"Does anyone have any idea how actually to do it?" Vespera asked.
"Invite Zery into the bond we share together, you mean?" Elyra said. When Vespera and I looked at her expectantly, she shrugged. "No clue."
"Let's start simply," I said. "Something similar to how we did it the first time."
"I think," the dragon interrupted me before I could say more. "It should come from me first. It is a bond between equals, is it not?"
I nodded.
"Then," she said, looking at me and then at the girls. "I wish to welcome you into me, into my thoughts and feelings, my memories and fears, my body and soul. Carnal desires and spiritual aspirations both, I open myself up to you, may the System be the witness, and hope to find the same openness in you, so that you may welcome me into you in a bond that lasts forever."
I felt the System stir at her words, but it wasn't enough. Zery's words were filled with meaning, intention and power, but a bond between equals could not come from a single person.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Vespera beat me to it. "I welcome you, Zerynthia Nightguard, into the bond that we share between us. I hope you will do the same with me."
The dragon nodded, smiling. "Of course."
Then Elyra took the lead, blushing shyly despite being the one who pushed for this to happen in the first place. "I…" she began, stammering for a moment before her voice grew steadier. "I offer you the gift of sharing our whole being, of becoming one with me, Vespera and Sol. May the bond last forever."
"Forever," the dragon said.
Then it was my turn. "It all began with an Oath the first time. I think it's fitting I do the same now. I hereby swear to share everything, the good and the bad, the happiness and the sorrow with you, Zerynthia Nightguard."
"…and I will do the same," she said.
"Forever," I said.
"Forever."
The room began to shake. Magic grew wild. The bond connecting me to Elyra and Vespera morphed and changed, while the System threw a slew of errors right in our faces.
Insufficient energy.
Insufficient energy.
Insufficient energy.
They kept going on and on, while we felt the bond snap back to us, the changes reverting and weakening. There was an offshoot of the bond that had been growing, brushing against Zery, but it began to wither and die without the magic supporting it.
"I guess a sacrifice is in order," I said. "Just like last time."
"A sacrifice?" the dragon asked, eyes wide.
"Didn't Vespera tell you? Last time, I sacrificed everything to make the bond happen in the first place. I'll gladly do it again."
"Wait!" Zery protested. "No! It's not fair."
Meanwhile, the demon's mind brushed against my own and she asked: "What do you have in mind, spacer boy?"
"Well, the System might be trying hard here, but it's like fate itself doesn't want us together."
Elyra gasped. "Fate…" she muttered.
I grinned. "Guess what? I REJECT fate!"
The System exploded with energy within us and around us. It latched onto something fundamental about us, something that it had never been able to touch before. Gingerly, it surrounded one of our skills, touching it, feeling it. Then it retreated as if scared.
"The System and the skills…" I gasped in sudden realization. "They are two different things! It makes no sense. It used to be able to—"
Error: insufficient energy to carry out the requested task.
"It's not working, Sol!" Vespera cried out.
I grit my teeth. I was watching it happen, but I wasn't doing anything. Why was that? This was OUR bond, not the System's!
"We need to take control," I said.
"How?" the demon asked.
"Grab my hand. Shared mana pool, now."
I felt two hands touch mine, delicate and warm. Our mana pools fused together, and I began to direct their energy towards that strange place the System had tried to reach, but seemed too scared to mess with. Instead of shoving it aside, I tried something else.
"Let's guide it," I told the girls.
"Sol, are you sure?" Elyra asked. "The System has encountered a limitation, something that had been put there for a reason."
That's when Vespera caught on with what I wanted to do. "Oh," she said. "And we are going to break it, aren't we?"
I guided our hands until we touched Zery's skin. "Oh yes," I said.
"Sol," the angel said. "If we do this, there is no turning back. We might break the System."
"Probably not," I said. "I don't think any E-ranked average Joe can break a System, you know?"
