Reiz clutched the stone. The moment she had touched it, it had connected to her on a spiritual level. She could feel the mind of the dead god. It was contained inside the stone on a basic level, and yet it was struggling to assert its influence on the network. He had poured himself into the stone with his dying breath, making everything that he had been and would be connected to the artefact.

  The stone had shrunk down to about the size of her fist, as she had connected to it, and she could easily pick it up. It might just be her divine body, or the fact that it was attached to her, but it seemed to weigh nothing at all, and almost shape itself to fit perfectly in her hand.

  It was still a stone, though. Carved with exquisite symbols, but still just a rock.

  She didn't hesitate, reassigning her Impact to carry the stone, rather than keeping up the elf morale. She hoped that would have to do for now.

  Then, Riez reached out for the pool of Energy that was stored in the stone. It was incredibly high, and yet, it too was connected to the once noble god. She looked over at the once former wielder of the stone, and the root creature gave a shrug with its shoulders.

  "I do not feel different, and yet, we are likely not to know what effect this will have. The emotional drain was slow and insidious." The Ent said, voice surprisingly soft.

  Riez nodded and tapped into the pool of Energy. She felt herself vanish, just like she had before, her body swirling through the network of roots, and yet she was perfectly aware of where she should be going. She focused on appearing in the town square.

  The area she appeared in was a blood bath. The woven branches underneath her were slick with the crimson essence to the point where only Riez's enhanced dexterity allowed her to stand upright.

  The elves had scattered, or at least most of them. A couple was standing behind the Ilshers.

  Ira, the red Ilsher, looked like he had been absolutely caked in blood, absolutely drenched in far more blood than should be possible. Marcel, the purple Ilsher, had his armour coated in that sanguine liquid. It looked like he had tried to clean himself multiple times, but was sticking to his armour.

  Ishtar, on the other hand, didn't have a drop of blood on her. Her white flowing dress, with those fake symbols on it, was still as pristine as newly fallen snow. Looking down, Riez noticed that the blood refused to pool at the Ilsher's feet, as if it was being held back.

  Behind her, the Grey Ilsher, which Riez still didn't know the name of, was standing. His chin was swollen and purple, while his grey outfit had been torn up from the bite of a whip. The hit was clearly so intense that it had broken skin, soaking his otherwise colourless clothes in crimson.

  Spif and Spaf were easy to spot. They were hanging around Ira's neck, trying to choke him, the red Ilsher clearly having given up trying to kill the two goblins.

  "CHOKE HIM SPIF!" One of them screamed, and Riez was actually fairly certain that it was Spif that was screaming.

  >????????????: ????????, ?????? ?????? ???????? ?????? ???????? ??????. ???? ?????? ???????????????? ???? ???? ???????????? ???????? ???????? ???????????? ?????? is ????????????. - ????????????

  Riez ignored the question, focusing instead on Ishtar. The goddess smiled.

  "Finally, you have come. It turns out that my brother isn't quite as disappointing as he let on." She spoke. voice barely hiding the deep hatred that was shining in her eyes. "You who killed my mother, you who-" Riez acted before Ishtar's monologue could get out of hand.

  She teleported Spif and Spaf to the Tree of Chaos before she tried to follow herself. There was no chance that she was about to fight a goddess of Blood, and like a million other Domains, in the middle of a pool of blood.

  However, something went wrong. As she tried to enter A'kastin through the root network, she got a strange message.

  Text from image:

  A'kastin has been locked. Please contact your local Admin for more information.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Text from image:

  ERROR: User cannot be pushed back to previous location due to previous location logged too far away. This would break Teleportation lockdown.

  Text from image:

  ERROR: No safe place to deposit user that would not qualify as Teleportation.

  Text from image:

  Coalescing user achievements before logging the user out.

  Text from image:

  You have brought joy to the elven lands.

  Congratulations. You have prevented stagnation in the elven lands. For your achievement, you have obtained 18 Worship and permanent ownership of the Stone of Alman. The stone will stay with your body.

