The sounds at her window were starting to irritate Lexie. She was trying to nap and had been trying for the past thirty minutes, but the incessant tapping of whatever bird was outside her window kept interrupting her. It was almost mocking, because right as she was on the precipice of sleep, it would tap again. Then, Lexie realized the taps were too coordinated to be a bird.

She slowly opened her eyes right as another one bounced off her window. It looked like a rock. Lexie frowned and got out of bed, walking slowly to the window. She opened it and looked down at the familiar boy on the grass.

"Are you throwing stones at my window?" she asked him.

Tate gave her a crooked smile. "Yeah?"

"You couldn't just, I don't know, ring the doorbell?"

He gave the door a single glance before looking back up with a shrug. "This way seemed more fun."

Lexie shook her head. Why were all the kids she knew so weird? They all had a penchant for windows and hated doors.

Lexie put on her slippers and went outside. It was sunset, a gentle breeze rustling over the grass. Her dad wasn't home, having gone to the Healing House to help Emma with a potion. He told her he would be back before dark, which meant he would be back soon.

Hopefully, he wouldn't see her with Tate and bring up Wisteria Calmpotter and Victor Valdam again. She couldn't take any more of their love story.

When she went outside, Tate was sitting on the grass, facing the suns. Lexie dropped to sit beside him, drawing up her legs and wrapping them around herself as she stared up at him.

"So," he said. "That was one hell of a fight."

Lexie sighed. "Yeah."

"Were those the cards you made in the dungeon?"

"Some of them, yeah," Lexie said. She let go of her legs to plant her fingers on the grass, squeezing the soft, wet surface. These were Limpwheat weeds. She didn't know how she knew that, but the fact whispered in her mind. She suspected that her memories as Lexie Sparrowfoot were returning, which is why some things started to feel more familiar to her.

The thought of that both worried and excited her. She would like to know what she'd been up to for the past eleven years, but would the cycle happen again? Would she lose her memories all over again?

Hopefully not, if Naem was to be believed.

"Conrad said you didn't want to continue with the AFC," Tate commented.

"Yeah. I don't think cards are meant for combat, at least not the way I used them. I think I messed up somewhere, and that's why Diana got hurt." Lexie belatedly wondered if making the cards in Eldritch territory had contributed to the spread of her Eldritch essence. Aiden thought that might be a possibility, which meant no more crafting cards in dungeons. On one hand, Lexie knew that was probably the right thing to do.

On the other hand, she felt a little depressed and resentful about giving it up.

After receiving free rein to make amazing cards without system limitations, now she was back to the basics, making frustratingly ineffective cards.

But it was probably for the best. She didn't want to get more Eldritch after all. At least that was what she reminded herself whenever the temptation arose. For now, she would refocus on studying cards instead and using loopholes for her research.

Aiden had told her about a deck, the Prankster's Deck, which had more to it than met the eye. It was also highly customizable, and he thought that with enough tweaking and working, she could make it work for self-defense and experimental needs. Maybe she would affix that as her Starter Deck.

Aiden was also back to teaching her Fae intent, and Lexie was back to struggling with it.

Once again, depressing but probably for the best.

In the meantime, Naem said he had to go back to Planet Fae, but he would be back soon enough when Aiden figured out what they were going to do about Lexie's essence. He gave Lexie a meaningful look before he departed. It made her think of his offer to teach her to control her Eldritch powers.

She might have considered it, if not for the gradually turning into a malevolent creature part. Using Eldritch mana would make her more Eldritch, and probably turn her into some kind of ghoul or vengeful beast. Or maybe she would be deadpan and scheming like Naem. Probably the former though. It was no coincidence that her Eldritch mana had been activated under extreme duress, spurred from anger and pure hatred. Maybe that was what she would be as an Eldritch.

She didn't want to feel like that all the time, especially when she was using magic. It made it too easy for her to lose control.

Maybe that's part of what he'll teach you. To retain control.

Or maybe that's my power hungry Eldritch side talking.

Whatever. She might ask Naem when he came back. Maybe.

"How long have you been here on Earth 9?" Lexie asked Tate. He glanced at her in surprise. "I used to think it was only for a year, but I'm guessing it's much longer."

