We returned to Perseverance's End, despite our shared hate of that place. There, we collected the daily money from Ted, stocked up on supplies, and got out as soon as possible. The tide meter was swinging a bit, but nothing too wild according to Vandril, whom we met at the guild while looking for suitable jobs to take while we were out.
One of them looked pretty interesting. An apothecary—who also coincidentally happened to be the apprentice of the guy we bought our healing potions from—needed some supplies from a source very close to where Vespera had found the strange ball of floating chaos-slash-demonic magic that led us to the underground cave system. We hadn't found anything but a messy fight in there, but there was no way we were going to stay away from it for long.
There was a mystery waiting for us, but before we could go and explore the depths and fight the Skitterpedes, I needed a weapon.
"Did you make up your mind about what sort of sword you wanna get?" Vespera asked as we scouted the patch of dark woods near the cliff.
We weren't going to go down the hole today, but still wanted to hang around the place in case anything weird happened. I mean, it happened once already, and this time we all wanted to be there.
"Something big and heavy, I think," I said. "To leverage my Strength, you know?"
It's not like I knew how to fight with a sword, but I hoped to make up for it by adopting a fighting style that didn't need me to. With sixty-plus strength, I was six times as strong as I would be without my stats, while my dexterity was just thirty percent higher. Still good, but not enough to make a spacer into a swordsman.
Meanwhile, the strength was enough that—if I managed to hit something with a heavy stick that also happened to be made of metal and sharp—it would probably die. And [Resonance Castling] would give me the perfect opening to strike.
"Makes sense," Vespera said. As she looked around for the mushrooms and flowers we needed to pick, her eyes kept returning to the hole in the ground in the middle of the dark glade near the rocks.
We had covered it with mossy stones and logs, but an expert would be able to tell it wasn't natural. Still, nobody seemed to venture over here, and by picking the only guild job in the area we made sure nobody else would have a reason to.
◈◈◈
"I think this is the last one we need," I said as I picked a strange red flower with yellow teardrop shaped patterns.
"Yep," Vespera said, double checking the list. "What now? Do we go back?"
"No," Elyra said. As we looked in her direction, she explained. "I think Sol might be on the verge of gaining a General level."
"How do you know?" I asked. "Can you feel it?"
"No," she admitted. "But unlike Class levels, General levels come from doing all sorts of normal activities."
"Right," I conceded. "And we have done quite a lot of stuff lately."
"Which means we should stock up on cores," Vespera said. "Heavens, growing our power really is a drain. I wanted to get cores and sell them so we could buy Sol a big-ass sword!"
"I can wait," I said.
"Can you?" she challenged.
I shrugged. "I mean, having a sword would be nice, but a new General Skill is nicer."
The woods we were in, however, were empty. They were dark and foreboding, but there were no monsters around. This meant either going back in the hole to fight Skitterpedes, or going back to our slime-hunting spot. After a little debate, we decided to go for the latter, since it was closer to the city. Not to mention much safer. Sure, we had healing potions to take care of any damage, and my new shiny skill, but potions were expensive. We were done buying cheap ones, after all, and this meant that each fight could potentially cost us dozens of silver coins.
"Now that I think about it," I mused as I watched the girls take on some slimes. "There aren't that many monsters roaming around in general."
Vespera dashed forward, sinking her claws into a rather large slime and shattering its core. "Save for the beast tides," she said after she caught her breath.
"That's true," I mused.
Beside me, Elyra was sniping the smaller slimes with her beam of light, trying to apply some modern knowledge to her magic but not having much luck with it.
"I think I am out of mana, Sol," she said as her shoulders sagged slightly. There was a bit of sweat on her face.
Meanwhile, the demon girl was dashing around like crazy, destroying entire fields of slimes. "I can still fight," she said as she rotated to another part of the woods. We trailed her, noticing how the slimes seemed to never run out.
"This world really is strange," I mused. "We must have killed three hundred slimes already."
"So much for not many monsters around, right spacer boy?"
I shook my head at the clear provocation.
Elyra nodded instead. "Actually, the slimes only spawn in certain specific spots. Take this glade, for instance. We have been here twice already, have we not? Each time, we depleted it of all the slimes, but each time we came back the slimes had also returned."
"Except they were a bit more numerous and a bit higher leveled," I finished. It was something we had all noticed, but so far none of the slimes had posed any threat to us.
Maybe they would have if they swarmed us, but they never did. Each one of them was content to just hop around while its brethren were being slaughtered by the dozen.
"I wonder what will happen if we keep killing them like this," the angel said, watching the demon methodically kill another dozen monsters, leaving behind their remains.
"I suppose they will keep spawning, getting stronger until they start to outpace us," I said, bending down and gathering the shattered cores.
They were covered in acidic goo, and it had gotten strong enough that I was the only one who could handle the cores for long without my skin blistering.
"You may be right, Sol," Elyra conceded. "We killed many, but gained no levels for it."
"Might be why nobody else is bothering with this," I added.
The angel didn't look convinced. "I think we might be missing something. Even that drunk asshole"—I blinked at that, not expecting her to use that word—"Buck claimed to have killed many monsters to gain levels before the last tide, and yet these slimes seem to be awful farming material. Even if we take into account our strange Class's reluctance at leveling up, it still does not add up. Where did he go to kill so many?"
I nodded, amused at the casual ease with which Elyra was beginning to use terms like farming material. But then again, what to me were outdated gaming mechanics from centuries ago, here were actual features of how the world worked.
"Not to mention," she continued. "This place should be the perfect spot for other low-leveled people from Perseverance's End to gain money and spare cores they might need down the line."
Vespera nodded as she straddled a slime and popped it, before vaulting away and landing close to us. "Right, it's not like you need a fancy class to kill the slimes. Even an accountant with a stick could do it."
