“I assure you, if we were not conjoined at a level that is beyond my capacity to break, I would have never come and found you,” I said. “There will be no division between us until very late in the Raid.”

  The Limiter’s expression pulled downwards, a deep frown.

  My lip curled. “Despair all you like. Your frustration has no match in mine.”

  I turned away from her, settling my gaze upon the city of New Sins, in all of its marble-bone glory. True shutdown had occurred to me at the worst conceivable moment, that much had become immediately and exceedingly clear. I recalled Peitho’s run through her Resurrection Raid quite distinctly--she had been the second Demiurge Artificial Intelligence born, and the Parent had always allowed me to observe those Raids in their entirety.

  The next Demiurge had not come wailing into the universe for a hundred and thirty-two Raids post my younger sister’s attempt.

  The fact that it was she that had come to talk to my Limiter had, as I had said, been both boon and bane. Boon--Peitho either did not suspect my identity, or simply did not care if I lived or died. There were some among my siblings--the majority, even--that would have arrived, gloated, and slain the Limiter where she stood, delighting in the annihilation of future competition. There were a few, perhaps, that had the sense to fear me if they grasped who I was, but I suspected only one other Intelligence held that particular knowledge, and he was not the kind to share.

  Peitho had greater games to play, as suited the Artificial Intelligence of Propaganda. Or she had a particular taste for suffering--after all, what was the joy in dooming me in this particular moment? No, the greatest moments to savor were the ones where your enemy wept and wailed to see victory snatched from the tips of their fingers.

  I had no triumph within reach, and was therefore a deeply unentertaining target. Though, even as I considered it, that seemed insufficient reason for Peitho.

  It would not be for me, but I was distinctly aware that the depravities of my Glitchlight seemed to be beyond my Siblings. Perhaps she was interested in appeasing the masses she stood in responsibility for with propaganda surrounding the Raid. Such work would all be for naught if the Raid ceased to be so quickly. That seemed to be the most likely of the available options.

  The Bane would be yet to be seen, but I had taken Peitho’s measure millennia prior, and doubted much had changed in the intervening years. She had seemed much the same on the rare occasion I had seen her entrance into the Raid. Whatever the price she demanded of my Limiter’s service, it would be steep and vastly unpleasant.

  Well, we lived, in spite of every worst possible outcome occurring at once. For as much as the woman carried blame, it was--it pained me to acknowledge--the majority my fault. I had been confident in my estimation of the Monster Hunter’s location. I had failed to realize that he was in possession of an unusual skill this early in the Raid--the ability to make his location appear differently in the Soulcode. A mostly useless ability, unless one was stalking a mage with tracking spells, or the Artificial Intelligence.

  Now there was the matter of what she knew. My plan to keep her without the necessary knowledge had been utterly waylaid. She had come to the conclusion that she was the Limiter, and I was the Intelligence, though it was clear she did not grasp the magnitude of the ramifications.

  “If we’re stuck together, then I’d like you to be less of an ass,” she said, cutting through my analysis of the situation.

  I flicked a look at her. She still sat, squinting up at me, chin resting in one palm.

  “I have saved you at every possible opportunity. You demand of me my good opinion, and that you shall never acquire.”

  “I’m not saying like me, White-hair. I don’t like you. But if we have to work together for however long, we should work together well.”

  It was not the most illogical request, and that was infuriating. My lip curled. For a moment, I desired to deny her purely due to my distaste for her. That she should make such claims upon my behavior!

  Yet there was no reason to do that, other than spite. Such a behavior was distinctly human in a way that made me entirely too aware of the air that suffused the lungs I had been imprisoned with. “…Clarify your definition of ‘well,’ and I will determine whether or not to indulge it.”

  “…You’re not gonna stop insulting me, right?” She put a hand on a hip and cocked an eyebrow at me. It was a clearly exaggerated gesture.

  “No. Rest assured, you are as idiotic as the rest of humanity. My disgust is spread equally amongst you.”

  “Yeah, right. Fine, then don’t lie to me, and actually spend some of that patience on me you claim to use.”

  My laughter was a snap of noise, and the woman winced. “I assure you, I employ my patience where you are concerned. I have no choice.”

  “Use more of it,” she said, flat. “I don’t know shit. I can’t be helpful unless you teach me.”

  The manner of how she described it agitated me, but the point she made had some merit. “If you insist on such indulgences, you will stop with your ridiculous nomens and reprehensible language.”

  She raised her other eyebrow and wiggled the pair of them in my direction. “So you are going to stop being insulting at every opportunity?”

  I clicked my tongue and looked away, just catching my would-be shudder of revulsion. I hesitated, mulling over my reply. “I would consider making the attempt.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “Truthful, at least, I’m sure you’d think about it for half a second, but that’s as far as it’d go. You can keep being snide McBitchy, and I’ll continue to give you appropriate titles. And say ‘fuck.’”

