“It’s this way!” Rei broke through a thick shrub of bushes, ignoring how the sharp sticks and branches cut into his new clothes and skin. Despite his age and experience, the kid was ridiculously fast.


    “Dammit, shit!” Unlike me, over six feet tall and understood elegance like how a redneck understood the city. I barreled through the bushes and felt feeble scratches on my skin. [Forged Skin] was doing work.


    “Wait, wait, wait—!” Problem roared and flew right over me as if someone had thrown him like a football. He swooped in front of Rei like an eagle, stopping him from pushing further.


    I caught up, trying to ignore the aching inside my muscles and joints, and finally had a moment to take in our new surroundings. The Crystal Forest. It was a handsketched scene from a children’s fantasy book, and we were the unflattering mistakes on canvas. Every note was pastel. We stood on white and lips-pink grass. The bushes we’d bumbled through were bleached blue, and around us were haunting trees. Long and thick pale limbs reached toward the cloudless and blank sky, sprouting paler leaves as pencil-colors sprinkled throughout the setting like soft violets and oranges. No animals here, and no shadows. Not even our bodies casted them but light came from somewhere.


    Growing on tree-roots were bushels of multicolored pastel crystals. Looking closer at some of the trees, the bark was peppered with shiny, reflective motes. A few had chipped off and seeded the dirt. Interesting. Could these crystals be harvested—? No, that was the corpo talking, forget about that—


    “Conqueror, focus,” Problem reminded me, pulling my eyes away from the strange environment. We faced Rei again, whose head was pulled like a needle in a compass. “Rei—”


    “She appeared!” Rei said, nodding toward the direction. “I-I had to come! I… I…”


    Something was caught in his throat, and he couldn''t squeeze out the rest of his sentence. Another mystery, then? Dammit, this was problematic. Sage was alone with Mongrel and Mystic, and we had to watch Rei given his current behavior… Rei knew something was going on, but was it relevant to the operation or personal to him?


    Problem’s narrow eyes went narrower. “Dammit. It’s too late to ask Mystic to open a hole. Conqueror, try contacting Rector.”


    I raised an eyebrow, opening my [PMs] as ordered. “Okay—?”


    [SLAYER SYSTEMS ENTANGLEMENT DETECTED! MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS ARE OFFLINE]


    I blinked at the error message. “What the hell.”


    Problem rubbed his eyes. “No, I don’t know what’s going on. The System doesn’t get errors on their side, only on ours like making an unpermitted codename. Whatever this enviro is, it’s somehow able to directly touch the System itself which isn’t the most reassuring thought.”


    [Memento Recollection - Technique Dagger]


    I waved my [Dagger] around then banished it. “[Skills] are still active. Guess that’s all we need.” As characteristic as it was for me to freak out and bitch about the never-before-seen error, we had to focus on the mission.


    “In that case, we’ll be running straight into the fray.” Problem hovered closer to the kid. “You will hang back, do you understand? I recommend against disobeying another one of my orders.”


    Rei gulped and nodded. “Y-Yessir!”


    “Good. No more time spent dilly-dallying, come on!”


    Problem let Rei take off again, and just like the Seraph Alternate, I was last in the stack. Damn my legs. Damn my [Skills]. Give me a [Memento] that could increase my speed or something, or let me traverse through forests better. My comrades glided through the various obstacles of foliage while I laid a slow path of destruction. I had traumatic flashbacks of falling, hearing "Seraph" scream.


    Please don’t let this fight end like last time.


    At some point, after I was breathing fire into my lungs and the soreness was roaring like a bad addiction, the earth began trembling under our feet. Groaning. Something distant crashed, and a light shockwave passed through and pounded wind against the grass and leaves. We didn’t need Rei to guide us anymore. We followed the sounds and the far sights: smoke, glitter in the air, and ash. Silhouettes in the smoke, and shouting.


