As we waded through the field of black orchids, I finally got a look at the idea that had settled over the world again. It was awake, and it almost looked like it was having a panic attack.

  The idea's mental conceptualization was completely alien compared to how sentient minds looked, so I was really just going off vibes. Instead of its mind being compressed into a visual metaphor relating to the personality of the individual, it was more like a script detailing every action it was taking and why. A lot of that information was complete nonsense or bloated to the point it would take forever to decode. For example, the explanation for why it was awake couldn't be contained in a library's worth of books.

  I didn't dare clip that explanation out to integrate into my mind. I'd already screwed my mind up once and didn't want to do it again, even by accident.

  It wasn't long before I couldn't even see where we had entered from, but there also wasn't anything I could see ahead of us. The flowers were absolutely still to the point that I could palpably feel the suspense in the air.

  “Weren't we supposed to arrive right back at the temple we left from last time? It doesn't look like we're getting anywhere just walking forward,” I quietly asked Aisling. I had turned the music player in my System on a long time ago to distract myself. Even though I could enjoy a nice hike, the scenery on this one was rather repetitive.

  “Normally, you’d be right. Instead, it’s taking us deeper towards the rift for some reason. We already passed our first checkpoint a long time ago,” Aisling replied, her ears twitching as she stared off at something only she could see.

  I suppressed my urge to poke her ears and continued onward.

  Onward ended up taking a lot longer to get to than I expected, long enough that I could see Aurin starting to get fidgety. She would walk closer to me, then move away again, then a little closer than last time.

  “If it's going to be that much of a problem, you can just hold my ha—” I started only to pause when I saw the idea shift. A new line had been added to the script.

  The idea was doing something relating to hunger, a near-unending hunger. I had to close my eyes and refocus, so I didn't remind myself of the memories I wasn't supposed to think about.

  Aurin had already grabbed my hand by the time I opened them again. It didn't seem to care about her lascivious intentions, as it didn't smite us the moment she touched me, so I was pretty sure it would be fine.

  In fact, I was fairly certain it didn't even notice. Maybe her being offstage was enough to avoid its sight?

  Whatever the case, it had done a thing, and I was trying to figure out what that—

  “Eyes up, contact!” Makesi barked. Looking away from the script, back ahead of us, I saw what appeared to be a group of Water Office mercenaries that were approaching us from the front.

  “They seem… a little off,” Aisling said as she unholstered her rifle.

  Pulling the gun from my hip, I noted the idea didn't seem to care that we were arming ourselves. In fact, it almost read like this was the expected course of action. It was either that or running… Wait, why would we need to run?

  “Stop where you are! We are here to help if you need a way out,” Makesi called out to the group. They didn't acknowledge that he had even said anything.

  I wasn’t paying attention to that, however, as I was trying to get a read on the mental concepts of the mercenaries. Aisling was right; something was off. Instead of being fully realized concepts, they seemed fragmented. Like someone had pulled out pieces of a puzzle, leaving just enough to have it still represent something.

  Or they were all just really weird, boring people. That was also a possibility.

  I tried to alter one that was just the fingertips that used to be part of a hand reaching for something unseen. The change I made was washed away in an instant, reverting it to the state it started in.

  “I'm pretty sure their minds aren't their own,” I told the team. “Maybe just put them out of their misery?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Vivi said right before she vanished. A pressure wave hit me like a hammer, and the field split apart. Petals drifted through the air as two halves of one of the mercs flew in opposite directions.

  The rest of the group pulled blades on her, but didn't last much longer than a few seconds past that point before being reduced to wet streaks across the field.

  It was a spectacular sight, the power behind her movement, the violence inflicted through it. I felt a warmth spread through my chest just witnessing the beauty.

  Aurin had to pat my arm to remind me not to squeeze her hand so hard.

  “Did you really need to encourage her?” Makesi asked with a sigh.

  “You think that was encouragement? Oh man, you aren't going to like it when I really start encouraging wanton murder,” I replied as I walked over to join Vivi.

  “I guess you have a point,” Makesi muttered from behind me.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Was that a reference to mind control? Because that sounded like a reference to mind control, which was not what I meant!” I shot back at him.

  He wisely chose to remain silent on the issue.

  When we reached where I expected to see a pile of corpses, instead, there was nothing. Vivi looked just as confused as the rest of us at that fact, and she had been standing right next to them.

  Their blood still soaked the orchids, but the bodies were just gone.

  Glancing at the script again, it looked like we were still in the same act of the play. It was as if it were waiting for something to resolve here that we didn’t do.

  Looking out into the field, Aisling and I spotted them at the same time. The mercenaries were whole again and approaching from all sides, blades drawn in complete silence.

  “I can’t keep that up forever unless you want to drag me back kicking and screaming… again,” Vivi said. With a flick of her arm, the blood whipped free from her blade before she sheathed it.

  I wondered how they even managed to drag her when she could move the way she did.

