It was an hour or two before midnight. The moon hung full overhead, an auspicious sign according to Sildra, and Velik was finally ready to pass beyond the boundary. He’d removed all of his gear, extracted a backpack of supplies and his new spear from his Traveler’s Bracelet, and handed the whole thing over. Sildra had accepted it wordlessly, then pulled Velik into an unexpected hug and wished him luck.

She was up on the mountain now, watching and waiting for him to start his journey. Velik walked slowly down the main road, a lone figure in the dark. Some people saw him from their windows or their tents. They watched curiously as he made his way to the boundary, but none stopped him.

The serving girl from the tavern stood in the doorway, silent and trembling, as he walked by. He never had learned her name, now that he thought about it. Her eyes tracked each step, but she didn’t say anything. A hand landed on her shoulder and gently drew her back into the building soon after Velik passed.

He was certain most of them knew where he was going. The whole town, not to mention the encamped armies, was terrified of the boundary. The way Velik understood it, there’d been a whole battalion that had been forced outside it and held there. They were gone now, mysteriously shredded in a matter of minutes. Even the witnesses on the inside of the boundary who’d seen the devastation happen couldn’t actually say what had caused it.

They’d blamed it on the desert monsters. Those were a known threat, even if they rarely approached the boundary. Velik thought otherwise. His nose told him Tesir had come through here twice. He’d hinted that killing Torwin had been a mistake. Morgus had outright confirmed it. But out beyond the boundary, it was a different story.

Could I do that? he wondered to himself. It wasn’t that he wanted to, but this was the only measure of Tesir’s real power he had. A few hundred men? Maybe a thousand. Could I go through them with such power and fury that observers couldn’t even tell what killed them?

He approached the boundary, marked by a stone wall ten feet high. There was no gate. Nobody wanted to go past it, so there was no reason to make it easy. The town’s houses became sparser the closer he got, until the last few hundred feet, where there was nothing but open, empty, dusty land.

And Horace’s assistant.

“Are you really going to do this?” she asked. She stood solidly in the middle of the road, the wall looming over her.

“Yes,” Velik told her. “Why do you care?”

“Believe it or not, I’d like to see you not die. Horace was certain you’d try something like this despite all his warnings. We’ve been watching in shifts.”

“And?”

“And you should turn back. This isn’t bravery. You’re not special. There’s nothing but death past this wall. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. Once you walk out there, you’re the same as a level 1.”

“What happens to people who go past the boundary and then come back in?” Velik asked curiously.

“What?”

“Simple question,” Velik said. “Seems like something a researcher should know.”

“This isn’t a game, young man,” the blonde woman said.

Huh. She doesn’t know? That’s… weird.

Part of him thought he should do something about that, but he realized that thought was just an excuse to stall. He was walking into the unknown, with only the word of a nebulous god that he’d come out the other side stronger. Velik wasn’t one to take things on faith. Maybe that was why Morgus had chosen Sildra as his champion despite Velik being objectively closer to the quest goal

Velik walked past the assistant and leaped to the top of the wall with a twitch of his legs. It was thin, only eight inches wide, but he held his balance easily. On the other side was sand, stone, and cracked, baked earth. There was almost no evidence left of the slaughter, which struck Velik as somewhat ominous.

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Did the desert just swallow the bodies somehow, or did one of its monsters come to clean up the mess?

Up close, he could see the ghostly white overlay of the world slowly fray away now that he was at the edge of the system. Thin tendrils stretched out into the desert, some going hundreds of feet, but all of them eventually tapered off, leaving a swath of barren, lifeless land that stretched all the way to the horizon.

In a way, it made sense. The system was full of magic. Out there, beyond it, he’d only have what he could carry with him. It would have to be enough. Velik wasn’t a man with a lot of faith, but he took some comfort in the fact that Morgus was backing him. If nothing else, the gods wanted to punish the divine beast that had broken the compact, and Velik was happy to be their instrument of revenge.

