I flexed my legs and hopped in place, finding that my balance was perfect. The skin on the feet almost felt real, too. In the same way that my actual skin did, in that it had this extra something added to it that made you dissociate as the softness of the material reached your mind.

  The flesh was also bulletproof according to a test that Makesi ran. I need not worry about being crippled in the same way again.

  Running across the rubble of the destroyed town, I found my footing almost too easily, even when I intentionally tried to take a non-optimal route, walls would vanish for a moment as I passed, bits of rubble would move out of the way on the ground, and the one time I decided to try getting a higher vantage point, I immediately found a convenient set of stairs that was still standing even though structurally it absolutely should not have been.

  I wondered what the limits to the movement anomaly were, but as far as my tests went, it felt like the world was just suited perfectly for me to travel through it. As if it had been pre-arranged with my locomotion in mind.

  On the less positive side of the effects, Vivi accidentally called me ‘mommy’, which I will be doing my absolute best to scrub from my mind. It was nice knowing the authority aspect worked at least, I supposed.

  Oh, and I was not an inch taller, but I supposed that didn't really matter. Longer legs would have cost more or reduced the overall effect after all.

  “Are you going to put the shoes on or should I just toss them?” Aurin asked, as I walked backwards past her to test whether I ran into anything when I didn't have a destination in question.

  “No, no, I still want them I—Ohfuck,” I yelped as I tripped backwards over a piece of rubble, bouncing more than once when I hit the ground before coming to a stop. Well, that confirmed I needed to have a destination in mind. “I was just enjoying the feeling of my new feet on the ground. You know I can't help but think the System wants to make me into something, but I can't tell for the life of me what it is.”

  “The System can't want anything for you, it doesn’t have the capability to want,” Aisling said so quietly that it almost sounded like she was talking to herself.

  “Then my Archetype, or whatever. Something made them look the way they do and refused to let me change it,” I said, waving my feet in the air before rolling to a stand just in time to catch the boots that Aurin threw my way.

  Tugging them on as I walked, I felt the laces automatically bind themselves tight against my feet. The boots weren't mentioned in the description for the legs, so I didn't actually know what they did besides make me look fancy as fuck while also being very comfortable, apparently.

  “If you could stop fooling around, the rift is right up ahead,” Makesi said as we took a turn into a section of the town that had seemingly been spared both the dismantling by the ghosts and the light brawl Vivi had with the asura that knocked half the town down.

  Not that it was any kind of special spot. We were down a side street of a side street, the road was no longer even stone tiled. It was a dirt path that was being encroached by the black orchids on either side that wound between market stalls that seemingly only sold small statues.

  I saw Vivi swipe one of the statues at the edge of my vision, but graciously chose to look the other way.

  The scent of incense hit me like a brick wall, the same moment I noticed we had passed into somewhere it felt like we shouldn't be. On the ground were thousands of those tiny statues being sold at the stands. Glancing around the side streets seemed to all converge here, not as a point of interest but as an intersection.

  All of the statues were arranged around a statue of a fox with blue marble eyes.

  While the rest of the group went towards the statue, I hung back, my eyes locked onto someone whom I had expected to see. Xinyu stood under an overpass, a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head and a pipe in her hand.

  Aisling glanced back at me when she noticed I wasn’t coming. I nodded in Xinyu’s direction and waved the rest of my team to go on. I wasn’t all that involved with the actual closing of the rift; all I had to be here for was to collect the reward. She nodded my way and whispered something to Makesi, who stood a little straighter at whatever it was.

  Aurin joined them without me having to say anything or look my way.

  Approaching the fox, I leaned against the wall next to her and held my hand out.

  “Trying to raise your debt even more?” Xinyu asked. I could hear the smile in her voice even with her hat blocking her face.

  “Oh, just hand the pipe over. It’s on theme for a meeting like this, for the host to share,” I shot back, doing a grabbing motion with my hand.

  She took one last pull before handing it over. The pipe was an unwieldy thing, designed for appearance over function. Which was exactly what it should be.

  Bringing it to my lips, I pulled in and held for a few seconds before blowing out a perfect ring of smoke. I hadn’t even intended to. My body just processed it better as a ring, and therefore it was a ring.

  “Your friends are closing the connection between worlds as we speak,” she commented.

  “And? Is that a problem for you?” I said, letting out a quiet cough as I felt my heart rate climb. Whatever she had been smoking was strong.

  “No. That was always your intended work.” I could hear the tilt of her smile beneath the brim of her hat. “A story that lingers too long forgets why it was told.”

  I understood that instinctively. Continuation wasn’t a right. It was something a story had to keep earning as it went on. This story was already at its end.

  I passed the pipe back to her, and she tapped the stem of it once against the concrete before bringing it to her lips.

  “But since you’ve already taken liberties with my cultivation, it seems only fair that I take liberties with your journey,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke into my face.

  I frowned as I waved it away. “Do we really need to do this? I provided guidance that helped you advance; it wasn’t like I was taking advantage of you.”

  A soft laugh slipped out of her, low and sharp.

