While looking out over the field, I felt something change in the air. I shivered as my skin started to tingle, and a gust of wind blowing out from across the field washed over me in a warm, steady wave, lighting up nerves across my skin as if Aurin was running her hands across my body. My muscles loosened, and I closed my eyes for a moment just to bask in it. Something was changing in the overlap, something big enough that I could feel it out here.

  This was probably a bad sign.

  The wave passed just as quickly as it came. It left my body softly tingling.

  Makesi was right, the Water Office had fucked something up on their expedition into the overlap.

  But that wasn’t really my concern right now. I was busy choosing what Stats I wanted to increase. Now that I had the funds required to gain a new Manifest, it was annoying that I couldn’t gain access to it immediately. I had to spend the Dust first because that’s how the System worked for some reason.

  It was possible to spend Dust just to advance your Grade. Right now, I would gain two points of Charge towards my advancement for every Dust I burned. That felt like a waste at the moment, because there was so much I could do with my Dust, and I didn’t have nearly enough to feel comfortable just burning it to advance faster.

  Maybe later, when the Charge requirement spiked, and the Charge gained per Dust burned rose alongside it, I’d consider it. Charge was what my teammates called the points needed to reach the next Grade.

  System Console

  Name: Ren

  Archetype: Noememetic Architect (Eunoic)

  Grade: 0 (3887/10000)

  Charisma (Glamour): 2

  Venust: 1

  Noesis: 2

  Entelechy: 1

  Dust: 8893

  Lives: 2

  Weight: 1/6

  I could add four more points before I hit my Weight capacity limit. I didn't want to add any more points to Noesis at the moment. Recalibrating myself to the extended time I was given to do absolutely everything was fairly miserable.

  The next one I eliminated was Charisma, because the extra point I added earlier already felt like enough, which left me with Venust and Entelechy. I still had no idea what Entelechy even did, but it had to do something useful. Stats always had an upside to them, even if they could also have a downside. Like how Venust made me more susceptible to being thrown in the back of a white van.

  I decided to split my points evenly between those two Stats. I liked the idea of being physically stronger without having to work for it, and maybe I'd actually figure out what Entelechy did once I invested a bit more into it.

  System Console

  Name: Ren

  Archetype: Noememetic Architect (Eunoic)

  Grade: 0 (7887/10000)

  Charisma (Glamour): 2

  Venust: 3

  Noesis: 2

  Entelechy: 3

  Dust: 4893

  Lives: 2

  Weight: 1/10 (Cap)

  Just like last time, I couldn't actually feel the difference from just adding the points. It was as if the effects were applied externally to me, not actually changing who I was inherently, just adding a layer of gloss overtop that I couldn't actually sense. Until I ran my hand across my arm, that is, then back over it, and back again, with supreme force of will, I eventually forced myself to stop rubbing my own arm.

  There was no way to physically describe the sensation; the word ‘soft’ no longer even came close. In fact, I was fairly certain it wasn't possible for something to feel like my arm did. It was as if my skin was hijacking the nerves in my hand to send augmented signals to my brain, giving skin contact with me an almost addictive quality.

  My skin felt so soft that I felt I could almost… I squeezed my arm as hard as I possibly could, noting that my flesh somehow compressed far further than it should, giving it a pillowy feel. With a shrug, I wound my arm back and threw a punch at my own head. The blow impacted like a bowling ball being thrown at a pillow. It didn't even hurt.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Vivi yelled from behind me.

  “Just added the last Stat points that I'll be able to for a while. It made my body all weird and squishy,” I said, turning to watch as Vivi climbed up the ridge, dragging a man with one hand who was kicking and cursing her out in Mandarin. She was wearing a cloak provided by Aisling that was supposed to make her fade into the background.

  It didn't really work all that well on me, just making her kind of blurry to look at.

  “Dust’s breath, it felt like I was dunked in a volcano for a moment there,” she whined. I noticed her shirt was soaked with sweat. Did her thermoception cause her to physically warm up, or was it just her nervous system thinking she was warm, leading to sweat production? Not that I was going to touch her to find out, she was practically dripping.

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  I never needed to worry about getting sweaty again and was incredibly thankful for that fact.

  “Sucks to be you, it felt fucking amazing for me. It was like someone dumped my body in fairy dust,” I said, then added a pinning phrase so I could lock the guy’s mind in place. He went limp as his mind shut off.

  “Yeah, that'll be great when you're fleeing an aberrative breach in reality and have to stop to moan or something equally stupid like…” she said, only to trail off as she turned to look at me.

  “What? Does the extra Venust make me look weird?” I asked, raising my arms to present myself and twirling in place. My feet somehow found the perfect places to land in order to make the motion feel seamless. Like the world was guiding my movements to aid in the presentation.

  Vivi remained silent, staring blankly at me. Which was absolutely no help at all, so I pulled Aurin out of the lockbox within my mind and into reality. Given my upgrades, I found myself needing less sleep, so she often had to make up for it in my mind while I did other things.

  “I was trying to sleeeeep, what do you—oh, hi Ren,” Aurin said, her voice rising in pitch to nearly a squeak when she looked at me.

  “What? Is it bad? Vivi, is it possible to undo Sta—” I started only for Aurin to tackle me off my feet into her arms.