    Rei and Problem arrived at the edge first, and I nearly barreled into them a couple seconds after. I tried asking what was going on but instead I coughed—good going. An ear-shattering impact deafened the world. A wall of air slammed into me, powerful enough to send my feet skidding five yards back. Dirt and gravel sand-blasted my face, then smoke swallowed our vision. Went blind, someone shrieked beside me, yet somehow, we stumbled into clean air with not-so-clean lungs.


    We were on the edge of a massive clearing—gradually growing depressed at the center, so it was more like a crater—overlooking a crystal ore jackpot, a ruined jackpot. Most of the million-dollar deposits were rendered worthless from the ensuing battle. The white grass was now gray and brown and black, shining with dirty sparkles, and the air tasted like acid and bitter medicine.


    “Dammit!” swore the culprit: Archknell, with immature crystal-buds growing from his thighs and shoulders like warts. He swung his arms forward, black strings unraveling from his [Netherstring Gauntlets] like long carpets of hair. They coiled into a couple dozen ropes as thick as telephone poles. They blocked and deflected a slew of arrow-like projectiles crashing down onto him, explosions rocking the area and creating fireworks.


    Despite my better judgment, I traced the trajectories.


    There she was: the Silverhonor Alternate, casually just levitating in the air. She was more “decayed” than Seraph was. Bright colors peeled off her skin like wet wallpaper. The colors flashed every second, incomprehensible and difficult to stare at for long. The abnormality encompassed her whole body, making her appear like a texture error in a game. Most notably, tears poured down her cheeks in paradoxically bright and dim colors, yet her eyes were solid whites like pearls.


    We had no idea where the original one was. Same with our teammates.


    The Alternate pulled her arms as if nocking an imaginary bow, and right as I thought that, she created a magical bow more pixels than mana. Distorted, unstable. An arrow glitched into life between the frame and hands, first charged with white mana, then purple, and green, and blue, and finally gold. She released, and Archknell cursed.


    [Netherstrings] wove a thick wall, deflected the arrow, and it bounced off and ripped through a quarter-mile of forest a few meters to his left. Everything in its path was destroyed, alongside our eardrums.


    “—are they?!” Problem shouted next to me, and as you could tell, I only caught the last two words.


    Rei tapped our shoulders and pointed ahead. The other side of the battlefield, about a football field away from our position. There was a mangrove tree—or a similar species—with its roots spread low and wide across the broken soil. Halfway up the tree was an ugly bulge like food caught in your throat. The tree was stripped bare of branches, being just a thick leg of wood. Sickly pink and green splotches ran up and down the trunk. In the little cove it''d created for itself was another array of bright crystals, and among them just barely, I saw a small twitching hand poking from the hard rock.


    Archknell had said he''d found Lyressa trapped in a crystal, and that was stuck inside a hollow tree.


    Holy shit—


    Wind swept my legs. Crashed onto my back, fragmented crystal shards poking through my [Suit] like broken glass. Couldn’t tell what happened but Archknell was suddenly in the air, and with him, Silverhonor had ten magical bows summoned behind her.


    The bows let loose.


    [Signature Trigger: Arcane & Crystal]


    Just in time, Problem’s [Arcane & Crystal] jointly-formed a defensive barrier of purple and red, a complex-looking magic circle swirling within.


    The high-rankers struck before I could see what was happening up there. Felt it, though. We all did. The wind was harsher than the last bout, spewing around the barrier’s edges with the force of a waterfall. I dropped my weight and held Rei close so he wouldn''t get blasted back to Japan. Problem audibly groaned and forced his dual-staffs forward, then dirt and sparkles rained from above. We bathed in the stuff. Drowned in it. Our clothes grew twice as heavier, our lungs inhaling more of the toxic shit. I kept our heads down as best as I could.


    It felt like an eternity, but eventually the aftershocks subsided.


    This is what a fight between high-rankers looks like. Silverhonor, our SH, was an A-Rank. The Alternate? She was going toe-to-toe with an SS-Rank Slayer, which meant she was in his weight class.


