This situation raised a dizzying amount of questions.

How did a 214 [Artificer] get stuck in a Shade? Such strong people should have ways to break free from being confined in a low-level creature. And why had the Shade not spat him out? Why would Isobel, who wasn’t even Level 100, be assigned a quest involving a person of such strength? It seemed a little ridiculous to call a low Level hero to the aid of a 200+ one, even considering her Level was lowered after a reset to a new Class.

Harrik looked at most thirty years old. This young, and this high Level, he’d have to be a prodigy of some sort. His age also meant he had to have known about the plague in Hallmark if he hailed from there, since it had been going for much longer. So, why didn’t he know about it at all?

Why had Bell and Iso not managed to get Theora out of this place?

Theora was hesitant of being suspicious of other people, but so far, the Shade had been rather straightforward with her, and meanwhile, he’d even acted oblivious right after Theora had woken up. Acted as if he wasn’t aware he was inside a Shade. Acted as if he didn’t know what was happening. No doubt, he’d tried to pass himself off as unknowing. There was little chance a Level 200 [Artificer] would be this oblivious.

And, as Theora stared up at him asking to divulge his secrets, his resolve immediately melted. His shoulders sagged, his gaze turned tired, and he bit his lip, wiping more pearls of sweat off his forehead.

“I messed up,” he said, scratching his beard. “Sorry. This is all my fault. I’m… I’m sorry.”

“How did you mess up?”

He stepped to the side in resignation, his head grazed by a strand of willow leaves, then sat down on the rubber grass as well. “There was… this artefact. That I had. Highly potent. Not a… Not a good idea to carry it around. I was young and… made poor choices. I was travelling with my sister, and when we got to the bath house, there was a Shade living there, and it… ate one of my backpacks.”

“And the artefact was inside,” Theora supplied.

“Yeah. And… that thing’s not supposed to be eaten by Shades. In fact, it’s not something that should be anywhere. I’m pretty sure the Shade noticed quickly, so when I offered to get it out, it swallowed me.”

Theora nodded. “So, you are in here by volition.” That at least explained some of the issues. Sure, Theora could see him stuck inside a Shade for seven years if he had no intention to leave it, and the Shade was waiting for him to get his job done.

He clenched his fist above the makeshift grass and pulled a few strands out. They immediately disappeared from his hand and regrew on the ground with soft plops. It seemed like he was used to this, because he kept doing it in a somewhat trained repetition. “I need to get the damn thing back. And then dispose of it, or something. I never should have carried it around… Damn it…”

“Alright. So, the Shade doesn’t spit us out because it wishes for us to retrieve your artefact. Any idea why the Shade can’t just… give it to you? Or throw up the thing on its own?”

“I placed some protective enchantments on the item, to make it hard to find. Always took me half an hour to find it in just my backpack. And I knew which pocket I put it in. I figured if someone else were to search my backpack, even after stealing it, they wouldn’t find the thing, especially if they didn’t know it was there. I didn’t want it to be stolen, you know? The idea that something might eat the entire backpack together with the item never occurred to me… I suspect it’s wedged somewhere inside the Shade’s flesh, but it just can’t find it.”

Theora hummed. “So, all we have to do is find a magical artefact in this—” She gestured around, “— Extradimensional space, and…”

She halted. She blinked. She sighed. This sounded far too familiar for her liking. “This can’t be happening,” she whined.

An artificial gust of wind pulled through Harrik’s hair, and as he adjusted a few strands fallen into his face, he hesitantly asked, “Are you okay…?”

“No,” she replied. “No, I’m not ‘okay’. I just realised something awful.”

“Awful…?”

“Nothing you have to worry about. It’s just that… This is a dry run. Someone is making me do this. I’m being bullied.”

Harrik just stared at her for a few seconds. “I’m sorry?”

