Emma stared at the notification. She could heal almost 5,000 HP with a single cast! She'd supposedly hit the limit not once, but twice?!

The worst part was, she didn't think she had actually made any progress using Ring of Sanctuary. If she had, it wasn't large enough to see. Emma spammed Basic Heal again until her Mana was empty and the crack closed another inch, completely eclipsing any progress she might have made using the other spell.

This complicated things. Emma didn't have enough information to properly assess the problem. Either the boundary's Vitality was more impressive than Emma assumed—and thus, the scope of the problem much more substantial than she could reliably heal—or there was something Basic Heal provided that Ring of Sanctuary didn't.

Either way, she needed to figure out something more efficient than spamming Basic Heal. She'd already been working for more than thirty minutes, and she'd only closed three inches of a six-foot crack. At this rate, she would be here all night.

More, the boundary said again. Its whispery not-quite-words language sending a shiver down Emma's spine.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm working on it," Emma snapped. She probably shouldn't take her frustration with the situation out on the boundary but given that it didn't seem to care what she said, it was likely safer than her taking her frustrations out on the nearby Elemental.

Maybe she could call Isla back and get some input…

She dismissed the idea as soon as it crossed her mind. Not only was the Elemental unpleasant in general but given how she talked about the Corvi's 'methods', Emma highly doubted that the woman knew anything about the cracks at all. She was just copying what she had seen in the past with no real context as to why the methods worked.

That meant that Emma needed to do some experimentation. She spammed Ring of Sanctuary until she was out of Mana, praying that it wasn't a waste of time. She was rewarded for her efforts with another inch of progress. That ruled out her theory that Basic Heal somehow had a leg up on Ring of Sanctuary. While Basic Heal allowed for more casts, they both healed about the same amount before Emma ran out of Mana and had to wait for her pool to refill.

Emma's next experiment was Lifeline. She wasn't fond of the spell. The feeling of having your HP leeched was unpleasant, like tearing a layer of skin off of an infected wound, and the relative Vitality scaling made it inefficient for healing players with a similar Vitality. For Britt, Andrea and Nathan, the HP was a one-to-one transfer. If she healed someone with an even lower Vitality, she would be actually losing HP with the spell.

The main reason she had picked it in the first place was Rayna's high initial Vitality. With Emma having a current Vitality of around a hundred points, even at Level 1, Rayna had twenty points more than her, which would make the transfer a twenty percent increase. Rayna must have gained at least a few levels by now which would make the healing even more efficient.

In short, the spell was designed as a way for smaller units to massively boost larger units while they did all the damage. It was an almost perfect support skill, assuming you had a way to keep your healer alive. Had Emma been playing alone, she wouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole, given it's complete lack of self-healing potential.

Lifeline was the worst results of the three spells. It was low cost in terms of MP, but Emma couldn't spam it due to the way it drained her HP. She ended up spending most of her MP pool on keeping herself alive while she threw as much HP at the boundary as she could. It should have been a decent conversion, given that it scaled on subject Vitality like Basic Heal, but Emma wasn't sure if the crack had sealed at all.

By the end of her testing, Emma had managed about a foot of progress, making the top of the glowing crack look like a partially closed zipper more than a healing wound. She had run out of both Mana and her patience with the inefficiency of healing the boundary.

"I have to be missing something," Emma said aloud, pacing back and forth in front of the crack. Maybe healing wasn't the answer after all. With her previous theories, Lifeline should have been the most efficient, followed by Basic Heal, and then Ring of Sanctuary. For Basic Heal to be keeping up with Ring of Sanctuary, the boundary's Vitality had to be in the five thousand range, which would have given Lifeline a multiplier of about one hundred and fifty given the Vitality difference between Emma and the boundary. That should have put even the most cautious of her transfers at 15,000 HP of healing.

Emma rubbed her temples. Between the Mana headache and the amount of math she was having to do, she was well and truly tired of this stupidity.

The boundary silently waited while she worked it out, not offering anything useful. It occasionally whispered 'more' in her mind, but it ignored all other attempts to communicate. Emma was seriously starting to doubt that it was truly conscious. It had a smaller vocabulary than her cat.

More, the boundary whispered again as if to prove Emma's point.

It would be a lot more helpful if you told me what you need more of, Emma thought.

Energy.

The word caught Emma off guard, if only because it doubled the number of words she had heard from it so far.

"More energy?" Emma asked.

The boundary remained silent, slowly pulsing in the empty cavern. Emma's brows knit together. Was it not going to tell her anything else? Or was she missing something?

A thought occurred to her.

More energy? she thought.

Yes.

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Emma bounced on the balls of her feet, excitement making her giddy. The boundary couldn't hear her words, but it could hear her thoughts. It seemed ridiculous, but in hindsight, it wasn't as if the boundary had ears. Perhaps it couldn't see her either, and was only sensing her presence through the connection she had established.

Emma could work with this.

By energy, do you mean healing? she asked.

No.

No? Emma frowned. But the healing has been helping…

Yes, the boundary said.

Then how was it helping, if not through healing? Emma asked.

The boundary was silent for a long moment, seeming to think through its answer. Emma was just about to ask another question when the boundary finally responded. Energy.

Energy…? as in Mana?

It made much more sense than healing, Emma realized. If it was about the energy expenditure of the spell, that would put Basic Heal and Lifeline on the same level no matter how many points of HP she transferred, but she had been throwing enough at the boundary that she had to heal in between, wasting Mana in the process. The reason Basic Heal and Ring of Sanctuary had the same effect was because each time she started with a full MP bar and cast the spells until she was empty, giving it the same MP usage between the two spells.

