I boasted a lot in front of Celes in an attempt to make myself look impressive. I wasn’t really that impressive though. I’d had a lot of dumb luck on my side so far.

I could have gone insane had I picked another skull. Or perhaps, the flour could have failed to explode, or simply the explosion could have been weaker, and then the Rat-King would have eaten us whole. Some other dumb, lucky idiot would have found my skull in a thousand years time, and then the cycle would have repeated itself ad infinitum.

I realized that I had gotten quite ahead of Celes, and her radiance of serenity stopped affecting me. This won’t do at all! I slowed down my pace and matched her slow, tired limping.

“Hiiiii.” I grinned at her.

“Yes?” She raised her golden eyes at me. They were infused with Qi and shimmered in the dark, highlighting her tired face with yellow-orange hues.

“Do people get addicted to your whole serenity radiance?”

“Uhm… it does make for easier interactions in the market when buying stuff, but I don’t think that it’s possible for a cultivator to become addicted to serenity. It’s a feeling of comfort and relaxation, and the cultivators are constantly out looking for their next fight to become stronger. Nobody—”

“Nobody so far,” I interrupted her. “I think I might be the first serenity addict, though!”

“I think you’re being ridiculous on purpose, Ash,” she huffed.

“Mm… yes. I find myself twice as ridiculous and twice as addicted to this empowering feeling of inner peace. Pretty sure that the Pharmacist and I are soul-pals for life now.

“For a thousand years, I’ve been waiting to find myself, and now I’m finally twice as peerless, in all sorts of unexpected ways!”

“You gave the ancient-human personality a name?”

“Yeppers.” I nodded vigorously. “It means ‘one who dispenses drugs.’ Honestly, I think you should try it.”

“Try what?”

“Try to eat an ancient soul! Ten out of five, would absolutely recommend it to a friend. We’re friends now, yes?”

“I’m going to have to decline the soul-eating. I’d rather not become insane.” She tiredly glanced at me as if she was judging me.

“Hey! I’m perfectly sane! I’m a doctor. I can even write myself a legitimate ‘she’s totally sane’ note.”

“I don’t know what a doctor is or why this magical note is supposed to change anything.” The kitsune tried to trudge through the mire of my 21st century terminology. “I’m just saying that there are far more chances to go insane if I go around eating random human souls.”

“Hrm! I suppose your dumb luck is inferior to mine. I suggest investing more points into luck.”

“What?”

“You know, if you had an ancient soul in your head, you’d understand my references. Or perhaps not; not everyone was a nerd like me.” I shrugged.

The tunnel in front of us ended, entering into an enormous hollow space. Gold, sparkling crystalline sand crunched under our feet.

There was a cool, damp draft coming from up ahead, along with the rumble of rushing water. A waterfall cascaded down from far above, rushing into the gold sand beneath it.

A few pink blossom trees clung to various cracks within the uneven distant walls overhead. A small shrine gate dedicated to Lord Boundless Chorus stood on an island in the middle of the azure lake. Light came down from the distant ceiling of the cavern and danced on the ripples of water.

“Excellent. I know exactly where we are! There’s a ladder over yonder that should take us up. Can you swim?” I asked.

“No,” Celes responded. “The place where I was born, the city of Lord Prodigious Desiccator, is basically a very large, extremely dry desert. Water is currency there, worth more than gold.”

“Hrm. Can you run on water?”

Celes shook her head.

“Disappointing. I wanted to see a cultivator run on water.”

The geisha gave me an annoyed look.

The phrase “very cool” didn’t translate very well into modern language, losing its idiomatic meaning. I probably did sound a bit insane to Celes, my brain being a jigsaw puzzle of two civilizations. A whole bunch of things weren’t translating correctly in my head.

The post-apocalyptic language of current humanity called “Aeiiznunmmnkk” was extremely odd—it didn’t sound like any past language of Earth that I knew about. Surely English couldn’t have mutated so much in a thousand years?

Was it even a thousand years? I had no idea what year it was, since the Boundless Cult announced the current year not by number but after some famous cultivator.

I was basing my temporal estimate on marketplace hearsay, which wasn’t the most reliable source. It was also impossible to tell exactly how old the Dead City was because of the random lack of decay.

We stood and stared at the lake for a bit, taking a breather.

“How do I claim this core?” I showed the Rat-King core to my companion.

“Umm… push a tiny bit of your Qi into it.”

I did as she advised. The core tinted itself blue. It felt a part of me now, a little bit of potential power in my hands waiting to be unleashed upon the world.

I wondered why I didn’t take one of the dead rats with me for its bones and realized that it felt extremely wrong to my Pharmacist-self. The entire concept of enslaving a creature to do all of my bidding was rather off-putting.

Yes, the Rat-King would likely have eaten us if given the chance, but there was something inherently perturbing about subjugating a soul to my absolute will.

I didn’t want to be like cultivators from the Gold City. I wanted to be better, to do things differently.

The Pharmacist and Ash had shared, synchronized, humanist goals. What mutual goals or shared interests could possibly be established between a cryptid thing like the Rat-King and a twin-soul human like myself?

I squinted at the shrine in the center of the lake. It brought back some bad memories for the Ash part of me.

I picked up a flat rock and chucked it towards the giant metal bell that stood underneath the gate. I had underestimated my twice-improved rock throwing skills. The pebble skipped on the lake’s surface eight times and struck the bell.

The ghostly figure of a giant moth with far too many long legs formed in the air in front of the bell. The moth-man watched me from the island.

I waved at him. He raised one fuzzy, transparent arm and wiggled a couple of big, sharp claws. Enormous, emotionless silver eyes stared at us from afar.

Celes gasped.

“Mothy is an old pal,” I commented. “Tried to kill me once.”

“What?”

“There’s an old servitor lantern hidden within that bell,” I divulged.

“How…?”

“Tried to rob the shrine when I was twelve. There’s pretty gemstones and gold bits all over that giant bell-thing. Thought it was totally unguarded. Swam over there and tried to pry a gemstone off with a knife. Hells, was I ever stupid.

“Mothy came out of the bell, snapped my knife in twain, and then almost cut me in half. I ran… and nearly drowned in this lake. That’s how I got this scar.” I pointed at the faint lines across my stomach.

“Yeesh.” Celes winced.

“Yeah, not the best time,” I testified. “I think the only reason I didn’t die was because this servitor ghostie is extremely old. Probably as old as that shrine. It did a very lazy job of trying to cut me up like salami. Swung a few times at me, then walked away.”

“I see.” The geisha clearly wasn’t impressed with my spooky survival stories.

“I think… that the older ghosts get, the more half-assedly they do their jobs.” I pursed my lips as the Pharmacist part of my brain analyzed what I knew. An idea was beginning to spark in the depths of my head.

Celes sighed.

“Anyways, we’ll have to take the long way around the side of the lake since you’re not a swimmer. Follow me and try not to slip on the rocks!”

I vivaciously trudged into the lake, keeping to the side of the cavern. The water was refreshingly cold and clean, washing away the stench of sewer water and fried rats.

The geisha hissed when she entered the water after me. She didn’t enjoy the cold part of it. I wondered if being a child of the desert-shaped god had anything to do with that.