(20 Days Left)

I’d expected Bolsh to screw me over somehow since he was never that nice to me to begin with, but this was far worse than anything I’d imagined. I felt quite thoroughly back-stabbed, the metaphorical knife sinking in deeper with every passing second.

Fifty gold. My life was worth fifty gold to that ass-hat banker!

My skin was starting to chafe madly from the magrad, turning red under the ungodly assault of the brilliant blue light of the ship’s reactor core.

Lightning started to dance between the reactor and the chains, will-o’-the-wisp balls manifesting into existence and floating around the accursed engine. Twisted rainbows made from impossible colors bathed the deck, reaching out towards me like the skeletal hand of death.

I didn’t have time to be angry at Bolsh; I had to think fast. I touched the activation hexagram on my cloak and vanished.

“Really?” Aconite laughed. “That’s a nice trick, but being invisible isn’t going to save you from becoming part of the ship, Merv. Didn’t think you’d be the kind to struggle against the inevitable tide of change...”

I ignored her taunting and took a couple of quick steps to the left.

The power of the Space mage was my best weapon. Aconite’s organic-inorganic identifying artifact made from a perceptomancer witch hadn’t scanned me deep enough to detect Alessii’s crystalline heart.

My right hand automatically came up in the air as I pictured the rune that extended space in my head, tracing the pattern in the air with my fingers.

[Extend!] I desperately thought as I poured power into the visualized rune.

The ship was bathed in magrad, which bent reality. It also made innate magic much, much easier to perform.

Space around me immediately extended, adding a sphere of extra seven meters all around me, making the deck longer. The amount of magrad pounding at my body from the reactor became slightly reduced.

It’s not enough!

The space manipulation made me feel tired, my eyelids heavy like they were made offrom iron. I growled internally, struggling to stay awake. I just wasn’t experienced enough to stretch myself farther away from the reactor—I sucked at directing the crystalline heart under duress.

I was screwed, absolutely, royally…

Space. I needed more Space. My bag!

My lovely extradimensional bag was a Space artifact! I pulled the bag off myself under the cover of the oversized invisi-cloak and quickly climbed inside it. The amount of magrad that was gnawing at my flesh instantly became reduced.

Yes!

No. Magrad was pouring from the opening even as I closed the bag’s leather flap.

Leather was a very poor deterrent to magical radia.

Magisteel… I need a magisteel barrier!

I already knew exactly how to expand space. Surely reducing space was possible too? Maybe if I simply pulled power from the surrounding area, inverted the space expanding rune… I could make the bag’s magisteel-ring opening smaller.

I pictured the space-expanding rune in my mind and turned it inside out, my hands grabbing the magisteel circle covered in [Space] runes.

The runes ignited under my sweaty, trembling fingers, the opening of the bag quickly shrinking and stretching away from me like a funnel.

It still wasn’t enough. Magrad still poured out of the funnel, making my face crawl.

I squeezed the runework ring harder, stretching the funnel away from myself sideways like a lopsided tunnel. My heart pounded as I desperately directed the runes to twist Space away from myself in a spiral pattern, akin to that of a mollusk shell.

My head suddenly stopped pulsing, my skin stopped chafing. The magrad inside the bag dropped to almost nothing as the radia pouring from the reactor finally failed to reach me.

YES!

I collapsed backwards into my pile of potions and ingredients with a grin, panting furiously.

I did it. I survived.

“I don’t know what you’re doing under that invisi-cloak, but it’s not going to work,” Aconite commented, her voice made a bit tinny by the mollusk-shell shaped pinhole tunnel of magisteel. “The cloak is going to give out, decay away pretty soon, and that’ll be that.”

“Go screw yourself,” I snarled at the long funnel in front of me.

“Such impoliteness. Tsk tsk tsk,” the privateer replied. “There goes your cloak... decaying away just as I... Is that a backpack? Are you hiding inside of a bag? That’s not going to save you. The bag will decay soon enough... and then it will be your turn to change...”

I ignored her mad ranting about the change of seasons, butterflies, and the advantages of being changed into an artifact as minutes stretched by.

Aconite’s voice suddenly dropped off. There were about five minutes of silence after. The silence stretched on.

“What?” she said finally. “Where the hell are you?!”

“Far enough that you’ll never reach me,” I growled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the privateer replied. “Artifacts cannot... Hang on... what have you done to my ship? Why is it longer?! Where did all this extra deck come from?!”

I didn’t reply. I heard the sound of Aconite’s feet walking closer and then farther away.

“I don’t understand,” I heard her muttering, and minutes went by. “Where did he go?”

“Merv?” she spoke into the air.

“Yes?” I muttered tiredly, feeling my organs settle back into place. My soul, even if severely fractured, was slowly repairing the damage done by the magrad, stitching itself back together from whatever effed up shape the reactor tried to force it into.

“Where are you?”

“I’m dead,” I said sarcastically. “I’m going to haunt the hell out of you now.”

“Pleeeease,” she drawled. “You’re clearly not my artifact. Artifacts do not talk. Something went wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I survived your bullshit. Deal with it.”

“But... you’re level zero,” Aconite muttered, sounding flabbergasted. “This isn’t possible.”

“Well, I’m full of surprises,” I said.

“So it seems,” she said with a sigh. “I’m going to slow down the ship and figure this out.”

“Good luck,” I said.

I dug through the pile of supplies, grabbed an adventurer’s lunch pack, and began unwrapping it.

I heard extremely frustrated foxgirl noises as Aconite searched for me to no avail for about ten more minutes, walking around her deck.

“Merv,” she said. “Please come out... This isn’t cool.”

“You know what’s not cool? Turning people into freaky artifacts with excessive magrad,” I replied, ponderously chewing on my third bacon sandwich to replenish the lost calories.

“I only turn bad people into artifacts,” she said. “Topaz drug dealers. Murderers. Smugglers. Slavers.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Which one am I from the list?”

“Agent Bolsh told me that you’re a topaz drug dealer,” the privateer explained.

“Bolsh is a liar,” I growled. “And a backstabbing dick. I’m not a drug dealer!”

“If you are not a criminal, why didn’t you leave from Skyway Central? Hrmmm?”

“As much as I’d love to tell you the story of my effed up life,” I said, “my trust in you is exactly zero. You just tried to kill me.”

“That I did,” she replied. “Now what?”

“I’m going to rest for a bit,” I said, stretching. “You can do whatever, murderer.”

“You’re clearly not dead, so why are you complaining?” Aconite asked as she paced around the metal deck. “What the hell did you use to hide yourself... some kind of an artifact?”

I didn’t reply. I was busy digging through my pile of potions for my vial of all-melting magic acid.