Alex and Claire hit the ground in the Mirrorlands in a tumble of limbs. They skidded a foot before coming to a stop in the shadow of the massive root bearing the portal that led to the Cracked Steps, entangled together.
Claire let a muffled groan out into Alex's shirt. "Fuck. My head."
"What happened to using 'bleed' for every curse?" Alex cast his gaze around to make sure nothing was creeping up on them while they laid on the ground. His heart pounded heavily in his chest, though he couldn't quite tell what the cause of it was anymore. Too many things had happened in too short of a time.
"Give me a moment to get my brains re-arranged and I'll give you all the bleedings you want," Claire mumbled back, not even trying to lift her head from his chest. "Zeal's domain just rattled my damn skull like a shitty toy."
"Really? I didn't realize he hit you," Alex said as he untangled his limbs from Claire's. She laid on top of him like a wet rag. He sent her a concerned look and prodded her in the shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"He didn't hit me," Claire said, finally pushing herself up and squeezing her eyes shut in pain. "It was his domain's pressure. Did you really not feel it? My internal organs feel like they each got beat to a pulp."
Alex blinked. He glanced down at himself as if expecting to suddenly realize that he was in pain, but there was nothing there. He really hadn't felt much of anything at all when Zeal had used his domain. There had been a moment of unease right as the man had activated his Soul Manifestation, but that was it.
"No," Alex said. "I didn't feel much of anything. Was it a delayed reaction or something? Why did it only hit now?"
"Because I wasn't going to show this much weakness in front of an opponent, idiot," Claire muttered through clenched teeth.
So either this is another front with her trying to get me to trust her, or she's showing weakness because she actually feels comfortable doing it in front of me. I'd like to think it's the latter. Only time will tell. Claire lost a fair bit of my trust when she lied to me, but holding a grudge isn't going to do shit for anyone.
Alex rose to his feet and pulled Claire up alongside himself, slinging an arm beneath her shoulders to keep her upright. He brought her over to a bundle of roots running throughout a destroyed town building, taking shelter beneath it while she recovered.
She gave him a weak nod of appreciation as they slumped down against the wall. A little rest had the potential to go quite a long way — and Alex needed his monsters back before they started hunting anything again.
They sat in silence as the minutes dragged by. Several times, monsters made their way through the street. There weren't any City-Eater Centipedes in this location, nor did there seem to be anything quite as large as them, but there were a fair number of monsters between the high Novice and mid Initiate Stages.
None of them noticed Alex and Claire. For that matter, the monsters seemed rather… distracted. None of them were really paying all that much attention to their surroundings. They just wandered through the streets aimlessly. That didn't seem like a very good strategy to survive when one resided within the Mirrorlands.
Alex didn't question their good luck. While he kept watch, he let his mind drift to other things — and while there were a number of them to think about, he found his thoughts turning to Rift Flood and Qi.
Both the ability and Qi had the ability to change his monsters' forms, but it didn't seem like they worked the same.
When he'd used Qi to summon Glint, the Shardwalker had come out flickering in and out of reality, and the monster gained the ability to rip a portal open and jump through it. When he used the normal Rift Flood on Glint, the monster just grew larger and stronger — and when he used the Qi empowered Rift Flood, Glint transformed into an even more warped monstrosity.
When I used the Qi empowered Rift Flood on Princess, she also became huge. I'm pretty sure the same general effects hold true on all of my monsters. So there's actually a pretty significant difference between summoning a monster with Qi or summoning them and then using Qi to empower Rift Flood on them.
Qi directly improves the magic of whatever its used on. When I use it on summoning a monster, it improves their magical abilities. When I use it on Rift Flood, it makes the physical empowerment much stronger.
A small smile pulled at his lips. It might have been a fairly simple deduction, but it gave him an enormous amount of versatility to work with. Even if he only had enough Qi to use the buff once per fight, he could get a lot of mileage out of the same energy by optimizing it for every battle.
Qi really is incredible. If its already capable of this much… I really want to know what my domain and Soul Manifestation will be. I have to upgrade my Mind Palace and get to Adept as soon as possible.
Alex let his head rest against the stone behind him as he cast his gaze around the root-covered clearing around them. His powers were one thing, but Zeal had given him a lot to think about.
I do wonder why his domain didn't affect me like it did Claire. Was it because my Mind Palace is put together better? Or something else entirely?
The answer didn't make itself known. Unless they found someone else with a domain to test against, Alex doubted it would. It would just have to wait. Fortunately, there was more than enough to occupy him.
He'd never thought that the presence of Outworlders would actually improve normal people's chances to get powerful, but he supposed that lined up with everything else the System did perfectly. When there were powerful opponents, there were big sticks to hit them with.
Alex just had to find the stick before the Outworlders did. Something told him the System wasn't going to make it easy for the Outworlders. It wouldn't make much sense to have a way to fight back if the Outworlders had an easy way to just gather it all up for themselves.
I wish I got more time to talk to Zeal. I really do need to find the Empty Court again. They seem like pretty stand-up people if Zeal is anything to go by. But getting that Town Token comes first.
The rest of the hour passed quickly and without note. Claire shook off the effects of Zeal's domain and Alex's monsters regenerated.
They'd only been in the Mirrorlands for a short while, so they proceeded to use the next few hours to methodically work their way deeper into the city while hunting every single monster in their path.
There were a number of fairly strong enemies, some of them getting up to Initiate 4, but none posed a significant threat against the two of them, nor did any catch Alex's eye as an interesting combination. That was fine — they were still worth a decent amount of energy.
He couldn't help but be slightly annoyed that none of the fights they ran into were strong enough to cause Claire to use any abilities that she hadn't revealed previously. She mostly fought with her sword, empowering her legs to increase her speed whenever the need called for it.
Alex couldn't even be annoyed about it. She couldn't say anything about what her class did — that would risk her failing her Trial. Using its abilities purely just to show Alex what they could do would probably cause her to fail as well.
And thus, just under ten hours later and after a few more breaks in-between fighting, the two of them made their way back toward the portal they'd entered the Mirrorlands through. They'd gathered a lot of magical energy and resources. Staying any longer and not leveling up would just be pushing their luck. The deeper one got into the inversed Valley Ford, the stronger the monsters were. Anything stronger than around the middle of the Initiate Stage was still too great a threat for them to intentionally seek out.
"Do you think you'll hit Initiate after this?" Alex asked Claire, feeding Glint Soul Flames as they walked.
"I'd better," Claire said. "I've got a lot of energy stored up. It should be enough to fix up my Mind Palace the rest of the way and make it to Initiate, maybe even Initiate 2 or 3. We'll see, I suppose."
"Nice. I'm going to put enough energy into my levels to get one more ability, then focus the rest on my Mind Palace," Alex said, fishing out another Soul Flame from his mirror and handing it to Glint. "I think—"
Golden letters sliced through the air before him before he could finish his sentence. He ground to a stop as they appeared.
Your Bonded Creature is 100% above the threshold to advance to Initiate 1. Would you like to evolve this Shardwalker? [Y/N]
"Alex?" Claire asked. "You okay?"
A grin split Alex's lips. "More than. We might have to take a quick detour before I open the portal and take us out of here. Glint just got enough energy for what should be a very interesting evolution."