Staring at the pills feels like it’s going to give me a headache, so I stick them in my pocket. Pearl and Clutter both shoot me the exact same damn look–one that says they’re not letting me get out of using the pills. And Clutter doesn’t even know what they are!

  “Can you go grab me one of the bodies?” Pearl asks. “I want to see what the connections look like. Oh, and if there’s more than one type, grab me one of each.”

  “There’s only one type.” Clutter says. “It’s the magic that makes them work differently.”

  Pearl nods. “I know. But the system could’ve changed things while we weren’t looking, so it’s worth checking out anyway. Besides,” Pearl turns to me with a mischievous grin, “you need the exercise, don’t you Shelby?”

  I roll my eyes and turn to leave. “Won’t need it for much longer. Try to find the secrets of the tower while I’m gone.”

  “Will do!” Pearl waves. “Don’t go too far without me! I have attachment issues!”

  Clutter’s eyebrows shoot to the top of his forehead. “You do?”

  Pearl stares blankly at him. “It was a joke. I can stand being away from Shelby for at least an hour.”

  “What about more than that?”

  “...So, what kind of magic do they use here?” Pearl taps one of the spheres with her fingertips. “Is it normally a liquid, or are they using solids that liquify under the right circumstances? Ooh, or gases that condense under those circumstances?”

  “You… um…” Clutter blinks and looks in my direction with a little confusion. “I don’t know. But you didn’t answer me about–”

  “Of course you don’t know; you’re not well versed in this. Let me give you a little demonstration.” Pearl cuts him off with a sharp smile. “So, from what I’ve seen, most of you just use runes that store magic and recharge themselves slowly. But if you want something like this, then you need…”

  Clutter stares after me as Pearl starts a long-winded explanation that really sounds like it only exists so she doesn’t have to answer his question. Maybe it’s to cover the fact that we’re bound by the quest, but I thought we were going to tell Clutter that in… a few minutes. Could be she wants to keep that part a secret. I’ll have to ask her before I say anything out loud.

  My footsteps slowly out volume the conversation above me, and within seconds, I’m standing at the bottom of the tower with my hand on the wall. It opens up before me, revealing the pristine construct bodies that Clutter took down. I run a finger over the coins in my holster just to make sure I’m still armed, focus on my awareness to feel for threats, and when nothing comes back I make my way to the closest body.

  The thing looks no different than when Clutter dispatched it. I lean down and turn it to make sure the circle with a dot inside is still there, and sure enough, it is. So into my inventory it goes. One of the empty slots fills with one body, and it offers me exactly zero extra information. No Worth for when I sell it, no name, nothing. Only way to get any info from these is to identify them.

  “Almost feels like that should be the other way around.” I note as I move to the next body. “If the quest’s removing most of the system functions, it’d make sense to get rid of identify before item descriptions. Or… both, honestly.”

  I lean down and check the next body. Which–surprise, surprise–is exactly the same as the first. Even down to how the wiry limbs wrap around the central rectangular mass. I can easily imagine a factory pumping out hundreds of these things at a time, and separating them into groups so their heads can be filled with differently coloured magic. But I guess having two of them to check out and actually confirm what I think I’m seeing can’t be detrimental, so into my inventory it goes.

  The body disappears with a thought. I open my Class Card to ensure it actually made it, and… only one slot’s occupied. The same one that the first body went into. Now the little image shows two of them pressed together tightly like hotdogs in plastic packaging. I… don’t think that’s how it should work. Each of them should take up one slot.

  I frown and turn my attention to the other bodies. Something’s… off. Not sure what it is, or if I’m just imagining things, but it feels like there’s something important here. Something that’s being thrown off by the fact that identify worked and the item description didn’t. All these bodies look exactly the same. But if there’s even a slight difference, the only way to tell would be by item descriptions with how general the identification information was.

  Or by taking all of them into my inventory and seeing which ones don’t go into the same stack.

  It takes me five minutes to go around and deposit all the bodies into my inventory. I don’t bother checking with each individual one, so when I send the last one away, I swipe to my inventory to see if my hunch was on the money, or just completely pointless.

  Three inventory slots worth of construct bodies stare back at me. One with ten. The second with nine. And the third with exactly one. Already that screams suspicious to me, but just in case there’s something else at play, I take one body out of each inventory slot. Then, one by one, I deposit them in every possible combination of orders.

  The two bodies from slots one and two go back into those slots based on one thing alone–which one I deposit first. Since they’re interchangeable between slots, I can assume they’re exactly the same. But the third one–that one always goes right back into a fresh slot. It won’t stack with any of the others no matter how I split things up. And the strangest thing of all?

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  It looks, feels, and–to my awareness–is exactly the same as the other nineteen.

  I smile down at my Class Card, then send it away with a flick of my wrist. Looks like there’s more to this than I initially thought, and if the hint from the orb in the tunnels is anything to go by, the tower itself is going to have something to do with it. Before I can go back and check, though, I’ve got another batch of construct bodies to check out.

  Just wish I hadn’t… damaged them a little more than Clutter did.