Tate hesitated before he admitted, "Well, I've been here my whole life. I was reborn here."

"So like a baby?"

He nodded.

Lexie mused on it. That meant other Chosen were literally reincarnated into this world rather than transmigrated as Lexie had been.

"Did you get the Welcome Manual too? Or just the guide?"

Tate frowned. "I don't know if I can say–"

"I think you can tell me things about the ISTS." She cut him off."I'm pretty sure I'm not technically part of the Chosen program."

"What?"

"I told my dad everything," she admitted, and mild panic flew into Tate's gaze. "Not about you, though, just about me. And nothing happened. I didn't get my soul terminated, didn't get so much as an alert from the ISTS. I take that to mean I'm not officially part of the program even though I have some of the features."

Tate stared at her in surprise for some time. He suddenly exhaled. "You know, I thought that might be the case."

It was Lexie's turn to be surprised."You did?"

He nodded.

"How come?"

"I suspected it when I kept running into you," he said. "You see the way things are set up, it's not just that we're told not to meet. We're not supposed to be able to meet. The program specifically tries its best to keep Chosen individuals away from other Chosen, and forces should have prevented us from meeting, even without us knowing. But I ran into you pretty easily, twice in fact. That was weird. Add to the fact that you don't have a guide, and well, I figured something was going on with you. I'm guessing your dad did something?"

That was a very good guess.

"Something like that." That was all Lexie was willing to admit. "Wait, so you knew I wasn't a real Chosen? Which means that you could have given me more information this whole time, but you didn't?"

He gave her a guilty smile.

"It's not like I knew exactly," he said, "I just suspected, and my guide still didn't want me to tell you anything, even if I wouldn't get my soul terminated. There might be unforeseen consequences of you having that knowledge, because you're not a known variable. You're more of a wild card than any other Chosen. That makes you kind of dangerous."

Lexie blinked. Dangerous as in, they would want to eliminate her, or dangerous as in they would want to observe her to see how much she'd increased their margin of error?

"Am I in trouble?" she asked Tate.

He stared at her. "I don't think so. Not to my knowledge, at least. As long as you stay out of their way and don't know too much, you'll be good."

Lexie shook her head. "I don't understand. If they don't want me to know too much, then why did they give me the welcome manual in the first place? Why did I get my cell phone? Why not just leave me in the dark?"

"I don't know. It might already be a built-in mechanism that you triggered somehow. When you're reborn in this world, you're given one item from your past life to keep, mostly as a memento, although some of it can be useful."

"How do they select what item we get to keep?"

"I don't know that either."

Lexie blew out a frustrated breath. Even with so many reveals, there were still a lot of secrets she didn't know.

"So that's why you were keeping secrets?" she asked. "To protect me?"

"No," he answered swiftly with a grin. "It's nice that you think I'm that noble, but I'm not. I didn't tell you everything because, on a selfish level, I still needed a bargaining chip for you to help me out with the dungeons, remember?"

"I see," she said. Then she punched him in the shoulder, hard enough for him to flinch.

"Ouch."

"You deserved it. And worse."

He sighed. "I do. In my defense, I never said I was a good person."

"I'll remember that," Lexie said. "So then, tell me. What is the program about?"

"You sure you wanna risk knowing?"

She thought about it and nodded. "I want to know what I'm up against." As annoyed as she was at him, he was the only one who could tell her.

He rubbed his shoulder, contemplating. "As far as I can tell, the people of this dimension pluck chosen souls from different dimensions and slot them into this world. Don't ask me how a soul gets chosen because I don't know. We get one artifact from our old world when the program activates, and if we don't participate, we lose all memories of our past life and get to live as normal. If we do participate, we have to win."

Lexie wondered if that was linked to her memory loss. "Win what?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'll tell you when I get there."

She sighed. "You could have dropped more hints, you know."

"I was planning to, after we raided one last dungeon."

He gave her a hopeful look, and she shook her head.

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"My dungeon days are over," she told him. As tempting as it was, she couldn't risk it right now.

He looked disappointed, but he accepted it with a nod. "I figured as much. But I have to say I truly don't get why you're upset over some little love taps."

"Love taps? I traumatized that girl."

Tate made a face. "Please. She had it coming. I read her lips."

