From here on out I'll put noncritical additional information in spoilers in the author's notes so people who aren't interested can easily skip it, but those who like worldbuilding notes/author commentary can have it. Personally I like both giving and reading author commentary on stories, but here's my compromise since a lot of people don't 
Spatiotempotectonic: referring to the layout and placement of subdimensions relative to their parent dimension.
Type designation of a Chaos: Each Chaos will have one or more designators attached to it, usually two, explaining how it acts. These refer to two parts. How they move and how they act. For example, a Parasitic Assimilation-type Chaos would move like a parasite, finding itself a host that it then assimilates itself with, giving it power but gaining a greater degree of control the more power it takes.
It's fascinating how much we take for granted. I don't just mean stuff like electricity, water, toilets, and so on. Being a world traveler is like going from a first-world country to the middle of the jungle, except even worse. In another world, I almost guarantee that things like the length of the day and color of the ambient light are different, without needing to mention things like constellations or the habits of the surrounding flora. Hell, you couldn't even assume that the Sun made a straight arc across the sky. Or, god forbid, you were on a planet with two identical suns.
Since we couldn't trust the codex entry for this planet, the only thing we were relatively certain about was that we weren't walking in circles, thanks to Aya using the age-old method of scoring a tree with her sword every few minutes.
Although we were in a forest, it's not like there weren't gaps where we could see the sun. There was just one problem with that.
"Ooh, mean that time when it took us more than a week to figure out the world was shaped like a mobius strip?"
"Huh?"
"You were monologuing through the connection again."
"Oh. Erm…"
Aya giggled as she watched me trip over my words, and because I got distracted, also over a tree branch.
Her giggles quickly turned into all-out laughter as I stumbled several steps before regaining my balance.
*Ahem* I coughed. "Anyway, yeah that's the world I was thinking about." I said, smoothly changing the subject.
Aya shot me a knowing smirk, but let it drop. After all, it was far from the first time this had happened.
"Yeah, that one was definitely something else… I remember one of the twins saying that it made the series of ringworlds they had seem normal."
I laughed at that. "You know Sena always exaggerates things."
"But I'm pretty sure it was Mina?"
I froze for a second. "Never mind then. That's actually kinda impressive."
"It's a bit odd though," I said pensively, "it's been at least several hours and I don't think the sun has moved at all."
"Maybe we're within a polar circle?"
"Possibly. Or else we're not on a planet at all."
"Ah, yes. Of course." Aya nodded sagely. "Because the most unrealistic explanation is usually the right one. What's that called, Occam's Breadknife or something?"
I moved to flick her forehead, but she just danced out of range. "It isn't that unrealistic, actually," I argued. "If we were dealing with a spatiotempotectonic shift, that would perfectly explain why the codex is incorrect, despite being no more than a few decades old.
Aya nodded slowly. "True. And I'll give you that that's more likely than the Stargazers being that misinformed."
I opened my mouth to continue my argument, but something out of the corner of my eye made me stop.
"Contact."
Aya continued walking as if she didn't hear me.
"I'll make a mark." She said, and I noted the slightly odd cadence of her words that indicated the use of Soulspeech. I opened my Conduit before I replied.
"Alright. We'll stop and rest a while now."
"How recovered are you? I'm not sure how well I'll fight right now. The chances of us being in a polar circle aren't low, which would definitely make my combat ability tank, but if we're on a plane then that comes with its own issues. Concealment should be the only main ability that isn't affected, but I can use some other supportive abilities to a lesser extent."
I tested my Conduit for a second before replying. "One Gate after thirty seconds, the second after a minute or so. The third will be tough but I might be able to force it."
"Start. I'll conceal it. If our 'guest' is another Sorcerer, I doubt they'll take offense. If they don't start running, that is."
Only in extreme situations would two Sorcerers actually fight. Even without taking into account that two Sorcerers simultaneously using powers of the same step cause them both to go haywire, Sorcerers were either considered extremely valuable assets or heretics that should be executed on sight. But either instance was inconducive of conflict.
