Clutter silently raises his hands to cover his mouth. The implications rain down on me like falling stars, each leaving mental craters that won’t ever fill in. All the plastic we’ve found was the system’s attempt at making shellraisers. And when it failed, either unaware or uncaring of the suffering it created, it turned the stuff into… a material. Nothing more, nothing less.

  “We’ve been using… dead shellraisers?” Clutter whispers. “Why would the system do this? I thought it hated the shellraisers?”

  “For the same reason it made the paindne.” Pearl mutters as quietly as possible. Clutter doesn’t hear. “It wanted us–but an us that it can perfectly control. So it created… this. A thing that’s not alive, not dead, and constantly suffering.”

  “Jesus.” I take a step closer. Magic needles at my skin, but I can barely feel it any more. This thing–this atrocity–needs to be dealt with. “What do we do, Pearl?”

  She motions at it with a closed hand, then spreads her fingers wide as she silently mouths an explosion. I completely agree, but I need to make sure this can’t be a mistake; the system made this place. If it isn’t technically part of the quest, doing anything could have serious consequences.

  I clear my throat, then look towards the ceiling. “Hey, quest. Is this still part of you?”

  Clutter stares at me. “Do you really think that’s going to work?”

  “Hell if I know.” I reply. “Maybe?”

  It will.

  I blink in surprise as the notification appears before my eyes. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to work.

  “Uh, hi. We’re kind of in… somewhere we’re not sure we’re supposed to be.” I gesture all around me with the assumption that the quest is monitoring us. “Is this still part of the quest, or did we accidentally break the boundaries?”

  Boundaries? No. The sequence: that’s a resounding yes, you little problem. How was I supposed to know your awareness-thing would let you do this? But you haven’t broken any rules, and it’s my fault for not knowing, so you’re fine. Have fun with your existential crisis, you rusher.

  The notification box disappears moments after the last word appears, and unless the system is really good at imitating the thing that’s overseeing the quest, that’s confirmation. I take a deep breath through my nose as the mass bombards me with baseless pain, take a pair of projectile coins, and aim them directly at it.

  “Stop!” Clutter jumps in front of me with his arms spread wide. “Is this really a good idea? We can’t… do anything with this?”

  Pearl bitterly shakes her head. “Even if this is a fake… it suffers like my people do in prolonged death. Even if the stuff the system sent to the world is a modified version of this that isn’t… suffering… this mass is. The least we can do is end it.”

  Clutter clenches his jaw without backing down. “There has to be some way to make use of it. I know that’s really harsh, and I’m being super insensitive right now, but you’re running out of Worth. The quest doesn’t seem like it’s going to give out much of it until we can get back home and exchange whatever treasures we find for Worth. Maybe we can… I don’t know… make coins out of the plastic? U-um, I mean–”

  “Fake shellraiser.” Pearl cuts him off dryly. “That’s a very Illumisia way of looking at it, Clutter.”

  He straightens his back with… pride. Pearl silently studies him, then turns to the mass with a pained expression. I can’t tell if she’s hesitating because of some twisted sense of duty to the fake shellraisers the system repurposed into the plastic-y material, or if she just really wants it dead and gone from existence. Destroying it fulfills both possibilities.

  “I don’t want to. But you make too much sense for what I want to matter.” Pearl turns to me and nods grimly. “Do whatever you can to make use of it. We’ll put it out of its misery later.”

  I nod back and Clutter steps out of the way with a relieved look on his face. From how Pearl clutches my earlobe, she’s not fine with this. But she’s shoving all those feelings down at the very true fact that I’m on a time limit. Just destroying this thing won’t give me any Worth–as proven by how all the other things I destroyed didn’t give me any worth–so I need to do… something else to it.

  The only thing I can think of is to get my hands on it and go from there. I take a step towards the mass of hexagonal plates. The magic intensifies, but in the same way that a fire is more intense the closer you get to it. My body twitches in discomfort at the disgusting energy, but it isn’t enough to dissuade me. I cautiously reach out and plant my hand in the perfect middle of a manhole-sized plate.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Weak magic jolts down to my elbow. Thin tendrils of plastic lazily reach out from the plate and wrap themselves around my fingers in an almost tender embrace. Though it’s tender in the same way that a soft breeze would blow a willow tree against you. Absolutely no intent or thought behind it.

