Vespera shooed me out of the room, claiming that she wanted to have a nice chat with Zery to 'get to know each other' while I could go and farm some monsters at a spot she found within the cave system, which she had gone and explored on her own.
She couldn't tell me how to get back there even if her life depended on it, due to her awful sense of space, but I could look into her mind and get the information I needed. Indeed, her knowledge helped me map the caves a bit more, and gave me a hint that maybe—and I say maybe—they could even connect back to where she and Elyra had been kept captive.
If true, it would give us a nice way to transport the other core, the one behind where she had been and that was still presumably intact, back here and hook it up to the System.
We needed a name for this room, by the way. Calling it Zery's room was out of the question, since she was captive here and certainly not here of her own volition.
We could call it System sector B2TTn#-7 control room, I guess, although it was a bit of a mouthful.
"Come on, git," the demon said as she literally pushed me towards the door. "I wasn't able to gain a level on my own but who knows, maybe you can? Would be wonderful, no? To get a new level before the dinner tonight?"
And with that, I was officially kicked out. I met up with Calla and Elyra, and we proceeded down the sparsely lit tunnels in search of monsters. What we found, instead, was a small pile of monster cores.
"She really left all of this lying around here," Elyra said, coming very close to facepalming.
The demon in question reacted through the bond, but she and Zery were too distracted to really follow. She sent the equivalent of a shrug and a tongue, and then went back to gossiping.
"I suppose they were a chore to bring back?" I suggested, trying to divine the inner workings of our favorite demon and, quite frankly, failing at that.
"What should we do with these, then?" the angel asked.
Calla perked up. "Can I… try something? The System is telling me to touch them."
I shrugged. We were the System's agents, I supposed it couldn't hurt. "Go ahead."
She gingerly kneeled and extended her delicate hand towards the small pile of Skitterpede cores. The moment she touched them, they crumbled to dust, reminding me of what happened when the System used them as energy fuel to give us skills.
That's when Vespera sent a pang of alarm through the bond. We all froze, linking up with her and seeing a rather flustered dragoness and, behind her, a broken draconic core glowing with power.
"Was this you?" the demon asked us.
I guiltily said yes, and got yelled at for spooking her. I laughed and she did the equivalent of hanging up on me.
"Well, I guess we know how to charge up the System," I said.
"I think I know why Vespera did not make you gain a level while fighting the monsters," Calla said timidly.
"Make us gain a level," I corrected her. Elyra nodded at me proudly.
"Right. I am still getting used to the… bond," she said.
"So, what do we need to do?" I asked.
"The System is not very clear in its instructions, but it encourages us to keep doing what we just did."
I cracked my knuckles. "Alright, time to hunt monsters, then."
It took several more minutes before we found the first Skitterpede roaming around.
"What do we do?" Elyra asked.
We still didn't know what Calla's magic was about. We could test things, and indeed it was the reason we were out here in the first place, other than to get levels, but there was something else I wanted to try first. I didn't have weapons, and the skill to summon weapons was gone, but I had stats now. Before, I had a lot of Vitality and Strength and little else, now? I had sixty to each single stat, being the currently designated core of the bond.
I felt their power the moment I thought about them. Strength filled my muscles, but it was a sensation I was familiar with. The same went for the Vitality, which made me tough and durable. The other stats were new, however. Wisdom and Intelligence acted in subtle ways I couldn't really quantify, but they gave me a feeling of power and potential. Dexterity… well, it was pretty straightforward.
I almost wanted to ignore the mental stats and go full brawler, but something stopped me. I turned around, following a sensation I had only felt in vague terms before, and my eyes widened at the sight of Calla casting magic! I thought I could see magic before, but I quickly realized that I could only see its effects and its presence when it was so strong it couldn't hide even from the blind.
Now? Its intricate, dazzling currents were displayed before me in their full vibrance and color. I don't know how Calla was doing it, or even what she was doing, but thorns and vines shot out from the walls of the tunnel and ensnared the Skitterpede, digging into its carapace and seeking its weak spots.
Calla slumped while the monster, now immobilized, roared and thrashed against its bindings. This was enough to shake me out of the contemplative state I was in, and I rushed at it while Elyra summoned shields to protect me and her beam cut through the air.
Despite all the novelty of the situation, despite our stats being different than before, despite the team composition being something we never tested… despite everything, we moved with coordination worthy of a team of experienced adventurers way above our league.
Some of the information even felt foreign, coming through Calla but not FROM her. Strategies, attack patterns and ways of fighting trickled from Zery, dragged up from memories not even she could access. The same happened with me, flashes of full immersion neuro-stims and movies, and from Vespera's experience brawling with the Skitterpedes. Elyra's knowledge was more esoteric, impossible to put to words in the way it manifested as instinct and muscle memory, but it added the missing ingredient to the soup that was our shared bond.