But the third option was actually the most realistic. That being him having no way of sensing a Sorcerer using their power in his vicinity.
I made the motion of clicking my fingers, except didn't put enough force into it to make more than a small *thap*. Through my Soulsense I felt the Soulforce of the millennium-old trees get forced out of my surroundings.
But through normal vision, the signs of my Gate opening were imperceptible, Aya doing a perfect job of cloaking them.
The two of us walked over to a particularly noticeable tree that Aya made a small cut in before she leaned against me for a few seconds, casually placing a hand on my chest as she did so.
"Now." I sent telepathically before stepping forward a few paces and speaking out loud. "It's impolite to watch people from the shadows, you know?"
The instant I spoke, Aya vanished into thin air. At the same time, a ghostly bronze cogwheel appeared behind me and thin chains began to wrap themselves around my forearms.
"Spatial movement?" A voice asked in a surprised tone. "Hah, I knew a Sudden Quest wouldn't disappoint."
"Well that narrows things down a little." I muttered under my breath, taking a combat stance. A second cog began to slowly form behind me as I began to open the second Gate.
A tall man strode out from behind a tree, arms crossed, with a sword on his waist and a spear on his back. He appeared similar to a human, but only if you were talking about a human that stood nearly 2.2 meters tall and had starved for a month. His skin was also a sickly grayish hue, giving off the feeling that he had just got off his deathbed.
His face split into a sadistic grin. "So the kid realized she couldn't beat me and left you here to die, huh? Kinda impressed, honestly. Didn't expect to see such decisive abandonment from a little girl, regardless of how powerful she is."
"Oi! Lemme stab him, Neb! At least once."
I ignored Aya and breathed in deeply, letting it half out before lunging toward him at the fastest speed I could physically muster. He sneered and just lifted his hand, grabbing my fist.
I held back from wincing as a cracking sound emitted from my right hand, which he was slowly squeezing with ever-increasing force. Unable to extract my fist, I threw a kick at him with my left leg, which he naturally blocked. However, it created the opening I was looking for.
His eyes narrowed when he saw the grin on my face, but him getting suspicious marked the moment when my goal was fully accomplished. The chains wrapped around my arms shot out like lightning, wrapping around his wrists, then spinning rapidly. Instantly the sickening sound of flesh ripping and bone being sawed through violated my ears and I retreated several paces.
No sooner than I got out of range, violet blood spurted out of the man's wrists, which no longer had anything attached to them. He looked at me with an almost puzzled look. And then the pain hit.
A bestial scream tore from his throat, echoing through the forest—is what would have happened, had I not stopped the sound from being heard any further than a half a meter away.
I retracted the previously unnoticeable thorn-like blades from my chains and took advantage of his current, eherm, distracted state to wrap them around the rest of his body.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a little bit of a gamble, but the fight couldn't have gone any better. I had banked on the fact that Assimilation-types can't provide their host any soul-based abilities, which would mean that he was judging me purely based off of my physical and magical ability, both of which were as good as nonexistent compared to him.
"You can come out now, Aya." I sent, and a moment later the silver-haired girl appeared next to me. The second cogwheel behind me, already on the verge of manifesting, faded into nothing as I let the second Gate drift close. But I kept the first one open, just in case, since the speed and precision of my tungsten chains would drastically decrease if they were only supported by my Conduit. It was a bit of a drain, but considering the fight had barely taken half a percent of my Soulforce, it was a loss I could take.
"I think I know what we're dealing with now, at least." I said calmly.
Aya nodded. "Yep, just need to make sure." She walked over to the man who was now lying trussed up on the ground, glaring daggers at us, and crouched down next to him. "So tell me, which Order are you a part of?" She asked in an innocent voice, as if she was asking a passerby what they thought of the weather, not interrogating an alien who's hands had just been ripped off by her partner.
He spat defiantly in her face, but she didn't flinch. Rather, he was the one who flinched when a quick thought from me made his spit fly back into his own face. Clearly he was either too beside himself to think clearly, or he didn't realize what being in the range of a Sorcerer's open Gate meant.
