I only realized I dropped the Item Ellie gave me a few minutes after I got up to try studying how to get the ritual working. But by then, I was already working on the project of figuring out how to teleport to her and couldn't back down.

I was going to join her side, even if it was the last thing I did. From what she mentioned, there were so many wonderful things she discovered completely on her own. I couldn't wait to learn about them!

If I could only figure out how to solve the damn Mana problem.

The Mana in the air and land was so thin it was basically useless. I'd have to power a ritual completely on my own or by using a lot of the only Mana-rich substance I could get my hands on, blood. Actual metric tons of blood.

Which was why I had my soulbound Death elemental doing exactly what it was brought into this world to do. Bring Death to these lands.

The idea of creating my own makeshift mindless elemental and stuffing it into a soulbound construct had been genius. I didn't even have to apply any Authority to get it to follow my commands.

As long as my commands would eventually lead it to bring Death, it was actually happy to do whatever I mentally ordered it to. I could feel an ever-present joy radiating over the soul link as it slaughtered an entire herd of Bullders. You'd think bleeding a herd of living rock cows would be like getting blood from a stone. Turned out they're more like walking juice boxes made of gravel.

The fact that their blood was fluorescent cyan didn't change that fact, and it had plenty of Mana inside it either way.

Elementals made of tamed Mana were so much easier to work with than wild ones. I just had never figured out how to keep them from dissipating within ten seconds of being created until now. Why I stored that seemingly useless spell in my memory, I'd never know.

Maybe you could convert a tamed elemental into a wild one somehow. That might be useful if you wanted to fuck up a lot of people's day very quickly. A wild Earth elemental could easily start throwing mountains at people once it emulsified enough environmental Mana.

My last self left me a bunch of half-finished ideas and even encrypted some of the information she left for me. So this might have been one of those situations. She started working on something, but was distracted. However, she wanted the idea to continue.

It's too bad I didn't leave myself any of the actual experimental designs, which was why I found it hard to trust her information.

Too much magic to know, too little space to use.

My skeleton friend finished piling the last cow corpse onto the pile of thousands of other corpses and signalled me with a short pulse of satisfaction at a job well dead.

Done, job well done. Stupid thought bleed-over. Why did I do a two-way link again?

Whatever, it was time to get into business.

Walking over to my activation circle, I fed it a small amount of Mana and watched as the completely intact corpses were drained of fluid through every orifice in seconds. The blood, spinal fluid, and whatever else the drop of liquid symbol in the ritual picked up flowed into grooves I dug into the earth. These grooves formed the final, true ritual circle, entirely powered through bodily fluids. A circle I was standing in the centre of.

I signalled the skeleton to follow me. Death awaited our journey together, I knew that, it knew that. It blurred into motion as it moved, appearing right next to me without a hint of wind.

Grace was bullshit. I had no idea how non-system users interacted with Stats, but Death was seemingly incredibly quiet and precise. Therefore, the elemental also carried those qualities.

I used [Inspect] on it. I wanted to check how much progress it had made after slaughtering all these cows.

[Deathkind Harvester Lvl 94]

Damn, its average level was higher than mine. I really had to get to work finishing levelling my Profession. The next evolution was going to be just splendid with everything I'd learned. The continuation of my Curious Mageling Class, which I had planned to choose scaled in power based on accumulated knowledge, proceeded as expected.

Unless something better showed up, the highest Second Ascension Class that I'd ever gotten was Wrought. If I could pick up an Emblazoned one this time around, that would be amazing. I just had no idea what the requirements might be. I'd already fulfilled the ones for the Wrought advancement.

The circle finally activated, and the Space around me warped. Skelly and I appeared standing on the top of a mountain.

Taking out an Item, I sent a ping of high-intensity Light Mana out, and a moment later received a response.

We had travelled only two hundred kilometres, and in the wrong direction.

Fuck.

I threw the range calculator off the mountain.

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We had figured out how to track her through the Item she gave me, but that was useless if I couldn't get the fucking ritual to work.

I wanted to scream.

But that would be unbecoming of me, so instead I told my skeleton friend to slaughter a group of bird-like creatures whose nest we had appeared near. That would have to be enough.

I began manipulating my Mana in the air in front of me. Running it through finer and finer threads. This was something I had been practicing lately. It was a good way to—

"That was a good first attempt." A voice came from behind me.

The moment I heard the first syllable I had turned and attempted to fire my staff at the source. Only to freeze the moment I laid eyes on him.

His appearance was incredibly modest. A red patchwork suit that looked like it had a few centuries of use, and a pair of breeches that had more than a few holes in them, and a pair of ratty shoes. Oh, and eyes that seemed to stare through my very Soul, picking me apart and storing that information in a database for future reference.

I tried to open my mouth, but found it was locked. My entire body was locked in place, in fact.

