Edge Cases

Misa's awareness of her prime self faded. Something about the buzzing in the air drew her attention to this path — it wasn't that she didn't recognize she was still safe and sound in the middle of the Roads, but the more she went down this path, the more she found she couldn't split her focus.

She was here. Her ploy had succeeded, but the Roads had done something to her in turn: something that made her fully present in this body. If not for the tingling awareness in the back of her mind — the strange feeling of the ground pressing into her feet, even as she walked forward; the flicker of lighting, where she saw a tunnel much brighter lit than the one she was in; the relatively cleaner scent of dirt compared to the sharp ozone that pervaded her nostrils here — she would have thought the Roads had somehow canceled her use of her skill and forced her back into one body.

That, thankfully, didn't seem to be the case. But the situation she was in didn't seem to be much better. The buzz continued to trickle under her skin, intensifying with every step. She didn't know if what she was feeling was magic, or if it was something else entirely. Some kind of test, perhaps.

What exactly was the Path of the Endless?

The notifications hovered in front of her, strangely immune to fading away. All the other ones had faded with time, and those that didn't she could ordinarily dismiss — but the one in front of her now refused to obey even the mental commands she gave it.

[ You are on the Path of the Endless. Good luck. ]

What did that mean?

She stepped forward anyway. One foot after the other, she told herself; she ignored the way the tunnel seemed to narrow down around her, the way the light around her seemed to fade until she was walking forward in darkness and only darkness. She shut her eyes, then, using a hand on the wall to keep her steered straight — if there was no light, then there was no need for her to keep her eyes open.

Keeping her eyes closed helped her focus. It helped her breathe. It helped her ignore the way the buzzing reached down into her bones, making every step forward even harder still —

Until suddenly, it stopped.

Misa opened her eyes.

[ You have completed step 1 of the Path of the Endless. ]

[ You now qualify for Path of the Endless — Iron. Would you like to continue? ]

Misa snorted. "Is that even a question?" she asked, her voice semi-sarcastic. She allowed a grin to take over her features.

Okay. She had a better idea of where this was going now.

This was a test.

"Fuckin' bring it," she said.

The buzz returned and expanded into a sensation that was not unlike a thousand stabbing needles. Misa tried to block it about three times before giving up entirely — the Roads were preventing her from using the skill somehow, and she wasn't sure she wanted to keep testing them. If she was given reason to try again at some point, she would; right now, it seemed all the Path of the Endless wanted her to do was endure.

That couldn't be all there was to it, though. Pain was nothing. Misa had once fought until she died in the defense of her village, and the injuries she had taken at the time were so fraught and severe they had stayed with her even after she had somehow managed to survive.

She'd traveled on her own afterwards for years, and she hadn't found a proper healer until Sev.

It didn't matter how much pain or discomfort the Roads gave her.

Evidently, the Roads agreed.

[ You have completed Step 2 of the Path of the Endless. ]

[ You now qualify for Path of the Endless — Bronze. Would you like to continue? ]

"Obviously," Misa snorted.

She didn't really need to respond verbally. Whatever part of the system Paths operated on, it seemed to be an older version of it — it responded to her thoughts smoothly. It was almost better, even, except it must have been removed for a reason; too many people accidentally responding to a prompt by thinking it, perhaps.

Either way, her response prompted the path before her to change — and now she really started to wonder how much of this was the Roads, and how much of it was the system.

The tunnel in front of her opened up into a cavern, not unlike what she remembered of the other paths — except this cavern held no weapon in the center, no pedestal upon which an item sat. The walls of the cave were the color of starlight and bluestone, with a shifting texture underneath that reminded her of the waves of a lake.

It was beautiful.

It also reminded her, rather starkly, of a dungeon that she'd been to when she'd traveled alone. It was a small, isolated dungeon that was out near the Outskirts — a dungeon she shouldn't have been to at all, really. The Adventurer's Guild hadn't directed her there, and there weren't any small towns or villages nearby that needed protection from the dungeon. All she could get from it were a few mana crystals, and perhaps whatever loot the dungeon opted to give to her.

But she hadn't been there because of that. She'd been there because it was dangerous.

Those early days had not been kind to her. It was easier to lose herself to fights than to confront what had happened to her family, and while those days were behind her now — while she had her family back, which was not a sentence she had ever dared to hope she could even think...

Misa's features sharpened. Off in the distance, the scuttling of a very familiar type of monster greeted her.

They weren't high level at all, for all that the dungeon was on the verge of breaking and sat at the edges of the Outskirts. Most dungeons in this area were at least Silver or Gold grade, and the only reason Misa had chosen this one was that it was a simple Bronze dungeon, with its monsters in the Iron range.

The part that made it Bronze — verging even on Silver — was not the power of its monsters at all.

The scuttling sound intensified.

It was the number of them.

In other words — the exact type of situation her abilities were least suited for.

