"Alright," I said, straightening on the sofa. "So what is it?"

Nom-Nom looked at the camera for a moment, then she looked down at her hands, and that alone told me the conversation was going to be more complicated than I was hoping for.

"I feel useless," she said.

I looked at her. Then I looked at Peko beside her. Then I looked back at Nom-Nom.

And I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, "Dude, what are you on about?"

Nom-Nom and Peko exchanged a look, and Peko exhaled through her nose before speaking.

"Young Master, look at the shape you’re in..." Peko said, her voice controlled and direct.

"We did not raise it before because we thought you might need time to mentally recover first, but you went straight to tracing herbs. Four of them. Sequentially. And what happened with Dove today, we understand how you feel about her, I personally do not understand what you see in her... but we know what it cost you to say what you said in that room, and you did it alone. You are doing everything alone, and you are sitting there with a bloody nose, one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed and..."

She stopped, but only for a beat. "And we are sitting in warm rooms drinking healing potions... and just living."

"Look, I’m fine..." I replied with a chuckle. "This damage you see, all of it is temporary, it’s nothing that can’t-"

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Nom-Nom said, cutting straight across me, looking directly at me when she said it.

While I froze mid-word, mouth still open until-

"Are... Are you suggesting all the shit I’ve been pulling was... unnecessary?"

"This... pulling by yourself is..." Nom-Nom replied, keeping her eyes on me, and kept going, "You should’ve called me to the mine. You should’ve called me when you went into the Nexus... You should’ve called me. We’re out here having fun while you keep going through everything alone, and it feels like..."

She stopped, looked at her fists in her lap, and then looked back up. "I don’t know... It feels like we’re unnecessary."

They were right about the arm and the leg thing.

After all, if I had called Nom-Nom to the mine, I would still have all my limbs attached to me. And that was a fact.

So was the reason I hadn’t.

"And why would I have called you? Is that all there is to you?" I circled her face on the screen with my finger. "Is that all there is to Nom-Nom? Someone you call in to hit things?"

Neither of them spoke.

"Because if that’s all there is to you..." I continued, "Then yeah. In a month, you might actually become unnecessary."

Nom-Nom’s face went pale as she shook as though struck by lightning, even Peko’s eyes went wide while I continued.

"Nom, I can already create a Ferum Knight worth 2,16,000 MP in an hour... Your 1,500-capacity is not even 1% of that, and if we calculate the exact numbers, it’d come down to 0.695%. Yes, you have your draconic and wendigo traits and stuff... But look at the damn numbers."

Peko and Nom-Nom were absolutely still, while I leaned forward and continued.

"Look, I’m not trying to demean you and stuff... What I am trying to tell you is... You gotta be more than what you are right now. Both of you... You gotta be more than just two powerful Chimeras with unique abilities. And that same goes for me..."

"Are we..." Peko said slowly. "Are we useless to you as we are?"

"No, of course not..." I shook my head immediately. "But, to be bluntly tactical, you’re not someone I’d blindly call for any situation either. And that’s exactly why I’m having you cram every book in the library..."

Turning to Nom-Nom, I went on, "And that’s exactly why I struck that deal with Garek to take you in the B-Rank dungeons... It was never about making money, or EXP, or hell, even credits."

I began running Nature Manifestation through my palm while I talked, watching the Silverleaf sapling push up through my skin.

"I can literally make gold out of thin air. And if my theory holds true, I would be able to make Grade 1 Mythril too... the literal stuff of the legends. I can buy this entire nation in a week flat or sell it all to the system for insane credits."

Both of them were staring at me with unblinking eyes, and I could see Nom-Nom’s eyes watering.

"But I am doing all this because the Nom-Nom with her potential fully unlocked is a Nom-Nom who is not only the strongest person to ever walk into any room, but the most skilled and deadly," I said, plucking the herb free and setting it aside, "And the Peko is one who can dismantle entire nations without casting a single spell..."