"A fine reaction time, too," the embodiment of ruin play acting as a man said. "You are familiar with divinity, I assume. What is your assessment of the gods?"

"Avoid upsetting at all costs. Avoid interacting with their agents if at all possible. Those in direct communion with them cannot be trusted to have free will." I found myself blurting out without intending to; as I did so, my assessment of the situation altered slightly, and so did my answer. "If one of them is attempting to ask something of me, I should acquiesce to whatever demands their personal agents make."

It smiled, "Good instincts, too."

The thing walked up to me and poked my forehead, then took a few steps back. A speck of Mana entered my body at the contact point. I had never seen Mana like it ever before. It didn't make sense. Its structure shouldn't exist. It wasn't even a type of Mana. It was as if he had put billions of instructions into the single point of Mana, which was impossible.

As the Mana touched my vein structure, it began to meld together with it. Doing… Something.

My body slackened, and I realized I could move again, but I did nothing except stand there silently. I would be told when I was allowed to speak. Doing so before then would be my death sentence.

"That is a gift, given free of charge. You will probably find it incredibly useful in the near future," he said in a raspy, hissing tongue that I had never heard before but could completely understand. In fact, I could understand it better than I could understand anything else. It was as if the meaning of the words seared itself into my brain.

I blinked in confusion.

"I am not here to make demands of you, I am here with an offer," it said to me.

"I refuse," I replied in the same language.

"Could you not at least humour me?"

"Absolutely." I hissed, complying with the request, and sat down on the spot. I would not refuse anything I wasn't given explicit permission to refuse. My hand moved to call upon a somatic spell component.

Instead of the Earth spell I had intended to cast to create a chair as I sat, I instead wrote something completely different into the air. The movements came perfectly naturally to me, as I signed in the gestural component of that language I didn't know existed until seconds ago. My movements were fluid and precise as if it were my native tongue.

Instead of landing on a chair made of Earth, I found myself sitting on one made of writhing shadows. It was surprisingly comfortable.

The thing also sat down, but instead of sitting on a chair, it just sat down midair as if the air itself was enough to hold its weight.

Grace really was bullshit.

"You want to be brought to Ellie Winters' side, yes?" it asked.

My eyes widened in surprise, and I could only nod in response. Only, instead of nodding, I curled my fingers in a specific way and displayed my open palm. That reaction felt more natural than nodding.

This was getting weird.

"I can make that happen like this." He snapped his fingers, and suddenly we were floating next to someone I was pretty sure was Ellie. She was completely frozen in time, or we had sped up. She was in one of those conversion Zones that turned everything into a single theme. So she appeared as a two-dimensional animated character.

But I would recognize her circuit patterns anywhere. She was standing next to a smaller version of herself that was building another construct. I knew she would be up to something ridiculous, but this was getting silly. She was already self-replicating?

"But?" I asked, as a whispered sigh.

He snapped his fingers, and we returned to where he had taken me.

"But. You will join the service of my Patron once you reach your Third Ascension," it replied, then took a sip from a glass I hadn't seen appear.

"What is this Patron of yours? I don't recognize your… Stylings. Nor do I know of any active divine agents allowed entry to Eternia at this time," I asked the most important question. There were many gods, most of whom I'd rather kill myself immediately than put myself under the service of. Eternal torment would be kinder than what they had planned.

"The Silence Beneath Our Moon, my beloved Astaris," the dead thing replied, then seemed to understand my follow-up question before I even asked it. "No, he is not one of the gods in The Sovereign's sphere. In fact, Ellie was the one who let me into this world."

I sat up straighter. Ellie knew him already, and he owed her. Even if she didn't know it, she had done him a massive favour, and favours must be repaid in kind, at least when gods get involved.

"Is that it? I join your faction at my Third Ascension? Nothing else, and you bring me to Ellie right now?" I asked, my hiss hiccuping slightly out of excitement. I covered my mouth, embarrassed.

The shadow burning itself into the world itself chuckled, "I do have one thing to ask of you before that can happen. You are currently on a path to becoming strong."

I held out my open palm again and twisted my hand slightly, signalling I already knew this.

"Strong is not good enough. I have a trial for you to undertake. Come back from the trial alive, and you will find yourself at Ellie's side. Fail and… Well, just don't fail, okay?"

I took a deep breath. This was a massive risk. I had no idea what they would want of me. I was clearly being made into an infiltrating agent of some kind, but a trial meant challenges, and challenges meant potential power.

Also, could I really trust my last self's opinions of the gods?

"Okay, but only if I can bring my tent," I replied, then as an afterthought, "Oh and my golem."

Skelly was currently beaming with excitement as it sat amongst a pile of dead birds.

"A deal is struck," the being said, and suddenly I found myself falling backwards into an inky darkness.

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