Clutching the spear tight to help him control the great weight and hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, Velik stepped off the wall.

* * *

She’d been expecting to have to coax him into the unknown, but he’d just blundered off the edge of the map all on his own. Even when she’d probed him, hoping to slow him down and give her time to train him to prepare, he’d shoved her aside and strode off into the desert with all the confidence of an ignorant toddler who had no idea he was walking into the monster’s den.

Frustratingly, that was kind of a problem. The moron had done exactly what she wanted, but he hadn’t properly prepared beforehand. And now I’ve got to keep him alive through a few hundred miles of desert, which would be hard enough even without the pillars roaming around enforcing the compact. Now he’s going to die and they’re all going to blame me for it.

It wasn’t impossible, but it was going to be an uphill battle. Flying would probably be easiest, but it would practically guarantee the need to flee from a pillar. Depending on what kind found them, she’d be risking her own life to ferry the half-human idiot to the sky bridge.

Her plotting was interrupted by an abrupt essence surge. Eyes widening, she leaped to the top of the wall. What is that?!

* * *

Velik wasn’t sure what to expect. He advanced past the white mana overlap and out into the desert one step at a time, waiting for something to happen. Only once he was free of the transparent coating did he realize that strands of it were clinging to him, trying to keep him connected to the whole. More of those frayed apart with each step, until finally, the last tether snapped.

Immediately, he staggered in place. For the first time in years, he felt weak. The heat of the desert slammed into him, and his spear ripped itself from his grip to slam into the ground with an explosion of sand. The weight of his backpack unexpectedly threw him off balance, threatening to topple Velik.

He took a single lurching, panicked step and was already mentally cursing Morgus for his treachery when something else hit him. The brief moment of weakness passed and a new system notification filled his mind.

[Connection to Greater System Lost. Essence configuration dissolved.]

[Approval for Limited Personal System granted. Retrieving archived configuration.]

[Configuration restored.]

The notifications chased the weakness out of Velik’s limbs. He straightened, blinking, and reoriented himself as the world expanded back around him again. For just a moment, he’d felt blind and helpless.

They weren’t kidding about how crippling it would be to lose the system. I guess it wouldn’t be as bad if I wasn’t already so strong, but going from over two hundred physical to… zero, I guess? That’s not fun.

Warily, Velik snatched his spear back up. Fortunately, nothing had attacked him during his second of vulnerability. The idea that his body could just randomly fail him at the wrong time was disturbing, but he had no control over that. If the system was going to abandon him, it wouldn’t ask for permission.

[Essence allotment unlocked. Sources: tithed, scion status, decarma conversion.]

What’s that now?

Before Velik could start to puzzle the latest message out, energy spiked through him. All of a sudden, he didn’t feel like he had a few hundred physical. It felt like he had a thousand. He could see every individual grain of sand for miles. He could hear the breathing of each person back in town, hear the creaking muscles and tendons of the ones moving around. He could smell the assistant researcher on the other side of the wall.

Wait… why does she smell like that? That’s not human. Is she an agent that somehow hid from Sildra? But… that’s not right. It’s a familiar smell, though. Could she be…

Velik whirled back to face the wall, but even with his super-charged senses, all he got was a glimpse of a shadow crouched on it, then a flash of feathers as something long and thin shot up into the air. It pulled a cloak of magic over its body and disappeared.

“Shit,” Velik breathed out. “Divine beast.”

It hadn’t attacked him, though, or anyone else. He supposed as long as he was doing what they wanted, they didn’t have a reason to. Or maybe it’s just that no one but me was stupid enough to leave the boundary. I’m fair game out here, right? So where are you?

Another notification popped up, distracting him. He tried to push it aside, not wanting to leave himself vulnerable, but something caught his eye.

[Essence calculation completed. Total essence: 17241. Unallocated essence: 9284.]

His eyes widened. If he was understanding that message, that meant Morgus had given him enough essence to more than double his current power. He just needed to figure out how to spend it.