—— ? ——

  “So that's really how you fight?” Kaelalin asked, examining Simon’s hands.

  Simon glanced down at them. The metal heart had burned away some skin, charred other parts, and left the rest an angry cherry red. Now that the adrenaline had faded, pain pulsed up his arms in steady waves.

  “Yeah, unfortunately, it's–ahhh shit!” Simon flinched as Kaelalin poured a reddish-brown liquid onto his hands. “Jesus Christ, Kaelalin, that fucking hurt.”

  She snorted. “That’s what happens when you do stupid things.” She paused, giving him a warm smile.. “But… that stupid thing saved my life. So thanks for that.” With practiced ease, she applied a salve and quickly wrapped his hands.

  The reddish-brown liquid was already having an effect. The deep, pulsing pains slowed in rhythm and intensity.

  Simon let out a breath. “No problem… But yeah. That’s the way I fight.”

  Kaelalin packed away her healing supplies, chewing on her lower lip as she studied him.

  “It’s horrible,” she said bluntly. “You move well, better than most I’ve seen. You were fast enough to keep up with that thing.” She gestured at the remains of the metal giant. “The problem is what you do when you catch it.”

  Her gaze drifted to where the didgeridoo had been less than a minute ago before shattering and disappearing in a shimmer of magic.

  “That… weapon? Instrument? Whatever it was. It did absolutely nothing for most of the fight.” Her eyes narrowed as they locked onto Simon. “Care to explain?”

  Simon met her stare.

  “Is it too late to say it’s personal and I don’t want to go into detail?” he asked with a nervous chuckle.

  Kaelalin didn’t smile. She shook her head.

  “Maybe that would’ve worked earlier. But Brian and I made some assumptions about you that were clearly wrong.” She sat down on her pack. “I’m not going one step further unless you explain. If you won’t, forget the rewards. We leave this dungeon before we both end up dead.”

  Simon hesitated. Could he actually explain the truth? Would that even be smart?

  The curses were the problem. He’d avoided mentioning them so far. Every time a conversation had approached the subject, he had tried to redirect it.

  But was that the right call?

  He doubted most people would react well to someone cursed by not one, but multiple gods. From what he’d overheard, most folks in Varnholt just stood in front of a deity, said “Yes, please,” and walked away with shiny new powers.

  That hadn’t been his story. His experience was unique as far as he could tell.

  But the question was, how unique? Were there others in town who were cursed? The system seemed to require a god’s involvement. Even if you got cursed, someone else had to step in with a blessing.

  Simon thought back to his first achievement.

  —- ACHIEVEMENT —-

  > Realm First: Divine Rage

  You rejected a Prime god, insulted his authority, and got cursed out of an entire combat path. He responded like any rational deity would. By launching you into a mountain.

  You somehow managed to survive! Congrats!

  Some doors slam shut. Others explode behind you.

  > Rewards:

  + Passive: Stubborn Resilience (Minor)

  + Title: Your name has been changed to Simon “of the Broken Oath”

  > Note: This designation is not ceremonial and is visible to deities and their followers, entities of equivalent power, and anyone who can read the air. Beware.

  —-—-—-—-

  Realm First. That meant it was unique, right?

  Or at least he had somehow managed to speed-run pissing off divinity.

  Kaelalin’s expression had shifted from curious to suspicious. She waited in silence, her frown deepening.

  I’m going to have to say something. Maybe not the entire truth… but something approaching it.

  Simon sighed and cleared his throat.

  “Alright, I’ll tell you. But you can’t share this.” He sat down with a grunt, his body was protesting, making him aware of the smattering of still-healing aches and burns. “Let’s just say I didn’t have the most… ideal start to this integration.”

  “You showed up weeks late, covered in corpses, and barely breathing.”

  “Exactly. I was in a divine realm. The god there decided I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to get his boon. Called me–” Simon made air quotes. “‘Untalented and deficient.’”

  Kaelalin nodded, a slight grin tugging at her mouth.

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Hey, I didn’t choose that asshole.” He paused, thinking, “Wait, now that I mention it, didn’t Brian tell you about this?”

  Kaelalin raised an eyebrow. “This is the first I've heard of it.”

  Huh, I guess he’s kept it a secret. Thanks, Brian.

  “Well, the short story is, I got chosen by the god of bards. He said I was horrible, then made me train with a teacher ‘avatar’ of himself. During my time with the teacher, I learned nothing despite my efforts.” Simon sighed. “Then after that, he gave me a skill: Summon Instrument. It lets me summon instruments, but I can’t pick what shows up, and the results… vary.”

  Simon’s gaze drifted upward, mind returning to the nightmare that was Melodian.

  “Apparently, because I spent so much time ‘training,’ I got left behind. That asshole of a god never told me I was missing out on weeks of benefits. Now, that skill, and the one I got from fleeing the abomination, are all that I have.”

