After finishing lunch, they got to fixing the rest of the messed-up essences, starting from the eight messed up Epics they had – which turned into Very Rares – and by the time they finished fixing them, the group finally noticed the light of the Mythical essence getting dimmer.

  “I guess the glow isn’t infinite… We almost used it up,” Dawn said with a wince.

  Linza just shrugged with a smile, though, heedless of wasting this apparently limited resource.

  “I don’t mind. I’m glad I could help.”

  “...Right. Well, a deal is a deal. Let’s see.”

  The twins then brought out all of the essences they currently had and made them float in the air. Linza blinked and immediately decided to try doing the same with hers – successfully.

  “So, you fixed… ten essences for us. You can take five of them.”

  The human leaned in closer and marveled at the essences as hers floated nearby. When she did, her essence followed. Despite having lost most of its light, it once again pulsed as soon as it got closer to a certain pair of essences.

  Layna noticed it first and gasped in horror.

  “Those are…”

  She was, of course, looking at the two ◆Umbrage◆ cards dripping with ethereal blood, that they’d gotten from… ending Jake.

  Drat!

  They were about to withdraw the essences to hide them, but before they could, the ghostly blood of the essences sucked up the last of ◆Liminal◆’s light and dissipated, leaving both essences without a hint of corruption.

  There was a beat of silence as the twins threw panicked looks at each of their companions.

  “Um, what–”

  Before Linza could finish her sentence, Layna grabbed her arm, jumped back with with her, and drew her [Icicle Bow].

  “Wait, hold on!” Dusk shouted as the twins raised their hands in surrender.

  “Why did you have two corrupted essences?!” Layna basically screamed through gritted teeth.

  The twins winced, berating themselves for bringing those out.

  “It’s… It happened in that rift. When everything broke and we got stranded. It wasn’t our intention!”

  “An accident? You don’t get corrupted essences by accident!”

  “No! It… We…”

  “He went insane,” Dusk said, his tone hard. “His entire party died and he kept pushing into the rift, trying to win it big. But we saw it. He had a… a negative skill. The one that eats at your psyche.”

  Layna hesitated.

  “He attacked us. Got mad for corrupting his essence from the Elite – nonsense.” Dawn floated one of the remaining messed up essences to the forefront to prove her point. “He wanted to kill us to get our essences. I… We…”

  “We had to fight back. We had no choice.”

  A moment of silence followed.

  Layna’s intense glare still pinned them just as she threatened to do so with her icy arrow. Meanwhile, the human – while confused at first – seemed to now be picking up what they were putting down. The horrified wide-eyed gaze had no right to be as cutting coming from a human as it was.

  “Okay… That explains one corrupted essence. What about the other one?” the catkin asked, muscles tense and ready to release the arrow.

  The twins stiffened, still hesitant to reveal their [Soul Split] – or rather, showing a skill made out of a corrupted essence would only make this situation worse, wouldn’t it?!

  Seeing this, Layna’s arm holding the arrow stretched further–

  “It’s the same one!” Dawn blurted out.

  “...What?”

  “They are the same essence! Look! Both are ◆Umbrage◆! We got them both from the same kill!”

  Layna’s eyes narrowed.

  “You can only ever get one essence per kill. Try the other one.”

  “We each get a copy!” Dusk shouted.

  “All essences we get are duplicated!”

  “You’re just coming up with nonsense at this point!” the catkin ground out. “Why would you get duplicated essences?!”

  They would have to show her [Soul Split] to convince her, wouldn’t they? But doing so would prompt questions about its origins!

  Dammit! They didn’t want to fight Layna! But what could they even do in this situation?! Stupid idiot past selves pulling out corrupted essences!

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The twins tensed up, ready to bolt while Dawn brought up [Branching Rampart] to cover their retreat–

  “They’re telling the truth!” Linza suddenly shouted, breaking the tense atmosphere like a pane of glass.

  “Wha–”

  “I saw it! When they killed the girl– the glass monster! She dropped an essence and it split in two!”

  The twins froze, realizing that yes, the human had seen the essence split. They had completely forgotten about it since she had immediately broken into tears.

  “That… Are you sure…?” Layna murmured, still watching the twins, but no longer as tense.

  “Yes! I remember it!” Linza smiled. “But even if not, I trust them. They wouldn’t kill someone without a good reason, right?”

  The twins held back from flinching.

  “That’s not…” Layna groaned. “Right, amnesia. I guess you don’t even know how severe a crime murder is in Vargarott?”

  “I do know. Killing is horrible! But… Well, it’s a cruel world out there, isn’t it? If someone can go mad from crafting the wrong cards… Can you blame them for defending themselves?”

  A hint of something flashed in Layna’s eyes.