I started on the second herb.

"Look, we have two 3000-year-old international organizations after us... One is probably already making moves while the other would join in the fun right after the Red Moon. And when they do, we’d be hilariously outnumbered, outgunned, and overpowered in so many capacities that we might as well just throw our hands up right now."

Plucking the second herb out of my hand without breaking eye contact, I continued, "So we gotta outskill them... outsmart them. And I can’t do it alone.

"No, scratch that," I backtracked immediately with a chuckle. "I can. I’m the destined freakin’ hero, I got Time, the System.... And even if I hadn’t, I still got Infinity. So if I went that route, alone, all-in, in that fabled way of the sigma edge lord with phonk blasting in the background... I’d probably win."

Plucking the third herb, I set it aside. "But that’s not the life I want. Going that way means sacrificing everything else in the pursuit of power, and that’s not what I’m here for. Same as both of you, I wanna live an actual life and have fun."

"So, to make it happen, to make sure all three of us get to actually live..." I sighed, turning to Peko, "You gotta be the one coming up with plans..."

I looked at Nom-Nom. "You need to be the one on the front line handling whatever anyone throws at us with me in the support, not the other way around."

"Nonsense..." Peko said, her voice soft but direct. "The way you handle things, the power you have, we will not be able to match that."

"Yes, you can and you will," I said, without any room for debate in it. "The point is not for you to become me. The point is for you to become fully what you already are, and that’d be more than enough..."

Sighing, I ended the little reality check with-

"While I, too, need to figure out a way to be more than what I am right now... Because all of us, as we are right now... we’re not enough to win against what’s coming for us."

"Doubts?" I asked, as I plucked the last herb, sent them all to the inventory, and opened the crafting menu.

Peko was quiet for a moment before speaking, "Yes. Nom-Nom’s original question. Why didn’t you call her?"

"We’re all currently one of the most popular bunches in town," I said, hitting Craft on the Grade 8 potion and watching the notification appear. "... Especially Nom-Nom. If she moved toward the mine at any speed that would have mattered, half the city would have known before she got halfway there."

"So would Entropy," Peko breathed.

"Yep, and until the very last moment I hoping that I hadn’t made enemies with them... which in hindsight was quite naïve. And Nom-Nom moving towards their backyard would’ve sent the impression that I’m gearing up to make a move on them... And once the Outsiders came out, the entire forest had become a seperate dimension. So I couldn’t call her after the attack either..."

"I see," Peko said.

"Case in point... I’ll handle things for now," I said, pulling the potion from inventory and running 30 MP/s of Ice Reinforcement through my palm. "... While Nom-Nom learns how to dominate fights with skill just as much as she does with power... and you, Peko, become the person I can tell to ’handle the problem’ before promptly forgetting about its existence."

Taking a sip of the chilled potion, I sighed and spoke in a tone that was both softer and more sincere than anything I spoke today.

"It’s not that I find you useless, hell no... I find you barely operating at the level you can be operating at."

Nom-Nom had her fists clenched in her lap and was looking at the floor.

Peko was looking at me with her expression settled and calm, but there was a sharpness in her eyes I had never seen before.

Looking at them, my thoughts by themselves went back to the oath I had taken quietly, alone, in the early days of all of this, before the three of us had any idea what we were walking into, and I had meant every word of it.

I, Nico, hereby solemnly swear that I forfeit the right to say to those who believe in me, that ’I don’t know what to do’

And I would’ve meant every word of it even without System registering it and adding an instant death clause to it.

I also realized that throughout all this, I had become a sort of answer-to-every-thing for them.

Someone who’d swoop in and solve whatever with the same ease as casting an Ice Pebble.

"Before we end our little heart-to-heart..." I said, and both of them looked up. "Know this for a fact, written in stone... There will never come a point when I wouldn’t know what to do. No matter the odds... I will always have a plan. I’ll always know what to do. I am your Deus Ex Machina, that much I promise."

