“Harvey? You feeling ok?” Elena asked.

  He fought through the pain as the rings around his eyes glowed like iron in the forge, his skill flickering to life as he dragged essence into the sigil. Floating measurements appeared in his periphery, confirming the greaves on the anvil would fit. Satisfied, he gave up on pulling the sluggish essence through his cracked weave and let the skill deactivate.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He grimaced, grabbing his infused iron tongs to use Perfect Finish to temper the leg armor.

  “You’re pushing too hard.” Elena sighed.

  “It speeds up the healing.” He replied. “That first day doing nothing barely brought my debuff from -30% to -25%. In the three days since I started using essence again, I’ve got it down to -7%.”

  “So instead of 5% a day, you’ve gotten 6%! Definitely worth the anguish.” Elena laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

  “Don’t forget all the profession levels I’ve gotten! And all the armor we’ve made.” He retorted, his voice still dry and hoarse.

  “The levels that left you collapsed on the floor from the pain of having your weave remolded?” She accused.

  “Whatever.” Harvey smiled before biting his lip as his essence flowed down the tongs.

  “I swear you’re some kind of masochist, Harvey…” Elena began.

  He prepared for the lecture he’d heard dozens of times over the last three days, but froze when the front door burst open.

  “Honey! We’re home!” Hannah sang, leaning through the doorway like an actress on a sitcom. “Damn, Harvey, you look terrible.”

  “Back at ya.” He laughed, dropping the tongs and limping to wrap her in a hug.

  “Hey, don’t be mean to…” Julian began before turning the corner. “Whoa. Sorry, Harvey, but you don’t look great. What happened to you?”

  “Let me tell you…” Elena began before Harvey yelled nonsense to interrupt her.

  “Wait! Let me tell the story! You’re going to make me sound like an idiot.” Harvey barked.

  “Sure. You tell the story then genius.” She quipped.

  “So, I had just finished inscribing my own set of armor…” He began

  “Exciting.” Hannah nodded.

  “Which gave me a Mark that let me create a super awesome profession skill. Naturally, I was excited to test it out…” He continued.

  “Of course.” Julian agreed.

  “So I went looking for a fight with the iron elementals…”

  “After not sleeping for almost two days!” Elena interjected.

  Harvey gave her a flat look, but didn’t argue. “And got ambushed by a sentient F-Grade who beat the hell out of me. I was able to fight my way out, but not before injuring my weave to the point I lost 30% in every stat. My body’s felt like it's on fire for days.”

  “You idiot!” Hannah shouted.

  “That’s what I said!” Elena agreed.

  “It’s not his fault he ran into an F grade! How was he supposed to know what was down there?” Julian defended, stepping up beside Harvey.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” Harvey agreed.

  “Boys, boys, boys… so reckless.” Hannah sighed.

  “Can’t afford not to be.” Harvey laughed. “How was your trip? Based on that quest we all got, I’m going to assume you found at least one other outpost?”

  “Two. One called Treetop Village and a second called the Hell Hotel.” Hannah answered.

  “You mean the outpost that just passed Veils End on the leaderboard?” Elena asked.

  “That’s the one! Run by our friend here’s old boss from back on Earth.” Hannah sighed.

  “Come on, Julian, you don’t have to lose to the guy just because you used to work for him. Is he really stronger than you?” Harvey joked.

  “Not even close.” He groaned. “But he’s got a nice, safe, air-conditioned hotel with almost 700 people in it, and we brought him 60 more. If the quest is about cumulative strength, the numbers advantage alone is going to be pretty hard to beat.”

  “They have A/C? Why don’t we all move there?” Elena gasped, hope washing away the disgust in her eyes from days stuck in a hot room with Harvey.

  “Because we’ll get lazy,” Harvey concluded. “If they really have that many people and were lower than us, most of them have to be sleeping all day.”

  “Exactly,” Julian affirmed. “It’s the exact reason the people we saved from Treetop Village decided to stay there instead of following us home.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Elena grumbled.

  “Me neither,” Hannah agreed,” but mostly because they earned a break after seeing how their integration started. Their Outpost was a bunch of treehouses, pretty sick, but there was a creepy anesthesiologist who got a skill to put everyone to sleep and used it to kill all the other guys before destroying the ladders back to the ground.”

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  “That’s horrible!” Elena shrieked.

  “I know. He had them all stripped down to their underwear and held them hostage for days. Luckily, we showed up, and I shot him like the pig he was.” Hannah scoffed.

  “Sounds like a successful trip then, even if you couldn’t bring anyone here,” Harvey concluded.

  “Very! That’s actually part of why we stopped by. You are cordially invited to witness our evolution into the F-Grade!” Hannah cheered! “But I refuse to wait a second longer, so get your sorry butts into gear!”

  Before they had a chance to answer, Hannah rushed out the door and yanked on Julian’s arm. Harvey wasn’t done tempering the greaves, but set them at the edge of the forge before rushing to follow. She was practically sprinting toward the church and groaned when she saw a short line for the Loom.

  “Wait up! You managed to get both your class and profession to level 25 already?” Harvey called.

  “I did! Julian’s a quitter.” Hannah quipped.

  “Ah! I’m not quitting Hannah, I’m just doubling down on my strong suits!” Julian snapped.

  “Whatever you gotta say to sleep at night! Ooh! My turn!” She quipped, stepping up to the Loom.

  “You’re evolving without a profession?” Harvey asked. “Elena and I bought Johns guide to the tapestry, and it said that’s a choice you won’t ever be able to take back.”

  “I figured as much, but I’m ok with it. I can’t afford to build dining tables for a week when I could be leveling my class and getting better skills to kill the Undead.” Julian explained.