  His gaze shifted back to Kaelalin. Her look had changed from suspicion to pity. Simon wasn’t sure how to feel about it. On one hand, it was nice to have another person understand the situation he was in. But he also hated it. He had more than enough pity directed at him in his life, and really didn’t want more of it.

  Well, maybe some pity was due.. Still… It bothered him.

  Kaelalin thought for a few moments, then asked.

  “So… you have a bardic skill. But you’re not a bard?”

  Simon laughed. “I have it on good authority that I am a terrible bard.”

  Kaelalin gave a slight smile, then frowned again.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “When you were fighting all those Aurora Hoppers, you were just summoning instruments and... beating them to death?”

  Simon shrugged. “Yup. My go-to has been: get attacked, summon an instrument, beat the thing until it stops moving.”

  Kaelalin’s mouth dropped open. “Oh…”

  She cocked her head. “But that doesn’t explain the giant.” She pointed at the broken monstrosity. “You were completely useless… Then something changed, and every hit started shattering it. As if every strike triggered a blast from its impact point.”.”

  She pointed at him accusingly. “You aren’t telling me everything.”

  After a pause, Simon decided he might as well reveal the cards she had seen. “Alright, so that is related to my uh… god situation?” He shrugged apologetically. “You’re right, I’m not being completely honest. I got this skill from… Well, it was related to why that asshole gave me the ability to summon instruments even though I suck with anything related to them.”

  Kaelalin’s face had gone icy and was filled with distrust. Simon’s rambling was clearly not winning any favor from her.

  Simon held up his hands. “Look, I don’t know who I can trust, alright?”

  “Maybe the person risking her life?” She snapped at him. “The one trying to help you.” She pointed at his chest, finger shaking in frustration. “Get a start in this damned world?”

  “Okay.. okay. That’s fair.” Simon grimaced. “Alright… the thing is…” he muttered.

  Simon took a deep breath, then spewed the words out on his exhale. “I got a skill called Weaponized Repetition, because I caused minor psychic damage to the teaching avatar of the god of bards.”

  Kaelalin's finger froze in the air, and her eyebrows raised.

  “... You what now?”

  “I caused the god psychic damage. Got an achievement for it.”

  Silence.

  Broken only by their breathing and the distant hiss of still-melting ice on the monster's corpse.

  Kaelalin blinked several times and pulled her hand back.

  “You hurt a god? How? I mean… wait.” Kaelalin thought for another moment, then a slight grin tugged at her mouth. “Simon, you said your skill doesn’t suit you because you are awful with the bardic arts.” Her long, light-blue fingers tapped her bottom lip. “Is that related?”

  Simon gave her a sheepish smile. “Like I said, awful is an understatement.”

  Kaelalin’s eyes studied his face, scrutinizing him. Then, her body shook.

  “So…” she guffawed. “You caused a god mental pain because you’re so bad at music?” Her eyes twinkled as she continued to study Simon, who didn’t respond besides shrugging his shoulders.

  Her quiet laughter deepened, but she quickly put a hand to her mouth and firmed her face. Kaelalin's eyes darted around the room as she remembered where they were.

  She wiped the beginning of a tear out of her eye and then took a deep breath.

  The remnants of a laugh filled her voice as she spoke.

  “Okay then. I’ll have to tell Brian never, ever to ask you to sing at the Resting Ember. For the good of Varnholt.” ” she chuckled. “I won’t lie; my academic curiosity wants to hear just how bad it is.” Her eyes drifted away for a moment. “But this isn’t the time for that. So this skill, how does it work? Why didn’t you use it earlier?”

  Simon let out a sigh of relief, thankful that Kaelalin had accepted his story.

  “Trust me, I wanted it to work far earlier. The problem is, I'm still figuring it out.”

  He focused and pulled up the skill.

  —-—-—-—-

  >> Weaponized Repetition (Unique)

  Level: 0.24 / ?

  Description:

  The first fifty times were annoying. The next thousand were torture. But over fifty thousand?

  Are you okay?

  > Fracture Frequency: Repeating a sound, note, or word with enough precision and persistence begins to resonate with the environment. Effects scale with time, focus, and stamina. The longer you sustain repetition without interruption, the more destructive the outcome.

  —-—-—-—-

  “Huh,” he muttered as he stared at the level. “That’s new.”

  “I’m going to assume you are looking at it,” Kaelalin said from behind the notice.

  “Oops.” He quickly dismissed the notice. Simon had been staring at and through her. “My bad.”

  She shrugged. “No, it's fine. I keep forgetting you missed the system events. Everyone talked about them for days after they finished. You can make that information appear however you wish in your mind by merely willing it to be so. Most people put it to the side.”

  Kaelalin’s eyes shifted to the right, then it appeared she was reading something. She looked back at Simon. “Like that.”

