“How was I supposed to know you'd have some sort of psychotic break and strip naked in the middle of nowhere? That hasn't ever happened to anyone else who has taken it. So it must be something you did,” Vivi grumbled.

  “How many people other than you have imbibed the substance?” I asked, my forehead pressed against Aurin's chest as I sat cross-legged in her lap, and she ran her fingers through my hair.

  It was the only thing I could do to stop myself from automatically thinking back to yesterday and having my mind hammered with incredibly condensed trauma. After the fiftieth time it happened, I was starting to make out a sort of logic to the madness. If my guess was correct, the hammer blow on recall was likely because my brain just couldn't process more than that single drop worth before it overloaded, and the failure cascade took the rest of my mind along with it.

  Only for the damage to immediately reverse itself, while leaving the tiny portion I could comprehend behind. Because I doubted it was even possible to damage my mind permanently.

  Anyone else who tried to perceive this specific information would… well, I wasn't even sure. Rendered mad felt like too light a term.

  “Uhh, fifteen, I'm pretty sure. Also, why would I take it? I’m all natural.” She definitely just picked a number off the top of her head.

  “And how many of those were Dustborn?” I continued.

  “Two…”

  “So it's entirely possible it worked poorly with my Archetype, or hell, maybe Bearers in general. Have you even tried searching for one that's safe for me to use and checked if it's the same listing?” I asked, turning to look Vivi in the eyes. A flicker of anticipation danced across her face, which faded into disappointment when nothing happened. Glancing down, I saw she was inching the ring I gave her off her finger. “Bad Vivi. Keep your anti-me ring right where it is.”

  Her hand darted away from the ring, she let out a huff, and her ahoge drooped down as if her hair had been scolded, “You know you’re allowed to let other people enjoy things. You happen to be an enjoyable thing. Please learn to accept that a little faster. And yes, the search result is still identical when I filter for ones safe for you. The System thinks it was safe for you to take, and it would know what happened after you did.”

  “Yeah, okay, ‘safe,’ that’s reassuring. Screw that, I’m not using them again. Also, I added another Stat point into Charisma. It was already a problem before; now it’s only going to have an even larger effect. Right, Aurin?” I said as I turned to look into her eyes.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Aurin asked, her face nearly glowing with joy from the eye contact. I didn't really need a verbal answer since she was already giving me a physical one. Her hand that was previously running across my head was now gripping my hair like a vice and seemed to be lightly shaking.

  “See, this is what I mean. Your mental construct is hogging all the fun,” Vivi grumbled. “I hope the next world we go to has Charisma as a common Stat so I can watch your stupid moral system fall apart.”

  I crushed the part of me that genuinely wanted that to happen before it could even begin to bloom. I couldn’t allow myself to think like that… because reasons. I didn’t actually know why it bothered me so much. It just did.

  My discomfort was interrupted by Makesi entering the briefing room, followed closely by Aisling. He looked worn out. I wondered what the guy had been doing this whole time that left him in this state.

  “Alright, Aisling has confirmed Earth Office is backing off due to losses. The logistics chain has been broken, and Metal Office is no longer looking to offer its expertise due to the risk profile. It looks like the Water Office is going to do one last push to attempt to gain something from this excursion. I’m not sure we can do anything to stop it because they’re moving in as we speak,” Makesi said, slipping out of his suit of armour and taking a seat.

  Aisling stood directly behind him, slightly to the left as if acting as his attendant. I think she was falling into a role she held in one of her previous lives.

  “So, we just wait then, right? Because it’s a massive, infinite field of flowers. What are they going to find of interest in there? Maybe they finish the first trial, but is that even a problem for us? They’ll just be showered with Dust when they complete it, and I doubt any will be lucky enough to survive,” I asked the question that had been bugging me for a while. Sure, stealing Dust from them was nice, but was there an actual reason we were doing this beyond that?

  It was entirely possible that Makesi could have been trying to fatten me up with as much Dust as possible so that I could start being useful for the team.

  “They are a military force entering an overlap with a rule of non-aggression, which is not a good outcome. However, there was no real way for us to prevent this—”

  “Besides completely wiping them out of existence,” Vivi chimed in helpfully.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Besides doing something that would gain the attention of the organization as a whole, when Aisling’s threat assessment concluded we should avoid doing that if at all possible, yes,” Makesi continued.

  “Question,” I said, raising my hand.

  Makesi sighed and pointed at me, “You don’t have to raise your hand, there are only four of us.”

  “Excuse you, there are five,” I said, nuzzling my head into Aurin’s chest and bringing her onstage. Vivi was the only one who could see her when offstage, and even then, only when she focused. I wasn’t really sure why, but then again, it was Vivi. Did Vivi require an explanation? “But that’s besides the point. What I was going to ask is how we were going to deal with the fact that the Heaven group obviously has access to multiple rifts.”