  A beat passed.

  Then she let the bow down and slumped with a sigh.

  “Fine. I… No, you’re right.” She shook her head, then hesitantly glanced at the twins again.

  One last tense moment passed and the catkin finally turned her bow back into a card and let her gaze fall to the ground, looking ashamed.

  “Sorry, I… You’ve been good to me. You don’t deserve this treatment. I completely overreacted.”

  Something in her tone lifted a weight from the twins’ shoulders and they let themselves relax as well.

  “…No, we get it.”

  “We would be shocked too if we found out someone we knew was a murderer,” Dusk said, his own words cutting into him.

  “Right. Okay. Let’s just… get back to what we were doing?” she asked, almost pleading with them to forget this altercation.

  The twins nodded, all too happy to oblige.

  “Yeah. Alright. Come on, hu– Linza. Pick five.”

  “Or six. Since you also cleansed the ◆Umbrage◆ essences…”

  Linza smiled and moved closer as the twins spread out the essences again for her to choose.

  The twins pretended to fully focus on the cards, but Dusk made sure to always keep Layna in the corner of his eye… just in case.

  “Okay, so… How does this work, exactly?”

  “How does what work?”

  “The whole… skill crafting thing. Like what happens if I combine… ◆Brine◆, ◆Command◆, and ◆Shatter◆? What will I get?” she asked, pointing at the individual essences in front of her.

  “Depends on what you use as a base. The skill is usually centered around the base card.”

  “Oh, I see… Hmm.”

  “Keep in mind the rarities,” Layna added, having walked closer again – still visibly nervous around the twins, but Linza’s positivity seemed to have helped quite a bit.

  “Combining three of the same rarity gives you a skill of a rarity one higher than that.”

  Linza frowned.

  “And how does that go? Which rarity is which?”

  “Very Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythical,” Dawn helpfully rattled off while pointing at the relevant cards. “Also Basics, those are the lowest rarity. And we don’t have any Commons, Uncommons, or Rares. Those go in between.”

  “Okay… And what if you combine an Epic, a Legendary, and a Mythical?” the human asked, completely ignoring the earlier situation in favor of focusing on deck building.

  “That… should count as three Legendaries. The Epic and the Mythical average each other out. So you should get a Mythical skill…?” Layna explained, sounding awfully uncertain.

  “Okay…”

  The twins had a feeling that Linza’s wasn’t much of a theoretical question. Though in practice, the only Mythical here was ◆Liminal◆, and the only Legendaries were ◆Umbrage◆. For Epics, they had ◆Bastion◆, and ◆Core◆ from the fixed essences, and then one more ◆Command◆ from… the dead coilborn. Everything else was Very rare or Basic.

  They’d be loath to give away their rarest essences, but… well she had been the one to cleanse them, so it was only fair.

  “Hrm, I still don’t know what to expect… Could I get an example of one of your skills?”

  The twins paused, a bit annoyed by the request… but acquiesced – they still owed her for helping diffuse the earlier situation, after all.

  Dawn pulled out [Transfrogify].

  “This curses me and my target to be frogs for three seconds.”

  Linza snorted, then quickly schooled her expression and pretended she hadn’t done anything. Dawn gave her a dry look.

  “I used three Rares for it. ◆Curse◆ as the base, and then ◆Reflection◆ and ◆Frog◆ as the mods.”

  Linza nodded with a serious expression – as if she hadn’t just laughed at the skill – as she analyzed this information.

  “Okay… I want…” She closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose. “I want something for both offence and defence. What could work here…?”

  The twins hesitated, but ultimately decided to chip in with a piece of advice.

  “Well, ◆Command◆ could work for that,” Dusk admitted, drawing the human’s attention.

  “I made a skill from…” His eyes briefly shifted to Layna. “From the other ◆Command◆. And it works as both defence and offence – look.”

  He pulled out [Terracotta Soldiers], immediately activated it with a stomp, and watched as three coilborn figures formed out of the ash and soot around them, each gaining a different colored tint.

  Linza’s eyes went wide at the spectacle, as if she’d never seen a skill like this in action.

  “High five each other!” Dusk commanded.

  The soldiers complied – they formed a circle and high-fived each other.

  “Now dance!”

  The trio of soldiers formed fists, pulled them closer to their chests, and then proceeded to awkwardly wiggle them around while they turned their mid-sections left and right to a beat nobody could hear.

  The twins could hear the other two girls snort and giggle – hopefully this stunt had erased the last bits of the tense atmosphere.

  “Now defend me!”

  In a snap, the soldiers stopped their awkward dance and slithered toward Dusk before settling in a triangular formation around him, watching all sides.

  “Now… go down this tunnel to scout. If you find something, inform me.”