Lexie shook her head. "Still."

"But I get it. I'm gonna miss you, dungeon buddy."

Despite Tate's decision to keep secrets from her, she had to admit that she would miss going on raids with him, too. "I'll miss you too."

***

Lexie thought she might have figured out exactly how to fix Urmas' problem.

She had been on it for a few days now, mostly as a distraction, but also to prove something to herself.

Maybe to prove that she didn't need dungeon-made cards to make a difference in this world.

Or to see if doing good things for people made the Eldritch part of her recede.

At this point, she was almost scared of using magic, even though her father assured her that it would be fine to use her other cards. She wouldn't go to any dungeons either and hoped that Tate was faring well without her.

She mostly decided to focus on her scholarly side for now. She read medical textbooks and consulted medical forums where she asked questions about the causes of mana instability when interacting with a prosthetic. One reason was a longstanding infection, which would cause the prosthetic to glitch randomly but frequently. Another reason was just mana congestion and bottlenecking caused by pathway interruption. This usually occurred when the pathway was placed under stress.

Lexie thought it might be the latter, considering it only acted up when Urmas was approaching fatigue and when his mana had been most active. Infection might also have played a role.

The next step was figuring out how to fix it.

She couldn't unaffix the mana in his leg without a healer, but she thought she could weaken their activity by attempting to siphon mana from his legs into a card. It didn't matter what the card did, only that it had to be active for as long as possible, and it had to specifically siphon mana from the pathways in his leg.

Affixed mana still behaved in many ways like free mana. When one activated a card or spell, the magic would automatically call to all the mana in the target pathway, whether free or affixed. Affixed mana would not be able to leave its position, but free mana would. If there wasn't enough free mana to fill out the card pathways, the card wouldn't activate.

That was what gave Lexie her direction and her purpose.

The catch here was that there was probably some free mana left in Urmas' body.

When affixing free mana to physical attributes (non-system affixation that is), it was a given that only 90% would be affixed, leaving 10% unaffixed, just due to the margin of error. Usually, that 10% leftover mana wasn't enough to do anything with. But, with a B-Rank mana user, which is what Urmas was, that 10% just might be enough.

What Lexie wanted to do was create an extremely weak card that took almost nothing to activate, and activated on a sliding scale. What that meant was that it would activate in increments, and it would only use as much mana as was available. It would draw out Urmas' 10% free mana in his legs, and once the free mana was used up, it would go for the affixed mana. Of course, it wouldn't be able to use that mana, but since the card wouldn't deactivate, the affixed mana would be caught in that pull, and fighting the pull would drain them of energy, keeping them still. This meant they wouldn't have the energy to revolt against Urmas' prosthetic, thereby stopping the glitching.

Another good thing about it was that, since the card was so weak and required so little mana, Lexie could bump up the active time to almost five minutes.

Lexie thought this might be her first medical breakthrough, and might lend to her research on making cards for mundanes. But she needed to see if it worked first.

To craft it, she reworked the very first card she'd ever made during the summer, the balance card, tweaking it with some of the knowledge she had now. She made sure it was specific to improving his leg balance, and activation drew the mana from his legs specifically. She also wanted to add a loop function whereby the card would automatically loop every five minutes so that Urmas wouldn't have to worry about continuously activating it, but that might have to come later since that mechanism would be a bit more complicated.

A few days later, she was done.

Now she just needed to see if it worked. Which meant she had to speak to Urmas.

It took Lexie a couple more days to go back to the dojo. She hadn't really left her house much for the last week and certainly hadn't gone to Arcadia either. She was nervous to do it, and the thought of going there and facing everything that had happened sort of gave her hives.

But, she didn't think Urmas would have time to meet up with her, what with training for his next match and such, so it was better for her to go to him.

Plus, she couldn't hide from them forever. She probably owed them all an apology.

She told her father where she was going, and he gave her his blessing, simply telling her to be careful. Luckily, it had gotten cold enough that no one batted an eyelash anymore when she wore a heavy sweater and a scarf that covered half her face. That was precisely how she showed up at the dojo, tentatively peeking into the parking lot in case there were people camped outside.

She knew there might be people there. Despite making a point not to watch any of her matches, it was too easy to find her name in the comment section of her teammate's matches, along with all the speculations that entailed.

