The message drove all thoughts of getting more rest out of Jay’s head. He knew it was probably a bad sign that he could even think of going back to sleep after having been out of it for so long, but there were some things that were just more important.

  Now aware that there was someone on the island who could hear everything, he was going to have to be very careful at all times. His first instinct had been to talk about it out loud, even going as far as to let out the start of a question before he choked it to silence. Internal thoughts only.

  What could the Tower be? That was the easy question; there was only one large cylinder he’d tried using his powers on since coming here. It had to be about the giant stack of coral and bone that he’d reflexively pumped some of [Lesser Resurrection] into. Come to think of it, that was probably why it hadn’t worked. There was no way something that size qualified as Lesser to anything. But what about it earned it a proper name?

  He tried getting the window to expand to give him more detail, something that had only worked a couple times, only for this to join the list of things that didn’t have any extra information attached. Jay decided he didn’t feel comfortable trying to go back there whenever the dives started up again, which only left one real option: [Astral Projection].

  He settled back into his cot and triggered the ability, trying to focus on his memory of the pillar of bleached coral. The golden form that his projection took peeled its way out of his skin, floating briefly above his body before rocketing off like one of his cousins strapped between two four-wheelers. It was fast enough that his vision blurred in spite of the lack of bubbles forming, fast enough that he swore he could see his own feet for a while.

  Then Jay slammed to a halt in front of his target. The cloud of purple and black had become a fog, descending until it hovered barely a foot above the surface of the city. It had even begun encroaching on the pillar’s courtyard, the occasional strand moving across the invisible boundary that separated it from the rest of the city.

  The pillar itself looked the same as it had before, save for a single change: there was a faint outline of green between the cracks of the complex shapes that were crammed together into the towering creation. It was only a small ring around the bottommost section of it, but if there had ever been a representation of exactly why his attempt had failed beyond just the label of “Lesser,” that was it. He probably had to fill the entire thing with his magic to have any shot at engaging whatever the Tower portion of it was.

  Was it worth it to pump more in, knowing now that it wasn’t just an increased drain on his Health? Jay didn’t know how much it could take or how that would translate in terms of tumor growth, so if it wasn’t worth it, the consequences would be terrible.

  He weighed the choices for a while. Trying to put the pros and cons into concrete form forced him to confront two things: the first was that he had made basically no progress uncovering the actual cause of the Curse and trying to fix it, with the second being that his Health had refused to tick back up the whole time he’d been asleep. It was the first time he’d ever woken up without it being full, even if the first point tended to drain away before he’d even started taking care of the day’s activities.

  It wasn’t worth it. Unless whatever this Tower was could help him solve either of those problems, it really just was not worth it. No matter how much he wanted to test out his newly upgraded [Resurrection], he couldn’t justify the cost.

  He went to turn away and was interrupted by a new System window.

  Even though Gilt had become Limned, apparently it was still going to warn him about that. He should probably be grateful; whatever the results of a severe deviation of personal fate were, he probably didn’t want to experience it. Maybe it was also a way for the System – or the mysterious Overgoddess – to tell him that things were important.

  Or maybe he was being fucked with. That was always a viable option as well.

  That was what he was most afraid of, honestly. If this was some godly prank, he knew he’d be on familiar ground, but that wouldn’t be enough to save him from hyper-accelerated magical cancer taking over his body.

  Wait. Taking over his body…

  Why had he phrased it like that? It wasn’t like it was costing him his autonomy, it wasn’t driving him to do things he didn’t want to. Unless it was and he wasn’t aware of it.

  Unless they were connected to the incident he’d had in Steelgate with one of his abilities trying to activate on its own. Were each of the tumors one of his abilities that was literally metastasizing within him? The wording on the Class Curse’s warning had definitely implied he was going to be puppeted by his own powers.

  Just to check, he pulled it up.

  “Mindless creature of undeath.” Well, hell. That really did sound like they were going to puppet him around if he failed to fix the curse.

  Though if they were physical, that brought up an interesting idea. Could he rip them out – doing whatever was necessary to do so – and remove the abilities by doing so? Was that a shortcut to living longer? Surely he couldn’t keep growing them if he didn’t have anything to keep corrupting him.

  He didn’t really have time to think about that. Or the knowledge to determine if that was possible, survivable, or advised. The worst part, at least in Jay’s opinion, was that he couldn’t ask anyone who might know without letting on that he was a [Necromancer] and probably getting executed immediately. He might have the next best thing to a cure sitting right in front of him and wouldn’t be able to know it.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He still noted it for the future. That might be worth looking into if he could figure out whether anyone would have studied that in any similar cases that might exist. For now, he’d been as good as told that this pillar was important. He might as well act on that now, since he was already here.

  Jay placed his glowing golden hands on the pillar of coral and cast [Resurrection]. The differences between the new form and the old began immediately, as the distinct wisps that had previously flooded out were now a single condensed fog, rolling out in an unending sheet. It crawled into the stack of bones, writhing into the gaps and vanishing.

  The ring of green light began to rise slowly. It hadn’t moved more than an inch before the natural casting fuel of the spell ran out. Jay didn’t feel like letting it take forever, so he forced it to keep going, funneling point after point of extra mana into it. It was a weird feeling, something he hadn’t had to do before since the normal charge had always been enough for him to either resurrect something or take it past the point that he had any hope of doing so.