    Not good. We were caught on the fringes, and the collateral damage from their attacks were enough to kill us ten times over.


    Blinking the dirt out of my stinging eyes, I found Problem and Rei looking back at me. We all knew: we should not involve ourselves.


    Problem looked back toward the strange tree. “It’s now or never, Conqueror! Rei, find a safe spot and stay put!”


    Rei coughed, wiping his eyes. “O-Okay! I-I understand!”


    Problem patted my back with one of his staffs. “On you!”Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    I gritted my teeth, chomping through hard gravel and crystal. Mana swelled inside my core, and I sent it straight at my feet.


    [Skill Activation: Mana Impact]


    My body didn’t agree with my decision. It ached, and as soon as I landed my first bunny-hop, the bones in my legs teased a break—don''t you give up on me yet. I had room to spare. The pain simply told me how many miles I had left in the tank. I launched myself forward, leaving behind a thick trail of dirt. My boots cracked and crunched the crystal-seeded soil, and death whispered in my left ear. Explosions, impacts, yelling and cursing, trees ripped from their roots and tremors banging the earth.


    The big-ass tree wasn’t so far when I was standing on the outskirts, but now when I was making the journey, the distance was the length of China.


    I caught something on the corner of my eyes: an eighteen-wheeler in the form of a pinkish-green crystal flying toward me. I gasped, tried stepping away but a tremor fucked my balance. My feet scraped on the ground and barely I regained my footing before hopping away. The crystal landed with a monstrous thud, and once again, I was on the ground. A moment sooner and one of my legs would’ve been crushed.


    “Take cover!” Problem shouted above me.


    I rolled until my elbow painfully smashed against the same crystal. The bad thing about this enviro was the lack of shadows, so imagine my surprise when the whole world began falling around me. Crystal splinters showered my position, many of them cracking against my new home and making piano-sounds. The earth shook some more, and half a tree-trunk dramatically landed a few feet away from me, sticking out from the soft ground like bone from skin.


    [Arcane & Crystal] fired off magic blasts, hit multiple somethings, and more debris rained.


    I coughed, punched my chest to expel detritus.


    “Go!” Problem exclaimed.


    My feet were already moving before my head did.


    My curiosity got the better of me. Archknell was completely enveloped by [Netherstrings], no different than armor like my [Yuzhou], but he resembled a twisted dark knight with elongated limbs and claws instead of fingers. [Strings] flapped from his shoulders like tassels. Silverhonor had surrounded herself in a shimmering barrier, and raised a hand toward the “sky.”


    An arrow soared and bloomed into golden rain.


    It encompassed a wide area.


    “Motherfucker—!” I couldn’t help but scream as I went faster than a sprint.


    The first droplet landed a few meters ahead of me, kicked up a pillar of dirt as if a mortar had hit. The next blew up the remains of a fallen crystal and covered me in a disgusting amount of glitter. I leapt over a destroyed deposit just as Silverhonor blessed me by hitting that exact spot a few breaths afterwards. The explosion threw me off my feet, I did a couple gymnastic flips and completely fucked the landing and banged up my side. Nothing felt broken, just my morale—


    A light shimmered in front of me.


    An [Arcane] barrier deflected a droplet, and it ricocheted toward the tree-line and casually chopped down a couple trees.


    I clawed to my feet, crawling then breaking into a run again—


    A young child cried. An explosion hitting the top of a lucky (now not-so-lucky) tower of green crystal. Across the top of my vision, a smoking black tarp was gliding toward the ground like an airplane without a pilot.


    [Mana Impact]


    My brain had already calculated it. The distance, the lead, the amount of power needed, and I joined Problem in the air. My math wasn’t perfect. I was a little too powerful and I underestimated the speed of his descent, but it was close enough.


    I nabbed him by the arm and pulled him into my chest, and let my back face the ground.


