Not-Ursula impatiently stares at me every moment that I don't reach out and put my hand on the panel. All the gears are turning in my head; linked together by experiences and a few assumptions to come to a clattering conclusion. Yet there's still one thing missing; the initial power to set the machine in motion.

Because this is the Quest, capital Q, standing before us. But I can't make any assumptions anymore. I need clarity before I go making any moves that could seriously hurt anyone. The quest is still working with the system; it standing right here doesn't change that fact.

I raise my hand halfway to the panel. "You're the quest. The same thing that welcomed me when we first came here three months ago."

Not-Urusla nods. "That's right; glad I don't have to explain that to you. Probably wondering why I'm right here instead of licking the system's boots, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Obviously," I say seriously. "When the hell did you start helping me?"

"When? Hm…" not-Ursula the Quest taps her chin thoughtfully. "Gotta think about that. Maybe it's when the system stepped in and started forcing me to break rules left and right. Did you know that's only possible because I'm a physical manifestation of a quest? Anything that's just system information can't be altered once it's set in place. But lucky me… I get to be a goddamn patsy."

Bitterness imbues every single one of the Quest's words. I'd just assumed the system was breaking the rules… because it could. That it used Click's departure to unfairly tilt the odds in the horizonguard's favor. Apparently not. It's an oddly… reassuring fact.

I shift a little closer. The Quest leans in with anticipation. "No, not yet. If the system is blatantly cheating, why didn't you do anything? The horizonguard is still going to clear this quest. Just shut it down for a few hours so we can go murder him."

The Quest snorts. "Would if I could, sister. When it's really down to it, I can't disobey the system. If it showed up right now and told me to murder all of you, I couldn't resist. Well I sort of could, since Quest involvement is still too against the rules, but you get the idea; the system's the boss. I'm just a disgruntled employee in charge of a very important project."

"In charge?" Slice balls her fists. "You were in charge of this place? All that time ago?!"

"Whoah, whoah there. No, no, you've got that all wrong. Me?" the Quest taps its chest for emphasis. "I'm a Quest. Naturally formed by the system's attempts to refurbish this place after the disaster did a number on it. Which, great job by the way; going through the database and reading everything you did was an absolute joy."

I furrow my brow and point at myself. The Quest shakes its head and nods at Jumble instead.

"She's the hero here. Though you'd be hard pressed to find a lot of paindne who thought the same way back then," the Quest chuckles morbidly. "But you heretics… you saw the truth. Even if you were repurposed and turned into something new, the system couldn't kill everything. Who would've thought that all you needed was some Shellraiser synapses to get you thinking for yourself again?"

Click softly raises a hand to its head. The liquid construct roils with emotion, clearly disturbed by the implication. Slicie, however, doesn't seem surprised at all. If anything, she looks like she just had a theory proven exactly right.

"So we're hybrids. Not heretics," she says with absolute certainty. "Just like our new boss here."

All eyes suddenly fall on me. This new info isn't exactly surprising, considering what the heretic in the dark revealed to me, but it is a little disturbing; the system blatantly succeeded. If it had just been a little gentler… it would've had an army of shellraisers all its own. Instead, all it has are the impostor constructs who don't have an ounce of shellraiser in them. I raise a hand to my neck, not to scratch, but to feel at the wound. The wound that's completely healed.

I… wait. Jumble? I turn and look deep into her eyes. In them, I see belief in me. Not fanatical, like the liquid construct, but the kind that comes from a really good friend. Yeah. That's definitely what it is; not in denial about anything right now. Her expression shifts when I keep staring, and realization dawns on her a moment later. She purses her lips, shifts her attention to Slice, and takes a deep breath through her nose to prepare herself.

"Yes. I was partially responsible for the… thing… that permanently phased the city out. At least I thought it was permanent," she sighs and shakes her head. "But things can change in hundreds of years, I guess. Heck, I'm not even sure I could do the exact same things and get the same result for a second time."

"Ah-hem," the Quest clears its throat to get our attention. "Everyone listening? Good. I'm removing all quest-based censorship starting now. Get everything you want out into the open, then go and get at killing me. Destroying the quest. You know what I mean."

Jumble softly presses her teeth together. "It's all gone? All of it?"

The Quest nods. "The disaster was caused by a few heretics working with a blatantly overpowered Worth class that the system repeatedly tried to murder with no success. There. Proof enough?"

A strangled noise gurgles from Jumble's throat. "Um, yes, that's plenty of proof. Please don't say any more."

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"Alright; it's your story, anyway. I just read it in the archives," the Quest shrugs, then gestures insistently at the panel. Still looks like blinding light to me, though. "Anyone else remember you're on a time limit?"

Right, shit. I shove all my other thoughts deep down, including a whole lot of newfound curiosity at exactly what happened to the city the first time, and press my hand to the blinding light. Something cool and glassy meets my palm with a ping of magical sound. A surge of clicks and pings ring out from the panel as I feel… something… prickling at my mind.