  “Guidance?” Xinyu echoed. “You pushed. Decisively. Down a path you liked the look of. Then I cleaned up your little mess for you.”

  “That was hardly my mess.”

  She looked up at me for the first time, her head tilting slightly. A predatory smile touched her lips, showing just a glint of fangs, “But are those not your men now?”

  Ah, shit, have things progressed that far already back at the Water Office encampment?

  “Besides, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy the process of repayment. It fits into your little narrative, doesn’t it? I need a vessel to inhabit once this place collapses. You have a stage that needs filling,” she said, before passing the pipe back to me.

  I took another slow drag, just feeling the world sharpen around me, and watching the colours bloom slightly as the unearthly substance coursed through me. Then looked up at her inquisitive, with blue slitted eyes; she looked like she was studying my face intently.

  “Alright, how do we do this—” I was cut off when her mouth met mine. After a moment’s delay, I recoiled, but even as our lips parted, something was left behind in my mouth. Hacking, I tried to get it out, but with my resistance, it started clawing its way to the back of my mouth, the taste of wet animal hair almost making me vomit.

  As it made its way down my throat, I felt a weight settle over me, one that I was familiar with.

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

  Weight: 3/10

  Temporary Asset Obtained

  Name: Hu Xinyu

  System Description: An infoform temporarily assigned a role within the host’s theatre.

  Role Description: Hu Xinyu is playing a Mature Huli Jing, a fox spirit that, through cultivation, has gained a human form.

  Her character is traditionally portrayed as clever, observant, and persuasive. The Huli Jing survives through wit rather than force. It is associated with illusion, transformation, and the manipulation of appearances. Its presence often coincides with disruption, temptation, or sudden changes in fortune.

  While frequently charming, it is rarely sincere. Motivations are personal and pragmatic, favouring survival, advancement, or indulgence over loyalty or morality.

  Warning: Removal may cause an ill-fated life.

  Weight: 2

  The System message played in my mind as I retched against the wall, my skin crawling as something passed through me in a way that it shouldn’t. One blink to the next, my mind felt like it was slowing its emotional charge, as if I were paying the cost to use my Aspect. Even though I shouldn’t be able to. There were no... oh shit.

  Between thoughts, the world came back into focus. The ground around me was flattened out, and the dirt path that I had been standing on had become a plywood deck. Looking up at the building that I was leaning on was now just a backdrop painted on a flat piece of wood.

  That’s… not right.

  I stumbled back out of the alleyway towards my team, crossing over the border of the spot where, somehow, I converted the idea into some kind of stage play of itself.

  A white flash out of the corner of my eye confirmed I wasn’t alone in my trek back.

  “Hey! How’d your chat go?” Aurin asked when I rounded the corner, and the team came into sight. I almost let out a huff, but held myself back because I was unsure how that reaction would look to my new passenger.

  “It went alright. It seems she’ll be joining us for a little longer than expected. As an Asset, as the System is calling it,” I replied, swiping the description window open and moving it so she could see it.

  “Huh!? You’re picking up Assets for free?” Vivi squeaked, several statues falling out of her pockets as she turned to glare at me, “Makesi, tell her she isn’t allowed to do that!”

  “I’m busy, please bother somebody else,” Makesi replied. He was building some kind of contraption connected to the statue of the fox. A golden glow was now visible coming from the base of the statue, being contained by the force of Makesi’s Aspect alone while he pried it apart.

  “What does Temporary Asset mean?” Aurin asked aloud.

  “Oh, thank fuck it’s just temporary,” Vivi said, letting out a sigh of relief that felt a little condescending. “I thought you meant you found a Permanent Asset lying around. Temporary Assets typically last only the duration of a single Contract. But since all Assets take up Weight, temporary ones aren’t really worth it. Unless you’re in your first life, I guess, or haven’t hit your Soul’s Weight limit for some other reason.”

  “Then what would an example of a Permanent Asset be?” I asked, then sent the message I got from receiving Hu Xinyu to Vivi through the group chat.

  “It’s something like this,” she replied, holding her hand up where a glowing orb of fire resided. Her eyes scanned back and forth, reading the Asset description. “Carrying a magic system through multiple lives is the primary example. It’s also possible to purchase species traits, which may come with a unique property or perhaps even a new Stat to gain. What you’ve got here is a unique Archetype-based Asset, which are apparently raining from the sky for you, huh?”

  Ah, she meant Aurin… whose Asset description I couldn’t actually pull up for some reason. But she took up weight, so what else could she possibly be?

  We had sort of talked about this on the night Aurin sold her soul, but never in specifics. I had to assume Aurin's soul was the price that was high enough to make her permanent.

  “Is that why you all have little features clearly distinguishing you as not human? I thought that might have just been an expression of your Archetype, like my eyes,” I said, my eyes had been different from day one, the moment I received my Archetype.

  “Yeah, in a way. Aisling picked up her ears two worlds ago,” Vivi replied, which felt to me like she was dodging the most important topic. “Your eyes are just an expression of your Charisma Stat; if you had zero points in it, they would probably look completely normal.”

  “And your ahoge?”