    That was a mistake.


    Ended up landing not on soft dirt but cracking my spine against a hard bed of stone. I howled, feeling spikes stab throughout my back, and we bounced off and landed unflatteringly on solid turf. My legs went jelly for a second, and a foot away, Problem didn’t fare any better either. He tried standing but collapsed into a crumpled, dirty blanket, groaning.


    For someone like him, his body couldn’t take much punishment.


    “I got you—fuck—come on, Problem.” Somehow, either through sheer spite or suicidal ideation, I stood and helped my savior up. I carried him with one arm, dragging both of our beaten bodies toward the sacred tree.


    We made it.


    I walked as fast as my shitty legs let me, then I threw Problem inside the cove first. Stumbling with him, I prized a thick bunch of roots and caught my breath. Battle raged outside, but Archknell knew to divert Silverhonor away from the tree. We’d be safe here; that was the hope.


    “C-Conqueror…” Problem grabbed some of the roots too, looking around at the crystals tucked underneath. “There… Right there…”


    He pointed at two human-sized crystals laying on the ground, unsupported. Freakily, they had living, breathing people inside like a prehistoric mosquito trapped in amber. Empress''s and Firebrand''s last expressions were immortalized, that of understandable terror, but they were too slow to avoid what was coming. What a way to get incapped.


    Time to get them out.


    I limped over and rested against Empress’s prison first. “Wake up.” I clenched my fist, channeling it with mana. “Dumbass.”


    My five bruised and battered knuckles cracked it open. As soon as her skin was exposed to the warm air, she started violently choking. No oxygen. Another punch freed her head, and I physically ripped the rest with my two shaking hands. When enough of her body was exposed, I pulled and laid her on the ground where she could recover.


    Sharp thwacking got my attention. Problem was using [Arcane] like a hammer, laying spiderweb fractures over FB’s prison, trying to avoid his hand that was sticking out. I hobbled over and did the same thing: break it open and rescue our firestarter.


    Our Angels were back to the realm of the living, having experienced what SH had when she was first rescued by Archknell, and they didn’t enjoy it.


    “God—!” Empress punched her chest several times, barely having the strength to sit up. “What happened?”


    “That’s, ugh…” Firebrand tried to stand but fell back down onto the crystal he’d been trapped in. “Fuck… What happened…? Can we port?”


    After he said that, a silver laser cut about ten feet from our hidey-hole and pounded the ground into oblivion.


    "No," I told everyone.


    “A-Alex…” Empress painfully moaned, one hand on the ground. “Lyressa… She’s trapped too.”


    “Where?”


    She pointed at the roof of our cove, which was just wood as far as I could tell. “I-Inside the tree.”


    Yeah, expected as much. The bulge we''d seen earlier housed Silverhonor''s crystal. Christ. The Mother had a twisted sense of humor. First, Seraph believed her husband was dead; next, Zhu Xinyue actually murdered her son; now, we were reenacting Archknell''s voyage into the Crystal Forest. Bigger problems: how was I going to break through the wood? Should I chop a hole underneath—? No, I didn’t know SH’s state. Any wrong move and she’d be in pieces, me with her.


    “There’s—” Firebrand hacked his guts out, “—t-there’s a hole up at the top of the tree. I don’t think I can climb it…”


    A distant explosion was an unnecessary reminder of what laid outside.


    Problem shook his head. “Conqueror—”


    I sighed and put a hand on my hip. “Alright. Wait here for me.”


    Pushing through the multiple sclerosis I''d just developed, I ventured outside and got a better look at the tree. Looks a lot bigger down here, probably the height of a five-story building. I''d have to scale that distance with no harness. Shit.


    Regardless of my feelings, the job needs doing.


    [Technique Dagger, Chain Gauntlets]


    [Daggers] were attached to [Chains].