“Yes, you should be.” Theora shook her head. “None of this would be happening if not for your ‘mistake’.” But then, she sighed. “Actually, scratch that. If you hadn’t made this mistake, the System would have found another way. Maybe all of Isobel’s quests are actually some kind of trap like this. Or it would have thrown an opportunity like this at me whenever it appeared throughout the next few years.” She t’ched. “It’s trying to make me practise using my Class.”

Despite his somewhat worried expression, Harrik chuckled at this.

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing!” he said, raising his hands in defence. “I was just thinking, you’re pretty talkative. Kind of fun. Nobody talked to me in… ages…” His voice slowly died down as he saw Theora stare at him.

“Talkative?” she echoed.

“Uh, sorry!”

“No,” she said. “Explain yourself. You would consider me talkative?”

He gulped, and slowly nodded. “I suppose? You’ve… been talking. So…”

Theora was talkative. Was she talkative? In fact, while she felt annoyed at the System right now, didn’t she also feel somewhat good? In high spirits, of sorts?

She barely felt tired at all. She’d gotten to sleep for what seemed to be a long time. And, Dema had sung for her in her most recent memory. Soon, she’d get to go on a date with her too.

With a decent amount of shock, Theora had to admit she was in a good mood.

A good mood only soured by… everything around her, so to speak. At least she’d get to help that poor little Shade throw up some unwanted junk. Yes, she’d focus on that cute creature, and how she could help it.

She eventually sighed. “Alright.”

Harriks eyes started shining. “You’re going to help me find it?”

“Yes.”

He looked like he was about to faint from happiness. Practically ripping his backpack off from excitement, he crawled towards Theora. “Great! Here!” He fumbled with the bag, opening pouches and rummaging around, and proceeded to dump one intricate magical item after the next to Theora’s feet. “This,” he said, producing a clock-like wooden contraption, “Improves Mana Regeneration. This,” he added, a metallic bracelet in hand, “Improves Cooldown Reduction. It has charges; each charge will remove an hour from a Skill you have that’s currently unusable. See the little red dots here? When they fade, it means you’ve used the charge. There’s three charges currently. Ah, and this,” he continued, producing a wreath of wood-carved intertwined ornamental branches, “Collects ambient Mana. I have it sap some of mine while I sleep, there’s about two thousand inside right now! Oh, and if you click on this button,” he said, pointing to an earring, “An energy burst will be released, and your stats are temporarily increased by about five thousand each! You’ll be as strong as a Level three hundred for a short while. I finished it last year from junk the Shade ate up. It’s Epic grade — the culmination of my life’s work.”

Theora nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “Please keep them.”

His mouth stood open for a moment. “What? Really, I’ve pretty much exhausted all my options… I’ve tried them, and they won’t help me at all. It would be a waste on me. You can give them back when we are out of here, or keep them, whatever! Consider it a gift for trying to help me at all.”

“I don’t use Mana.”

“Oh! Like, Stamina? Well, I can make stuff for that, too… Would take a few days, and won’t be as strong, but I can make it happen.”

“No Stamina, either. Also, no cooldowns. To be a little more precise, my Skills don’t require any resources to use.”

He blinked, then scratched his head. “How does that work…? They have to have drawbacks?”

“The drawback is that they annoy me.”

With a shallow exhale, he lowered his hand holding another item to the ground. “But… they will help us in this situation, right?”

Theora pushed some hair out of her face, and tugged it behind her ear. “I honestly don’t know. You can help me come up with a strategy, if you would like to?”

“Uh… Sure? Shouldn’t you know your Class best, though? But yes, just tell me what you can do, maybe we have some unexpected synergies.”

Theora tried to come up with a good way to describe her abilities, and after a moment, she started to explain. “So, one Skill of mine is a bit like an oracle. It gives answers, but there is no guarantee for the answers to be correct. The issue is that I need a sky to look at in order to use it.”

“Okay,” he murmured.

“The second one makes random things possible or impossible. It doesn’t tell me what it did after use.”