Nom-Nom unclenched her fists.

The look on her face was not relief exactly, it was something more settled than that, a conviction even though she had no idea what Deus Ex Machina even means.

Peko just gave a single nod.

So, with that, I ended the call.

And the moment I did-

-Ding!

{Question. How do you intend to manifest Grade 1 Mythril within a week?

The cost of even a small nugget is beyond your current means.}

"Come on..." I said, chuckling. "I thought you would have worked that out by now."

I leaned back, taking another sip of the potion. "The difference between Grade 9 Mythril and Grade 1... is impurity content. Grade 9 has significant impurities. Grade 1 is nearly pure. So, what’s stopping me from tracing a Grade 9 chunk, mapping the atomic structure, and then manifesting only the Mythril atoms through Metal Manifestation? With a bandwidth of 65 MP/s from an infinite pool, it is just a matter of keeping at it."

-Ding!

{I cannot recommend this.

Manifesting Grade 1 Mythril in any meaningful quantity will require a sustained mana output that risks Mage’s Folly.

There is a reason practitioners who have mastered Metal Manifestation do not attempt High-Grade materials.

The purity demands are extreme, and the mana cost per unit of output scales non-linearly with grade.}

"Probably... sure," I said. "But who said anything about quantity... A gram a day goes a long way, y’know~"

The System went quiet, like it always does when I figure out a way to break the logic it functions at.

I chuckled, took another sip, reached for the book I had purchased from the System on the walk to the inn, and flipped it open.

The book was about Meditation.

After all, it was about time I learned the classical way to get stronger.

The first method was Recovery.

You simply drain your Mana Core completely dry and then keep draining whatever it recovers, holding it in a state of suspended recovery.

The overdrive response makes regeneration faster over time. This was useful for anyone with a standard core and a finite pool.

For me, it was useless. My regen came from the very concept of Infinity. I could not physically drain my core to zero, no matter how hard I spent.

So, I moved to the second.

Accumulation. You pull ambient mana from the surrounding environment and pack it into your core beyond capacity.

It was the same basic logic as gaining weight over time through overeating; repetition causes the core to expand its baseline capacity.

I read the ten pages of explanation on the mechanics, the safe rate of accumulation, the warning signs of overdoing it, and then I hit a line that made me stop.

"Accumulation causes foundation destabilization."

[System?]

-Ding!

{Accumulation will damage your core’s integrity.

In native terms, this is called an unstable foundation, and it is why accumulation is done in moderation with recovery periods between sessions.

Combat has historically been one of the most effective methods for stabilizing the foundation. The mana expenditure and strain of active combat cause the core to consolidate its expanded capacity at a much faster pace than normal.

The consequences of overdoing accumulation range from minor damage to complete rupture.

In practice, this is called being crippled or having a crippled core.}

"Okay," I said slowly. "But with my infinite regen, that makes this... I don’t know... um..."

-Ding!

{Unpredictable is the word.

You draw mana from the concept of Infinity, not from the world’s ambient pool.

It is uncertain whether Infinity would treat structural leaks in your core as containment failures or as pathways to the external world and incorporate them as part of your core’s expanded structure.

Either outcome has significant consequences.}

I sat with that for a moment.

"Okay..." I said, and the thought was already forming. "But don’t cores get damaged during intense combat all the time. When a practitioner pushes past their limits and stuff..."

-Ding!

{That is correct. It happens frequently and is a significant part of why I monitor your output as closely as I do.

The risk is not just to you. Depending on how Infinity responds to cracks in your core, the consequences could extend well beyond your person.}

"Right... So. Accumulation is off the table for now."

I flipped forward to the third section.

Assimilation.

I read the first few paragraphs and put the book down in my lap.

I picked it back up and read the paragraphs again.

And threw the damn thing across the room.

"Dude, what the shit! How does anyone even do this?!"