    I bounced off the tree-roots, using them as stools to reach the main trunk. My [Daggers] surprisingly sunk into the wood without much force, which gave me slightly more confidence that I could pull this off. In my short yet "thrilling" life, I had many experiences but rock-climbing (or tree-climbing in this face) was not one of them. This was as new to me as the Slayer thing.


    As I hung there contemplating my next move, my position offered a perfect vista of the ongoing fight. They''d moved away from the clearing and into a nearby section of forest. Our fighters were on the ground surrounded by smoking, flattened ruins. Neither side had caved in yet, but one of them was human and the other was a breacher. Humans, despite their dramatics, were limited by pesky things like stamina, energy, and blood. Archknell was running low on all of them.


    He still donned his mummy-wraps, but blood poured through the individual strands and soaked the [Strings]. Being hunched over like that? Damn, he looked like a mad berserker who''d somehow gone more insane. Silverhonor, meanwhile, had her pearl eyes discolored red and black. Visible holes and gashes adorned her figure. She didn’t bleed blood but bled something else, I couldn’t tell what it was exactly. A blackish-blue glitter of sorts.


    Archknell unraveled more [Strings], and they wove a rough, bloody warhammer and shield. The hammer came down and strongly clanged against an invisible barrier, shimmering from the impact, and that’s all I was willing to see.


    Had to keep moving. One meter at a time. One foot at a time. One centimeter.


    I climbed over the bulge that likely housed SH. Despite the soft wood, it was getting difficult to penetrate the [Daggers] deep enough. My forearms were burning; how long could I keep this up? A part of me thought to speed things up and start jumping between holds, but with my strength and experience, I couldn’t.


    I couldn’t risk it—


    Another explosion and gust of wind.


    My legs were immediately snatched from the tree, forcing me perfectly parallel to the ground. I embarrassingly shrieked as my grip on my [Daggers] began slipping—then it happened. Good thing I thought ahead. Because I’d attached them to [Chain Gauntlets], I was still hanging onto the tree only because I had driven the [Daggers] deep in the wood.


    At least, that’s what I thought until one of the [Daggers] slid free and threw my left arm back.


    That time, I almost pissed myself.


    After a few seconds, the wind showed me mercy and I slammed into the tree. Yeah, that hurt. My right arm was hanging there, and a single [Dagger] was holding my weight.


    Not wanting to test my luck further, I got back to climbing, using the pain as motivation to end this rescue mission as soon as possible. My morbid curiosity wanted to see what had caused the wind, but my sanity wouldn’t handle the knowledge.


    Just focus. All I had to do was keep climbing to the top. Closer and closer, ignore what your arms were telling you. They might fall off, but we could always reattach them later. Your heart was beating from fear and exhaustion, but this was far from the worst you’d seen and felt.


    A gust stung my open wounds. My hands were clammy and grainy and numb, but I saw the most handsome sight: the top of this damned tree. A second wind rejuvenated me, and when my hands gripped the ledge, I was manically laughing.


    I pulled myself up and nearly took a twenty-ish foot drop. Catching myself at the edge, I looked down. A crooked hole led straight to the bulge, and inside was a pastel-pink crystal in the shape of a bumpy, irregular egg. Barely, through the clouded rock, an elven woman was nestled in the fetal position but her expression wasn’t at peace. It was tortured.


    Losing your memories would do that to you. Waking up in a foreign world, a stranger to its inhabitants and worse, to yourself. You only knew your own name, forced to trust your own dulled wits. It was a good thing that you found Archknell, someone who gave a shit about morals and basic decency. He gave you a home, a place to belong, and foundation so you may finally uncover your own secrets.


    I was just one bystander watching you sift through the sand. Wish we didn’t have to meet again like this, but…


    “Time to wake up, Silverhonor.” I hopped down, dragging my [Daggers] down the inner-walls to slow my descent.


    Then, after I was close enough, I let myself fall the rest of the way.


    At the bottom of the long drop, I clenched my fist and threw it forward.