  The trio slithered away as commanded.

  …Okay, the scouting had been a pretty spontaneous action, but perhaps this skill was even more useful than he’d initially thought? They didn’t need to just be a meat wall against a berserk Elite. They could do so much more!

  “Okay. Yes! I’ve decided!” Linza announced with a clap, drawing attention back to her.

  “I want to take one ◆Umbrage◆ and the ◆Command◆. Is that okay?” Linza said, dragging the twins back to the present.

  The twins tried not to grimace.

  Of course she would pick those.

  Well, to be fair, they had just made the perfect case for ◆Command◆, hadn’t they? This was their own damn fault.

  “...Sure,” Dawn grumbled, then paused.

  “But, if you’re taking ◆Command◆, then you have to know that it’s also a person essence.” Dawn saw Layna tensing again and quickly kept talking. “We got it during triage. We… failed to save a patient and got her essence.”

  The twins grimaced at the memory, ignoring how Layna stared at them for another moment before relaxing again.

  Linza looked conflicted at this new information, likely not sure what to make of it.

  “What we’re saying is that this essence has weight to it! So don’t waste it!”

  “I… I’m not sure if I should…”

  “Take it!” Dawn shouted, annoyed at Linza for double-guessing herself, and shoved the two essences into her hands. “You already picked one person essence! What’s one more?”

  Linza’s eyes widened in horror. Had she forgotten ◆Umbrage◆ was also a person essence? Was her amnesia expanding or what?

  “U-Uh. Okay. Thank you…”

  “No problem. You can get four more…”

  “But if you’re crafting a skill right now, it’s better to craft the other one later.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “”Headaches.””

  “Ah… How bad are they?”

  The twins shrugged in unison.

  “Depends on the rarity. If you’re making a Mythical…”

  “Right.”

  Again, the human seemed to have second thoughts about actually making the skill now.

  “Just do it,” Dawn grumbled. “We can’t sit around all day!”

  Linza looked at Dawn with pursed lips, but then steeled her resolve, nodded, and grabbed her three essences in her hands.

  “Alright. How do I… Hmm.”

  “It should be instinctive.”

  “Yeah, it is. Weird,” the human murmured, as if crafting skills was some kind of otherworldly mechanism she had never experienced.

  “Okay, here goes nothing!”

  ◆Command◆ in one hand, ◆Liminal◆ and ◆Umbrage◆ in the other. She slammed them together, causing a small flash of pink light – did ◆Liminal◆ still have some light left? – and immediately groaned as she grabbed her head and collapsed on her butt.

  “Linza!”

  The catkin immediately knelt by her side.

  “Ughhh… T-This is worse than I thought.”

  Similarly to their [Soul Split], this craft took a while compared to every other craft the twins remembered. So much so that even the twins began to get uneasy.

  What kind of monstrosity had they helped create? Would this also become a Prime card? Not like they knew how Prime cards even formed, but…

  The card finally stabilized and everyone poked their heads closer to see it.

  Pink flowery blossoms formed the rim, faintly glowing with the same color – A mythical, as Layna had predicted.

  And most importantly, not a Negative or Prime.

  The art featured a faceless figure standing with their arms crossed, looking at the camera challengingly. Their feet were submerged in a pool of shadows that coiled up and around the figure’s legs and torso, and ended with a ghastly sneering face resting next to the figure’s head.

  [Umbral Acolyte]

  A beat passed as the quartet admired the card.

  Then Linza used it.

  The twins and Layna flinched away as the card dissolved into an inky blob of darkness and crept down Linza’s arm, around her torso, and straight into her shadow.

  Then it also travelled up her figure and covered the left half her face before the sneering face from the card’s image appeared – a very disconcerting sight, considering Linza’s right eye remained visible as well.

  The human smiled and the twins felt a chill run down their spine.

  “Oh… I like this!”

  They tensed, not sure what to expect. Layna’s fingers twitched, likely readying themselves to materialize her bow again.

  Then, with a snap, the tense atmosphere disappeared as the shadows covering Linza rushed back to her hand and coiled around it into a small snake-shaped glove with a creepy sneer on its head.

  “I’ll call you Jim!” Linza brightly announced, suddenly back to her cheerful attitude.

  The others stared.

  They didn’t laugh, but they did try to give an awkward smile to push aside their earlier discomfort.

  They didn’t know the extent of what ‘Jim’ could do, but something told them this shadowy snake creature was a lot more than a weird article of clothing.

  “So–”

  But before Dusk could ask, his soldiers tugged at his awareness.

  Since when could they do that?

  “Oh! My soldiers found something?”

  The others perked up.

  “Something?”

  “I think… I think it’s the exit!”