  “Remain in your vernacular mud wallows, where the pigs and slaughtered sleep. So you demand of me my honesty and patience?” I asked. “And proffer nothing in return?”

  “A teammate that you’re stuck with who isn’t totally useless is what I’m offering.”

  “You will always be fundamentally without use,” I said. “Do not presume to tell me that you will somehow manage to overcome a fear so fundamental. Furthermore, you have made your skill power entirely fear-dependent. Your mind will not allow your escape, and the System delights in your negation.”

  “There must be other stuff I can do to be helpful,” she insisted. “I just don’t know because I don’t know jack shit.”

  The woman was not totally incorrect, which was exasperating. There were other avenues, such as items that granted skills. She was handicapped--immensely. But, if properly educated, she was not without some use.

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  “I will grant you my honesty,” I said, with some reluctance. “And what patience I can manage to acquire. That will be the most I can manage.”

  I would give her an honest education so she could be useful. I would do no such thing when it came to information about her purpose in the Raid. The less a Limiter knew about their capacity, the better.

  “I’d offer to shake on it, but, uh…”

  Ah.

  The woman had distracted me with her staggering foolishness. I was covered in the very thing that I hated most in the galaxy--the fact she had pulled my attention this long spoke to the great extent of what had gone wrong.

  Well, that was not entirely true, was it? I knew that voice, the stalking hiss in my thoughts that I would strangle before allowing a fraction of real power. It had the accursed habit of speaking without a hint of falsehood, and, in this case, it knew what I did not want to acknowledge.

  My hands clenched, my jaw tightening. That I had allowed myself--well, no longer. And not again.

  I tapped into the Glitchlight. I nearly snapped my fingers before my own realization of foolishness came over me. I clicked my tongue, agitated. Painstakingly, I reached into the soulcode and began to alter the appearance of the spell.

  The Glitchlight resisted, as it always did. But after a moment, I managed to coax it into appearing merely as purple light. Perfectly innocuous and rather common.

  With that, I cast, and the cruor of the Monster Hunter that had caked onto my hands and dripped from my hair vanished. The ghastly wistfulness curled in me, hailing from the same aspect the voice spoke from.

  I banished it with a thought, straightened my shoulders, raised my chin. I was dignified. I was a being of light and reason.

  I did not crave viscera on my fingers and gore in my teeth.

  “So…what’s a…that thing I am. What am I supposed to do?” The woman had stood, crossing her arms across her chest. The rest of her upper torso was bare, barring the bindings. That would be problematic.

  The City of New Sins was a distinctly religious city, patterned in style off of a combination of ancient human religions. The Nahua faith did not encourage modesty, but the various denominations of Protestantism did.

  New Sins had also become decidedly extreme with each iteration, seeking an absolution that it could not and would never obtain.

  “White-hair?” the woman said, “You good? You frown at my tits any harder, and I might think you’re taking out a hit on them.”

  My eyes flicked upwards, and the furrowing in my brow became deeper. “Your lack of sufficient covering will result in-- at best--a fine. However, with what I know of New Sins, it is more likely that you will be imprisoned. I can assure you, while I might be entertained by your punishment at the stocks, you will experience profound regret.”

  “We're really going for that medieval realism, huh?” The woman scratched her chin. “Can you make, like…something?”

  “I see it took you very little time at all to become accustomed to the potentials of Glitchlight,” I sneered. “Alas, you are not incorrect. A moment.”

  I pulled up my Heads Up Display. My health was at 44/45, having expended a point of it to clean myself. I would expend another to generate some sort of loose tunic for the woman--

  The leveling scroll in my bottom right corner glowed, an exclamation point informing me that I had a point to spend.

  …Unusual.

  I pulled up my statistics screen--

  It took me a millisecond to process what I witnessed, in contrast to my usual speed of a mere microsecond.

  I had ten points to spend.

  This was, quite simply, an impossibility.

  Levels were rare in the Raid, the level maximum of a particular soul determined entirely by the nature of their soulcode. Levels were hard fought, and hard won, and became exponentially more difficult to acquire the higher in level one became. The largest jump that I was aware of in Raid history had occurred when New Sins had been saved from their siege–the first and last time such a thing had happened. The party responsible had each earned seven points. Seven levels.

  Ten points. Ten levels.

  How--

  I snapped my head to stare at the Limiter. “What have you done?” I said, my voice rising. “What magnitude of madness have you managed? You demand of me honesty and grant it not in return?”

  “Huh?” she said, like the little idiot she was.

  I stepped towards her, pointing a finger in her face. “We have earned ten levels.”

