Vin could only stare at the infernal glaring at him over her desk. He’d certainly heard her question, but he was struggling to physically comprehend what she’d asked. He had barely had time to process Alka’s true death after all, and now Madam Trebella was offering…

  To bring her back?

  Slowly, Vin stood up, never taking his eyes off the infernal until his face was inches from her own. His balled up fist tightened to the point he thought his knuckles might crack as he stared directly into the Witch’s golden eyes, trying to detect some sort of lie.

  “If this is some game you’re playing…” he said, letting the threat hang ominously. Honestly, he didn’t know what he’d do if the Witch were just messing with him. His emotions were all over the place at the moment, and he feared his anger and grief might lead him to making some horrible mistake.

  Thankfully, the infernal maintained his stare with ease, clearly not threatened in the slightest. Instead, Madam Trebella said five words that shook Vin to his core.

  “She’s not gone. Not yet.”

  Letting out a shaky breath, Vin allowed himself to collapse back into his seat, putting his face in his hand and trying to get a hold on his rampaging emotions. He’d gone from rage, to sorrow, to hope so fast he felt like he was going to be sick. Half of him didn’t want to even entertain the Witch’s words, telling him not to trust such a scheming woman. That if he let himself hope again it would hurt all the greater the second time Alka was taken away.

  But the other half…

  From the very beginning Alka had been journeying with him in order to finally put herself to rest. The two of them had become fast friends, and the longer they travelled together, the more the fact that it was all temporary had quietly weighed on him in the back of his mind. So when she’d mentioned what Madam Trebella had told her, that she could possibly have some semblance of a life again and had decided she no longer wanted to die just yet, Vin had been ecstatic. He wouldn’t have to lose his first friend he’d made on this world, and more importantly, Alka could have her own life she so rightfully deserved.

  But right after she’d come to that hard decision, her life had been ripped away from her anyway.

  It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Vin had certainly experienced his own fair share of life throwing him under the bus back on Earth whenever he’d felt things were starting to go a little too smoothly for him. But as a runaway without any real education or money, there often was little he was actually able to do about it.

  So if there was even the slimmest chance he could do something to save Alka…

  Sucking in a deep breath, Vin shoved his wild emotions to the side, steeling his resolve as he came to his decision.

  “How is she still alive, and what do I have to do to bring her back?” Vin asked without so much as a hint of hesitation in his voice.

  Madam Trebella stared at him for a brief moment, as though wanting to confirm he had what it took before she even bothered to get his hopes up. Vin could only assume she picked up on his determined gaze because she nodded, taking her own seat once more and leaning forward over her desk.

  “The divine warrior did not actually kill your ghost companion,” she explained, watching him carefully. “He destroyed her primary anchor and disrupted her form, but strangely, the ghost had a second anchor she was able to retreat back to.”

  “Me?” Vin asked, not believing what he was hearing. “I thought Alka was bound to the sword, and I was just some sort of temporary anchor for her. I felt my connection to her snap when he killed her.”

  “What you felt was your own connection to the sword, through her,” Madam Trebella explained, raising a finger. Vin watched as her claw glowed red, and she drew a straight line in the air as though she were sketching out a runic formation.

  “This, is you,” she said, placing a dot on one end of the line. “This, is the sword,” she continued, placing a dot on the other end. “And this…” she said, placing a dot directly in the middle, equidistant between the two others. “...is your friend. When the divine warrior destroyed the blade…” she paused, slashing a claw through the line connecting Alka’s dot and the sword, causing the red light to waver and vanish. “...you also felt its destruction, as you are part of the connection. Even if not directly.”

  “So that strange tightness I felt snapping inside me… That wasn’t Alka, but the sword?” Vin asked, wanting to hear it directly from the knowledgeable Witch.

  “Correct. However, this diagram isn’t quite drawn to scale.” Raising another claw, the Witch reformed the connecting line Alka had with her sword. However this time she redrew the same line again and again, continuing to thicken it until it was nearly ten times larger than the pitiful line connecting Vin to Alka.

  “The main reason you felt anything at all when that connection was severed was largely in part to how powerful the connection was,” she explained. “From what little she told me during our unwelcome chat, I’m aware that your friend worked her entire life to get her hands on that blade. It meant more to her than anything, and the act of having it then taken from her so soon after finally achieving her goal was what caused her spirit to linger in the first place.”

  “In comparison, her connection to you is flimsy at best,” she said, causing Vin to wince. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, the fact that a connection even formed at all is curious in itself. My best guess would be it was partially due to the fact that she saw you as her only hope of passing on, and partially due to the fact that she entrusted you with her beloved sword.”

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  “So despite our… flimsy connection, Alka was able to use that to what, retreat into me until she can restabilize?”

  “Not exactly,” the infernal frowned, her golden eyes squinting at him. “In fact, the connection you two share is flimsy enough that it should have simply shattered when her form and sword were both destroyed. To be honest, I’m not actually sure how she was able to cling to your form as though it were a life raft and she was adrift at sea.”

  Human Vessel, Vin realized with a start.

  “I have a title I gained from willingly letting Alka take over my body and stay within me for so long,” Vin explained, earning a surprised look from the infernal. “Could that be how she managed to survive? The System didn’t say anything about a connection or anything like that however.”

