On the third day, Theora flew past the planet she would steal velocity from. The manoeuvre brought her much closer to it than she’d initially anticipated; so close, in fact, that she was almost worried she’d fall down.

“Don’t worry,” Isobel was saying, “I ran the calculations. You’re totally safe!”

“It would just be unfortunate. Does this planet have an atmosphere?”

“Don’t think so.”

Theora nodded. “In that case, if I fall down, I would be stuck. Even another Orb can’t overcome the planetary attraction, can it?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Isobel said. “If you find yourself on a planet without an atmosphere, that would be bad.”

“I would lose all speed I have accumulated, and would have wasted all that weight.”

“Yep! All that propellants would be wasted. But! You still have enough left, more or less. Something would need to go seriously wrong for you not to make it.”

“Don’t say that,” Theora murmured. “Also, this planet has a ring. It looks like I might crash into it. They are made of rocks, right?”

“Yeah.” Iso clacked. “But they only look dense from afar. Once you get there you’ll see they are actually super far apart. That’s what the notes of the space farers said.”

“But I might still crash into one.”

“Unlikely!”

By the fifth day, the light lag had grown to over ten minutes. As a result, the messages Theora received and those she sent were getting longer. Harrik wrote paragraphs about how much his sister had grown in the meantime; he’d built a magitek device to see her while invisible, so she’d playfully started learning how to evade detection despite that. Helena was still jokingly complaining about how much time Balinth was spending on Theora, and tried to ‘beat her out’ by talking about her favourite recipes.

Everyone was putting in lots of effort to make Theora feel less lonely. Despite the growing light lag and despite the fact that Isobel’s contact was growing more and more sparse, to save time on the communications device in case they needed it later.

But Theora herself didn’t really have much to talk about. All she ever saw was a sea full of stars, every second of the day; and while she could never grow tired of that, it also didn’t leave her with much to report. She was always heading towards some star or constellation, with no hope of ever reaching it. The stars were so ridiculously far away that even on the fifth day, after journeying what Isobel called almost two-hundred billion ‘universal units of distance’ — about six-thousand times as long as her home continent —, her view had not changed.

All she could really do was latch onto whatever other people told her, and react to it.

And, under the attire that absorbed most of the sun’s heat, she was unable to radiate enough heat away from her body, and after thawing from the ice-cold atmosphere of her home planet, she was now hot, the sweat bubbling on her skin as it left her.

Luckily, she had brought a lot of water, so at least, she could drink.

Whenever nobody had time to entertain Theora — because they were sleeping or because they were busy — she decided to wade through System prompts instead. Not necessarily because it was fun or because she liked it, but she had wanted to do it for a while, and now there was no excuse left to postpone it.

She watched at her party screen as the numbers went up and down, telling her when the others were using mana. Isobel used most of it — did [Compute] have a mana cost? She was constantly hovering around half, with large jumps. They typically happened either before she got into contact with Theora or after, so it was likely related to her mission control work in some way.

Dema’s mana was mostly steady at around 90 %, but she was clearly using it. Bell’s was also never full. Theora sometimes looked at their stat sheets to watch the Skills level-up, which was especially noticeable with Isobel, since she was a baby of only a few decades old, and had only relatively recently switched to her current Class.

 

Name: None Class: [Mossmancer], Level 78.

HP: 5/5

STR: 1 DEX: 1

MND: 2,719 VIT: 1

DEF: 1

Class Skills: [Store Water] [Mossify] [Photosynthesis] [Plant Plant Plant] [Spore Bloom] [Marine Snow]

Common Skills: [Inner Monologue] [Compute] 

Traits: [Common Knowledge] [Moss Librarian] [End of Hunger] [Ancient] [Granted Immortality]

 

That reckless girl still hadn’t increased her defence at all… Although to be fair, Theora wasn’t sure what that would actually do. Isobel’s Skill distribution was very anxiety-inducing nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Dema was talking about a big secret scheming project she had going on that she wasn’t willing to go into details with. Her sheet was massive, but mostly static. Of course, Theora had asked for permission to look at their stats, and she really had nothing else to do. 

 

Name: Dema Class: [Mage], Level 1,678.

HP: 6,642,512/6,642,512

Mana: 84,286,426/95,425,609

STR: 6,868 DEX: 6,463

MND: 66,623 VIT: 7,636

DEF: 626

Class Skills: [Blood Whip] [Reshape Earth] [Crystallise] [Hemokinesis] [Tectonic Shift] [Exsanguinate] [Capillary] [Tremorise] [Survive] [Blood Donation] [Deplasmarise] [Clot] [Find Veins] [One With Earth] [Craterise] [Regeneration] [Lifesteal] [Inject] [Blood to Flesh] [Survive II] [Mana to Blood] [Emboulder] [Flesh to Mana] [Rejuvenate] [Blood Rain] [Regrow Limbs] [Hematopoiesis] [Hematography] [Crust] [Enhanced Mana Retrieval] [Blood Boil] [Pink Mist] [Throw Rock] [Condense] [Destroy Planet] [Survive III] [Regrow Horn] [Replenish Selfhood] [Blood Bath] [Earthquake] [Ironize] [Mineral Gown] [Blood Stone] [Plasma Curdle] [Hemocytic Laceration] [Blood Moon] [Undizzyfy] [Meteorite] [Blood Rot] [Vampiric Bite] … Click to expand 113 more Skills.