It's coming from my earrings. They chime out in perfect resonance to the magic from the panel, linking me to the… thing. Information flutters through the air in physical form; tiny hexagonal creations that look like very primitive butterflies. I catch one on the edge of my vision. Absolutely nothing happens. I reach up with my free hand to brush against one.

Silky softness meets my skin, though it feels… dusty. Untouched. Nothing sears through my skin to implant knowledge in my brain. No new information suddenly bursts into being. Aside from the strange prickling, it almost feels like nothing's happening at all.

I peel my hand away and shake it out. "Quest? What is this?"

Silence. I look inward to gauge Pearl's reaction… but she's completely quiet, too. I turn to Jumble–same thing there. Stunned, blank-staring silence. What the hell is happening?

"Slice? Click?" I ask, unease raising my voice half an octave.

No answer from them, either. Shit, this can't be good. The quest must've duped us somehow. I need to relocate out of here before the system shows up. My coins are heavy against my mind as I summon them to my hand. The connection to my relocation in Gil's store burns hot and small, like a magnifying glass searing a hole in a newspaper. Something about it all just feels… off.

I look up at the Quest. Everyone but me is frozen in place; chests still rising and falling with breath, though, so this isn't the same thing that happened in the hoard. Can't make out any identifying features, since they're all still shadowed under the hyperintense light. Except for Pearl. She's still visible inside her shell.

"Pearl," I hiss desperately. "C'mon, talk to me. What's going on?"

The Quest turns lazily to me. "You can't tell?"

"I… of course not! Look at everyone! This isn't right!" I exclaim with a wild gesture at everything. "You brought us here, claimed you want to help us, and now everyone but me is frozen! I don't have time for this!"

A calculating glance from the Quest looks me up and down. "You're immune. Is that because you're human?"

"Immune?!"

"You don't have to yell," the Quest tuts. "Yes, you are immune to the deluge of information that's crashing into your friends' heads right now. Information that I plucked from their brains to make the quest more 'fair'. The time for fairness is over, though, so I figured they should have it back. It's only fair."

The Quest chuckles to itself and shifts to face me fully. Ursula's form starts to bleed away, revealing… something. A mass of something that doesn't seem right. Light bleeds away as the mass takes shape, bringing colours and depth back into the world. Everything around us slowly reveals itself.

Rows and rows of construct-grey rectangular slabs five times my height. Each set with thousands of blinking multicoloured lights that seem to have… something behind them. I rub my eyes as the light focuses into a single thing; whatever's right in front of me. Everything else in the room is just grey, grey, and more grey.

"Shelby. Look at me," the Quest's voice emerges from the luminescent stain. "See me for what I really am."

I blink away spots. But I don't need to. My awareness can already feel the thing in front of me. Or, rather, the mass of things, connected to a central pillar that stretches far into the ceiling and down into the ground below. Strange magical liquid bubbles inside thousands upon thousands of pods exactly like the ones Jumble and I found in the apartment.

My awareness catches on engravings behind the closest pod. They're almost nothing; a cataloguing afterthought for replacement purposes, if I had to guess. But the context stabs my gut with utter disgust at the system.

"Magical generator and storage node 11; paindne heretic," I read aloud.

One singular broken tank out of thousands. I turn to look at Click, who stares at the shattered containment with an expression like it'd just been shot in the heart.

"That's where I was," it says quietly. "Before all of this happened. I remember now."

The Quest laughs, but it's a sympathetic thing. "Of course you can't remember. I needed somewhere to slot in to actually run this thing, and I needed something else to oversee all the trial subquests. It sort of broke you to take you out of here, but Shelby fixed you right up–at the cost of giving the system a perfect entry point."

Slowly, all the paindne corpses floating in the still-filled shift their focus to me. Long-dead empty eyes crack open in different states of disrepair, all locked on me with a single-minded desire. The Quest's influence fills the room with an almost malicious edge.

"Well, here I am," all the corpses speak in unison. "A natural quest manifested from the desires of the long-abandoned, restless paindne trapped here. Jumble? Can you do it again?"

Jumble flinches at being addressed. Her eyes refocus, tears welling at their corners, and she silently nods. The Quest laughs once again, and my Class Card pings in response.

"Then go do it. If you can, I'll give you the one secret the system reluctantly shared with me so this quest could get underway."

I reach for my Class Card. The world shifts once more, blinding light burning away the scenery to make way for something new; a door. Right between me and the quest. I look up at one of the corpses. It still feels like the quest isn't telling me somethig… but I don't have time to wonder about that right now. I pinch my Class Card between my fingers and step through the doorway.

Enough footsteps follow me for everyone. Soft conversation starts up as the door closes behind us, dropping us in some random stretch of hallway that looks like every other stretch of hallway. Jumble grabs her book and immediately turns to the page detailing Dani and Rina's ongoings. Which leaves me a moment to see what the Quest sent me.

A simple reQuest.

I know how I came across… but I don't want to die.

There has to be some way to free everyone from the city.

If you can find a way to do that… well… look under the three dots for my offer.

No hard feelings if you can't; I'd much rather be dead than the system's torture tool.

…

Reward: complete and utter ownership of all false-shellraiser infrastructure in the city.

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