The multiverse was home to many planets, civilizations, and factions beyond Zlithia and even the angelic host. Travel between universes was difficult for most. For some creatures such as angels, that required a Form Change skill simply to craft a body that could survive in the target universe. Of all the options, human and human-adjacent forms were often picked because they were so widespread.

  In fact, there were so many kinds of humans with different System-granted names that the angelic host created the umbrella term “Arslan” to refer to them all. From there, it also coined terms to refer to the hybrids that spanned the gap between the many human species and subspecies and the equally numerous beasts. Celians, of which Zlithia was home to many, were those closer to humans. Tevrite were the opposite end of that spectrum where they were more beast than human.

  Despite the sheer number of known (and probably unknown) universes, movement between them was not a normal thing. Teleportation within a universe had an exponential cost in mana and difficulty. The rings of safety the guests of the pre-hunt party used to escape were difficult to make and costly to buy. They were crude things with so many limitations and ways to go wrong that death would be preferable to using them to more advanced cultures who better understood such things.

  There were some civilizations that both knew about the different universes and could travel between them. A few even had magitek artifacts created with the sole purpose of ferrying peoples across the boundary of one universe to the next. These were the rare exceptions such as Brivaria’s own people. In spite of their differing beliefs, angels and demons were among the most knowledgeable species in existence when it came to inter-universe travel. Most other civilizations were far from their equal. In fact, most didn’t even know other universes existed.

  It was entirely common for a planet to give birth to life, see that life grow, watch it stagnate, and then oversee its eventual demise in a vacuum. Planets, races, nations, civilizations, and more rose and fell thinking that they or their planet was all there was. There were ageless beings sitting in otherwise dead universes only because they couldn’t conceive of worlds outside their own.

  This was partially a feature of the System. It would offer a person what they knew. Someone who had never envisioned a universe outside their own could never be offered a class or a skill related to such a thing. Angels had skills to reach out to people in need but those people had to first develop the skills to call for that aid. Planets like Zlithia were among the rare few whose peoples broadly knew they were not alone in the multiverse but only a select few truly understood what that meant.

  Guardsman Eugene Talver was not one of those people. He was a sort of middle of the road kid growing up. His family was neither rich nor poor but merely average. He was neither a genius nor a fool but merely average. When he’d taken to hunting thinking it was his calling, he’d learned that he was neither great at it nor awful at it but merely average. He’d joined the Barton city watch and become a guardsman because the work was neither easy nor hard and the pay was pretty good for his age and skill set.

  He considered himself an honest person and a good person. He liked helping people. He liked smiling at someone and getting a smile in return. His skills were average, the home he shared with his parents was average, his job was average, and if someone called his entire life average then he’d smile and say “that’s alright with me.” Things were reliable and he liked that. He didn’t want to change the world, he wanted to afford one of those really comfortable-looking chairs in Mrs. Samuel’s shop and a pair of Mr. Houstan’s cold weather trousers. Those would keep his bum so warm in the coming winter.

  All of the happiness that Guardsman Eugene Talver had spent the last 26 years of his life building disappeared in an instant. A literal blink of the eye stole it all. He’d never known there was a world outside Zlithia. Maybe Zed would sometimes get drunk at the tavern and start spouting nonsense but Talver had never taken any of that seriously. Barton was all he knew and all he wanted to know. He loved his family, liked his neighbors (mostly), and enjoyed what he did. He didn’t want all of that to be taken away from him but it was.

  The moment he saw that eye blink, he realized something. None of it mattered. Barton wasn’t a small city, it was nothing. The people in it were ants and he was one of them. The mere concept of that thing in the sky weighed down on him. It smothered him with its very existence. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t a skill or spell. It was the truth. It was every weird thing that winged girl had said since he’d entered this strange place condensed into a single moment of absolute horror.

  He fell to his knees and stared because what else was there to do when one realized their entire life was meaningless? What did his tiny, insignificant dreams even mean in the grand scheme of things? He wasn’t average at all. He was a speck of dust staring at the broom. He was a grain of sand in a desert. He was nothing.

  “Get up. Get up. Talver snap out of it,” came a distant voice. He barely heard it over the beating of his own heart. His whole body was shutting down. His mind refused to go any further. He was… suddenly on the ground and pain radiated from his jaw.

  “Wake up,” the voice shouted once more and pieces of Talver’s mind gradually reassembled themselves into something that resembled what they’d been before. He wasn’t the same. He’d never be the same again. He pushed through the feelings and his eyes focused. He looked up at the angel-turned-demon and grimaced.

  “Ow,” he said while experimentally moving his jaw. The world spun and he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to be all in his head or not.

  “We’ve got to go,” Brivaria said while looking at the man. The guardsman had gone catatonic in the face of the thing in the sky but she wasn’t going to leave him behind.

  The problem was that shit was hitting the fan. The slime amalgamation was reassembling itself. It wasn’t fast but it was happening. Talver had killed a dozen cores but there were plenty leftover. While they could fight and possibly kill the thing if he had a few more of those anti-magic bolts, that wasn’t the true problem, not anymore.

  In the wake of the eye blinking, creatures had appeared in the sky. They seemed like they were coming directly from the darkness within the eye. Every second they spent was another second those things got closer. The slimes were dangerous but they didn’t frighten the angel. The flying things did. They were one of the true threats of the Between and something that she’d have hesitated to fight even at the height of her power.