A drop of sweat let loose, merging into one of his eyebrows. “I… hope there are a lot more to come.”

“The last one injects a sun into me.”

He stared at Theora as if she was messing with him, his eyebrows folding together. “Wouldn’t that kill you?”

“I wish. There are two other Skills but… One of them doesn’t belong to me. I can’t actually activate it, since it’s not mine. The second one destroys targets I choose at the cost of potentially causing drastic damage to our surroundings. Not something I want to use inside this little Shade.”

“I’m honestly baffled you seem to have any hope of us finding the artefact,” he said. “Like, that’s it? These don’t sound helpful at all? What Level are you?”

“I’m Level 6,” she said, and he choked. “Also, I do have two more Common Skills that I excluded for brevity; one is for brewing tea and the other lets me communicate through flowers.”

He frowned, slowly shaking his head, seeming rather confused. “And… you were sent here by a quest from the System? I thought… Wait, so they recruit just about anyone to the Hero Project nowadays…? You must be the most useless hero in existence. Ah… N-no offence…”

“None taken,” Theora said. “I agree with that assessment.”

He gave a warm and genuine smile. “Well, in any case, I’m really glad you’re willing to help. I’m not sure where this is going to go, but I appreciate you. Thank you, really. This is all my mess, I never intended for anyone to get stuck with me. Again, I’m so sorry.”

Theora shrugged. “No use crying over spilt lava.”

“What?”

“Could you give me a quick rundown of the things you have already attempted to find it?”

Harrik nodded, then started littering the ground with even more crudely put-together magitech-devices from his backpack.

“This is a locator device… and this is a Mana sensor, though it has only led me to parasites so far… I scanned the place for years. Every nook and cranny. Nothing! It must be buried. Maybe wedged in a part of the creature it doesn’t have access to. Like, as if something got stuck in our livers.”

“That would be unfortunate,” Theora murmured. “If it’s hidden that deep, we might have to do surgery to get it out.”

“Yes, except we’d need some general idea of where it even is. We can’t just cut blindly. If the Shade dies before we find it and this space collapses as a result, the artefact could be lost between worlds forever.”

“Also, I would prefer not to harm the Shade more than necessary,” Theora added.

His eyes widened. “Oh, yes! Yes, of course. I’m sorry. It’s just — I do want to get back to my sister, and finally having some help gives me a bit of hope… This whole ordeal… I can’t imagine how she might be feeling. Sorry. I agree, the Shade is important.”

“You’ve been in here for seven years,” Theora said. “While your sister is still outside.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “I really hope she’s okay. I can’t really let this item just be stuck in here. It could cause some serious harm one day. And I don’t know how to leave the Shade without killing it. I was hoping for it to spit me out when the artefact is retrieved.”

“Alright.” Theora smoothed out her nightgown, then went from sitting cross-legged to kneeling, with her hands lying on her thighs. “Let’s find the item doing as little damage as we can. I think I actually have an idea.”

He raised his eyebrows. “An idea on how to do it? Can’t wait to hear it.”

Theora nodded, smiling with sly confidence. “I could talk to the clouds in my head until they come up with a plan.”

Harrik grimaced, and looked like he was about to cry. “Y-you really think that could work?”

“I was once able to ask a question by imagining a sky in my head, as I said. So I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. They solved a mystery for me before, when I messed up and shifted the planet.”

“… I see. Wait, what?”

“In fact, let me try right now.” Theora hummed, closed her eyes, and imagined a vast sea of clouds, trying her best to remember that fake sky she’d seen earlier in one of the other rooms inside the Shade.

How could we find Harrik’s artefact?

[Head in the Clouds].

Answer: My dear, I pitied you back then, but please give me real clouds, not these things you made up!

Wow.

Didn’t the Skill complain earlier about her not reaching out enough? What a way to twist the knife.

Seeing her vexed expression, Harrik gave an expectant look. “So…?”

Theora harrumphed softly. “I got yelled at. I think we are on our own.”