  “NO!... I mean, uh, you're good. Don't do that. Please stay the way you are, oh my god, you're like a little doll that I can squish whenever I want now,” Aurin rambled while testing the limits of my ability to be compressed.

  While trying to half-heartedly untangle myself from her hug, I felt a stray hand start poking my back.

  “I'm a person you know! Why is nobody here respecting my boundaries?!” I grumbled.

  “Do you genuinely have any that apply here, or are you just complaining because it feels like the right thing to do?” Aurin whispered in my ear.

  “The latter…” I reluctantly admitted, “But either way, I can't leave the man Vivi borrowed lying around for too long. The change I made to his mind is going to wear off any second now,” I said, squirming to reach around and slap Vivi's hand away.

  When Aurin finally dropped me, I staggered backward before walking over to my patient.

  “Why are you two so fucking weird?” I asked, then went to fix my clothes, only to notice that they were still framed on my body in a perfectly presentable way. In fact, my apparel looked almost overly stylized for the comfort clothes that they were. Odd.

  Looking at the guy on the ground, his mind was also still frozen in place, showing absolutely no signs of recovering any time soon. Poking the pin, it felt solid like a steel spike driven into his mind.

  Was that what Entelechy did? Make my changes more effective?

  It took me a moment to realize he was turning blue because he had stopped breathing.

  “Ah, shit,” I muttered as I manually restarted his breathing.

  Pulling him off the ground, I nudged his mind into looking up into my eyes. When my Charisma took effect, I started moulding an extra space separate from his mental conceptualization. This space hung above his concept, which was a lantern hanging over a lake at night. Rather unusual for a soldier, but maybe he worked in IT or something.

  I had just asked Vivi to grab a random person, whoever she could get her hands on, without making too much of a mess.

  In it, I built a small stage, like the one in my mind, but scaled down so it could barely hold a single person. Then, from the bottom of that, I hung puppet strings and connected them to the lantern.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a playbill and handed it to the soldier. On contact, the brochure immediately dissolved in his hand. Within the stage I just built in his mind, a black clad figure wearing a theatre mask that looked like two different masks stitched together, one smiling and the other frowning, appeared.

  Taking inspiration from my experience with the statue, I planted a surprise for anyone who tries to manipulate his mind. If they were going to set mental traps, then so was I.

  Then I handed that figure a sheet of paper containing instructions. Gave the model a last look over, touching a few places up that looked unstable or like they might break under mental stress. When done, I stood back and let him loose.

  I didn't even have to take a break to let my mind recover; given that I was allowed to take my time, I didn't have to.

  “He awoke, ready to perform his mission,” I narrated as I pulled the pin out.

  The soldier snapped out of his trance, stood, saluted me and sauntered off back to his camp.

  “You know it's kind of creepy how you do it. Normally, when a Whisperer works on someone, they do it by being supernaturally convincing, whether that be through their voice, appearance, or sometimes touch. It's a dance of persuasion, seduction, intimidation, and most of all charisma. Definitely recommend watching it in action if you get the chance. You, on the other hand, just stared at him for a few minutes, and he's now your servant, I guess?” Vivi explained while attempting to sneak a poke at my arm. Instead of swatting her hand, I smacked her mind, and she recoiled as if I had burned her.

  “He isn't my servant, at least get his role right, a servant wouldn't perform well in this kind of position. He's an informant working to leak information about the inner workings of the Water Office to the REB. A servant role is better suited for someone with whom I have to interact on a daily basis,” I said, then picked up a second cloak and threw it over myself, dropping Aurin back onto the stage so she could go back to sleep as I did so.

  Together, Vivi and I followed the soldier from a distance to ensure he made it back into the encampment. When someone looked like they were going to halt his progress, I pushed their interest in a different direction. From there, it was fairly easy for him to slip in as if he had never been gone.

  “Alright, you wanna grab another one? I'd like to finish at least a dozen or so before the end of the day,” I asked Vivi, who wasn’t paying attention.

  With a sigh, I turned to see what had distracted her, and froze. There was something wrong bubbling up in the overlap, out on the horizon; something was rushing our way. A colourless wall that made my skin crawl to look at. It was like joy was being sucked out of the very air itself, as guilt for some imagined transgression wormed its way into my mind.

  The wind of change that once blew over the field had gone completely still, and if I listened closely, I could hear the sound of gunfire in the distance.

  “Think that was supposed to happen?” I asked Vivi. “I mean, they couldn't have gone in completely blind, and they'd know the mythology better than us.”

  Vivi let out a snort, “These sorts of for-profit anomaly hunters usually have no idea what's going on. Not to mention, this is the first overlap on the entire planet. The first group sent in was likely entirely disposable, a way for leadership to see what works and, assuming there are any survivors, gain a bit of intel.”

  Looking out over the darkening field, I let out a long breath and then muttered aloud, “A boot descends and crushes the spider.”

  Vivi dropped like a rock, her hand completely missing my arm that she was trying to grab as she collapsed on the ground.

  “I thought I made it clear, don't touch me. Come on, up to it, we don't have all day.”

  “But you're so sooooft!” Vivi moaned as she kicked her feet on the ground.

  “And you are biologically twelve. I don't give a shit if you're chronologically six hundred or whatever. Grow up first before getting handsy, please,” I replied and started heading back up to where I was waiting before.

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