"Or they could hire a guild worker to escort them," I said.
The demon shrugged. "Anyway. I'm done here, shall we move to another zone?"
"Sure. One more and then we go, okay?" I offered.
"Okay!" she said before waltzing away, seeking new kills.
"There's also another thing I'm wondering about," I told Elyra, continuing our conversation. "The slimes are getting stronger, so we could say that this spawn zone is increasing in level, right?"
"We could, yes," the angel said.
"What happens when we return, say, tomorrow? Or after a few days?"
"I suppose either it will have remained as it is, or it will have reset," she said.
I nodded. "If it resets, then that's fine. But if it doesn't…"
"…then that means that we really are the only ones farming the slimes." She paused, thinking. As she did, I gathered the last few cores and called Vespera over. "Perhaps it is because the shattered cores really do yield very little money and System energy compared to intact ones, and there are no easy ways to kill a slime without breaking the core. Nor does a slime have useful materials that could be gathered from its corpse."
That made me pause as I was struck by an idea. "Not normally, I said."
"Ooh, I like the look in your eyes," Vespera told me, her own eyes shining red.
I smiled. "Normal people don't have [Matter Reclamation]."
The demon giggled. "Yes! Let's gather all the goo and see what happens!"
She darted away, eager to try the new shiny thing.
"She seems to have forgotten—" Elyra began, only to pause when Vespera suddenly cursed.
"It stings! Sol, you do it!"
The angel laughed. "That."
I shook my head, amused, and went to work.
"We might be working with flawed assumptions," Elyra said as she and Vespera watched me work. "Although I admit I am curious as to what will happen, so feel free to proceed Sol."
It wasn't easy, nor was it clean. The slime goo lingered on the ground after the slimes died, but scooping it up with my bare hands and dumping it into a small hole in the dirt wasn't exactly glamorous. Nor did the goo cooperate much, slipping and sloshing and, should a tiny bit spill out from my cupped hands, it had the nasty habit of dragging all the other goo with it. Like a plastic polymer or something.
I sighed at the thought of plastic. If only I had been an engineer or nerd, there would have been so many ways I could have broken this world and its magic. But no, I was just a humble hauler with surface level knowledge of many things, and in-depth knowledge of nothing.
"Perhaps the tide resets everything?" I mused.
"It is worth checking," Elyra said.
"You're so smart, Sol," Vespera cooed.
I eyed her. Since I was elbow deep in slime goo, on all fours on the ground, it did not have the effect I wanted and she simply smiled at me as if to challenge my position. I just let her have her fun.
"She is right, you know?" Elyra said, surprising me. "I am very pleased that you can not only follow my arguments, but even contribute to them. Back when we were imprisoned, Vespera used to be an awful talking partner, joking and changing the subject all the time."
"The heavens you talking about?" Vespera said, elbowing her in the ribs. "We spent millennia in silence!"
"Not at first," the angel said. "Do you not remember?"
"No—wait, shit," the demon said, eyes going wide. "I do remember. Just vague impressions, but…"
"It is the same for me," the angel said. "But I distinctly remember you not wanting to entertain my arguments."
Vespera looked down. "I… couldn't follow them, Elyra."
Elyra didn't reply at first. She looked at the demon, noticing her downcast face. Through the bond, I felt her guilt. "Ah. I am… sorry, Vespera. I didn't mean to… I did not realize that you… were…"
"Stupid?" the demon finished for her.
"No!" the angel said quickly. "I would never consider you stupid. Not… now, at least. But in those memories… I treated you badly, didn't I?" she said in a low voice. "You are not stupid. You are quick on your feet, always know what to say, and are a very pleasant person to have around. Back then, I could not look past my preconceptions about your race. I talked about things I knew you knew nothing about, and acted as if it was your fault for being dim-witted. I am an awful person, Vespera. I'm sorry."
"Don't say that," I interjected. "What you did was awful, true, but you are not the same person anymore, are you?"
"It's okay," Vespera said, still not looking up.
"I…" the angel began. I turned around to see that she was crying. "I'm sorry Vespera. I can't believe I was so mean to you…"
"Hey, little angel," the demon began, wiping away the angel's tears. "It's alright. What Sol said is true. We are not the same people we were millennia ago."
Elyra shook her head, her wings trembling and wrapping around her. She sat on the ground, hugging her knees. "Vespera…" she began, voice cracking. "We are beginning to remember, don't you see? What if more and more memories return each time we level up?"
"I don't understand," the demon said. "Wouldn't that be a good thing? Don't you want to know your past?"
I put a hand on her shoulder, silencing her. Sitting down beside the angel, I took her hand. Vespera mirrored me silently.
"Hey," I said softly. "You are scared you will turn back into who you were before. What you saw in those memories…"
"Flashes," the angel said softly. "They were barely flashes and impressions. I do not even know what I said to hurt her, I just know that I did."
"Regardless," I said. "You didn't like what you saw, did you?"
"No…"
"That's enough, you know?" I said.
Shy brown eyes looked up at me through the pale living glass of her wings. They were full of unbridled hope, and confusion. "What do you mean? How can it be enough?" she asked.
"It's enough for me to say, with confidence, that you will not regress to the person you were before."
Vespera grabbed her other hand. "I agree with our favorite spacer boy, little cat. I know for a fact that you won't become a person I would ever be capable of hating. I just know it."
"What if I change?" the angel asked.
"We all change," I told her.
"That we do," the demon confirmed. "And we will. Together. You're our little trash panda cat angel, and that'll never change."
Elyra laughed, still sniffling, but there was a smile on her face. "Thank you," she said quietly. "Both of you. I do not want to lose you."
"You won't," I said.
"Heavens know you won't," Vespera said.