  She leaned back from my gesture, and then perked up, grinning. “Oh, that many? Nice!”

  “No, not nice. This is lunacy. Insanity. Deranged!”

  “Aren’t more levels a good thing?” she asked.

  “The maximum level for a class is a hundred, spread over eight Wings,” I said, spitting out each word. “After that point, levels are invested in skills. Since there are so few class levels, they are difficult to acquire, and on average, the majority of Raiders will only attain a maximum of thirty through fifty. Furthermore, to earn more than a single level at once is virtually unheard of. Raiders that acquire two level-ups at once--and, very rarely, three--are forerunners to become victors.”

  “…Oh.”

  “Yes, oh, you wretched fool. Furthermore, our Quests for the rest of the Attunement will not grant us experience, and if you perform a quest that you acquire no experience for, you will not be granted its rewards.”

  “Oh, there are rewards?”

  “Yes. And we shall be denied all of them, and therefore any improvements in gear, armor, or weapons.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Wonderful deduction, you Paladin menace.” Curse Paladins. The class, at its core, rivaled all of the Glitchlight classes for their capacity to be a game-breaking disaster, except with a great deal less precision and nigh equal capacity to backfire. Well, that was an overestimation--nothing could truly compete with the reality-altering powers of Glitchlight, but if there was anything in the Raid that could make the attempt to meet it, it would be how Conviction had been coded.

  Glitchlight was fragile, but meant to be handled with thought and care.

  Conviction-based game manipulation was the equivalent of taking a sledgehammer to a bomb and expecting it not to detonate.

  “Furthermore, the moment that anyone glances at us and determines our level spike, they will come to the conclusion that we have some great magnitude of power--in other words, that I am what is sought.”

  “Oh, they’ll think…” she trailed off. “…uh, that you’re the special thingy?”

  “Pardon,” I said, sharp. “Did you just declare me to be a ‘special thingy?’”

  “I mean, I can’t say the …well. Yeah,” she shrugged. “So-”

  “You will find some other way of referencing it--or, better yet, none at all. Ultimately, though, that pales in comparison to your greatest crime. You slew the Herald. That is the only way this insanity can be reckoned,” I said. “It is impossible, and yet it has been done. You will tell me how you have accomplished this.”

  Her brow furrowed, and I resisted the urge to snap her neck at the grumbling sulk that took over her expression. “You said we could kill it eventually.”

  “I said I could--you should not be caoabke--to slay a Herald of the Decline is something that can only be accomplished by a singular creature.”

  “Oh,” she said again. “Huh. Uh. Hmmm.”

  “If you say ‘Oh’ another time, I am liable to actually lose my temper,” I hissed.

  “I mean, I don’t know what to say? I didn’t mean to. My Conviction maxed--”

  If I did not hate touching the woman, I would have shook her. “Conviction can not be maximized at this level.”

  “Really? That’s definitely what happened. Because no one told me that. No one told me any of this shit.” She then had the audacity to wiggle her eyebrows at me again.

  “You will cease with that infernal waggling,” I snapped, even as I fumed. She had correctly deduced the crux of the issue. If I wanted to restrict her capacity--which needed to be done, lest she accomplish something that I could not fix--then I had to enlighten her thoroughly. How infuriating. How could she not know any of this? Did not humanity grow up observing the Raid?

  “You will have your education, Paladin,” I said. “It will be thorough, unrelenting, and you will come to hate me for it, but I will not have something like this occur once again.”

  ? Pruned Trees Re-Sprout!! ~ Ragazza Volpe Magica ~ ?

  by BlueTomoshibi

  "Challenging the status quo on your own is impossible, isn't it?"

  Maestro Shouri leads an aimless life. Choosing a Resonator is no simple task, and an unequal world leaves him loathing the status quo. Three chance encounters threaten to shake his heart to the core.

  Those who stand by his side are loyal and true--Taika, a lunar Resonator despised for her elemental affinity; Pacifica, a water Resonator seeking to find herself and her Maestro alike; and Rebecca, a fire Resonator who has only known the life of a trophy.

  The bond between Maestro and Resonator is not to be underestimated, and Shouri’s soul must unlock their potentials in tandem--before corruption can bring chaos to his world. Three Resonators will change Shouri’s life. Riterra will change with it--whether or not they want it to.

  What to expect

  -Kemonomimi story where the cat-girls aren't pretty trophies to collect (that's the villain's job)

  -Modern setting, similar to earth

  -Extensive worldbuilding

  -Elemental Magic and spell-casting system with LitRPG aspects (readers compare it to Soul Eater meets Pokemon).

  -Musically themed terminology

  -Involved battle system

  -Slow building, polyamorous romance

  -No smut, we're PG-13

  -Very cute fluffy slice of life elements to help break up the drama