  I grimace at the sensations and slowly scrape my fingers through the plastic shellraiser. It squelches under my skin, offering a slight resistance for a moment before it gives way and lets me in. The thing doesn’t react. Even the mound back in the graveyard reacted. Does this thing really have…

  No commands. No influence. It’s stuck here, potentially for thousands of years, doing absolutely nothing but existing. That’s how we’re going to use it. We just have to find out how to manipulate it. I pull my handful of fake shellraiser away and hold the writhing mass as far away from myself as possible.

  “You’re going to help us.” I tell the stuff. “I need Worth. The system changed you somehow into something that can imitate things, but not exactly right. I need you to turn into Worth that I can use.”

  The plastic pulsates exactly as it had a moment ago. No change whatsoever. It was a long shot, anyway, so I’m not too worried–even if the concerned looks I’m getting from Clutter and Pearl would want me to think otherwise. I squish the plastic in my hand twice, just to see if it does anything, then send it to my inventory.

  You do not own this.

  I click my tongue; that’s the exact same problem I had at the shellraiser workshop all the way back when I first came to this world. Truth be told, I can’t think of a way to somehow gain possession of all this stuff. Not unless the quest gives it to us. I go to lower my handful of plastic, but another notification popping up stops me dead in my tracks.

  Serenade of Shattered Shells: Stolen.

  The very being of a shellraiser was stolen to make this mockery.

  What was stolen cannot be rightfully claimed.

  Make a rightful claim, and take back what is rightfully ours.

  Rightfully yours.

  The notification fades away. Pearl stares through the space where it was, and her eyes shine with renewed purpose. She offers me a brilliant smile, then scurries down my arm and places her hand on the plastic. It gently wraps thin tendrils around her wrist, and the magic inside instantly shifts. Instead of needling me it washes over my skin with a cool, damp comfort. There’s still no intelligence in it, but the outright hostility is gone. The suffering remains, though.

  She steps back with a melancholic smile. “It’s done. The system can’t claim ownership over a blatant forgery. We’ll have to remember that the next time we find some knock-off machines.”

  I roll my eyes at her attempt at making the situation a little less bleak. She runs back up my arm as I close my eyes and focus on the mass of shellraiser plastic squirming in my hand. I’ve seen a less powerful version of the stuff turn into a paindne construct, a monster, and a powerful mass of magic. But the thought of leaving this stuff ‘alive’ to suffer is just… wrong. Whatever I shape it into can’t be alive any more. Just like the jewelry Clamber made for us.

  “Coins. Then you can rest.”

  The plastic shudders, then blurs into motion. It twists, turns, and reshapes itself into a… hexagonal coin that’s a little bigger than an iron five. An entire handful of the stuff into one simple coin. But the coin is… quiet. Stable.

  Not suffering.

  I bring it close to my chest. Absolutely no magic filters out of it–for all intents and purposes, it’s just a dull grey hexagonal coin. Not a fake shellraiser any more. I look up at the mass, all that suffering and twitching and writhing, and I don’t hesitate.

  “You, too.”

  Two simple words. The mass of fake shellraiser spasms, then erupts into a spray of falling six-sided coins. Hundreds of the things coat the ground near us, and my awareness latches onto each and every one. Not all of them are exactly the same. I count six in total, each with an ascending amount of dots on one side and a simplified version of Pearl’s shell on the other. With a thought, I call them to me.

  Shoreline Risemutation: New possibilities registered.

  Shellrisen Single Hex. Effective Worth: 6.

  Shellrisen Double Hex. Effective Worth: 12.

  Shellrisen Triple Hex. Effective Worth: 18.

  Shellrisen Quadruple Hex. Effective Worth: 24.

  Shellrisen Quintuple Hex. Effective Worth: 30.

  Shellrisen Sextuple Hex. Effective Worth: 36.

  Note: like ghost quarters, none of these can be spent in-system.

  Additional Note: these coins are far more compatible with a shellraiser’s awareness.

  Final note: Evolution available upon completion of current quest.

  As the coins filter into my inventory, I can’t help but smile. Almost a thousand single hexes, then half as much for the next, repeating until the sextuple hex has only a little over thirty coins. But because of the diminishing returns for spells over ten Worth, it works out to about a thousand six-Worth hexes and a thousand ten-or-more-Worth hexes. As long as I don’t go absolutely crazy with spells, I’m good for a damn long time.

  All on the back of the system’s attempt to make shellraisers after it murdered all but one of them.