[Glyphcrawlers] x17 are preparing Mana Drain! This attack requires sacrificing one turn for the glyphcrawlers to charge their mana. On their next turn after your current one, the glyphcrawlers’ Mana Drain will activate and drain you of all of your mana and health.

  That notification flashed in my vision, and I immediately dismissed it as the mobs stopped glowing and my portable glowed again. A sinking feeling filled my stomach when I realized that not only had I been right about their plan, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Presumably, their Mana Drain spell didn’t need all of them to survive. Taking out one or two would not stop the spell. I needed to kill all of them at once to win this fight and make sure that the spell didn’t drain all of my mana. I assumed that meant my Words, but I didn’t want to wait and see how their spell would adapt to my unique Discipline.

  I needed to take all of them out at once to both win the fight and end the spell.

  And I only had five minutes to do it.

  My first instinct was to tell Nimbus to attack them before I remembered that he also didn’t have any attacks that could strike multiple enemies at once. It didn’t help that the glyphcrawlers were all scattered across multiple trees, meaning that even if we did take out a group of them, it wouldn’t be enough to disrupt the spell or end the fight.

  Nimbus evidently had the same thoughts that I did because he said, “Um, Aaron?”

  I looked at Nimbus in annoyance. “What?”

  Nimbus scratched his ear. “When the glyphcrawlers kill you, can I loot the bananas off you that I haven’t eaten yet? I wouldn’t want them to go to waste. They are so delicious and you spent so much money on them that—”

  I tuned out Nimbus’s rambling to focus on the problem at hand. A solution occurred to me just then:

  I didn’t need a new spell to attack all of them at once.

  I just needed to edit one of the spells I already had.

  With great effort, I opened my Inscriptionist Console and immediately focused on Splinter Glyph:

  Splinter Glyph()

  I selected MODIFY and received the following notification:

  Would you like to MODIFY the attack radius of Splinter Glyph?

  I overlaid glyphs for MODIFY across the runes for Splinter Glyph:

  MODIFY/(Splinter Glyph, {Radius: ???})

  I didn’t know exactly how wide to increase the radius of Splinter Glyph, seeing as I didn’t even know what its original radius was. But I was sure that if I increased it by 50%, that would be enough to take out all of the glyphcrawlers at once. If nothing else, it should disrupt their group spell.

  So I increased the radius of Splinter Glyph by 50%, but before I could unleash the spell, my portable stopped glowing, and I got the worst possible notification I could have gotten right now:

  Your turn has ended! It is now the turn of Nimbus the Cloud Rabbit, which will last approximately two minutes and 30 seconds.

  Nimbus’s forehead started glowing, and he said, “All right, Aaron! I’m going to try to shoot them with my Arcane Pulse. Maybe I’ll get lucky and take out enough of them to stop the spell.”

  I shook my head rapidly and said, “No! That’s not going to work. I’m trying to modify Splinter Glyph to increase its radius. Or I was until it was your turn, anyway.”

  Nimbus looked up at me with a puzzled expression on his face. “What are you talking about, Aaron? You can cast spells on my turn because we are synced. Didn’t you see that notification earlier?”

  I hadn’t, but when I opened my Inscriptionist Console again and saw that my modified spell was still waiting, I went ahead and fired it.

  Normally, Splinter Glyph manifested as a glyph that I launched out of my stylus at enemies. When it detonated, it would spread area force damage that would injure not just the target, but also anybody around the target within a certain radius. It was a useful spell for both individual and group enemies, so I was sure that it would do something to the glyphcrawlers.

  I just didn’t expect my modified Splinter Glyph to do quite that much damage.

  Or do it to us, too.

  Splinter Glyph exploded from my stylus like a cannonball from a cannon. It crashed into the glyphcrawlers on the tree directly ahead of us, blowing up not just the glyphcrawlers, but the tree itself. Chunks of wood and branches flew everywhere.

  That wasn’t the only thing that went flying, however. Upon collision with the tree and the glyphcrawlers, Splinter Glyph itself exploded, but its radius was much, much wider than usual. The explosive force from the spell slammed into the mobs on the other trees, flattening them just as easily as it had the first group. But the force also smashed through the other trees, knocking them down flat onto the muddy ground with multiple crashes. One tree even crashed into the trees behind it, smashing through the branches and ripping them from their roots in a cacophony of falling trees.

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  Unfortunately, I had definitely increased the radius of Splinter Glyph way too much because its force damage then slammed into me and Nimbus.

  If I had to describe the impact of the area damage from my own spell, it was kind of like how it felt to get gored by a cow. Not that I had ever been hit by a cow, but I distinctly remember, as a kid, seeing one of my father’s hired hands get run over by one of our unruly cows. He hadn’t even been doing anything wrong. One moment, he was attempting to herd the cow back into its pen; the next, it mooed loudly and headbutted him with enough force to send him flying. I remember Dad and me rushing over and asking him how he felt, and he claimed that every bone in his body felt like it had been broken at once.

  Looking back, I suppose that is why Dad ended up selling Parah the cow to a buyer at one of the big slaughterhouses in Hebron.

  But regardless, that is also how I would describe the pain from getting struck by Splinter Glyph.

  The force of the impact ripped the webs off my feet and shoulders, sending me flying backward through the heavy fog. I smashed into the entrance to the second room hard enough to rattle the door on its hinges. Nimbus crashed beside me a moment later, and then we both fell off the door onto the muddy ground.