  If he was going to do it, he was going to do it right; he poured his entire supply of mana in except for a single point.

  It still wasn’t enough. Not nearly. The light was only about a quarter of the way up the pillar. He’d have to hope that regenerated with more success than his Health was at the moment, and that the stockpile didn’t decay over time. He’d come back and try to continue it as much as possible. If the remainder of his spells kept being perfectly workable off the default, he shouldn’t have any issue saving the mana.

  He cut off [Astral Projection] and expected his cracked golden form to get pulled back to his main body immediately. It had last time; it didn’t this time. It didn’t even start pulling at him.

  Jay looked around as if the answer was going to be waiting for him in his immediate vicinity. He caught a glimpse of flickering blue light and realized he might be closer to right on that front than he would have expected. The color was distinctive, even unmistakable.

  The ring from the dream he’d had every night that he had dreamt while on the island had glowed the exact same shade.

  He might be able to get closer this time, maybe even enough to get a clear sight of what was on the other side. Jay told himself he didn’t have any intention of going through if he could get that close. The statement was even less convincing in his own head than it would have been if he was saying it out loud.

  There was even a small amount of curiosity in him at what would happen if he sent his projection through it. He didn’t know if this was fully his soul, a duplicated version of it, or a small splinter that had been shaved off, so it was impossible to even take a guess without it being a complete shot in the dark.

  He jellyfished his way through the streets in search of the light. Now that he was pushing his way through hanging clouds of backlit inky material, he found that it was actively resisting his movement. Even the water wasn’t doing that.

  Once, he made the mistake of trying to go through a glowing portion of a cloud. That didn’t just inhibit his movement, it shocked him like what he used to imagine being tased was like. His astral projection seized briefly afterwards, shaking head to toe, and the cracks in its skin rippled with the same purplish color. A poison of some sort? Something that could affect a glowing incorporeal version of him?

  Jay expected to see a System window pop up telling him he’d been afflicted by something, but nothing appeared. He didn’t know whether that made him feel better or worse; some of the higher Tiers of power could apparently keep the effects of their abilities hidden. It was the kind of thing that was only referenced a couple of times in the books he’d read, since people in those tiers were both rare and secretive. Most people didn’t get anywhere near triple digits in level.

  If he managed to swing his own survival into being, he almost wanted to be one of those people. Even with the overwhelming amount of things he’d have to do to collect Motes of Wisdom and the insane amount of experiences he’d have to live through to keep that level of growth going for that long, it couldn’t be all bad.

  He turned a corner and found the ring waiting. There were details that were visible now that the dreamstate had hidden. Whatever the material was, it looked like overlapping scales of black above a clear iridescent underlayer that fractured the multicolored lightning into the entire spectrum of colors.

  Jay didn’t think that was how light worked. There had to be some form of magic involved.

  It also twisted oddly, wrapping around itself so gradually it was hard to see without taking in the whole thing at once. It seemed to form a complete loop by the time the top of the circle came around, with the direct middle of both the top and bottom being perfectly straight.

  Disappointingly, the portal itself was dark. Whatever had been on the other side in his dream, it wasn’t there this time. Was there something missing about it? Something keeping it from activating?

  Jay even pushed himself through the circle a few times, just to make sure there wasn’t some effect there that he couldn’t see. The part of him that was still dwelling on the dream and its call celebrated.

  [Astral Projection] finally began to end, pulling him back to his body with no more answers than what he’d started with. Jay stewed on that annoyance the whole way back as he was pulled through any obstacles along the most direct path to his body. A complete and total answer to something would be good, just once.

  As he passed through one of the corners of the rock shelf that stood between him and his bodily return, his vision didn’t go entirely black. There was a faint blue light coloring the darkness with no discernable source. It was very nearly a small rectangle, just shy of being a square really.

  It was the right blue to be a System window but they’d never dimmed to that level of transparency before without him dismissing them. Jay focused on it. He tried to take hold of it mentally, tried to drag it into full visibility.

  He felt like he latched onto something. Whether it was the right thing or not, he didn’t know; he pulled at it anyway with every point of his Willpower.

  His vision shattered into four panes. One, a short red-on-black System window. The second, a normal black-on-blue. A third, a white-on-black box containing what might have been the most ominous message he’d read yet. Last, the normal range of vision from his body.

  All four together were disorienting in the extreme, like they were trying to occupy the same space in his range of vision without helping him process all of the information at once. He almost regretted getting it straightened out when he finally did.

  It was probably unreasonable to assume he knew where that red text message was coming from since he had a very limited pool of options, but he really wanted to make that assumption anyway. Jay could only think of one – maybe two – choices for who it could be. The question of whether it was Zirrus or the being that had left that trap in the book wasn’t something he could answer right now. Jay didn’t know even whether the two were separate. They could be the same person for all he knew.

  Regardless, he’d run enough over the course of the weeks he’d been in this world. He had already been tired of it by the time he got to Kinicier’s Haven and had to flee from there anyway. At some point that was going to have to change.

  So why not now? Maybe he was just riding the high of being able to kill all of those goblins without any significant risk but he felt like he was as prepared as he could be to face it head on. Would being a higher level help? Probably. But until or unless he figured out exactly what made the Motes of Wisdom trigger, leveling enough for that to make a difference wasn’t all that feasible.

  So Jay resolved, then and there, that whatever this was and whoever was behind this situation, he was going to face it head on.