Common Skills: [Appraise]

Legendary Skill: [Immortality]

Traits: [Ancient] [Blood Magic] [Earth Magic] [Unreasonable Resilience]

 

By far the most interesting Skill to Theora was [Find Veins], because neither its name nor description specified what kind of veins it was talking about. When looking for fossils decades ago, Dema had used an echolocation-type Skill to find deposits of specific rock or mineral types in the mountains, and it was not unlikely that this was one of the Skills she’d used for that. On the other hand, veins also existed in the human body, and could be used to find blood.

The Skill thus seemed to synthesise both of Dema’s affinities, and it made Theora wonder how much of a difference there was between a planet and a person. Dema often clotted blood into stone or crystal-like material, and she was able to swim inside rock as if it was blood sometimes too. It had never occurred to Theora how well earth and blood magic mixed together. Dema was using blood magic to regenerate and heal herself, and was sturdy as a result — sturdy and solid, just like a rock would be.

There was also [Vampiric Bite]… She’d never seen Dema drink or use other people’s blood, even though her Skills would definitely allow her to use foreign blood for her magic too. Dema had never even shown interest in that. But she clearly had a Skill to bite someone. What did that mean?

If it turned out that Dema liked things like that… Perhaps Theora could make some tea of her own blood, as a treat.

Theora swallowed. The unlivable conditions of space were impacting her ability to think. She was getting too ahead of herself. Way too ahead. Perhaps Dema had absolutely no interest in interacting with Theora’s fluids at all.

But, she couldn’t ask this over text. If it turned out Dema actually wanted to drink Theora’s blood… Better not think about that on a mission to save the planet. And if it turned out that Dema didn’t want to, then Theora would be sad.

Eventually, Theora settled on sending a more innocuous message, just writing, “Hope things are still going well. How are you?”

And now, on to waiting. Theora scrolled through the group chat. It was still active, but felt harder to participate, because by the time her messages would deliver, the topic of the discussion would have long-since moved on. Still, it made for an entertaining experience to see people she knew talk to each other, even though she couldn’t directly participate.

It’s not like Theora had ever been a very talkative person. But now, she couldn’t even sleep to avoid feeling the passage of time, because she needed to focus. And all she could see were the stars. She occasionally chatted with [Head in the Clouds], but the Skill suffered a similar listlessness. 

After about twenty minutes, Dema’s response read, “Sorry! Can’t talk right now. Gonna get back to you.”

Alright, so Dema was busy, then. So was Bell, who did not even respond. Iso had cut the connection to save power on the transmission device, and she rarely responded to System messages anyway. She was also fairly busy even when she wasn’t coddling Theora, making sure to keep all the data in view and [Computing] possible problems in advance.

Isobel likely wasn’t planning on resting much during the mission. She’d plunged head-first into learning the laws of nature and memorising the route and the positions of all known objects in the planetary system by heart, had done her best to provide insights throughout the strategizing phase, and had gobbled up and analysed tons of data with [Compute] to level it as high as possible, and that data included the entirety of Theora’s sheets and System logs, since that was the largest amount of data readily available.

All to make sure she would be the best choice to accompany Theora on this mission. 

Theora managed to distract herself a little by checking in with Balinth, who told her about the most recent books she’d read, and even offered to type out some passages for Theora to read, which, in the span of the next day, turned into Balinth sending entire chapters of her favourite books, although it took her a while to write them down.

“I really liked that chapter,” Theora wrote at some point. “I’m glad Serrena was able to overcome her fear of being touched.”

“Yeah, right? Stories like this really hit me hard. Hell used to be very… restrained. In more ways than one. Reading such scenes makes me nostalgic. As if we’re young again and she’s crying next to me because she thinks I’ll leave her if she’s not putting in enough effort.”

“Is this something you can share with me? Or would she feel uncomfortable?”

“Oh, she’s over it, don’t worry. These scenes don’t resonate too much with her, but she still keeps recommending me stories if she finds something that hits that spot.”

Nearing the end of the fifth day, Dema had still mostly been silent. Her mana fluctuations were getting more violent, and it was down to 86 % now. Bell’s mana was dropping as well. No messages at all from her.

 

On the seventh day, Theora activated the second Orb. With that, there were only three left. One for later patches of mould, one to meet the behemoth and one to return home. Theora counted the seconds, nervously staring at the party sheet to absorb any minuscule change. Dema still had barely talked to her. Bell had not sent a single message in two days.

Something was wrong.

One-hundred twenty-three minutes left until Theora would hit the second patch. Isobel would guide her through it, so Theora was planning to ask if she knew what was going on. She sent a message to Isobel, asking for confirmation — yes, the System had a lag, but Theora really needed answers to her worries. She hadn’t heard from Isobel in two days either, ever since the course was corrected.

Eventually, about ninety minutes before hitting the mould, it happened.

Dema suddenly lost large amounts of mana and health. Down to 79 %, then 76 %, then 74 %. Considering how much she had in total, this was ridiculous. Bell was losing mana too. She had some Skills that allowed her to gain back quickly, so her bar kept jumping up and down. She was taking damage, too.

72 % for Dema.

68 %.

63 %.

About ten seconds after it started, Dema reached 60 %, and then left the party. A moment later, Bell left as well.

The lag meant this had happened over ten minutes ago. Were the two still fine?

Theora stared at her bracelet.