Beatris had never seen herself as strong.
From hunting in the woods for food while the screens made everything more difficult, to play-fighting with her siblings, she had always been stronger.
But in no way strong.
Yet as she traveled with the Hogs Feet party, learning, improving, and figuring out how to handle herself better, she got stronger.
Still not strong.
But stronger.
Strong enough that she could look back on her past and realize she was better than she had been a month ago.
Or even two years ago.
So the natural next step was to look forward and see what the next point would be.
"Did that crab just create a sonic boom with a punch and liquefy a turtle-ogre thing?"
Beatris asked without turning away.
Beside her, one of the other members of the Plate Games also stood watching.
"Yes," he said simply. "Yes, he did. Though I'm a bit more concerned about the guy in armor who just summoned a massive angel and the scorpion guy who basically opened a portal to dino world so a bunch of trained monsters could rip into these guys."
Beatris nodded along as she turned toward the two in question.
On one side, the figure dressed as a knight held their sword in front of their helm, muttering something.
On the other, a massive swarm of mammoths, raptors, and all kinds of ancient beasts poured out, ripping into the charging army.
Yet even through the chaos, crashing trees, and distant sounds of destruction, Beatris heard what sounded like a strange tinny instrument.
She made sure she was still in her part of the circle, feeling her mana slowly being drawn out and circulated.
In the middle, Liora floated with bloodshot eyes and a small trickle of blood running down her lip from where she was biting it while focusing.
Leaning over, Beatris saw what looked to be a dwarven man in warm clothes with a bald head and a full brown beard, his head bobbing up and down as he played something that resembled a banjo with a bunch of metal theming on it.
He moved like he was performing in a death metal band.
Beatris had no idea what he was playing.
But the girl doing things like messing with gravity and turning dirt into quicksand screamed something about Banjo Through the Fire and Flames, so.
"Hey, Bea," Mari protested as she lay between Beatris's ears like they were a lounge chair, "what exactly is the point of us being here? Liora has a whole job to do, but the rest of us are basically just here for some reason."
Beatris shook her head to make Mari fall off.
Then she turned to her system screen, looking for something to do besides just sit there.
You have encountered Potential Son of Blue Zilla, Godblight.
You have gained 50,000 XP for encountering a creature above A-rank.
Your maximum possible damage cannot harm Zilla.
System advisement for user survival:
Run, because the gods won't risk answering your prayers.
You have reached level 20.
Upon completing something great, you will receive an evolution to your class.
Currently unlocked possible evolutions: 3/102.
Beatris knew the top part already.
What really puzzled her was the last bit about evolutions and how many she had unlocked.
So she did the thing that had served her well whenever she was confused so far.
She turned to someone who probably knew more than her.
Nearby was a large spider wearing a backpack.
Probably a fullblood like Beatris, since they were much larger than a normal spider.
Close to her own size, now that she was looking.
They were lying down and using their bag as a sort of backrest, doing what looked to be some kind of string work. A shape was slowly growing out of the bottom as they moved.
"Uh," Beatris asked before thinking about it, "shouldn't you be more attentive to this?"
Jax had said that asking things like that would make her sound rude and cause a lot of fights if she was not careful.
The spider glanced over and shifted slightly before answering in a very light tone.
"Not really," the spider said. "We're just anchor points, which means we are here to make the mana flow better."
They gave a small shrug.
"Besides, I know I can't handle the things out there. Since I can barely see them move, much less attack, I prefer dying casually rather than frantically if it comes to that."
"That…"
Beatris stared.
"That just feels wrong on so many levels, to be honest."
The spider turned to her slightly, then sighed.
"Are you making small talk because you're nervous and trying not to be," they asked, "or did you have an actual thing to talk about?"
Beatris took a moment to turn to the three little angels.
Each gave various gestures of well, go on already.
So Beatris turned back.
"Okay," she said. "So I'm new to all this. I was a feral fullblood until, like, a month ago. What exactly is this whole thing about evolutions? And is it bad I only have three out of a bunch unlocked?"
The spider paused.
Then fully rolled over.
They raised about four eyebrows.
"A feral fullblood?" the spider asked. "Like animal mom, animal dad, and you with the system screen pop-up?"
"Yeah," Beatris said. "For years, I couldn't get it to close at all. But I figured it out recently with some help."
She looked away slightly.
"Thought I was a freak of nature until a few months ago."
The spider nodded along with an amount of expressiveness that made Beatris wonder if all spiders could express themselves like this, and they were just too small for her to take seriously.