"But you are not just an E-ranked average Joe, whatever a Joe is!" Zery said, her voice cutting through the cacophony of magic of the room like she was right there in the bond with us.
Indeed, a new stream of magic had joined ours. She was still separate from us, but she was right there, at the edge of a world-shaking change.
"You know what?" I said. "You're right. I'm not the average Joe. Perhaps it's time I stop pretending to be one. Let's break the System together. Or, at least, the local System."
I leveraged the slave bond we had with Calyx and the treemind. I felt sudden worry and apprehension from the dryad, and tried my best to soothe him. Truth be told, he was right to worry. At the same time, I didn't want him here. We were having a special moment.
He sent something I never expected him to. Understanding. And a question. Will we still be here should all hell and heaven break loose?
"Of course we will," Vespera said. "He's our friend."
Even Zery nodded. She wasn't in the bond, not really, and yet she had understood completely. I could feel the echo of her emotions. All she knew about Calyx was that he was a dryad, a descendant of the beings that imprisoned her. All she had seen of him and the tree was their attempt at killing me and draining her.
Despite all of this, never once did she entertain the thought of abandoning him in case things went south.
This was all the push we needed. Her stream of magic joined ours. Her mana pool fused with ours. The bond extended, and she was dragged in.
Together, we breached past the System's protections and failsafes. They were strangely familiar, like an echo of a vision. A memory. The hauler, where we had been dragged in a memory against our will. Was it related to this?
Something gave out beneath us, metaphorically speaking, or perhaps it's more right to say… inside us.
The System watched us from afar. Only when we gave it space did it draw closer. There, like stars in the night sky, were my skills—our skills.
One shone so bright it was blinding to look at.
"Go ahead," I said.
The System circled it, as if to ask me if I was sure.
"Not just me. All of us. We are sure."
The girls nodded.
Still, the System hesitated. We felt the precarious state we were in begin to crumble, but even then the System did not do it. I realized why. It was Calyx and the tree. Even though they were not the System, they were influencing it.
"If you do this, there is no going back," they seemed to say.
"We don't want to go back," I said. "I want Zery to be able to be with us."
The edges of space were breaking. Beyond them was the now dark room with the now dim demonic core. The Green bubbled and hissed, the fluid superheating and boiling over, and the core began to crumble. Its energy was gone but, somehow, the System was still hanging on.
After one last moment of hesitation, it latched onto the skill we had chosen to sacrifice.
Fate has been… REJECTED.
The skill will never be available again.
The star imploded, then expanded like a supernova. Its light washed the whole space, scraping it raw. When it passed, a single line lingered.
Insufficient energy.
Vespera screamed in rage. "What? Greedy bastard!"
Zery stared at the message, likely the first she had been able to see since she lost her status. "It needs more," she said, voice barely a whisper.
I could see her look at me like we were all floating in space, surrounded by distant stars and the much closer stars that represented our skills, with the residual light of the supernova still casting hard shadows everywhere. She was beautiful, gorgeous. Her eyes met mine, and she took my hands into hers.
They were twice the size of mine.
"I sacrifice all of my magic for us," she said. "For our bond."
The System stirred again, and she was stripped of everything. Then, she began to disappear.
"She's going to vanish through time again!" Elyra said. "We must stop her!"
Insufficient energy.
"What more do you want!" Vespera screamed. "Fucking System! I hate you!"
Error. The antenna is missing the main anchor.
"What?" I blurted out. Blinking, I could see the room we were in.
The lights had gone dark, but the maelstrom of magic coming from us lit it in strange, shifting colors. The demonic core was gone, crumbled into dust.
"The demonic core was the anchor," I said. "The tree was the antenna but the core was the anchor! The System needs another anchor or it will stop working!"
"I'm… cold," Zery said weakly. She was almost transparent. "I don't want to be gone again. Sol, Elyra, Vespera, please help me. I don't… know what else to give." She paused, looking at herself. "I can only give up my race to—"
"NO!" all three of us screamed in unison. "NO!"
