I gaze deeply into the swirling vial of slime and push my skills as far as they can go. I get a vague sense of direction and distance before having to stop and drink a bottle of tea to bolster my Inspiration regeneration, but I believe I can trace it back to its origin. Floj is technically a living being, and it's tied into an aether core.

"We found something from Gannet Halkyn Tempest Tiganna," says Meadow, holding up an envelope with a postal address. "Can you take us to Aldwych? We can back you up in tracking down the floj once we take his boat. Aunt Rosemary had me pick up all the skills to fly one already."

"Good plan," I say. "Where is it?"

Kestrel pulls out the map. "On the edge, three kilometers east of here."

Leaving the Daring Edgewalkers behind to continue scouring the flat, the rest of us return to the boat.

I take us out through the cityscape, narrowly avoiding colliding with a whirring brass drone, which Kestrel sweeps out of the way with a gust of wind. It blinks a light and rights itself with its six propellers and corrects its course, continuing on its way again.

Gannet's flat is in a slightly more plain part of town, and he has a private dock with a work boat parked in it. The aethercraft is twice as long as mine, with a small cabin area in the back. The name Rabid Badger is painted on the side.

With absolute audacity (and a desire not to have anyone swinging from the ropes dramatically when it's completely unnecessary), I pull in to park across in the empty spot next to it.

You have discovered Aldwych. Skill increased: Mechanics (Piloting) You do not have authorization to park here. Holding enchantment not activated. If a parking watcher sees you here, you may be warned or fined.

I can live with that risk. The Mushroom Survivors start leaping off as soon as we're close enough for their skills to make it.

While they're raiding the flat of that guy who tied them up and threw them in a mushroom dungeon, I refocus my skills on the bottle of floj again. Triangulating from the last reading, I'm getting closer to being able to pinpoint the source of the floj on the map.

Meadow hops on board the Rabid Badger and touches the activation sigil, but nothing happens. "Locked."

"Gannet probably has the key crystal," Anise says.

"Go get him!" Kestrel cheers. "We'll watch the dock."

They don't need to be told twice. The four of them draw weapons and head for the door to the flat. Their Rogue, Baldric, pulls out a lockpicking set and, after a few tense moments, gets them inside.

Rowan grips his blade of defense, alert eyes watching the docks. "Do you have a read on the floj yet?"

I hold up the bottle of floj and focus on it again. "About a kilometer southeast of here and two hundred meters down."

"They would have had an easy way to get it out of the domain," Jade says. "Maybe they've got a secret ledge on this side too? I saw any number of openings down there into docking areas. Finding the right one would be the trick though."

Noise and light erupt from the flat in front of us as I try to hold the skyboat steady. Anise stands at the prow, ready to set something on fire if necessary.

While I don't see the aether cores' offers as sacred quests, I do have to consider that it's not likely that people will receive quests that are completely out of their depth. The Mushroom Survivors have this in hand, if they're up to it. If not, I have confidence that Meadow has the good sense to withdraw rather than get herself killed.

I can't get a good view of the fight from here, but it's over in a few minutes. Meadow emerges from the door and pumps her hand in the air. A small green crystal hangs from a chain around her arm. This time, when she hops aboard the Rabid Badger and hits the activation sigil, the boat lights up.

"The others are doing some quick looting," Meadow says, practically bouncing. "I'll get the boat ready to go. Oh, this is so exciting."

Amroth would not have given me a challenge for destroying the floj if it did not believe my party was capable of successfully completing it. I was going to do it anyway.

Once Meadow's party members have secured anything that looks even slightly valuable aboard the Rabid Badger, we set off before anyone can give us a parking fine.

We take it slow as Meadow gets used to the way the Badger handles, as she'd only gotten just enough training in [Piloting] to unlock the skill. Her control is still Weak and the larger ship is slightly less maneuverable than mine.

"You doing okay over there?" Kestrel calls out.

"I've got this!" Meadow assures her, not taking a hand off of the wheel.

The Rabid Badger does a long, slow forward roll, fortunately making a good display that the skyship's artificial gravity is working properly as its new tyro crew's feet remain affixed to the deck even as they turn upside down.

Two teenagers on a flying carpet stop making out long enough to rubberneck and giggle at the spectacle before flying on.

Once the others get a handle on their ship, we set about to trying to locate the correct entrance. Rectangular holes of various sizes dot the edge of Flux, some of them sealed with garage doors while others open to admit flying boats loaded down with crates and barrels.

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[I think this one's it,] I send to the party members on the two boats. [Cover us. We're going in. Jade, Colt, it's time to test your ropework, because this might need some careful maneuvering.]

The garage doors over this entrance are open just wide enough to fly through. Someone clearly found it too much effort to open them fully when this was good enough. There won't be a lot of clearance on either side so I'm going to need to fly precisely. That might not be a problem for someone whose flying skills are higher but I've only been at this for a few weeks and haven't even maxed out my [Piloting] skill at Novice rank yet.

A strong aether current tries to push the Celestial Duck away from the entrance, forcing us to adjust the sails several times before getting the right tack. The tunnel is a little more spacious once we get past the half-open garage doors, but it's still a claustrophobic underground garage in three dimensions.

You have discovered Ratcliff. Skill increased: Enhanced Soul (Aether Sailing)

The tunnel opens up into a larger landing area. Several people shuffle about on the ground in front of us, including one particular aura I've seen before.

