The process of removing her body’s impurities was like nothing else Mikayla had ever felt.

  It didn’t hurt, exactly. It was freeing, in a way. Anza had described it as removing small bits of poison that accumulated in one’s body, and she could feel that. With every impurity that they purged, her body felt a little lighter, her breaths came a bit easier, she felt more alive. Energy filled her body in a way that made her feel like she was a child again, ready to run and jump and play with no heed for the limitations of mortality.

  Asika was like a machine - well, in a way, she was a machine. After observing her method a few times, she’d insisted that Mikayla help rather than just watching. Both because it would be faster that way and because Mikayla really should know how to do this herself.

  So she’d marshalled her mana and started to grind away at an impurity in her left elbow.

  It was torturously slow work, like ripping off a bandage a single molecule at a time. Mikayla could see that this was a process that was intended to take weeks or months of on-and-off work. If the situation wasn’t so dire, she would happily take a more slow and measured approach to removing her own impurities, perhaps doing a little at a time in the evenings, because maintaining this degree of focus was exhausting.

  Having Asika helping her was a godsend in that regard. In the time it had taken Mikayla to burn away a single impurity, the faerie had purged ten. She was tempted to just sit back and let Asika handle all of it, but banished the notion, reminding herself that this was a skill she had to learn. Refining her mana control and body purity in this way was a fundamental ability for the strong in this world.

  And if there was one thing the Kaiju Coast had taught her, it was that she needed to be strong or she’d end up dead.

  They’d been working at it for two days, interrupted only when they had to wait for their Mana to recover and when the guards delivered food to the prisoners, as well as another round of blood samples being taken. Once again, Anza warned them not to touch the drug-laden food, no matter how hungry Mikayla felt. Two weeks of the Kaiju Coast diet had, thankfully, hardened her stomach enough that a couple of days’ starvation was only annoying.

  Flyreh hadn’t returned the second time, their assailants were just unnamed goons. Including the afro-sporting one who’d stolen Chesham’s Armour Core. For want of an introduction, Mikayla decided to christen him Afro Thief.

  Afro Thief wasn’t as stupid as he looked, unfortunately for the plotting prisoners. He saw that the four of them had gathered together, and suspicion filled his eyes. “What are you all up to?”

  Mikayla had rehearsed an answer. “I’m a historian, and I’ve finally -“

  “Not you,” he cut her off. “I want to hear it from the faerie. Faeries can’t lie,” Afro Thief demanded, squinting at Asika.

  Mikayla slumped back, stifling a wince.

  Asika took over, firing syllables from her tongue with the cadence of a machine gun. “We’ve been discussing appropriate mechanisms by which hypothetical individuals would undertake quintessential procedures to overwrite the inherently calcimine disposition of the circulatory systems possessed by an endothermic individual with the capacities of munificence and -“

  “Stop,” Afro Thief growled, looking like he was developing a headache just from trying to parse Asika’s dictionary soup. He wrestled with himself for a moment. “I heard ‘discussing’ in there. As long as it’s just talking, it doesn’t matter, not like any of you can do anything locked up like that,”

  Another round of blood samples being taken went by, and they were left alone to resume.

  “Faeries can’t lie, huh?” Mikayla cast a knowing look at Asika.

  Asika just giggled. “Doesn’t mean we have to tell the truth,”

  By the following morning - or so Mikayla guessed, as being unable to see the sun made it hard to tell time - almost the entirety of her body had been scoured clean of impurities, only a few remaining in her head.

  Keldryn’s progress wasn’t quite as good, no doubt because Anza didn’t have Asika’s mechanical precision. When there were only three impurities remaining, all in her neck, Asika broke off and went to help Keldryn catch up, leaving Mikayla to do the last three herself.

  Once the last one was gone, something clicked into place. It was like Mikayla had unknowingly gone her whole life with a vision impairment and the world had suddenly come into focus for the first time. She could see more. Hear more. The world seemed slightly slower. Or perhaps she was thinking, living faster. It was a subtle, but incredible shift.

  “Good, you’ve finished the hard part. Now shimmy over here,” Asika dragged their cages together, wrapping one hand around Mikayla’s wrist and the other around Keldryn’s. “This is the easy part. The Stamina coating,”

  “The part where we harden our bodies to prevent new impurities from forcing us to do that all over again,” Keldryn remembered.

  “You got it! We’re in a rush, so I’m gonna just guide you on how to do it. Watch and learn!”

  Like pixelated lightning, Asika’s Mana flowed all over Mikayla’s body before she could even react, kneading her channels like dough. In a hundred places up and down her torso and limbs, she felt her Mana get pressed into the boundaries of her body. At the points of contact, she felt her flesh getting harder . . or maybe it was more accurate to say it was growing tighter. Like her pores were sealing themselves up, her skin quite literally growing thicker.