Probably the second, now that I think about it. Even the basic capabilities of a Sorcerer aren't exactly well known, let alone those of a Third-step. Now that I think about it, this place probably views Sorcerers as heretics, so I'm basically their worst enemy. Hehe. I nodded to myself a few times. Yeah, I can't see an Assimilation-type letting people who might be able to defend the—
An enraged scream tore me unceremoniously from my thoughts. "LIKE HELL A NOBLE DRAPHIR WOULD SERVE THE ANGEL ORDER!"
I wonder what the hell Aya said in a few sentences to make him go from spitting to screaming out info. I thought idly.
"Yep, that answers that question." Aya muttered, visibly annoyed, as she shook her head and rubbed the ear that the 'Noble Draphir' had just deafened. We both had complicated looks on our faces at the realization. "Come on, Neb. He probably attracted some things with that screaming."
"Actually I doubt that, considering the cost it took to stop anyone from hearing his screams of pain was close to nothing. I do agree we should get a move on, though." I quickly sharpened one of the chains, plunging it into his skull and killing him instantly.
Aya and I both recoiled in shock at the veritable explosion of Mana, Soulforce, and Entropic Energy that burst from his body on death. I started to absorb the Soulforce, purging it of its color as I did so. But barely a few seconds later I backpedaled, desperately pushing out as much Soulforce as a single Gate allowed. "THIS MOTHERFU—"
"Neb!?" Aya yelled in concern, grabbing my arm.
"I thought False Order was relatively benign on a human timescale." I gritted my teeth in anger. "Either something has changed, or the last Sorcerer to see this was criminally inept."
I felt a slight tug as Aya borrowed my Soulsense, trying to see what was going on through my eyes. Although as an Aspect, Aya had quite a powerful sense for the supernatural energies, the only entities capable of rivaling the Lighthouse's Vanguards in terms of their ability to perceive souls were some Death Gods or Aspects of Samsara.
After a few tense moments that felt like I was about to fall off of a tightrope, I relaxed. "Phew. That was a close one."
"What happened?" Aya asked. "All I could see was you slamming as much Soulforce as possible into something. I've never seen you use it that crudely before."
I made a disgusted expression. "Yeah, normally I never would have. That little stint cost me almost 13% of my total pool." I growled. "But False Order crossed my bottom line. All of our bottom lines."
Aya's eyes grew cold. Somehow, she looked even angrier than I felt. "Looks like our top priority is finding out how to extract an Assimilation-type Chaos. That'll pay well when we get back home."
The words she said could easily be taken as a joke. The idea of a small team like ours finding an answer to a problem that had plagued all Sentients for eons was absolutely ludicrous. But it wasn't like we had much choice. Not anymore.
To understand the situation, a basic knowledge of souls is required. Almost everything has a soul, but that's simply a mass of colored Soulforce anchored to a physical body. What sets apart sapient beings is the existence of a Soulsphere. If non-sapient souls are like an amorphous ball held together by gravity, the souls of sapient beings are like a container, made out of information and instructions, filled with an identity; what makes a person unique.
When a sapient dies, the Soulforce, the identity within the sphere, dissipates, and the Soulsphere itself returns to the planet—or a god, or Samsara, depending on the situation—where it stays inert until a physical body capable of bearing it is born.
It's not an exaggeration to say that a planet is developed and defined by the amount of Soulspheres it possesses, which is why the greatest taboo for us, who want to survive in the storms of Chaos, is to destroy a Soulsphere.
And that's exactly what False Order attempted to do, and would have done if I hadn't stopped it.
The reason our only real choice is to discover a way to extract False Order from its hosts is simple. In the past, the only known way to defeat an Assimilation-type Chaos was to annihilate all its hosts on a planet, which was a doable task, albeit a savage and an astronomical one. When a host was killed, its Soulsphere would be sent back to Earth, saving it and preventing any new hosts for the Chaos from being born.