"Never realized that was a thing," the spider said. "Weird-ass past you got there."
They shifted.
"Aside from that, though, if you're worried about the evolution thing, don't be. Basically, when you reach level twenty, the system says to do something big. It's mainly to prevent those dumbasses who try to hunt super weak enemies to get a bunch of XP and level up."
They gestured loosely with one leg.
"If you succeed, you get some evolutions that give you new skills and stu—"
They were cut off by sounds of clamor.
Both turned to watch as the crab, the scorpion guy, and the girl all ran into the large magic circle.
A second spider, this one more like a halfblood with a humanoid torso and a spider lower body, came walking up with another human with blue-colored hair.
Before Beatris could stop herself, she turned.
More panic slipped into her voice than she intended.
"H-Hey, why are you coming in here? Aren't we still under attack?"
The others ignored her.
Except the girl.
She turned and gave Beatris a calm smile.
"It will be fine," she said. "We're just getting out of his way before we get caught in the crossfire of his ability."
She pointed outward.
Beatris turned to see the man in armor standing there.
An ominous red flow leaked from him like slowly dancing fire as he held his sword aloft and began to speak.
"A name stolen, a mother silenced—our pact endures. My will speaks where her voice was taken."
As he spoke, there was a small surge.
His armor began to shift slightly, chains wrapping around parts of it while a yellow glow began to permeate the red from before.
"Her sorrow is ink. I carve fate in fury. Let chains become letters of vengeance."
He ran two fingers down his blade.
Twin yellow chains rattled down its length before tightening, and a strange yellow blade formed around them, making his sword larger than before.
"In this world, her words are wings again. Witness wrath reborn—by oath unbroken."
As he spoke, the ground began to turn yellow.
The change stopped only at the edge of the magic circle.
A looming statue began to climb from the dirt as stone chains snapped off the female figure and her now-sprawling stone wings.
"Mother of mouths, chained and rewritten, hear me. Your stolen lullaby spreads like plague-light through breath and thought. Let every tongue remember the correct shape of mercy, and let the unworthy be edited until they fit."
The yellowed ground expanded further.
Beatris felt a strange writhing along the sides of her mouth.
She turned to the girl in panic, but the girl only held up a hand where crackling blue energy instructed:
Do not speak in this domain.
It will kill you.
Beatris's eyes turned back as growing worry built in her chest.
"Chains become teeth. Letters become hunger. Magentina, eat what dared to cage you. Let weaker worlds be swallowed—and let their laws become my punctuation."
From the yellowed ground, though seemingly shaped away from forming inside the magic circle, several chain-like beasts with wrapped maws and broken-chain teeth began to slither through as if exploring this new domain.
"The horizon is a sentence you cannot finish. Step past it, and you belong to my grammar. Magentina, mother of voices—close the world's mouth and open only mine."
The edges of the yellowed land vanished.
Where there had once been dirt, there now rose a looming stormy sky filled with flying words in a variety of languages.
Their meanings were both comprehensible and not at the same time.
Several people opened their mouths as if to speak, whether to protest or something else.
But the girl held a finger to her lips and said, "Silence is to be kept by those outside our party."
A feeling washed over Beatris.
She looked around before a system notification appeared.
Verdena's Aether Manipulation has been used to temporarily disable your vocal cords.
Speech will be impossible for the next 30 minutes.
"A mother's voice is not a sound. It is a law. Magentina, chained goddess—lend me your first lullaby, the one that named the world before it had ears. I speak the True Name now—and reality answers like a child caught lying."
The man's voice rang out.
"World Will—Hailer of the Chained Goddess!"
Beatris would have liked to say she could describe what happened next.
But she was stuck, surrounded by so, so…
So much.
Yet at the same time, nothing at all.
It felt like she was seeing everything and blind at the same time.
Yet as she stood paralyzed, a single thought broke through.
This…
This is something people can achieve?
"All right," someone said, "that should be good. We gave them five minutes, plus it looks like fireboy's ready to light. Let's head out."
They turned toward Verdena.
"Verdena, if you could open a portal for us?"
The group stepped forward.
Beatris saw the domain around them shatter and fall inward.
Several figures began to move in from the distance as the group that had been protecting them stepped through a looming oval of light.
Beatris turned toward the sky, wanting to yell.
Her vocal cords still were not working.
She tried to step after the group.
Then she felt a pulse of mana suddenly drain from her faster than before.
Beatris began to turn toward where Verdena was floating.
But instead, her eyes caught on the blinding flash of light in the distance above the city.