Mr. Douglas was right about her becoming severely talked about, and Lexie had managed to find her name and her family under pretty much every comment section. There was talk of her being banned from the AFC, and while some people agreed with that verdict, a lot of people seemed to think that it was unfair. After all, she'd only reversed the skill Diana had used on her. The only problem was that she had boosted Diana's pain to unimaginable levels, and Lexie hadn't been able to stop it when she needed to. But fair was fair.

Most of them just really wanted to watch her fight again.

They were also those who had zoomed into the video to count exactly how many cards Lexie had used and wondered how a C-Rank mage could use that many cards. Some thought she might be a silent spellcaster, and she was just using the cards to cover up. Lexie didn't mind that assumption so much. Maybe that would help her crime stay hidden.

What she hated was all the questions about her father and her mother. It reminded her of Diana screeching all those nasty things at her.

The comments made her feel like maybe she was overreacting a little? Then again, none of those commenters knew the truth. About her being partially Eldritch. About her losing control of her emotions. About the unsteadiness she'd felt.

They would probably feel differently if they did.

Even with that, Conrad had been asking Lexie to come over to the dojo and say goodbye in person. She figured she might as well do it now.

But as she stood there, staring at the door, she couldn't bring herself to open it.

No one else was in the parking lot, to her relief, so she took her time to calm herself.

She dragged in breaths to soothe her nerves. Calm down. The worst they can do is throw you out and tell you never to come back. That would hurt badly. She'd hate to see fear in the eyes of those she'd come to consider friends. She'd also hate for them to shun her and be scared of her the way she scared herself when she thought about Diana's contorted face.

The door pulled open suddenly, and Lexie jumped back. Boris' smiling face filled the doorway.

"We made a bet on how long you would stand here," he said. "And I was about to lose, so I came to get you myself."

"How did you even know I was here?"

"Conrad got security PHORBs around the place," he said. "People started coming over randomly and trying to break in, so he had to beef up security by a lot. Now it gives us regular alerts when someone is at the door."

"Oh." Lexie gripped her pants, her palms suddenly sweaty. She found it hard to meet Boris's gaze. "That…that might be my fault. I'm really sorry."

"Aw, you want to apologize, little birdie?" He bent and swooped her up, ignoring her protests and walking right in. "Guys, Lexie's here to apologize!"

Lexie was mortified. She ran her gaze around the dojo, spotting Jan and Shadow sparring, Cara talking to Lane and Ken, with Conrad adjusting Tate's stance as he did pushups. Everything looked so unchanged, so normal.

Conrad was the first one to look over, and he smiled at Lexie.

"Finally," he said. "You're here."

Lexie smiled nervously, successfully managing to get Boris to drop her.

The others started speaking at once. "Lexie!"

"Ha, I told you she would be back. You owe me thirty credits, Tate."

"Hey Lexie, can you show me that move you pulled? And lend me that card? Could use it for my next battle against Megador."

Lexie didn't answer any of the questions, because they all came flying at her all at once. Boris, though, shushed the group.

"Guys, Lexie's here to apologize."

They all looked confused. "For what?"

Boris turned to her for the answer. Lexie hated being put on the spot, and Boris smirked as he knew it.

"That's for not answering any of my texts," he whispered.

"I'm sorry for what I did during my last match," she said to the group. "I broke the rules and I used a card that I shouldn't have. I besmirched the reputation of this group, and sorry if you got increased scrutiny because of it."

"Increased scrutiny isn't a bad thing," Ken said first with a shrug. "It means more people are paying attention to us."

"Yeah," Lane concurred.

"Also, I don't think you thought that card would work like that, did you?" Cara said.

Lexie shook her head. "I just tried something new for the first time that day, and it didn't turn out how I expected."

Cara nodded. "Makes sense. I knew you wouldn't do that on purpose, even if my cousin is convinced your father taught you some kind of forbidden magical skill."

"My father had nothing to do with it," Lexie said emphatically. "He didn't even know I was making those cards. If he did, he would have asked me to stop."

"Are you really a C-Rank mage?" Shadow asked quietly. "A C-Rank mage shouldn't be able to make that card, not on your own. It's making me wonder just how powerful you really are."