What Emma needed was a way to test the theory. If the Mana was important and not the spell effect, then it wouldn't matter what spell she used as long as she cast it on the boundary, right?

Emma spammed Purify. It failed more times than it succeeded, but she didn't care about the spell's actual function, she just wanted to see if it would help to close the crack.

Sure enough, by the time her MP pool hit zero, she had managed to close another inch or so. She grinned. That was another piece of the puzzle solved, but her smile quickly faded as she realized what this meant.

Emma had no way of closing the crack faster than she already was. Her MP pool was the true limit of her progress and there was no way she could improve upon that without leveling up.

Unless…

Emma glanced around the cavern. There was a good amount of black energy circling the area. She hadn't seen it before connecting to the boundary, but it had become visible along with the crack. This was either Essence or Miasma, the two energies she had seen in the journals at the researchers' lab. But which one? Did it matter? And could she somehow harness it; channel it into the boundary to help it heal?

She had overdrafted on Mana before, back when she was trying to keep them all from dying in the Elemental's trap. Maybe when she reached the end of her Mana, she started pulling it from the air instead.

The theory was far fetched, but it was possible and at this point, Emma would try anything if it meant she didn't have to stand in front of the crack for three days closing it at a rate of two inches per hour.

Emma kept a close eye on the energy around her as she cast Basic Heal. With her Mana pool at zero, she shouldn't have been able to do so, but as she had found in the past, it worked without any issue besides a slight headache. Black energy swirled around her, channeled through her and into the spell. She couldn't exactly feel it, but she could see it happening.

Emma took a deep breath, upping the ante. This time, instead of casting a spell, she just funneled Mana directly into the crack the same way she would push Mana into an item. The edges of the boundary crack glowed brighter and it started to close at a visible rate.

Excitement bubbled in Emma, the feeling mirrored by the boundary itself.

More. More. More. The boundary pulsed in time with the words..

Yeah, I know, Emma said. Just give me a sec. This isn't as easy as it looks.

She pushed harder, trying to funnel the Mana as fast as her body could pull it in. The energy swirled around her, picking up speed as she grew more confident. The crack closed several inches, then a foot. Then two feet.

Then the energy in the cavern started to wane and Emma's headache grew stronger. The energy flowing into the crack slowed to a trickle.

"No! Not yet! We're making progress!" Emma snapped, trying in vain to push more energy into the crack.

She hit a wall as her reserves ran dry, the energy in the cavern no longer able to sustain the effort. Emma fell to her knees, banging her fist against the ground in frustration. She almost had it! The crack had closed a full five feet. Another little bit and she would have finished it!

More, the boundary pleaded.

There's no more, Emma said, unable to even lift her head. The cavern is empty, and I have nothing left. You'll have to wait until my Mana refills.

Emma was so tired. It was like she had been drained of everything she had. Even with Lifeline, it didn't affect her ability to function, but messing with energy was riskier, it seemed. She closed her eyes, trying to think through the pounding migraine that she had given herself with her effort.

Stored, the boundary said.

Emma frowned, unsure she had understood the boundary correctly. "Stored? Stored energy?"

Why would she have stored energy? Emma didn't even know how—

The answer came to Emma in a flash. Back at the researchers' cavern when she had first overdrafted on Mana, the mage lights had all died as she activated them, her headache fading gradually until they finally worked. She had thought it was Britt's inexperience with runes, but what if…?

Emma pulled out a light, activating it. It immediately winked out, barely taking the edge off of her head-splitting migraine. Emma grinned, the small movement sending a pulse of pain through her head. She pulled out the rest of them, activating them all at once to try to speed up the process. It brought her migraine down to manageable levels, but it didn't give her enough energy to funnel more into the crack.

Emma repeated the process for the rest of the items in the supplies Britt had given her, making a mental note to apologize to Britt later for wasting so many items. One by one, she drained invisibility spells and emergency wards, lights and baubles, she even drained a few of the items that she had found in the research lab. That was probably for the best, since she didn't really want to risk testing them to figure out what the runes were designed to do.

Finally, she came to the last item in her Inventory. Her head still hurt, but not so much that she couldn't think rationally as she stared down at the communications device Britt had given her. It was her only way of contacting the others when they got back to Ember, since they were probably long gone by now, but it might be her only chance to catch up.

Emma had already been at this for a few hours. If she waited for her MP to refill another six times—which would be how many times she needed to close the last foot of the crack—she would have no chance whatsoever of catching up to them. Emma had invested more into Dexterity than the others had. She could still catch up if she closed the crack fast enough.

Emma silently apologized to Britt as she activated the item.

A rush of energy flooded Emma and she drew in a sharp breath as her headache instantly vanished. She sat and stared at it for a few seconds, surprised at the amount of energy it contained. She couldn't gauge it properly, as Britt seemed to be able to, but it felt more substantial than the energy in the cavern had.

Emma stood, turning to face the crack. This time, when she funneled Mana into it, she didn't have to start with a trickle and work her way up. Energy gushed into the crack, closing it faster than Emma would have believed possible.

Emma stopped funneling her Mana as soon as the crack was fully sealed and the flow from the communications device stopped as well. She deactivated it and placed the item back in her Inventory.

The world tilted and before Emma knew what was happening she was lying on her back, staring up at the freshly closed crack with blurring vision.

"It seems my instincts were correct," Isla said, melting out of the wall. "You are in fact, able to close the cracks in the boundary."

The edges of Emma's vision darkened.

Isla knelt next to her, her brows knit together. "Though perhaps, you are only able to close one."

That's it, I'm never working with Elementals again, was Emma's last tired thought before she passed out.

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