Serenity considered. Given what seemed to be happening to Blaze, there might be a better way. “Can I try something first?”

Margrethe waved him towards the bad. “If you think there’s a chance it’ll help, it’s not like you can make it worse.”

“Such confidence.” Serenity smiled, despite the tense situation. He walked over to the bed and looked at the man. He placed his hands on the two strongest areas he could see, which seemed to be his belly and head.

Serenity took a moment to feel the energy, then pulled, just like he’d once pulled at a monster core - and more recently, how he’d absorbed the crystal from the dungeon.

The essence didn’t want to move. It was eddying in the man’s body, and there were no proper channels for it to move in. He could feel where it had burned small pieces of channels into the man and here it had gathered into many small sharp agglomerations all over his body, but especially in the chest and the head. They felt more like clots than a monster’s core, damaging rather than storing or enhancing. The man didn’t have anything that looked like a core at all. If anything, the clots were less common in his brain than elsewhere, even though there was a lot of essence there.

When he’d absorbed essence in the past, the core and crystal had dissolved as he took the essence, giving him access to what was inside. He couldn’t - shouldn’t - dissolve the man that way. Or … perhaps he should. At least the bits that didn’t fit, though that seemed dangerous. But first he needed to clean as much as he could, and dissolve the sharp clots - rocks? - whatever they were. That much he could do, if he could just access the essence.

He only knew one way to access essence that was inside something - the way his body did it. The man needed a network like the one Serenity had. He pushed the idea at the essence, and found that it felt remarkably similar to the times he’d changed something about himself. He just had to want it enough. It was harder, probably because it wasn’t his own body he was changing, but the man didn’t fight him.

He probably couldn’t fight it.

Serenity hoped he’d be able to remove the network afterward, but suspected he wouldn’t be able to.

Serenity tried to limit the network to the relatively uncorrupted parts of the man’s body, but quickly found that wasn’t an option because there weren’t any. Serenity expanded it from his hands to cover only the man’s brain and vital organs. That was what needed cleaning the most. There also seemed to be a concentration in the man’s stomach, so he included it.

Serenity pulled. This time, the essence flowed easily.

When the essence draw slowed down a little, Serenity took the time to start dissolving - one by one - the many small sharp rocks, followed by the contents of the man’s stomach. He felt healing energy flow in behind his rock clearance, repairing the damage they’d done.

Once that was done, the essence draw slowed to a trickle. He could feel it entering the part he’d cleared from the rest of the man’s body, but it moved slowly.

He noticed that none of the changes that had happened had reverted, even in the area he’d fully cleaned. They felt like part of the man to Serenity. When he tried to push the same way he’d created the network, nothing happened. It was like “the way you used to be” didn’t exist, and “more human” wasn’t really an option.

Bigger, sturdier lungs didn’t seem like a bad thing overall, though the change in the ribcage shape might not make the man happy. The hollow bones might be a problem, and the wing stubs on his chest definitely wouldn’t make him happy, never mind the hoofed leg sticking out the back of his neck - but they weren’t things Serenity could change.

Hadn’t Margrethe said something at some point about reversing changes? Serenity couldn’t figure out how.

Perhaps he should leave her some essence to do that with. He let himself stop pulling essence and moved his attention back to his own body.

The first thing he noticed was that the energy field around the bed was much, much weaker.

The second thing was that he was very sore. How long had he been sitting there?

[Choosing saving a life over keeping secrets has been Noticed]

Blaze wasn’t in the room anymore. Margrethe was. She appeared to be sleeping.

“Margrethe?”

She opened her eyes and looked at Serenity. She clearly hadn’t been sleeping. Concentrating maybe?

“I can’t - I can’t fix any of the changes to his body. All I can do is - I could pull more but if you need it - ” Serenity thought that was what Margrethe needed to know.

“That’s my job, then. You’ve - you’ve done more than I’d have thought possible. I should be able to take it from here.” She stood up and escorted him out of the room.

Once they were out of the room, Margrethe insisted on checking him for corruption, even though he was confident there wouldn’t be any. She agreed, but “it doesn’t hurt anything to check and it might hurt to not check.”

He was fine.

“Before you leave, you should check in with Blaze. He’s in the break room, having dinner.”

Dinner? Surely he hadn’t been here that long?

“Oh, your friends stopped by. Apparently Moira was able to lead them to you. They left after she and Echo checked in on you.”

They wouldn’t have been able to get to the next level of the dungeon without him. If it really was dinnertime, they’d lost a day. Oops. They needed to test if you could leave from a level entrance as well as the exit; Serenity suspected you could, but they needed to be sure.

Serenity looked at his hands. The fractal pattern had disappeared. Blaze first, then.

“You’ve lost weight.” Blaze greeted Serenity as he walked into the breakroom. “Eat something. While you eat you can tell me what that was on your face.” Blaze was sitting in a padded chair, drinking something hot.

“The lines? That’s normal, I can’t suppress it in there, that’s all. Wait - what do you mean lost weight?” Serenity didn’t feel hungry. He felt kind of stuffed, if anything.

Blaze pointed at the storage cabinet. There was a mirror on it, just like the one in the instructors’ dorms.