  Simon focused. He envisioned where and how he wanted those notices to appear. With a nudge, he pulled the skill back up. The notice appeared on the right side of his vision.

  “Thanks.”

  Kaelalin nodded. “No problem. You can also limit information, expand it, or mentally probe for ideas or concepts. It will either give you the information, or let you know it doesn’t know.”

  Simon thought back to his escape from the abomination in the snow. At the time he needed speed and had mentally screamed at the thing in his head. It had shown him his dexterity and his strength, which had been the right place to use his stats.

  “But what's new?” Kaelalin said, interrupting his thoughts. “And you still haven’t explained that skill.”

  “Oh, that. I was looking at my skill, and it looks like it grew. I hadn’t seen that before.” He waved at the metal corpse. “I’m going to guess that metal guy had something to do with it.”

  Kaelalin looked at him then waved her hand in an ‘and?’ gesture.

  “Oh right, so basically if I repeat a sound, note or word with precision and persistence it will resonate with the environment?” He held up his hands. “Not sure exactly how that works? But if sustained, it gets destructive.”

  “Hmmmm…” Kaelalin mused. “It’s a low level, I assume?”

  “It, uh… hasn’t really leveled?”

  She blinked. Then looked at the shattered remains of the monster. Then back at Simon.

  A grin pulled at her mouth. “...and you said it grew from that fight? How much?”

  Simon glanced ?to his right. “About a quarter.”

  “Does it say anything about what will happen when it levels? Also, what’s the limit on its level?”

  Simon sighed. “Nothing there about that, and I don’t know. There's just a question mark.”

  Kaelalin’s eyes widened. “It has an unknown limit?”

  “Yes? That’s what a question mark means… right?” Simon said. Kaelalin was silent and just blinked at him. After several blinks, Simon waved his hand in front of her face. “Hello? Kaelalin? Are you there?”

  She blinked hard and shook herself out of her daze.

  “Simon. Every skill that I have heard of has an upper limit.” Her eyes had taken on a gleam. “That’s one of the first things our guide told us during the first system event. ‘Most skills have limits.’ Once you hit that cap, you either keep the skill as-is, evolve it, or combine it with another to create a new skill.”

  Kaelalin’s voice gained a teaching tone. “It did mention an exception to this, though. From what we were told, the system rarely guesses. It quantifies everything within its reach. Skills, abilities, stats, items, pretty much everything. If it can’t quantify something, or refuses to, it still leaves behind evidence of that.” She looked excited, and she leaned closer to Simon. “Anything that isn’t quantified, people from the integrated realms call: Unmeasured.”

  Simon’s brow furrowed. “Unmeasured?”

  Kaelalin nodded, letting out a breath of air. “Very creative name, I know. But regardless, Unmeasured anything is apparently exceedingly rare.” Kaelalin tilted her head as she tried to recall something else. “Oh, and skills of that category normally come with massive downsides or a negative trait.”

  Simon’s eyes brightened. “Oh! Like my summon instrument skill.”

  Kaelalin gave him an incredulous look. “That’s Unmeasured too?”

  She held up a hand before he could answer. “Wait. Based on what you said, that one probably does have an awful drawback. But that repetition skill…” Her eyes flicked to the ruins of the shattered giant. “Am I correct in assuming it doesn’t have some awful catch?”

  Simon pursed his lips, but nodded.

  Kaelalin clapped her hands once. “Alright then! We can work with this.”

  She stood up, grabbed her pack, and strode towards the metal remains.

  “Based on what they told me during that event, that skill should grow immensely with every level.” She knelt beside the twisted remains and began pulling out magical tools. “We just need to plan it. I’m going to study this thing and see if I can figure out any exploitable weaknesses.”

  She looked back at Simon, her eyes shining, mouth grinning.

  “You just rest up and heal. I’m not ready to give up a juicy percentage of this place just yet. Especially if what can be harvested is what I think it is.”

  Simon gave a tired chuckle. “Sure, that works. I need time to spend my stats, anyway.”

  “Oh, you leveled too? Even better!” She called back, distracted, holding up a crystalline compass-looking device to the corpse.

  Simon turned inwards. Before he did anything else, he wanted to see his newest acquisition.

  ——————————

  >> Features:

  >> Brand of Refusal

  > Explanation: A limit was imposed. Despite this, you pushed against it. Now that limit has prevented you from growth you have earned. In recognition of this, you have been given a Brand of Refusal.

  > Uses: These brands can be used to empower skills of your choosing. Each is equivalent to using two skill points for that skill. If you use this brand to empower a skill, all future brands or similar features will be automatically used on that skill.

  WARNING - By using the Brand of Refusal, you accept the limit that has been imposed on you. Once used, the feature will be blocked, and a path will be forever closed to you.

  > Amount: 1 / ?

  ——————————

  He stared at the question mark.

  So… what does that mean then?

  —— ? ——