  “My what?” she asked, her ahoge twitched before going completely still. It looked as if the strand of hair knew it was being singled out despite Vivi's ignorance. The strand was vibrating slightly as if about to spring into action.

  “The little strand of hair on your head that looks like it's alive, and marks you as foolish—” I started, only for Vivi to cut me off.

  “Really? F-ucking zekirauns exist here too? My hair doesn't define who I am! Is that so hard to understand!” Vivi screamed at me, her ahoge exploded into motion, spinning at the top of her head. The way she said the word zekirauns sounded like she was spitting it out in disgust.

  “I… what? This is just a media trope on Earth. Nobody here is judging you for your hair,” I said, confused at the reaction. The possibility that there could be a world that somehow ran on the logic of Japanese animation didn't seem real to me.

  I mean, in the entire multiverse, sure, I guess that might happen; there had to be a near uncountable number of universes…. hopefully. But the probability of running into someone who had lived in one of those universes, that should be basically zero.

  “Don't repeat trichokinkphobic talking points around me, please. I already dealt with that enough in my first life,” Vivi replied in System Default, followed by an exasperated sigh.

  The word she used translated to something like fear or hostility towards people with hair kinks. I knew System Default was designed to be a universal language, but the fact that it contained something as specific as that was odd to me. Was this a problem that happened often enough to define it through the System?

  Was it common in other universes to be racist towards people with certain hairstyles? Why did it line up with an anime trope?

  “What were people with hair drills stereotyped as?” I asked, hoping I wasn't stepping over a line.

  A message appeared in front of me mid-sentence.

  Aisling: She's very sensitive about her hair. The culture she grew up in treated people with her hairstyle as inherently mockworthy. Please be considerate of her.

  “Oh, those prissy zekiraun fucks? They were the snobbiest bitches in existence, yet somehow everybody loved them for their ‘refined taste’ or whatever other bullshit ideas their parents' propaganda claimed,” Vivi replied while I was still reading Aisling’s private message. Her voice dripped with venom at the mention of the drill-haired princess trope.

  Her world was sounding more like a one-to-one match with my world's anime tropes regarding hair. I wanted to ask more, like, did guys with big, weird hairstyles have really eventful lives more often than normal? Before I could, however, Makesi stood up, and a moment later his Aspect enveloped us all. My Aspect’s sight went blurry as reality was rapidly deanomalized. My breathing suddenly felt weird when my Stats vanished. It felt like there was a weight to it that I had forgotten existed, like switching from doing it automatic to manually.

  “Rift closure in ten seconds, final call for objections,” Makesi gasped out, glancing over. He was kneeling with one hand bracing himself against the ground. His breaths were shallow and fast, as he burned his stamina to ward off the reality spallation event that was happening where the rift had been. The interaction between the machine that Makesi had been setting up and the rift had dissolved the space the statue was occupying into both a pure golden glow and an object that was more of an incomplete objective truth than a material object. Like an objective fact about reality that lacked an answer.

  Looking closely, I could see what looked like a time-lapse of the statue itself as the physical material broke down into pieces of information that then reformed into something fundamental about Dust, Life, the universe, and everything. It felt as if I just followed every step of the breakdown, I would be able to solve my most crucial issue, the one that had followed me my whole life, no, not just this life, but all my past lives too. Time passed as I tried to build a pattern out of what I was picking up as the ten seconds turned into minutes, then hours, finally days, before I lost count.

  Someone’s hands covered my eyes the moment before it all clicked, right as I was about to make the final connection that would blow the whole thing open. And the picture that had been forming in my mind was dashed away in an instant. I halfheartedly tried to pry what felt like Vivi’s hands from my eyes as a feeling that I’d missed my only shot passed over me, only stopping when I realized that my line of thought didn’t make any sense.

  “Trying to directly comprehend the unreality of the Sea of Dust for extended periods is inadvisable for maintaining long-term sanity. Please take care of your cognitive health; it would be unfortunate for you to destroy your mind before a backup is made.” Aisling muttered in my ear, only removing her hands when I nodded. When she did so, I was greeted with the sight of Makesi sprawled on the ground in the middle of a dry rice paddy.

  A notification floated in my vision.

  +3642 Dust

  Dust: 3685

  That was about as much as I was told to expect to receive in a closing harvest, and brought me back from almost zero after buying those new legs. I walked over to check Makesi alongside Vivi, pushing the image of a person that looked very similar to me out of my mind. They were wearing what could only be described as a princely version of a bard’s clothes in yellow. A whole cast of characters unfamiliar to me were also in that image, except that instead of being part of the crowd, the bard was looking down from above, a wry smile on their lips. This was the only thing I could recall from my mind’s swim through the Sea of Dust.

  “Hey, you alright?” Vivi asked while we helped Makesi off the ground.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure my mind is intact,” I replied with a snort.

  “You sure? Because, uh.” With one hand, she motioned to my cheeks.

  Raising a hand to my face, I found tears pouring from my eyes. The reaction elicited a surprised breath that ended up as more of a choked sob. Quickly wiping my face on my sleeve, I forced a smile for Vivi.

  “Yup! I’m fine!”

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