She stopped. Her eyes were so big, so vulnerable.
"I don't accept this shit," I roared.
Blinking, I was back in the real world. I acted on instinct, feeling three sets of eyes watch me through the bond. Yes, even Zery. She was almost gone, but hanging there by a thread.
"Calyx," I called. "Come here."
I had no idea what I was doing. But I felt like this was right.
The dryad ran into the room and regarded me with confusion, pain and loss.
"Can you become the anchor?" I asked him.
"I…"
"Do you want to?"
"It is my fate," he replied.
"Not fate. Choice."
"Then, yes. Will you still be my friends?"
"Of course. Tell us, what do you need?"
He stammered again, before his eyes became filled with emeralds. The treemind was here. "Energy. Anything you can give."
"So be it," I said. "Take everything."
"Sol?" Zery cried. "No. Don't sacrifice everything for me!"
I smiled at her. "I don't want to see you gone. And we need the System. Think about the greater good."
"It's a theme," Vespera said, knowing that she couldn't fight against the inevitable.
"I suppose it is," Elyra confirmed. "I sure hope we will not have to do it every time."
"Whaddya mean every time???" the demon asked.
I chuckled at their antics. Their banter distracted me from the hollow sensation of cold. I was being drained. All the magic, all the skills. All the stats. Everything.
Creating new designated anchor.
Error: anchor cannot be a slave.
"Shit," I cursed. "Calyx, I release you."
Rebooting System.
Error: Calyx cannot be released from slave bond.
I grit my teeth, mind working overtime to find a solution.
"Add him to the actual bond," Vespera said, biting back a curse.
I wanted to say something, but time was running out. Cursing myself, I looked at Calyx. "Do you wanna join?" I asked unceremoniously.
"Not as I am," the dryad said.
I bit back some rather foul words, but before I could spell them, he looked at me with soft eyes.
"I wish for the System to change me. If I am to join the bond, let it be not as Calyx, but as Calla Nightguard, true dryad and anchor of System sector B2TTn#-7."
The System rushed towards him and changed him. A blinding light hid him from us, in the material world, but through the bond we felt a new presence tentatively join.
A girl. Small and petite and vulnerable and so, so very happy. Calla.
She hovered there, at the edge of our space where the stars had dimmed and the System had dried up the massive lake of our mana. She needed permission to join, and we gave it to her.
There was no need to speak. Our minds talked plenty.
Rebooting System.
Sector B2TTn#-7 anchor has been designated: Calla Nightguard.
Battery missing.
Insufficient energy.
"Come on!" I screamed. "Take everything and stop being a bitch!"
That did it. The System took literally everything, leaving nothing behind save for the bond. Zery flickered, but we held onto her, and her form stabilized, no longer dragged through the currents of time.
Fuck. We made a mess. And it wasn't even over yet.
The System brushed against our class.
"It's going to take it too?" Vespera's voice shook.
"We told it to take everything, didn't we?"
"I guess we did," she mused. "I don't have to like it."
We closed our eyes and prepared for the sense of loss. If losing our skills, levels and stats had hurt, this was going to leave a hole in us that we feared it would be impossible to heal.
"We have the bond. We have each other," Elyra said. "We will heal."
At once, we stopped resisting.
The System coiled around our class, and we watched it, unable to breathe.
Then we gasped. Instead of taking it, the System poured energy into it.
Expending leftover energy…
[Bound to the Fallen] Class upgraded.
Zerynthia Nightguard's race upgraded to Great Race.
Error: old race has been sacrificed, and cannot be restored. Change is inevitable.
However…
…
…
…
The message window blinked. We stared. Since when did the System communicate like this?
The bond you share is special. It will change the world. Change is inevitable. Restoration, but also change.
Two new Great Races are born.
The Abyssal Dragon,
And,
The Anchor Dryad.
Reboot complete.