  “We press on; if they get in our way, then cut them down. If not, ignore them. Maybe they’ll pass on their own,” Makesi proclaimed before making his way forward.

  Vivi called upon fire to burn the ones in our way, and we set a brisk pace. I doubted we would get away from them that easily, but there was no harm in trying. Running was supposed to be an option after all.

  As we moved forward, Vivi blazed through seemingly endlessly respawning Water Office soldiers. Aisling switched out with her when her purchased magic started running low, her anti-material rifle seemingly capable of firing both incredibly accurately and rapidly due to her Celerity Stat.

  While we walked, I did my best to decode what was going on and what it wanted us to do. The longer I worked on it, the less hope I had in a solution to the constant attacks existing.

  What I was pretty sure the idea was doing was attempting to resolve a karmic loop that began when the hunters came in with the intent to hunt for anomalous creatures. The beings that were following us weren’t actually people. They were more like husks made of the idea itself, pretending to be the anomaly hunters that entered the overlap.

  The only way to resolve the karmic loop was to remove anything for them to hunt, which was impossible given this entire overlap, or to convince them that hunting for anomalies was useless. Looking back at the hundreds of people who were stalking us, I was fairly certain there was no convincing them of anything.

  There was a click under one of my footfalls, and with a metal clack, something grabbed my leg.

  I let out a yelp and kicked my foot to dislodge whatever it was, only to realize after a few kicks of nothing happening that I’d stepped on one of those traps designed for animal legs. Its blades were so rusted that all they accomplished was squishing my skin, but not actually breaking the surface. I was very thankful for my extra points in Venust.

  Makesi had me put my leg down, then stepped on it, shattering the metal with the weight of his armour. Aisling was a lot more careful in checking the ground for hazards after that, as she was uniquely vulnerable to being hobbled.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked after another half day of travel. The sun was starting to set over the horizon, and while I was more of a night owl anyway, I wasn’t used to marching all day. Aurin had given up a long time ago, and I’d closed her lockbox so she could get some rest.

  There were also now what had to be tens of thousands of husks following behind us; the bodies were apparently being conjured out of nothing somehow. Because I knew with absolute certainty that only fifty or so people actually came here to die.

  “It should just be over there,” Aisling said, pointing to what appeared to be the ruins of a town in the far distance. I could have sworn it didn't exist just a moment ago, but I couldn't see anything indicating the idea had made a change.

  As we got closer to the town, it became apparent that it hadn't been in ruins for long. In fact, it was still in the process of being destroyed by those husks that were following us.

  Were they leading us here? It had been oddly easy to get here compared to what I was expecting. Besides the long, boring walk, of course.

  I voiced my concern to the group, and Makesi turned to look at the wall of bodies behind us.

  “I believe from what you learned and the behaviour of these wights that they're likely what Buddhists would call hungry ghosts. If I understand what I've read correctly, they shouldn't be capable of that kind of planning. However, Class Fours do take liberties with the source material sometimes if it suits their designs, so it would do us well to be wary from here on out,” he said as if I hadn't been wary this whole time. And bored… actually mostly bored, I couldn't wait to close this thing and get out of here.

  I didn't even have Aurin around to bug.

  Unholstering my weapon, I took a couple of pot shots into the crowd of ghosts by the town, effectively doing nothing as we were still out of range.

  “Hey, can I try firing the big gun?” I asked Aisling.

  She looked from me to the pistol I was holding, then back at me and shook her head no. Then started picking off the ones she could to make a path for us to get into town.

  “She’s being so mean to me, Vivi.”

  “Maybe you should kill yourself, then she wouldn’t have to,” she snapped back.

  I had forgotten she was already spent and still recovering. Vivi recovered far slower than the rest of us for some reason, though with the power she could output, that sort of evened things out.

  I let out an exaggerated sigh and followed them in.

  Once we were within a stone's throw, it almost looked like the hungry ghosts were systematically breaking down the buildings. I got to shoot some husks now, though, as they were crawling out of buildings towards us, which was nice.

  “Are they looking for something?” Aisling mused aloud as we passed from the flower field onto a tiled stone street painted white.

  “Could the fox be in this town somewhere? That's probably what set the Class Four off in the first place and got the Office personnel killed,” I asked.

  “Keep an eye out for any sign of it. It might have a clue to lead us to the rift. Unless you can tell where it is exactly, Aisling,” Makesi said as he began planting landmines across the road we took into town. With the sheer number of wights following us, I wasn’t sure if that would actually do anything, unless those were the ones Vivi bought. In which case, we might need to start running now if we wanted to live when they went off.

  Unfortunately, I didn't really have anything I could buy that would help us right now. That would have to be something I'd think about for my next Manifest, which I'd almost reached.

  “I can tell it’s close to the centre of town, besides that, I’m not really sure,” Aisling calmly explained, which was impressive because a massive bulging pile of muscles that at one point may have been described as a man slammed down right where she was standing. She managed to dodge out of the way with a flip backwards that just looked like a blur to me.

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