The few records we have of False Order being beaten back were a bit more complicated than that, befitting its ranking as the fourth overall most dangerous Chaos, but they had the same basic concept.
But this time, even if I were to brutalize nature, wiping the rudimentary souls and absorbing the pure Soulforce, I doubted that I could stop the destruction of more than two or three Soulspheres a month.
"Hey, Neb…" Aya trailed off hesitantly. "What if we gave up on the sapients and just saved the Sentients?"
I gritted my teeth in anger, though I wasn't even sure what I was angry at. Aya for suggesting that? Myself for being unable to do anything? False Order for pulling this? My predecessors for never coming up with a way to solve this? Probably a mix of all of those, really.
It took me a moment to clear my thoughts, but I finally shook my head in response. "I don't think there's any reason to discuss that. Putting aside what I might do when things get down to the wire, only saving the Sentients isn't going to be a much larger hurdle to cross."
"What do you mean? There shouldn't be more than 1 Sentient for every 4 sapients, so it'll only take a quarter—"
"We can't." I cut her off with finality. "You remember this is False Order we're dealing with, right?"
"Oh." She deflated. "The Demon God."
I grimaced slightly and nodded. One of the key factors that made False Order so dangerous was a hard time limit, and, for lack of a better phrase, its win conditions.
Out of all the Parasitic-type Chaos, False Order had by far the simplest conditions for spreading. While others required close proximity to infect or change host, False Order would plant a seed somewhere that would germinate for a few days before radiating soul attacks, attempting to assimilate itself into everyone it could reach. These hosts would then act as points for new attacks, and so on and so forth. It could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to infect an entire planet. That was when the real hell started.
It would create an illusion of two different sides, the Angel Order and the Demon King Order, but it was rigged so that the Demon King Order would always come out on top in the end. It would use countless deaths to steal life and power from the planet itself, before only a single being would be left alive: the Demon God. This final survivor, packed with the power that came from sacrificing billions of lives, would then travel through the multiverse, spreading the Chaos' seeds, before finally becoming a seed himself when he no longer had enough power left to travel.
I hope we're not in a situation where the "seed" on this planet is an ex-Demon God. Having a deadline at all is bad enough, I don't need it to be moved up even furthe—
I was pulled out of my thoughts by my body moving on its own to block a forehead flick from my disgruntled loli.
"Hey! I told you, no more jinxing!"
I rolled my eyes and just started walking off, still holding onto the hand I just stopped from brutalizing my forehead. "Come on, we need to find someplace to set up a base of some sort." I casually brushed aside the fact that I'd apparently been broadcasting my thoughts through our connection again.
"Yeah, yeah. Then we can work on looking for the other four once we're set up." She didn't make any attempt at retrieving her hand, instead intertwining her fingers with mine so that we could walk side-by-side more comfortably.
"What, is being alone with me really that objectionable?" I said with mock offense.
"Weeelllll…" she drew the word out for a couple seconds, before apparently deciding to not respond to my banter. "You know it's not. It's just been so long since we've actually spent time with any of them."
I nodded sadly and gave her hand a little squeeze. Apparently not being able to fight earlier for fear of her powers not working was wearing on her more than I initially thought. "Yeah. Well, we have a lot of time and a lot to get done. You, Leo, and the twins can work on finding a way to extract False Order, while Rin and I work on raising a Usurper and Inquisitor to take down the Demon God."
Aya laughed and looked up at me with an amused and slightly disbelieving look on her face. "Usurper and Inquisitor? Really?"
"Hey!" I objected, "don't laugh! Those are accurate names for what they are, and since they didn't have a name already, it was obviously my responsibility to remedy that."
Aya giggled for a bit longer before resting her head on my arm, still sporadically making small noises of amusement. Honestly I didn't know what she found so funny, but I was glad she seemed to be back to normal.
We walked like that for a few more minutes before Aya broke the silence. "By the way, earlier, you weren't actually accidentally using telepathy. You just had that look on your face like you were monologuing, so I naturally assumed you were in the process of jinxing us."
"..."