  “You should have led with the fact that you had a title based around possession,” Madam Trebella grunted, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That would have solved a lot of the unanswered questions I’ve been working through these past few days.”

  “But the title-”

  “Titles are unique things,” she said, cutting him off. “They are strange, rare rewards given out by the System, and often do far more than the System says they do. I didn’t even consider the possibility of you having a title as they are almost exclusively seen in people deep within their second prestige at the very earliest.”

  Vin almost spoke up and mentioned that he’d gained his first title back when he was only level six or so, but decided at the last second to keep that information to himself. He didn’t know if this new System awarded titles more readily or if he’d just stumbled into an easy-ish way to gain one through blind luck, but the infernal didn’t need to know that.

  “So because of our weak connection and my title, Alka is still technically here?” Vin summed up, wishing she would finally get around to how he could bring her back. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more you’re not telling me?”

  “She is dying a second time,” Madam Trebella said without fanfare, staring at him impassively. “Your title is enough for her destabilized form to unconsciously cling to, which proves that she truly has changed her mind and wishes to remain in this world, but it is not enough for her to reform like she would be able to with her sword. For that, you’d need to forge a new anchor for her.”

  “Like what, a new sword?” Vin asked, his heart sinking at the thought. He’d do anything in his power to try and help Alka come back, but there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he’d be able to get his hands on another blade made from petrified elder wood.

  “No, even if you could get your hands on another unique sword like the first, it wouldn’t be enough. It was what that particular sword represented that your friend was so attached to.”

  “Okay, so what do I need to get for her new anchor?” Vin demanded, already feeling like Alka was slipping away. Now that he knew every second mattered, he was tired of beating around the bush. “What do I need to do to save her?!”

  “Just as she was drawn to her first anchor, you need to get your hands on something that her subconscious will be drawn to inhabiting now,” Madam Trebella explained. “If you can do that, I can conduct the necessary ritual to help bind her to it, and she’ll be able to reform within her new anchor.”

  “Something she’d be drawn to…” Vin repeated, going through everything he knew about Alka at this point.

  It wasn’t exactly hard to pin down what drove the Slayer.

  “She wants to kill monsters,” he said, getting to his feet and beginning to pace around the study. “But you made it sound like binding her to another weapon wouldn’t work, so what’s next then?” Suddenly, Vin recalled the conversation Alka had told them she’d had with the Witch before leaving the infernals' village, and he snapped his fingers. “Alka mentioned the two of you talked about binding her to a golem! Is that what we need? Where the hell are we going to find a battle capable golem?!”

  Silently, Madam Trebella pulled a piece of parchment out from within her desk and sketched something down on it fast enough that Vin wasn’t able to make it out before she folded it in half. Standing up, she held out the folded piece of parchment toward him with a predatory smile. “I told you before that prior to setting up my concealing ritual our village actually welcomed a surprising number of travelers. Two different people who visited weeks apart both talked about stumbling upon the same place on their journeys. A place that holds exactly what you need to save your friend.”

  Vin went to take the paper, and blinked as Madam Trebella lifted it at the last moment, holding it up over him.

  “This information, and the ritual you need from me to help save your friend, don’t come without cost,” she said, her gold and black eyes seeming to pierce his very soul as she grinned at him.

  “What do you want?” Vin hissed through clenched teeth, his fingers itching to snatch the paper from her. If he didn’t need the Witch’s ritual as well, he very well would have tried to grab it by force at this point.

  “You’ve already agreed to take down the divine warrior as part of our last bargain, so no need to revisit that again,” she said, tapping a horn as she pretended to think hard about it. “No, let’s do something a little simpler this time.”

  “In exchange for this information and the following ritual needed to save your friend, I want a favor from you,” the infernal grinned, eyeing him up like he was a piece of meat. “I don’t have anything specific in mind at this very moment, but I have a feeling I’ll have a use for a talented Explorer one of these days. So that’s the deal. A future favor for your friend’s life.”

  Vin returned the infernal’s stare, not backing down in the slightest. He knew agreeing to some blanket favor was probably a horrible idea, but he didn’t really have any other option if he wanted to save Alka.

  “I’ll agree… But only on the condition that the favor doesn’t involve physically harming anyone that’s not a mass murderer like the divine warrior,” he said, holding up his hand as the Witch went to argue. “I have a divine boon myself, only mine is defensive. Just like how the divine warrior has the restriction of needing to give a speech before fighting, mine is that I can’t hurt people unless it’s to save a life.”

  “Truly?” The infernal blinked. “My, you are just full of surprises aren’t you. Alright, a future favor that doesn't involve physically harming anyone… Unless they deserve it. Do we have a deal?”

  Vin stared at the infernal’s outstretched hand, his eyes flicking back and forth between it and the folded piece of paper. Every fiber of his being was screaming that this was a very bad idea, and that this agreement wasn’t like the other ones he’d made with the Witch previously.

  But it was the only way to save his friend.

  Gritting his teeth, Vin reached out and shook the infernal’s hand, his face hard as the Witch’s grin merely widened as they stood there, staring at one another.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” Madam Trebella said, finally handing him the paper he needed to save Alka’s life.

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