"You!" yells a small, angry gnome. "You stole my boat! I'll just be taking that back now. Die!"

"My grandson can steal all the boats he wants!" Kestrel says. "I'll take care of this gnome."

Kestrel leaps off the boat, shards of ice swirling into existence around her body, and lands lightly on the ground in front of the gnome. Their wands clash with vis and a localized weather system gathers in the enclosed area. As the two Heroic Wizards square off, I focus on landing the ship safely. The Celestial Duck touches down next to the other boat.

An arrow glances off Rowan's shield, and he deflects a second one with his sword. Anise lifts her hands, aura singing in glee as she rains fire upon anyone who feels like sticking around. The Basics all immediately flee, leaving a pair of Elites to try to back up Carter.

After a brief but fierce fight, the landing area is ours.

Skills increased: Blocking (Cover), Athletics (Dodging), Enhanced Feet (Soft Landing)

"I'll loot the corpses and guard our getaway," Kestrel says. "Go find the floj! Pull back to here if you run across anything you can't handle and I can help."

We enter a hallway and open the first door along it. Unlabeled wooden crates lay stacked up on shelves, and I don't even need to open them to detect the tiny floj slimes neatly stacked up inside each box.

[Anise, please set this room on fire,] I tell her. [I think we're beyond the point of worrying about alerting anyone to us being here.]

Glee spikes in her aura as she channels that joy into her [Pyromania]. Highly flammable crates burst into flames. A few moments later, the corridor echoes with the sound of shattering glass and the unnerving screams of dying slimes.

Further on, past storerooms containing only empty bottles, we come upon a room containing a large vat half-full of floj slime. Many tiny slimes intermingled. Nozzles with sigils around them are arrayed across the side, along with holders for bottles. Tiny slimes slowly drip out of nozzle didn't get fully closed when the workers ran for their lives when they realized they were getting raided by adventurers. Anise torches the ones that have already gotten loose, but more are still coming.

Pipes carry slimes into bottles, but where are they coming from? A rickety maintenance staircase winds up and around the pipes, and I follow it.

On the floor above, a vat covered in complex sigils holds slimes undergoing a strange process only visible to [Witness]. Vis converts itself into frozen experience as it works. That would essentially enable whoever drinks this slime to absorb it for themselves, as I saw involuntarily before. Skill potions don't inherently sound like a bad thing, but all of these slimes contain aspects like [Obsession] and [Sloth]. None of these are things most people would even want.

Up another flight of stairs, a huge storage tank has new slimes actively flowing into it.

I continue to follow the staircase up over a hundred meters until I run across something very odd on the psychic level. In the room above me, visible in my [Ghost Eyes] through the floor, a human lays directly above the pipes. As I watch, unaspected slimes flow toward him and absorb negative aspects from his aura as they sluggishly course through the pipes.

Skills increased: Clairvoyance (Aura Sight, Witness)

I telepathically tell my party what I'm seeing, and Rowan's aura surges with disgust. [Let's keep going,] I add. [The actual source must be further on.]

After another storage tank, the pipes travel around this level for a short way before we come upon a locked door. Jade picks the lock, and we get inside.

A massive pulsating slime rests beneath a glass dome on an elevated dais, like a platter of cobalt blue Jell-O at the world's worst party.

Category Monster Type Slime Class Psychic Rank Elite

Its mind and emotional palette are strangely blank, and it does not react at all to our presence. The pipes at last reach their origin in the base of the dais, where one of them lets a continuous stream of baby slimes flow toward the storage tank.

"That's what people have been drinking?" Colt says, shuddering.

After sharing the information with my party, I add, [It's a monster, so it will probably respawn, and I doubt it's the only one in existence. However, killing it and doing as much damage as we can to the facility will cost them a lot, and I doubt Amroth expects anything else of us.]

"You kids better get yourselves outside," Anise says. "My [Friendly Fire] skill may not count for environmental damage."

"Someone above is going to notice when the slimes stop flowing," Basalt points out. "And the runners might tell someone who will send reinforcements. What if you get cut off? Besides, I bet my axe can do plenty of damage here too."

"No way am I missing out on this experience," Colt adds.

"Oh, fine," Anise says.

A lever to the side retracts the glass dome when Basalt pulls it. The mindless slime makes no move to defend itself as Anise torches it. Once its aura winks out, we waste no time in making for the exit, smashing things up on the way out. Once the bottling machine has been broken, I feel aether surging around me and look at my notifications.

Your party has destroyed a floj factory, hampering smuggling operations in the area. Skills increased: Enhanced Soul (Ghost Eyes, Mystic Inspiration), Search (Inspection), Clairvoyance (Telepathy, Trace Connection) You have completed a challenge from Amroth: Stop the Floj Congratulations! You have attained Elite rank. Your skill caps have doubled.

In the astral plane, a bud unfolds into fingers to reach into the world. I take a deep breath and flex them, like my aura had been chained my entire life and is finally free.

The crystallized experience suspended in the slimes mostly winds up falling into Anise's aura, transformed by the skill that was used on it. I'm not the only one ranking up here today. From the massive amount of experience released from the challenge, Deed, and the floj itself, it looks like we've all ranked up.

Although everyone is elated, this is not the time or place to celebrate. Billowing smoke chokes the halls as Anise makes sure every last baby slime is wiped out. Emerging from the burning factory, we make a break for where we left the skyboat.

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