  Which was how I got a mouthful of mud after falling face-first into a particularly big pile of mud.

  I pushed myself onto my hands and knees and spat out as much of the grimy, gritty mud as I could. Even so, I couldn’t get all of the muddy taste out of my mouth unless I found something to eat or drink. Fortunately, Ruth had given me and Nimbus a handful of health potions before we left the first room, which I had stored in my inventory for just such an occasion as this.

  But the pain from the impact of Splinter Glyph and crashing into the door made it hard for me to think, much less get up or use my inventory. Every bone in my body felt like it had been rattled by an earthquake, and I got a blinking red notification in my vision:

  WARNING! Your Health is at less than 10%. Once your health hits zero, you will no longer be protected from lethal spells or attack damage.

  I blinked away the notification with a thought, but it was troubling.

  What many people didn’t understand about the Health stat—heck, even what I didn’t understand until I read it in the old book Isaac lent me—was that it didn’t represent a Codexer’s actual physical health. What it actually measured was a body-forming magical shield that all Codexers got when they completed their trial and became Codexers. This magical shield was generated by their portable and conformed to the exact shape of their body, including any clothes, armor, and equipment they might wear.

  But the magical shield wasn’t invincible itself. Every hit to the shield decreased its strength, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot, and, very occasionally, entirely. So long as I had one hit point, as it was called, left, I’d have my magical body shield. It would also gradually recover on its own, given enough time, though one could speed up the process with healing spells or health potions like what Ruth had given us. Codex Beasts had similar shields.

  Once your health hit zero, however, and your magical shield disappeared, then you were just as defenseless as your average non-Codexer. Supposedly, having a high Defense stat would protect you further, but the book hadn’t been clear on the exact relation between Health and Defense, and Isaac, per usual, hadn’t been helpful when I asked him about it.

  So even if my own attack had depleted my HP, I wouldn’t have died.

  But I would have been left even more vulnerable than I already was … and if there had been any other mobs nearby, 10% HP wouldn’t keep me safe for long.

  Fortunately, the glyphcrawlers must have been the only mobs close by because I heard a celebratory chime in the air and got this notification:

  You successfully defeated the [Glyphcrawlers] x24! Here are your rewards:

  

  
• 
  
    +12 Words
  
    


  
• 
  
    +24 Fragmented Glyphshells
  
    


  
• 
  
    +5 Lines to Spellcasting
  
    


  
• 
  
    1 Time Sphere
  
    


  

  I then got another achievement about winning my first turn-based battle in the second room, but it only gave me 20 Words and +5 to Defense, Health, and Constitution.

  I had to admit the rewards were nice, but …

  “Ugh.” Nimbus groaned and sat up, shaking his head. He gave me a reproachful look. “What did I tell you about warning me the next time you tried to edit one of your spells?”

  I groaned and sat up myself, rubbing my head and cringing at my muddy robes. “Sorry. I overdid the radius. Probably could have done twenty-five percent and gotten the same or even better result.”

  Nimbus shook his head. “You could have gotten us killed, Aaron. But somehow, getting my perfectly snow-white fur covered in thick mud is even worse.”

  Nimbus wasn’t kidding about the mud. He was so covered in mud that he looked like a brown rabbit instead of a cloud rabbit. He smelled awful, too, though I doubted I smelled any better.

  I took a deep breath and glanced at my Health bar, which had appeared in the upper-left corner of my vision with a thought. It was now at 15% and rising, though I still popped a cherry-flavored health potion from my inventory regardless, letting my health shoot back up to 50%. It also increased the rate of my health regeneration by 50%, so I figured I would be at full health within the next half hour at most.

  But then I remembered we only had an hour to get out of the room, and I rose unsteadily to my feet, brushing as much of the mud off my pants as I could. “Worry about your fur later. We still need to get to the exit before the hour is up. That fight with the glyphcrawlers wasted twenty minutes. I hope Ruth and Jonah are okay.”

  A glance at the Party Page showed that they were both still alive, at least, though whether they were having any luck with their respective enemies, I didn’t know. I thought about sending them a chat through the NodeLink, but if their enemies were anywhere nearly as dangerous as ours, then I didn’t want to distract them.

  “Hey, Aaron,” said Nimbus. He seemed to be looking at something only he could see. “That fight took us about twenty minutes, didn’t it? Then why does the timer say we still have an hour left before we are trapped?”

  I snapped out of my thoughts and looked at the timer. Just as Nimbus said, the timer had reset to one hour, though it was already counting down rapidly. “I … I have no idea. And I have no idea if it’s a good thing or not, either.”

  A new notification unfurled in my vision:

  You received 1 Time Sphere for successfully defeating your first enemy in a turn-based battle in less than 30 minutes! This Time Sphere automatically resets the timer on your room countdown timer. The only way to get more Time Spheres is by defeating more enemies in battle, though they only reset the timer and do not increase its length beyond one hour.

  That was simultaneously convenient and yet frustrating at the same time. Getting the timer reset was great because it gave us more time to complete the room, but if it only reset the timer to one hour and gave us no more time than that, then we still were under a tight deadline. I also wondered why this apparently didn’t count as a Codex Achievement, though maybe it was more informational than anything.

  Regardless, I looked into the fog and the destroyed trees around us and knew we needed to keep moving.

  Hopefully, get to the end of the room before the timer ended and reunite with Ruth and Jonah at the same time, wherever they might be.

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