  “That’s pretty short-term thinking,” Harvey warned.

  “Right now, the short term is the only thing guaranteed. Sorry, Harvey, but this is what I’m doing.” Julian exhaled.

  “You don’t have to apologize. Elena is doing the same thing with her profession. I’m just making sure you’ve thought this through.” Harvey explained.

  “I have.” Julian declared with a tired smile. “What about you? Getting close to evolving?”

  “My profession is close, but I haven’t been able to hunt since I got injured. Hopefully, I’ll be good to get back out there by tomorrow.” Harvey answered.

  The trio sat in a pew next to an anxious Buttercup and caught up while Hannah made skill after skill. Her first task was creating the Capstone skills for both her Class and Profession, and she wasted no time force-feeding memories into the loom. Apparently, she’d been brainstorming with Julian for days and already had plans in place for the ultimate evolution.

  The rainbow haze receded after the creation of each skill, but she didn’t give them a chance to read them before initiating her evolution. It looked just like any other skill creation, other than two separate clusters of visions gathering between herself and the Loom.

  One side featured Buttercup in every vision, usually carrying Hannah as he dodged around her enemies. One had her healing him in between shots as they ran from a flock of particularly vicious birds. Another showed a tired and sweaty Hannah with the same gaunt face that Harvey recognized as being completely drained of essence as Buttercup struggled to repel globs of caustic spit from a tree frog with bolts of force.

  The other cluster was a mix of Hannah’s most devastating attacks. He saw her blow a chunk of flesh out of a massive bear with an exploding arrow he hadn’t seen her use before beside a vision of her patiently waiting for the perfect shot through Buttercup’s antlers as he bucked beneath her.

  Harvey marveled as the Loom showed him the play-by-play of all her adventures without him, and he was reminded how magical their new world really is. It killed him that he wouldn’t be able to evolve to F-Grade with them, but at least he could use their experiences to squeeze every last drop of potential out of his own.

  She didn’t have any marks or stains to include, so it was only the visions that sank into the loom. Brown, Red, Orange, White, and Silver threads cascaded down, shooting straight for her and burrowing into her skin. Harvey gasped as the threads lifted her off the ground, her body going limp as light exploded from her entire weave. The thin veins across her body noticeably widened before disappearing completely. One by one, each sigil representing one of her skills followed suit, erasing the weave until all that was left was the mix of mottled gray and healthy tan flesh.

  “Oh no. Where did it go!” Julian roared, shooting to his feet. “Hannah! Hannah, are you ok!”

  Julian railed against the rainbow haze, trying everything he could to break her out as thread poured into her body. Harvey’d never seen him lose control before, and felt the reassuring flavor of his aura disappear as it collapsed around him.

  Buttercup stamped his feet nervously, panicked snorts filling the quiet church.

  “Could she have failed the evolution?” He cried, both hands pressing against the barrier.

  “I… I don’t know.” Harvey gasped.

  “What happened to her weave? She looks like a normal person again!” He shouted.

  No matter what they tried, they could only watch helplessly as her legacy was rewritten before their eyes. One by one, each thread severed itself from the loom, leaving Hannah’s limp body to float to the ground. As her feet touched the floor, they saw a gasping breath escape her lips.

  “She’s alive.” Julian rejoiced.

  “Better than that,” Elena whispered, pointing at her.

  Her wicked grin returned as her eyes shot open, and more visions began to appear between her body and the Loom.

  “The book didn’t say anything about this part.” Harvey worried. “It’s supposed to be over.”

  The Loom didn’t seem to care, as the rainbow haze stood firm.

  The first cluster once again showed the explosive arrow ripping apart the bear, along with a few other uses of the same skill. He gasped when the sigil for Critical Mass reappeared right where it rested before, glowing brightly for a moment before lifting off her skin and joining the cluster.

  “Maybe it’s not really gone?” He wondered.

  The visions floated into the Loom, and it returned a more complex sigil resembling the skill she’d fed into it. They couldn’t hear anything through the rainbow haze, but saw a familiar grimace as the sigil reattached to her skin.

  She completed the process three more times, feeding the Loom her Caretaker’s Connection skill, Steady Draw, and a set of glowing antlers Harvey didn’t recognize. Each skill was taken, remade, and added back to her Weave. When the final sigil seared back into her skin, the rainbow light finally shrank back into the crystal ball, leaving Hannah to collapse to the ground. Julian caught her and helped her to a pew as she struggled through heaving breaths.

  “Are you ok?” He fussed.

  “That… was… intense!” She smiled.

  “We thought we lost you for a minute there!” Julian laughed, his aura washing over them once more. “I freaked out when your weave disappeared!”

  “IT DID!” Hannah screamed, looking down at her arms. Her skin was clear, but in her panic, he felt something leak from Hannah for the first time. She had no Marks or Stains to flavor it, but it was undeniably her aura. He felt her personality in the air, and the weave drawn on her skin began to appear like invisible ink.

  “Oh, thank god!” She gasped, watching the ink disappear again.

  “I think I understand,” Harvey said.

  “You do?” Elena asked.

  “Yeah. John’s guide basically said our auras are constantly at full blast in the G-Grade, but we’d be able to control them once we evolve. Maybe part of that is hiding our weave until pieces of it are actually being used.” Harvey postulated.

  “Hallelujah. I won’t have to explain my face tat to my mom the next time I see her.” Hannah laughed.

  “Alright, quit making me wait, or I think I may burst a blood vessel. Let’s see the upgrade!” Julian cheered, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close.

  “Gladly. It’s even better than I expected!” Hannah grinned.