  They were sleek, silver humanoid creatures. Their bodies looked to be entirely made of muscle and the silver coating over them was nigh impenetrable for even magic weapons. Each had a hand with two large thumb-like appendages and five fingers. Every digit ended in a silver claw. Their feet were much the same with two heels and five toes with talon-like claws for the toes and heels alike. Their wings were unlike those of angels or demons. It was more like watching a pair of arms with the bat-like membrane between them and an enormous claw at the top of the wing which they could use like a second set of arms.

  Their bodies were neither masculine nor feminine. The only growths from them besides their wings and limbs were their tails and their tentacles. Each silver creature had a single large tail with a sharp, crescent blade at the tip. It ran along the tail and up so the point of one end was at the end of the tail while the other rose up along the top. While there was just the one tail, the tentacles were numerous. They emerged from shins, elbows, shoulders, hips, and wrapped around the silvery bodies. They never stopped moving, Brivaria knew. Even when the things were still, the tentacles writhed almost uncontrollably. They wriggled like snakes and she knew they could strike just the same.

  More than the bizarre physiology and the tentacles, the thing that made Brivaria’s skin crawl the most was the head. The truly disturbing thing about the silver creatures was that they had no face. There were no snapping jaws, no deadly fangs, no ominous black eyes, and none of the terrifying hallmarks of demons and mere mortal terrors. Their heads were simple silver ovals. They were entirely smooth without eyes, mouths, hair, ears, or any kind of features but they still turned when they heard a noise. They still turned when someone moved. If eyes truly were windows to the soul then these things were soulless. They were the cold, efficient, ruthless killers of the Between. They were the Gaunt.

  Brivaria dragged Talver to his feet and they ran. Every fiber of Brivaria’s being was screaming at her to leave Guardsman Talver behind and run. She should activate Current Control, dump every last point of mana into it, and run as fast and as far away as she could. If those things caught her, she was dead. It wasn’t even a question of fighting back. She wasn’t a match for one of those. Not a single person in all of Barton was. Hell, not every man, woman, child, guard, adventurer, mage, or whatever all put together was.

  The slime had been the source of the noise. Even if it was Talver’s bolt that caused the disturbance, it was the slime that had made it. It knew what was coming just as much as the angel and human. It tried to run. It tried to lurch toward one of the pools of fluid in the spine that made up the path. It failed.

  The gaunt descended silently and mercilessly. Claws on arms and wings reached into the slime, pulled out each core, and crushed it. The slime fired its deadly molten liquid attack at the gaunt. It did nothing. The slimes tried to split up. They tried to flee. Some even jumped from the bone road to get away. None did. Tentacles unwrapped from gaunt bodies and struck like silver spears, destroying any slimes that tried to jump. It didn’t even take 10 seconds from start to finish.

  The monster that had chased Brivaria and Talver was dismantled and died so easily that it almost made Brivaria mad. They were laughably low level and, for all her progress, it meant so very little in the face of a true terror of the Between. Worse, she knew how fast they were. She could see the door in the cliff-side that Talver’s Sense of Direction had pointed out. She could see how far away from it she and Talver were. They wouldn’t make it.

  If she had run and abandoned the guardsman then she could have made it. She could have lived if she’d given up on him. Now it was too late. They were far too slow. The angel had no tricks, no clever ideas, and no hidden ace up her sleeve for this situation. Still, she and Talver ran. They ran because it was the only thing they could do.

  “Take your class advancement,” came Akashic’s voice in her head. Desperation and fear were plain to hear in Akashic’s voice. Brivaria had never heard Akashic so scared as she was in that moment. There was genuine terror in the other woman’s voice. Brivaria wanted to laugh at how dumb that suggestion was, how little it mattered. “No, you stupid girl, take Sronyan Valkyrie and do it now. Do it or we both die. You die, I die, the stupid human dies. Choose it now!”

  Akashic was shouting in her head and Brivaria made the mistake of turning around. The gaunt turned to face the pair nearly as one. They didn’t move in unison, not completely. They weren’t a total hive mind but there was communication between them, somehow. The angel could feel their attention shift to the pair as they fled, specifically to her. Dread welled up in the pit of her stomach but she pushed it down. If she was to die, it wouldn’t be a death she calmly accepted. She would fight for every last second using every tool at her disposal. She opened up the class advancement screen and selected Sronyan Valkyrie.

  You have gained the class Sronyan Valkyrie.

  You have gained the skill Meridian Fang.

  Meridian Fang (Active)

  You may designate one weapon or object in your possession as your Meridian Fang. The Meridian Fang is infused with unholy magic and becomes significantly harder to damage, break, or destroy. When you kill a creature native to a world other than your own with your Meridian Fang, you gain a portion of their knowledge and memories. Strength and duration of the infusion scale with arcane, modified by presence.

  “Okay, open up your skills. Quick!” Akashic shouted inside Brivaria’s mind and the angel did. She skimmed the new ones but didn’t know what she, no, what they were looking for. Suddenly Akashic spoke up again. “Ah, it’s there. Pick Affinity (Unholy) and use Twisted Reflection on the gaunt.”

  At the sound of those words, the angel felt as though she were suddenly on the precipice of making a decision she could never take back. Everything up to this point could be forgiven, in time, and maybe fixed. This would change her forever. There would be no fixing it so she hesitated. She thought of all her new friends back in Barton. She thought of Giselle, Kseniya, and Nyx. Most of all, she thought of Trixie and of what would happen to the dog if Brivaria never came home. She made her decision.

  You have gained the skill Affinity (Unholy).