The fight was over in moments. Elyra's beam cut and seared, growing more focused by the moment until it was almost an actual laser, Calla's thorns held and crushed, and I dashed and kicked and punched until the monster was reduced to a pulp.
I looked at its remains and was surprised by my own power. Not just due to the new developments of the bond, but also due to the realization of just how big a difference having balanced stats had. My Strength was 60, less than half than before, but thanks to Dexterity and—I suspected—even the mental stats, I could leverage it in ways I couldn't before. It was as if my eyes could for the first time actually follow what my body was capable of, and I was quick on my feet too, rather than being a clunky punch machine that relied on slow, heavy movements, while also retaining the same destructive force.
Even Zery and Vespera had momentarily stopped gossiping—about me, I was fairly sure—just to stare in awe at this new development, having felt the strange flow state mediated by the bond the moment it manifested.
Then the demon grinned. "Happened to me too," she said telepathically. "Much weaker than now, though. I wonder why."
"We should experiment fighting all together," Elyra offered. "To see if the effect is stronger."
It was a good plan. Meanwhile, I fished out the core from the monster and offered it to Calla. It was a weak Skitterpede, so the core was small and barely held any magic, but everything helped, right?
She touched it, but nothing happened.
"We are too far away," she said meekly. "Sorry."
"You do not need to apologize," Elyra told her, smiling gently like an older sister. "Let's see how close to the room we need to be."
Turns out, rather close. And, killing monsters while out of range basically delayed all experience gains until we got close enough to be able to sacrifice the cores.
"Sucks," Vespera grumbled.
"It really does suck," Zery added.
"See? Even the dragon is upset! The System really shafted us this time."
"Shush," Elyra said. "You two keep gossiping, we are busy. And no badmouthing the System. We are its agents now."
"So what??" the demon complained. "It really did!"
"Do it out of respect for Calla. Can't you feel she's upset by what you said?"
"I… oh," Vespera muttered. "Sorry Calla. It's not about you."
"I know," the dryad replied. "But I feel like I could do more! The System is very complex, it makes my head spin. When you complained about it, it filled my mind with things and instructions and, and, and…" she clutched her head. "Didn't you feel anything through the bond?"
"Nothing," I said. "Only your distress. We thought it was due to what Vespera said."
She shook her head. "I don't hold sympathy for the System, even though it is even now trying to bribe us to like it. It will shower us with gifts, but I fear it is because we are its only agents. I wonder about its loyalty. In any case, my distress was due to the amount of stuff it filled my head with. Oh, Sol."
She looked at me. "What?" I asked.
"You would understand! Or Elyra."
"What about me?" Vespera asked.
"I…"
"Joking," the demon said. "I don't wanna have my head filled with System bullshit. Better to let the nerds handle it."
"That's my point! The System talks to me, and I barely understand it!! I'm not smart. I'm not capable! You all are and I am just… just…"
"Hey," I said softly, turning to her. "That's not true at all." I walked forward, pulling her into a hug. "All of you are unique, amazing, smart and capable. You hear me, Calla?"
"I…"
I broke the hug for a moment, and she stiffened. She looked up, and when our eyes met, I felt an electric tingle in the back of my head. I hesitated, but then the other girls used the bond to push me, and I gave in.
I kissed her. It was a chaste thing, yet full of emotion and understanding, and her tears flowed freely down her cheeks, wetting my face as well.
"Do you feel it?" I asked her. "The bond?"
"Yes…" she said, her voice small.
"Can you feel all the love, understanding, and acceptance from all of us?"
"…yes."
"Good. Because we are not comparing you to anyone else. We complete each other, and we need each other. We are in this together, forever. Never forget that."
She smiled, and her tears became happy tears as I pulled her into another hug. Elyra joined us as well, as did Vespera and Zery, their presence through the bond no less tangible than that of the angel that was there with us.
"Come on," I said. "Let's hunt some more. We still have time. And, maybe you could help me with something?"
"I can?" she asked, still struggling to accept how things were.
"Yes you can. When you used your magic, I felt something. Now that I have mental stats, I was wondering that maybe, just maybe, I could use magic myself? I want to see you cast your magic again, and then Elyra, and then you two together. You can do that for me, Calla?"
"Of course, Sol," she said. "Thank you. You're special."
I smiled, leaning in and booping her cute little nose. "Now, now. I'm the random space hauler boy here. You, on the other hand. All of you. You're the most special people I could ever dream of meeting, and I feel blessed that you all chose to share your life with me."