Misa watched the wave of Bluestone Crabs crest the far corner of the cavern she was in and allowed a small smirk to take over the edge of her lips. Suited or not, it had been a long time since she had nearly died to them. She'd grown by leaps and bounds, not only in level, but in personal skill.

It was only that these were system monsters that disturbed her. Not a single thing she'd fought here had ever had a system tag attached to it before; this world was meant to be as detached from the system as possible. The fact that the Roads had produced something that could attach to the system meant it had produced something that attached to her anchor; she didn't know what to make of that. But it didn't change what she had to do.

The first crab scuttled up to her, pincers held out and ready to pinch. She remembered when she'd faced them down the first time — remembered the nervous tension coursing through her body at the sheer number of them. She hadn't been afraid, exactly, but it was here that she'd first learned her first important lesson after losing J'rokksur.

She didn't want to die.

Now, though... Misa was curious. She let the crab do as it wanted. She'd grown so much in the time since that she was certain she could beat them even without a weapon. The amount of damage they could do was paltry compared to her health.

Sure enough, she felt no more than a small pinch. Misa chuckled, bending down to give the angry crab a little pat on its shell even as it scuttled angrily at her. She hadn't even known the things could scuttle angrily.

And yet, strangely enough... the rest of the crabs didn't attack.

They gathered in a circle around her, keeping their pincers at the ready like they were ready to swarm her at any moment. The one she stood next to kept angrily grabbing at her with its claws, unaware that its attacks were doing little to no damage to her. Misa frowned and looked around at the circle of crabs, perplexed.

"Not gonna attack me?" she asked out loud. She wasn't expecting a response, but somehow felt relieved anyway when she didn't get one. "Huh. Not gonna lie, y'all are pretty cute when you're not trying to kill me."

She felt something inside her healing.

This had been... her second near-death experience. She remembered scrambling to leave the dungeon as wave after wave of crabs poured after her. She remembered how stubborn she'd been at the time, continuing to fight long after it was in her best interest to leave. In the end she'd only just made it out.

Was this the secret to the Bluestone Dungeon? Just... grab a crab, and carry it with you?

On impulse, she picked up the crab, tucking it under an arm and adjusting carefully so it stopped pinching her. It settled for flailing wildly instead, and Misa snorted. She leveled her gaze at the crabs, stepped forward...

...and watched as they parted in front of her.

Huh.

[ You have completed Step 3 of the Path of the Endless. ]

[ You now qualify for Path of the Endless — Silver. Would you like to continue? ]

She'd assumed that the Path was testing her endurance. The first two steps had certainly implied that; they'd put her in a frame of mind to assume that the Path was all about lasting as long as she could. First came her tolerance of discomfort, and then came her tolerance of pain.

The third step had tested neither of those things. They'd tested her spirit, if anything — put her in a situation that had formed one part of who she was. The Bluestone Dungeon was the reason she was so hard on Sev every time he fell into his self-destructive tendencies. The way he was willing to sacrifice aspects of himself...

It wasn't the same, exactly. Misa had been far more selfish.

But he reminded her of her.

She strode forward through the crabs, even as they all stared at her in something akin to reverence — it made her feel uncomfortable. There was something almost intelligent in their eyes, and she was reminded of a conversation she'd had with Derivan and Vex, near to the start of all of this. After Derivan had revealed who and what he was, and Vex had questioned the nature of intelligent monsters, and inquired after the possibility that those they deemed monsters might be people...

"You don't happen to be a person, do you?" Misa asked the crab under her arm.

It continued wiggling indignantly, and Misa sighed.

She wasn't entirely surprised when it dissolved out of existence — nor was she surprised when the next stage of the Path tested her by confronting her with a vision of her dead family. It slowed her down, but far less than it would have a year ago.

Her family was back, and she'd found a new one to boot.

"Too far," she told the Path anyway, and knelt beside each body, allowing herself a moment to grieve for each one. The moment had been real to her, and it seemed disrespectful to walk past them. This memory was a part of who she was, too.

That awarded her the fourth step, and a path upgrade to Gold.

The fifth step — the one that Misa hoped would be the last, though she doubted it would be — was a reenactment of her fight with Irvis. This time the Path showed her a vision of her losing that fight, of her friends dying in front of her. Her chest tightened, and a powerful tension rang through her body.

She almost, almost stepped into the role of her old self — the one that had fought Irvis and lost. But she shook her head.

"No," she said, clearly and cleanly. Her gaze cut ahead and through the illusion, and she took a step forward; the image of her dead friends faded away like the morning mist.

She understood what the Path wanted from her now. It wanted her to define who she was. It was the Path of the Endless because the answer to that question was an ever-evolving one, comprised of all the choices she had ever made, and all the choices she ever would made.

[ You have completed Step 5 of the Path of the Endless, and have many more steps to go. ]

"I know," Misa said. She wasn't as angry as she should have been, perhaps, for all the things the Path had shown her.

[ You now qualify for Path of the Endless — Unranked. Your journey is your own. You have received your first skill. ]

[ New skill acquired: Me, Myself, and I ]