  The process spread from the myriad starting points, expanding like shockwaves of transformation that made her more, spreading the changes both across and deep. The insides of her muscles itched as they grew more powerful, more durable. Her bones hardened, their internal structures growing more complicated in ways Mikayla didn’t understand and could only barely perceive.

  “Focus! You gotta know how to do this yourself!” Asika reminded her, and Mikayla nodded, scrutinising the process and doing her best to commit to memory what Asika was making her Stamina do, even if she barely understood it.

  The waves of changes had filled her body before she knew it and were spreading up her neck. They filled her jaw and infused her teeth, and Mikayla felt them growing straighter and more resilient. It washed over her scalp and through her hair, which she was surprised to feel spontaneously grow a few inches. Once it had filled her skin, it turned inwards, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she felt her brain be adjusted, become more capable, so that it could handle the changes to her body.

  Stolen story; please report.

  A sudden lump rose in her throat, and her gag reflex kicked in involuntarily. Something slimy and squishy was expelled from her throat and onto the floor, a ball of gristle and dirt that she was repulsed to know had been inside her.

  “Aaaaand there! Ta-da!” Asika cheered.

  “How do you feel?” Keldryn asked, concern etched into his face.

  “You’re about to find out! Your turn!”

  Mikayla just sat back against the bars of her cage, feeling her heart pound, as Asika turned her attention on Keldryn to inflict the same process on him. Her heartbeat felt magnified. Faster. Stronger. Had her hearing improved or was she just imagining things? She knew that this would be a change, she knew that breaking the First Schema Lock would be a qualitative boost to her strength, but she hadn’t been prepared for how everything suddenly felt different and yet the same.

  For several minutes, she just revelled in the feeling. A word came to mind; transhuman. Was that what she was now? More than human? Better than human? Still human at all?

  Before she could go too deep into that rabbit hole, she forced herself to remember their current circumstances. In only a few minutes, they would begin their prison break. She could grapple with leaving behind the shackles of mortality when she was certain that she would live to see tomorrow.

  “Alright! All done! Now, your reward for all my hard work; pull up your Statistics!” Asika commanded.

  “Show me my Statistics,” Mikayla parroted at the System.

  [STATISTICS: (1 Lock Cleared, 125% Efficiency)

  HEALTH: 1750/1750

  MANA: 2000/2000

  STAMINA: 1750/1750

  STRENGTH: 17.5 (BASE VALUE: 14)

  DEXTERITY: 17.5 (BASE VALUE: 14)

  CONSTITUTION: 17.5 (BASE VALUE: 14)

  CHARISMA: 17.5 (BASE VALUE: 14)

  INTELLIGENCE: 20 (BASE VALUE: 16)

  WILLPOWER: 21.25 (BASE VALUE: 17)

  ]

  Mikayla’s eyes widened, taking in how her Stats had all leapt upwards at once. “Whoa,”

  A bit of quick maths confirmed it; everything had increased by one-quarter of its previous value. “That’s what Schema Locks do? A permanent, multiplicative boost to every stat? That’s insane!”

  “It’s awesome, huh? You got it!” Asika confirmed. “Every point you have is now worth one-and-a-quarter points. Once you clear the Second Lock, they’ll be worth one-and-a-half,”

  “So by the Fourth Lock, it all gets doubled,” Mikayla realised. “That’s a cascade effect alright. And everyone gets that?”

  “Yeah. There’s a reason we tell people to be wary about fighting someone who’s cleared more Schema Locks than they have,” Anza offered her input, lips twisting. “Most of the time, the only way to offset that kind of power gap is with skill. Which you two don’t have,”

  “Hey, I’ve been training my whole life,” Keldryn retorted.

  Anza quirked an eyebrow. “So has everyone else. You’re still low enough level that you should be wary of fighting pretty much anyone,”

  “The plan is to escape, not fight. We know,” Mikayla assured her. She took a deep breath, looking herself over. “Alright. Time to bust out?”

  “No, there’s still one more bit of prep work to do before we make a break for it! Now that you’ve managed that, we need to equip you with some Techniques!” Asika cheered.

  Keldryn’s eyes widened. “Really?” His voice had turned incredulous. “You’re going to give us Techniques?”

  “Is that different from when you showed me how to set my fist on fire?” Mikayla checked.

