Geoffrey and Yuta's ghosts shared a brief nod with one another and then leapt into action, darting off in opposite directions—left and right.

I glanced at Himichi and Andalon on my neck and back. "Hold on!"

My two riders screamed as I reared up and cast my strongest defensive spell: "<Holy Aura>!"

Protective, scintillating energy shells of <Holy Aura> blossomed around each one of us right as the tide of monsters struck. The pandemonium churned against our <Holy Auras>. The spherical forcefields were the color of Andalon's eyes, and they thrummed with power, crackling with purple lightning as they repelled the mirage monsters.

Then I heard the sound of glass cracking, very loud and very close.

"Dr. Howle!" Mr. Himichi yelled. He kicks his foot on the right side of my head.

Turning right, I saw a nasty-looking fissure had opened up in my <Holy Aura>.

More breaking-glass noises shot out from all around. The forcefield was bucking under the strain of bashing horns and raking claws. The mirage creatures leapt back and changed, ramming themselves into the <Holy Aura> again and again.

From off to the side, Yuta came running down the street and hurled his kanakatana at the creatures. Ink sprayed out from the blade as it spun. The black arcs sliced through the creature-liquid, clearing a path, and then clearing it again as the kanakatana hurtled like a boomerang back into Yuta's waiting hand.

The creatures regrouped, flowing around me to either side, and then doubling back.

Andalon and Mr. Himichi yelled in terror.

The incorporeal beasts churned with scything claws and bulging limbs. Fire and lightning blinked in and out of existence all around us.

"Hold on," I yelled.

Falling to all fours—my tail now regrown—I spun around, flinging my tail like a club.

My <Holy Aura> wasn't just protective. It could also repel and strike back. Abstract howls erupted from the monster fluid as the parts struck by the <Holy Aura> evaporated away.

"Do it again!" Andalon yelled.

"I can't!"

My <Holy Aura> had only taken more damage. It was riddled with cracks.

"Genneth, above you!" Mr. Himichi yelled.

I looked up in panic, but then smiled.

Trails of lightning blasted over my head as Geoffrey plummeted onto the tide. Walls of electricity crackled around us, disintegrating a section of the monster-tide. The flow retracted, pulling away. Geoffrey hovered along the ground, swinging his magic halberd, clearing away more swaths of the mirage creatures.

I flung myself forward onto the fluid. Purple lightning sparked along my underbelly as my <Holy Aura> dissolved the creatures trapped beneath me.

Geoffrey flew toward the creatures to take down more, only for wings to erupt from the tide and launch up at him. But Geoffrey adjusted his wingbeats to turn himself around mid-air just in time to have the bird-thing impale itself on his halberd. He flung the creature off as he swung down in his next strike.

At the same time, Yuta was sending out vertical waves of ink that cut channels through the tide. One of the monsters lashed out at Yuta with a scythe, but the <Holy Aura> around the samurai's body deflected the blow, disintegrating the mirage-monster with angry spurts of purple lightning.

I cast <Major Recovery>. It wasn't my strongest recovery spell, but it was the strongest one I had left. My tongue healed, as did Yuta's wounds.

Swooping down, Geoffrey cleaved his golden jade halberd, pushing back at the tide.

"Geoffrey!" I yelled. "If you have <Deep Pit>, use it!"

The monsters flowed back toward me as Geoffrey suddenly flew up. Yuta launched ink slashes at them from a distance, but it wasn't enough.

Bits of the mirage-fluid trickled through the widening cracks in my <Holy Aura>. The creature-fluid screamed as it boiled away on the aura's inner surface like ice on a hot griddle. Its evaporating particles cut into my scales and underbelly.

Andalon yelled as the ground shook. "What's happening?!"

"Something good," I said, as I galloped away, feeling the street move under my feet.

The creatures set off in a chase, but too late. There was a solid crack as a wide, yawning pit opened up in the middle of the street. The tide howled and flailed as it spilled into the <Deep Pit>. Claws raked against the pavement, carving furrows as their owners slid down and down.

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Seizing the opportunity, Geoffrey and Yuta redoubled their efforts. To my and Yuta's amazement, the individual kana of Yuta's sword suddenly separated from one another and flew about, spinning in the air.

"I think he just unlocked a new ability," I muttered.

Yuta looked confused for a moment, but then realization bloomed in his eyes. It seemed he could launch the kana at will, and control their flight, moving them around like they were remote control shuriken. Three or four of them swept and shot out, slicing at the beasts that hadn't fallen into the pit.

Within the pit, the mirage-fluid roiled. The hole widened and widened as the substance ate away at its walls, unable to climb free. Creatures phased out from the walls of nearby buildings and leapt into the pit, adding their mass to the fluid, causing the 'water' level to rapidly rise.

Other than the one spell slot for <Holy Fire>, I didn't have any other high-level attack magic, and—in my panic—I'd completely forgotten to use <Weapon Merge> to make my tail into a ballista. So, I made do by spamming my <Smite> orison like there was no tomorrow, launching bolt after bolt of icy blue energy, trying to knock the creatures and fluid back as rapidly as possible.

