"

"Yeah," Sev said. He shook his head slightly. "I don't think my soul's gonna recover for a while. Not sure we should head further into this dungeon without backup from Vex and Derivan."

"Good thing my system's working again, then," Misa said. She glanced at the massive statue of the golden worm off in the distance. Sev followed her gaze—there was a slow leak of shadows around it, peeling off and slipping away as the amalgamation of souls slowly healed. "I'm going to send a message to them and see if they can come meet up with us."

"Please do." Sev groaned a little as he collapsed into a chair. Tinsel ran up to them as he did, still a literal walking light fixture—Sev couldn't deny the sight was a little amusing. "Hey, Tinsel."

"You did it!" Tinsel said cheerfully. He shoved a bundle of things into Sev's arms. It took a moment for him to parse what he was being handed—a few golden tickets, and then a bundle of fresh soulblooms. The smell of them alone instantly made Sev feel better, soothing the fresh ache within his soul. "Here, I decided to go collect some of the soulblooms while you were gone."

"Uh... thanks," Sev said, a little awkwardly, but not ungratefully. He glanced at Misa, who was suddenly staring intently at her screen and sending messages rapidly, then back to Tinsel. "Actually, I think we've got a little time. Can you show me how to make one of those soulbloom potions you were talking about?"

"Can I ever!" Tinsel brightened. Literally. It shone so brightly Sev had to squint just to be able to look in its general direction. "Ah, sorry. I forget your eyes don't work as good as most people."

"I question your definition of good," Sev muttered, though he was more amused than anything else. "Hey, Misa, I'm going off for a bit. Tinsel's going to show me how to make one of those soulbloom potions."

Misa nodded, waving at him and not even looking away from the screen; somewhat bemused and a little worried, Sev followed Tinsel off to a corner of the station, where a makeshift cauldron had been stapled together.

"Hello," the cauldron said. Sev jumped, then sighed.

He supposed he shouldn't have expected anything different.