  Another ten minutes later, since I apparently launched a few of the constructs a little further than I thought, and I’ve got forty total construct bodies in my inventory. At first I was a little worried that the… chips and bumps… would mess with the grouping, but it just put a little asterisk next to the inventory space with the number of damaged ones in the group.

  In total, I’ve got five inventory spaces dedicated to the bodies. Three with ten, one with eight, and another with two. Unfortunately for dumbass me, one of the group of two is… a little more damaged than the others. I couldn’t find the chunks that make up the lower third of it, and there’s a giant scratch right through the rune. Hopefully it’s still useful, even if only as a comparison to the intact one.

  I press my palm to the wall and open up the tower. Sounds of a vigorous and much less one-sided conversation instantly hit me, and I can’t help but grin as Clutter and Pearl’s argument about the best way to stargaze gets just heated enough that she brings out the big gun; ‘damn’. He fires back with multiple ‘heck’s, then finishes with calling her argument ‘shit’ and immediately backpedaling while vigorously apologizing for getting too heated.

  “Shelby!” Pearl calls before I get halfway up the stairs. “Come settle an argument for us.”

  Clutter sits bolt upright, then grimaces. “She’s back already? It’s only been… oh, wait, it’s been fifteen minutes. Darn you for making me lose track of time.”

  “That’s not the only thing you’re losing.” Pearl mutters as I stick my head into view. She turns to me with an accusatory gesture at Clutter’s chest while her other hand fishes through a tiny hole in the yellow orb. “This dummy thinks that stargazing should be done from the highest point possible–even if the view or area you’re in isn’t as nice as it could be. He’d stand tiptoe on an inch-wide stick if it means he can get a little bit higher!”

  Clutter sighs and shakes his head in exasperation. “Because the entire point is to get as close to the stars as possible. Sure, a few extra feet won’t do much, but climbing to the highest point available gets you by far the best results.”

  Pearl sputters in disbelief. “Results? Results? You go for the experience, not the results! A nice, roaring fire, good food, and friends make the best stargazing outings. Shelby, what do you think?”

  I raise an eyebrow and summon all thirty-eight similar construct bodies in a corner. They appear perfectly stacked, with just a little space between them for the overhang of their limbs. Clutter gasps, but Pearl doesn't even react. She just stares at me expectantly.

  “I think you’re distracting yourselves from something. But I can’t imagine what that is.” I say flatly, then summon the two different constructs right between the two arguers. “Do you really care? Both your opinions are acceptable.”

  “No, they aren’t.” Pearl states flatly. “Clutter likes being alone and going as high as he can. I want as many people there as possible where the best views are. Which one’s better?”

  “Hey, I don’t need to be alone. It’s just…” Clutter trails off as he looks away. “Sometimes you don’t want people there. You just want to be alone with your thoughts to figure some things out.”

  Pearl huffs, then begrudgingly nods. “I guess that’s true.”

  Clutter tilts his head to the side. “It is?”

  “Yeah, of course it is. It’s your stupid ‘screw the view’ idea that I hate.”

  “...Oh.”

  “Cool. You’re both happy-ish. Can we focus on this now?” I motion at the constructs I dumped between them. “Those two are different from the other thirty-eight somehow. Pearl, can you feel any difference? Or do we have to take them apart?”

  “Fine. We can table this argument for now.” She carefully removes her hand from the sphere and leans in to take a look. “Nothing at first glance. How’d you know they’re different?”

  “Because they went into different inventory slots.”

  She nods. “That’d do it. We’ll have to run some tests on these to see if they’re made out of a material that looks the same, but doesn't have all the same properties. Clutter, did the heads all group together in their own inventory slots?”

  Begrudgingly, he nods. “Each colour had its own slot. But none of them had a description to go along with them.”

  “Neither did the bodies.” I add. “The system’s suppressing it for some reason.”

  “Hm. Probably to stop you from instantly solving whatever puzzle this is.” Pearl pats one of the constructs with her palm, then motions at the perfectly stacked pile. “Can you bring one of those over?”

  I nod, walk over to the pile, and grab one for her.

  “Thanks.” She says as I place it on the other side of the sphere. “Come help me out here, Clutter. We’ll look into this while Shelby does one of her workouts.”

  I grimace, but don’t say anything as Clutter scooches over to sit next to Pearl. The two of them instantly get to work, leaving me to get to a pill-fueled torture session masquerading as a workout. The container pushes against my leg as a horrible reminder that I’m going to have to improvise for the workouts Ursula made for me.

  “But what if we get attacked?” I argue. “I can’t be out of commission for that.”

  “We will get attacked. But right now, we have a little safe downtime. There’s a good chance you won’t get to do this again for a few days–maybe even a few weeks.” Pearl turns away from the construct and smiles. “You got a lot more stat points when you came back to this world. Right now they’re just going to waste, and that’s a huge shame.”

  I sigh and shake my head. She’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And without some liquid sleep on hand, I’m going to be completely out of commission for at least a few hours after this. They better hope Clutter’s strong enough to defend us against whatever rears its ugly head before I’m recuperated.