Geoffrey launched a bolt of lightning into the pit. The fluid squealed and hissed as the energy struck it, recoiling—but only briefly.

"You have to get out of here!" he yelled.

"I can't," I said, "my powers aren't—"

—Then, speak of the Norm, I suddenly found myself back in my body out in the real world.

"—Working." The last word of my sentence spilled out of my mouth.

"What about working?" Heggy said, turning to me.

"Sorry," I said, shaking my head. "I was just… mumbling."

She gave me a look, and then turned away with a sigh.

Biting my lip, I took a couple seconds to ground myself. Getting shunted back and forth at the drop of a hat like this was disorienting beyond belief. Without my wyrm-strength memory, I don't think I'd have been able to keep track of what was going anymore.

The liquid mirage monsters were gone, as was the uncanny Noyoko. I was back with Heggy and Suisei in the hallways of darkness, looking around the corner of a doorsill as we stood next to the light trickling out from an open door.

That was strange. Time should have passed out in the real world while my dopplegenneth had taken care of things with Heggy and Suisei, yet, from the looks of things, time hadn't moved forward at all for my body between now and the moment I'd decoupled from it.

As I was definitely freaking out by this point, I figured it was worth trying to see if I could still alter my perception of time by changing the speed of my thoughts.

I would have breathed a sigh of relief as the world slowed down, but I couldn't, for all the obvious reasons.

Okay, at least slow-mo still works, I thought-said.

"Why it, but not the other stuffs?" Andalon asked.

I was thinking the same thing, I replied. Hmm… maybe…

I tried a couple other things, and was intrigued by the results.

I tried hyperphantasizing an orange in my hand. Immediately, one appeared. But when I tried to return to Mr. Himichi's memories, nothing happened.

Which gave me an idea.

Instead of accessing Mr. Himichi's memories, I tried to send myself back to my Main Menu. The result was immediate; the next thing I knew, I was standing beneath its familiar endless skies.

"Mr. Genneth, look…" Andalon said.

One of the soul crystals was surrounded by static and mirage. The invasive substances swirled around, dripping from the crystal, evaporating as they fell to the floor, or trickled up and rained into the infinity overhead. The fluid lapped at the edge of holes that had opened on the air and the floor.

Obviously, this was Mr. Himichi's soul crystal.

The holes opened up onto voids of total nothingness. They expanded with terrifying speed. That, and the way that Andalon just started screaming had me out of my Main Menu and back in my body in under two seconds flat.

Back in the hallway, Andalon was freaking out like no tomorrow. Unable to comfort her, I tried making a new Daydream Alley, and to my luck it worked. The next thing we knew, we were in a perfect copy of the hallway where Mr. Himichi's ghost had appeared to me.

I got down on my knees and wrapped my arms around Andalon in a hug. She sobbed into the front of my coat.

I rubbed my hand on her back. "It's okay… It's okay… We're safe here." I looked around. "I think."

Almost instantly, Andalon joined me in searching the hallway for any signs of incursions. Thankfully, we found none.

I looked her in the eyes. "Do you mind if I try doing one more experiment?"

Instead of responding, Andalon sat down on the floor and wrapped herself around my leg, squeezing tight.

"Andalon doesn't wanna be here any more…" she said.

I pried her off my leg as gently as I could, and then sat down on my knees.

While she was looking at me, I quickly tried summoning a few ghosts at random, making sure to pick spirits that had nothing to do with Mr. Himichi. One after another, three very different people suddenly appeared behind Andalon, only to disappear just as their faces began to contort with confusion. It took all of one and a half seconds. Andalon only caught on at the end, but when with worried curiosity she turned back to look, there was no one there.

She looked me in the eyes.

"What did you do?"

I nodded. "It's alright," I said. "I figured it out."

Andalon rubbed her eyes. "Wha?"

I smiled gently. "This is what happens when you're brave, Andalon. You learn things." I let my eyes wander over our surroundings. "Whatever the fungus and this place are doing to me… they're targeting Mr. Himichi."

"Mr. Michi?" she asked.

I nodded. "The Incursion is only affecting my ability to access Mr. Himichi's memories. I felt something stir in me when we entered the quarantine zone. It was coming from Mr. Himichi's spirit." I nodded. "I'm willing to bet that kaiju had something to do with it."

"What's that mean?" she asked.

"It means there's something about Mr. Himichi and that kaiju that the fungus doesn't want us to see." I stared, and then blinked. "Oh fudge…"

Things not seen, I thought.

"What is it?" Andalon shook her arms with worry.

More pieces were falling into place.

"I… I think that place—that Noyoko we saw… I think it might have been another world. Another version of my world," I said, looking Andalon in the eyes. "Think about it: it's our world, but with a slightly different history. It's our world, but they still had stars in their sky."

"And what's that mean?"

I stood up. "It means we need to figure out the kaiju's secret. It might just hold the key to stopping the fungus once and for all."

Then, with a thought, I dissolved the mind-world and returned to my body. And for once, I had hope.

I'd found something the fungus didn't want me to know.

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