Chapter 23: Scene 23 – Tasting Hunger

"You come back here!" Gaia chased after Amanda, waving her fist. Her sneakers skid to a halt in front of the House of Black Mirror. Candles seemed to melt across the floor from inside the House, their wax pooling near the entryway as a pit of black tar. Gaia took a deep breath. She could turn back now. The cleanup team would be able to recover her gauntlet.

She might be called incompetent, but she wouldn't be dead. "Forget it!" Gaia shouted. "You can have the glove! I'm not my glove; I'm a magical warrior!" Gaia pounded her chest, unsettling her glasses, and a window opened in her vision.

"Wh… what? No, take that back!" Gaia began to panic. She was not in the state of mind to question why the system message was pale pink instead of its usual shade of green. "I didn't mean to hand it over. Those were just words!" Gaia hissed.

(Great. I've just handed the controls to Earth over to a Malice.) Gaia rubbed her forehead. This was shaping up to be a much worse problem than she'd anticipated. If she hadn't opened her big mouth, she might not have handed over half of the controls to a creature that wants to undo reality as she knows it. Who can comprehend the damage that could be done with just one of them?

"Well, at least there's a path to recovery." Gaia sighed in relief. As long as she could get her hands on the gauntlet, she could fix the problem at its root. Nothing bad would happen, Gaia hoped. Taking an unsteady step onto the waxy pool, Gaia started to make her way into the House of Black Mirror.

The attraction was dark, lit only by the candles and their reflections across the waxy floor. Gaia could see herself dimly reflected in broken mirrors as she advanced deeper into the manor. On occasion, she would find herself inside a dead end; exchanging a look with her reflection, she would turn around and make her way down another path. The path seemed to wind, looping in a few places; Gaia had to stop herself.

"I need a better way to keep track of my position." Gaia thought things over, opening up a skill window. The culmination of everything she was and could be spread out before her, starting from a central node. This point represented her core, her essence. [Champion of Earth]. A simple concept that could mean many things; here, it meant that she was the one human capable of representing Earth.

Three paths diverged from her core, petals on a stem. The path of [Earthen Sculptor] represented her hobbies made manifest; she was a potter and a mason before her transformation. She could reshape the world around her, and create and destroy as she wished.

Then, the path of the [Nebulossom]. This path represented the essence of the planets, the powers derived from her Planetary Seed, [The Gauntlets of Gaia]. This path seemed as if it was wilted; without her other gauntlet, she would not be able to draw upon the full strength of her power. She would be sacrificing a significant amount of her potential if she did not retrieve it soon.

The last path available to her was the [Ethos of Effort]. This power would let her drag out her potential, so long as she put in the work; whether it be study, strength, or socializing, the more effort she invoked, the more potent her power would be.

One of these paths had to hold a solution. Gaia sat on her knees in the pool of wax, puzzling through her predicament. Maybe she could start by mapping things out? That was a skill that could be useful, but with the advent of the GPS the skill's applications were limited to Neverlands. It was a technique she wasn't likely to use very often, and not one she felt needed to be prioritized.

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For that matter, tracking her other gauntlet would also be a waste of skill points. Most of the malice she'd fought that day-- if you could call their wholesale slaughter 'fighting'-- were passive. None of them had thought to steal her gauntlet except that mechanical angel she saw running the other way. Gaining a skill for tracking would be no different from adding a useless component to her already limited repertoire.

If she didn't want to waste today's spoils, she would have to try something new. Her mind clicked, and she stood up. "System, I'd like a skill that lets me sculpt the bodies of dungeons."

"I'll need a little more information." Gaia shook her head, an unsettling but implacable feeling washing over her body. "Each purchase is important; everyone knows that. If I blindly purchase, I might make a mistake."

"Ambiguous, but I think I understand. I'll be able to create a regenerative fixture in the dungeon." Gaia nodded along with the text. "Something that will return whether the dungeon likes it or not. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I'll take it."

"That should do. Thank you, System." Gaia paused on that word, the implacable feeling from earlier clicking into place. "Hey, System, why are you green now? Weren't you pink just a moment ago?"

Gaia's eyes drew wide, filled with fear. "Oh, no. That's not good."

Two hands rested upon Gaia's shoulders, and her blood ran cold.

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