It wasn’t so much that Serenity had lost weight as that he looked less muscular. He stared at himself for a moment, then pulled up his status to realize that he’d had a large increase in Will. His mental stats had passed his physical stats, and that seemed to have affected his appearance. He was still more muscular than Thomas had been, even if he didn’t quite look the way he felt he should. He’d have to do something about that later. He had enough Ev to do something now.

Something else in his status caught his eye. A new Affinity?

“Eat something. You’ve been working for hours. I’m sure you’re not hungry, but you should be.”

It would be easier to eat something than to argue, so Serenity pulled a sandwich together while he checked for notifications he’d missed and his Status.

[Essence Aspect initiated]

[Essence Concept defined]

[Essence Affinity created]

[Title Awarded: Aspect Pathfinder. Title consumes Concept Pathfinder and Affinity Pathfinder]

Aspect Pathfinder

As the first person to discover a new Aspect, Concept, and Affinity, you set the path for those who follow you on the road of Essence Magic. Creating new methods and applying methods from other magical schools is easier.

Serenity could only guess that that had happened when he created the network he’d used to remove essence from the patient.

He could only be grateful that the Aspect awakening had been peaceful. They were often worse than Concept awakenings, and he’d apparently done both at the same time. That might be part of the reason; Concept awakenings tend to emit the Affinity, while an Aspect awakening would consume it. Or maybe he’d just been lucky; he had been trying to do something he probably shouldn’t have been able to.

No one knew much about finding new magical schools. There hadn’t been one found - as far as he knew - in the entire lifetime of the Final Reaper.

His Concept was low - he didn’t really understand Essence - but his Affinity was high. Oddly specific, too, that number looked familiar. Only his Death affinity had a decimal, and that was new, so why did Essence affinity have one?

Oh.

It was the same as his Core Progression.

Serenity had the feeling he’d been set up. Probably not that it happened now, but that he’d been able to do it at all. The real reason the Aspect awakening had been peaceful was probably Order’s Voice smoothing it out, somehow.

Serenity dismissed the interface and finished making his sandwich.

He wasn’t hungry until he took the first bite. He suddenly felt ravenous and had to force himself not to eat the sandwich in one bite. Small bites, he reminded himself. He was used to repeating that by now.

Apparently he’d been stuffed with essence - he still felt stuffed - but that didn’t mean he didn’t need food. He needed to learn to separate the two feelings.

Serenity made a second sandwich and got some tea to go with it. It was easier to eat the second sandwich slowly. He found another padded chair and pulled it to the table. He was more tired than he’d thought, too.

“You’ve done healing before. Death magic - cancer?” Blaze set his mug on the table.

Serenity nodded.

“Thought so, healing after you - Where’d you train? Stallet? It didn’t quite feel like their style.”

Serenity finished his sandwich as he debated how to answer. He had been to Stallet - it was the closest Training Academy to Earth - but it wasn’t where he’d learned to precisely use Death magic to counter cancer.

Serenity liked Blaze, but the question was far too close to a dangerous secret. For once, it wasn't really one of his secrets, but that didn't make it any less dangerous. “No. Not Stallet. I probably shouldn’t tell you where. Too dangerous. For both of us, probably.”

“Knowing where you trained is dangerous? Where did you go, Blackthorn?”

Serenity froze for a moment too long. “How would someone from a new tutorial go to Blackthorn?”

Blaze’s guess was entirely too good. Vengeance had spent a lot of time at Blackthorn Academy, and it was where he’d learned the basics of runic and ritual magic and some of the intricacies of both Void and Death magic. At the time, he’d been better at Void, but Death had stayed his focus. The thing was … Blackthorn had a reputation. A reputation that was well deserved.

Serenity wasn’t sure he wanted to go, if that became an option. They were really, really good at training - if you survived. Vengeance had been fine … but he’d also been far more willing to kill than Serenity was.

There were a lot of secrets at Blackthorne. Knowing someone trained at Blackthorn actually could be dangerous.

It was, of course, ridiculous to think that Serenity could have trained at Blackthorn. They didn’t accept people who hadn’t made it to tier 4. Serenity wasn’t sure Blaze knew that - but he was sure that saying that wouldn’t help.

Blaze took a long drink from his mug. “How would someone from a new tutorial know about Blackthorn? Or for that matter, Death affinity?” He paused, then waved at the air. “I don’t want to know if it’s actually Blackthorn. Doesn’t matter. You dropped your plans for the day to try to heal someone for no reward. That’s what I need to know about you. The rest is just curiosity. Curiosity doesn’t fill the larder.”

Serenity had heard that saying before, but it’d been a long time. He couldn’t remember what planet it came from.

Blaze finished his drink and set it on the table. “Since you’re done eating, how about we go check on the patient?”

Lillene

Serenity spent somewhere around ten hours in a trance. There's a good reason he was sore when he stood up.

---

Also, he's wrong about being set up. Order's Voice had no idea Essence magic was possible. It'd never been found before, after all. Serenity probably is correct about getting help with the Aspect awakening - and the fact that it's only at Initiated helps, too.