  “She’s a faerie. Her Mana and Stamina control are perfect. There are legends about people doing incredible things to prove themselves worthy of learning a technique from a faerie. Anything she gives us will be Flawless,”

  Asika grinned. “Yeah. I’m only supposed to do something like hand out free Flawless techniques during an emergency, but I think this counts. The bad news is, I don’t have my uplink to the Overmind active right now, so I can’t give you something tailored to your fighting styles, just stuff copied from my own personal kit. And even then, only the stuff that doesn’t rely on my equipment or faerie physiology,”

  Keldryn looked disappointed.

  “That’s still good! Right?” Mikayla nodded encouragingly.

  “You tell me,” Asika gripped her wrist again, once more sending her Mana flowing up Mikayla’s arm.

  [NEW TECHNIQUE SAVED: PSYCHIC BOLT (FLAWLESS)]

  [NEW TECHNIQUE SAVED: HEEL PROPULSION (FLAWLESS)]

  [NEW TECHNIQUE SAVED: ASIKA’S AWESOME LASER BARRAGE 10.0.48 (FLAWLESS)]

  Mikayla blinked at the last one. “Asika’s Awesome Laser Barrage?”

  “Everyone’s got hobbies! Don’t throw that one around willy-nilly, it eats a lot of Mana,” Asika grinned at her.

  There was a blast of light, and the door of Keldryn’s cage exploded. All eyes went to him, as he stared at his hand in bemusement and what the Psychic Bolt had done. “So that’s a Flawless technique?”

  “Actually, that one’s supposed to do more damage to living things than to inanimate objects!” Asika nodded encouragingly.

  “. . Wow,”

  “Show me my Techniques,” Mikayla suddenly commanded her HUD, suddenly hesitant to unleash the clearly overpowered abilities Asika had just gifted them.

  [TECHNIQUES:

  CIRCULATION OF STAMINA (Basic): Expend Stamina to accelerate the natural healing process.

  FIRESTARTING PUNCH (Crude): Expend 50 Mana to wrap your fist in flame and strike your target with an inferno. Damage scales with Willpower.

  PSYCHIC BOLT (Flawless): Expend 40 Mana to project your thoughts in a blast of energy. Can be used with friendly or hostile intent for either communication or offence. Damage scales with Willpower.

  HEEL PROPULSION (Flawless): Expend 30 Stamina through your feet to launch yourself in a direction. Effectiveness scales with Agility.

  ASIKA’S AWESOME LASER BARRAGE 10.0.48 (Flawless): I worked out the kink this time! It still only shoots forty-eight lasers but it isn’t costing 30 Mana per laser anymore, I got it down to 15! And it’s not ripping my body apart when I cast it anymore! It looks like lasers in multiples of sixteen are the sweet spot. Next I’m gonna try to get it up to eighty!]

  Mikayla was unsurprised by Asika’s enthusiastic notes on what she was now certain was a homebrewed Technique. A bit of quick Maths told her that forty-eight lasers at 15 Mana each would cost 720 Mana, or a bit more than a third of her new total Mana capacity.

  She almost hoped that they would get into a fight on the way out, just to have a chance to try it out.

  Keldryn had already crawled out of his Cage, and was working to release Anza from her chains. “What are you waiting for? Come on,” he insisted.

  “Might need a hand with mine,” Asika added, gesturing at the heavier locks and chains encrusting her cage.

  “Okay. Here goes. Psychic Bolt!” Mikayla chanted, and the Mana in her right arm flexed into a pattern that reminded her vaguely of a railgun. A ball of blue light flashed from her head, down her arm, and out through her palm, striking the door of her cage and making it explode open. She crawled out and relished finally being able to stand up straight after three days of confinement.

  Asika’s pleading gaze convinced her not to waste more than a second on that, and she raised her hand, throwing another Psychic Bolt.

  It splashed off, only dealing minor damage.

  “Uh. Nope. If that worked, I’d have done it already,” Asika shook her head.

  There was a thunk, and they turned to see Anza had dropped to the ground, groaning as she stretched. The cuffs were still wrapped around her wrists, ankles and neck, trailing broken links of chain. Keldryn had clearly decided that blasting the manacles off was too much of a risk and instead broken the chains. “Allow me,” the Guardswoman grunted, her arms lighting up with golden energy.

  She drove her hands into the bars of the cage and ripped it in half without even the aid of a Technique. The metal buckled and collapsed, parting around Asika.

  “Ohhhh, that feels good,” Asika stretched, rising to her full height for the first time since Mikayla had known her. Somehow, it wasn’t surprising that Asika was the shortest present, and based on everything Mikayla had heard about her archetype and ideal self, she probably liked it that way.

  Asika bounced from one foot to the other in what looked like a gymnastics warmup routine, then grinned. “Alright! Who’s ready to bust out?”