[Miss Hatt, are you still sapient?]

Kepler nosed her, worried.

[Miss Hatt? Is it the new form? All your diagnostics come up correct…]

He whined. She rolled over, moaning. Wait—rolled over? Did she have a body—

No. Yes. She certainly hadn’t rolled over, that was an illusion of the mind.

[You are still sapient!] More tail wagging. No, not real tail wagging, it was just her putting an image to the emotion. He was still bodiless, but she….

What am I? Stone. Cold stone—warm stone? Air, no, power. She was stone and power and water—

[We have connected to the system!]

What? That’s not an answer, Kepler. She shuddered—really shuddered! Stretched her warm net of power/will/existence.

[Patience is a virtue, Miss Hatt. The system is a--] He paused, trying to parse the concept in a way that wouldn’t hurt her. The web they’d connected to whispered something to him, and he growled irritably. [I could have figured that out.]

The system is that web, right? The one feeding off the rift.

[Yes! That’s what it is! But it’s also like me.] He huffed softly to himself, [But a slut.]

She paused. What?

[It’s connected to a lot of people. All the people on this side of the rift. Slut.] The last part was directed at the system, who ignored him. Its attention had moved away from them.

Clare collapsed into laughter, the chortles vibrating down her power-net, no, she’d call it her aura. It spasmed like her lungs would have, twitching as she giggled.

[I don’t see what’s so funny.]

She laughed harder. Kepler’s ears drooped, and effectively blushed (stretching the dog analogy, unfortunately).

That slut saved our lives, you know? And it’s—she laughed harder—It’s so frickin big and powerful, and you just—If she’d had her human body, there would have been tears in her eyes. As it was, she laughed for a good five minutes.

Ah, that was another good thing. Time was both present and normal.

Thank god. We really survived.

[Well, that is good.] Kepler made a small, satisfied noise.

It really is.

Relieved, Clare stretched her aura out in a comfortable slump, reveling in the feeling of having a body again (no matter how weird).

Her aura was the most reactive part of her, but it wasn’t the only piece. In the center of it, there was a large gem, about the size of a human fist. She knew instinctively that her soul rested there, much like her brain in her old body, and it didn’t look all that durable.

Kepler?

[Yes?]

You never answered my question.

[Oh, right.] He hesitated for a moment. [The system says to compare it to the litRPG genre, back in your old world.]

Oh? Then the system is—

[That kind of system, yes. It feeds off the rift and funnels some of it into small sapients, much like the species you were. The sapients can’t take very much, though, or they break.]

Clare hummed in her aura thoughtfully. Which is why there are levels?

[Yes. Creatures like you exist to help the sapients level.]

Oh? She would have blinked but made do with flicking the frayed edges of her aura. Kepler, am I—

[A dungeon, yes.]

Huh. Clare was…

Strangely okay with that.