  Text from image:

  You have been logged out

  Riez woke up with a gasp of air. She was surrounded by darkness, but as she moved, the inside of her pod lit up. It had been set up in her apartment, and to save on electricity, she had turned off the lights before diving into the gameworld. Now, she cursed herself, as she felt blind, her eyes expecting to be in the midday sun. The small lights in the pod helped al ittle, but they were honestly barely noticeable.

  That had been wild. What was going on with that last volley of messages?

  She adjusted herself in the pod a little. Her body felt like it was absolutely broken and battered. It was such a pain to... you know... feel pain.

  Riez was actually about to doze off in her pod. The padding inside was much better than her old mattress, and she had considered sleeping inside it, though that might void the warranty or something like that. However, she was pulled from her cozy bedding when her phone and laptop started to buzz and ring. With a hiss, she slipped from the confines of the pod and made several curses as her stiff limbs didn't do what she wanted. Combined with the feeling of having much lower dexterity in the real world, she had to stabilise herself by touching the furniture in her apartment.

  The apartment wasn't much to write home about. It had a bathroom where the shower and the toilet shared the same space, which was... convenient... and she had a kitchen, which doubled as a living room, and an office. Last but not least, she had a bedroom with room for her bed... and that was about it. All in all, for 2,5k a month it was practically a steal. That wasn't including utilities, but since most of the time the hot water wasn't working, those were fairly low.

  She staggered over to her office space, which was her dinning table with her laptop sitting on it, and she flipped it up, revealing that it was the rest of the team that was calling her.

  "Ey, all!" She said with a bright smile, watching them huddle up on a couple of couches. "I have a bug to report."

  Jasper laughed. The man could be a bit intimidating, though he was honestly just kind of dorky. Even so, being the team lead and all, Riez couldn't really know if he would end up seeing her as a hindrance and want an actual developer on the team. So she enjoyed putting on the joking and teasing persona to help ingratiate her with her boss. It was better than the covering and submissive persona she had to put on around some of the suits at the office. Honestly, she felt more like that Grey Ilsher than herself when she was around those guys.

  "Yeah, I think I spotted a couple, too. Want to take stock of what happened at that last stretch?" Jasper's voice said, only for Martin to groan.

  "The relic is circumventing teleporting, but the script for keeping PCs out of A'kastin wasn't designed for that, so things went all funky. Should be an easy fix, if a fix is needed at all. I mean, since we get to choose destinations when we spawn in, things should be fine, right?"

  Celeste pipped up, and Riez could hardly spot her cuddled up to Jasper. For some reason, the woman had decided to be the big spoon, despite being almost as short as Riez.

  "Riez got a ton of Worship, while neither Martin nor I got any."

  Jasper nodded and moved to write some things down, only to be pulled back by Celeste, and Martin rolled his eyes, and grabbed the block of paper and started to write things down.

  "Yeah, I have a couple of theories on that. First of all, you two didn't sleep. And while you made that Fire flower-"

  "Forge Lily", Celeste interrupted.

  "Yes, Forge Lily, you didn't really solve any problems. It will probably impact the dwarves, but you don't get Worship for not solving problems. Furthermore, Riez actually managed to solve a problem for an entire nation. It was practically handed to her, but it was helped quite a bit by the Ilshers wanted revenge. So she got a huge point bonus for her last drop. Not to mention that I think that her first reward pool was actually her getting the points I should have gained as well. So she got double points from the undead guys." Jasper monologued.

  "I didn't get double, you just suck." Riez taunted, wiggling her eyebrows.

  "DO NOT!" Jasper protested.

  "DO TO!" Riez answered, and before long, they were arguing over who was carrying whom.

  It helped Riez a lot to know that her boss was as competitive as she was, and that he didn't mind a bit of banter.

  Of course, the other two joined in soon after, but it didn't take long before the call ended. Riez was left sitting on her chair, feeling strangely alone. She hadn't felt this way in quite some time, but seeing what the rest of the team had, it made her feel... isolated.

  It was a shame they were halfway around the world.