Lexie felt her heart skip a beat at the scanning look he gave her. "I really am a C-Rank mage. They checked my system screen and everything to make sure."

"Ignore Shadow," Conrad said. "He's just salty that your fight overshadowed his. You didn't do anything wrong. And as to all the attention we're getting now, well, most of it's good. We even have an online team name now. You all are 'Conrad's CoolKids'."

"Except Boris, who is way too old to be called a kid."

Boris shot Jan the middle finger and said, "You're only two years younger than an asshole."

"Lexie," Conrad said, "You're free to hang around for as long as you'd like, but the rest of you need to get back to work."

"Um…actually, I wanted to talk to Urmas."

Urmas seemed surprised. He'd been quiet on the bench and only now spoke up. "Me?"

She nodded. "I think I have a card that can help you."

There was a hush in the atmosphere, and Lexie could almost see them thinking. Were they thinking about whether the card would be as dangerous as the one she'd used in the arena?

"It's not dangerous at all." She rushed to clarify. "It's not even powerful. It's a weaker balance card, but it should help with your specific problem."

Urmas' eyes flared with interest, and Lexie continued talking.

"The problem with your leg is that one or a few of your pathways got severed, which then blocked the mana flow in that area. There's some free mana and affixed mana bottlenecking there that has nothing better to do but attack your prosthetic, and when you're fighting, it gets even more agitated, causing the prosthetic to glitch. It's not a very common problem, so either your surgeon messed up or you might have also sustained an infection at some point that damaged that pathway. I'm not sure which."

"I was sick for a while after the amputation," Urmas admitted, looking downright excited about what she was saying.

Lexie nodded. "Makes sense. What I'm going to do is try to siphon some of that mana from your leg to hopefully calm it down to stop your prosthetic from glitching. It should work in theory, but I'll need to see it in action to be sure."

"Um, alright," he said, and she walked over to him. Lexie materialized the card and showed Urmas how to use it. "Eventually, if it works, I can find a way to make it specialized for you so it reduces the activation time."

"You can do that?" He looked amazed.

She nodded. She'd done something similar with Cara's card.

"Neat," he grinned. "Thanks."

He stood and activated it. After he did, he frowned. "I don't feel much different."

"You shouldn't at first. It's only a slight mana drain, and the balance it lends is minimal. But when you're fighting and your free mana is going haywire, that would suck it out and reduce the activity of your affixed mana."

"Alright," Conrad said, smiling/ "Let's test it out."

Lexie sat on the bench watching Urmas fight Cara. It went on for about ten minutes with no glitching. So far, so good.

As she watched, Conrad came to sit beside her. "How are you? Really?"

"Better," she told him. "I should have listened to you that day when you told me not to go on."

"It's okay. We all make that mistake at least once." He grinned. "'I'm glad you're feeling better, though."

She scuffed her shoes. "I thought you would be a little mad because I no longer want to be in the AFC. I wasted your time."

He shook his head. "Of course not. How can I be mad at you for doing what's best for you? That would make me a hypocrite, wouldn't it?"

He reached out and ruffled her hair, and a hesitant smile spread across her face.

The card seemed to work for Urmas, though his activation time was a hefty thirty-nine seconds. She asked him to practice so he could bring it down, and he readily agreed, thanking her.

"This is amazing," he told her, staring at her like she hung the moon. "Thank you. Seriously, I don't know how to repay you."

"You don't have to. I wanted to do it." It was a nice distraction from her problems.

"Yes, but..." He shook his head. "Even when you told me you were working on something, I frankly didn't think it would work. I feel foolish for ever doubting you. Thank you."

"It's fine," Lexie shrugged, feeling embarrassed by the effusive gratitude. "I had time on my hands. That's all."

Urmas kept thanking her right up until she left. She felt a lot lighter and happier on the trip home. Later, when Lexie was home, she got a text from an unknown number.

Unknown number: Lexie?

Lexie: Yeah?

Unknown number: This is Shadow. Got your number from Boris.

Lexie wasn't expecting that.

Lexie: Oh. Hey, Shadow. What's up?

Shadow: Watch out for Tate.

Lexie: What?

Shadow: Don't trust him. He's not who you think he is. He's not your friend.

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