  “This dimension is completely fucked. We should just give up on the contract. This was an emergency replacement job, so it wouldn’t even look bad for us on our performance review. If another team were entirely wiped, why would they expect us to perform better?” Vivi added.

  “Shut up, Vivi,” both Makesi and I said simultaneously. “Sorry, why would you conclude that? It is possible that the single Class Three you ran into was a spontaneous manifestation. Those are fairly common once things have progressed to this point.”

  The Class system he was talking about was based on the amount of Dust contained within an anomaly. Class One anomalies contained between ten to one hundred Dust, Class Two were one hundred to one thousand, each Class going up by magnitudes of ten. Class Zero anomalies were so small that they couldn’t even be recycled; they were also incredibly numerous, especially close to uncontained rifts.

  So the porcelain statue that I gained 2475 Dust from would be considered a Class Three, and so would whatever I ran into right afterward.

  “Because that wasn’t the only one I ran into. I’m now sitting at over eight thousand unspent Dust,” I replied, tapping my fingers together in a pattern to distract myself from remembering the hostile memories. “Those anomalies had to come from somewhere, and I’m willing to bet half the Dust I have that they were manmade.”

  The room was quiet for a little bit, which is why I didn’t mention this over the group chat. I wasn’t sure how, but I had managed to obtain an absolute fuckload of Dust at some point after consuming Vivi’s solution, but before I found myself standing in the middle of nowhere. Indicating I likely ran into the Hundun and recycled it, somehow.

  How that happened was a mystery I honestly didn’t feel like solving.

  “I’m unable to find any other rifts on this continent… not that there aren’t any, it's that I can’t find them or even tell how many there are,” Aisling finally broke the silence. Her expression looked strained as she pushed her Aspect to its limit. “I'm being blocked somehow.”

  “So we’re fucked. The only way for us to protect the dimension is for us to start open war with the one faction you keep telling us that we can’t handle,” Vivi said, her ahoge pointed accusingly at Makesi. “I’m starting to see why the last group abandoned the Contract. Why didn’t we get a report from them on the situation here before we took it? The Contract had us going in completely blind.”

  The fact that she was the one who argued for the team to take the Contract didn’t seem to come to her mind. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

  Makesi fell silent and closed his eyes, his tongue flicked out as he massaged his temples.

  “So we’ve been working on this one rift, but it turns out there are a bunch already under the control of the corporate state. Is there any chance we can open up talks with them to close the rifts?” I asked despite that being a bit of a long shot. Everyone but me was biologically between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Even though their actual age was in the hundreds, that didn’t really matter for how they were perceived.

  “I would prefer not to contact the Heaven Office because that would get them involved, and you may have ruined our chances of working with the Water Office,” Makesi muttered, and I shrank into Aurin in response to that.

  How was I supposed to know that attempting to kill their commanding officer would make things harder for us? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “Look, think about it like this, Makesi, what are we actually doing? What’s our objective? We have to close every single rift on the planet to stop the Dust incursion. The only way to solve it is to come into conflict with an enemy that we can’t beat, because they're in the way if we want to close every rift. I say we just collect as much Dust as possible, then get the fuck out of here before the universe collapses. Fuck completing the Contract, as you said, it was screwed from the start,” I explained, looking at each member of my team as I spoke.

  Vivi seemed on board with the idea because her ahoge gave away exactly what she was thinking. Aisling I couldn’t tell, maybe she was on board, maybe she was just too anxious to say no. Makesi was obviously conflicted.

  “Aisling, what’s the chance of one of us experiencing permanent damage that a reincarnation will not fix if we engage Heaven Office in an attempt to close their rifts? Or a full team wipe.” Makesi asked.

  Aisling took out a small red notebook and a pen from somewhere. I couldn’t actually see any pockets on her outfit, so I had no idea where she had been storing it. In the notebook, she scribbled something down, then she closed it and put it on the table. Makesi and her stared silently at the notebook. Vivi looked bored in the corner, playing with her ring. I glared at her to ensure she wouldn’t take it off, not meeting her eyes obviously.

  “So, uh, what are we waiting for?” I asked after we had been sitting around for almost ten minutes.

  “The book takes a short while to process potential paths we could take. Aisling isn’t an Oracle so don’t expect an incredibly detailed result,” Makesi replied, which was interesting. How did the book determine what paths were viable? Also, what the hell, there’s an Oracle Archetype?

  A few minutes later, the book flipped open on a specific page. Aisling picked it up and read the results out, “Direct unplanned assault led by Vivi, fifty percent chance of soul damage per person, ninety percent chance of full team wipe. Careful guerilla tactics led by Makesi, twenty-nine percent chance of soul damage per person, sixty percent chance of full team wipe. Whatever Ren comes up with, five percent chance of soul damage per person, fifty percent chance of full team wipe.”

  “What?!” Makesi, Vivi, and I all yelled at once.

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