It’s been a few hours since I destroyed Chroterr using the Continent Crusher. We’ve been resting up for the most part since the Elven Continent was practically a no-rest hellscape.

I’m currently sitting at the top of Atlas’s trawler. For whatever reason Esther decided to accompany me, and now she’s sleeping on me… again.

I don’t mind it too much… It’s better than her trying to eat-

Wait.

I still haven’t fed her.

Maybe I should have Atlas get us moving…

<Cyn.>

“Huh-? Yeah?”

<What happened to everything in [Storage]?>

“Everything in… oh!”

||STORAGE||

The gray window opened up in front of me… I saw an icon for an apple and clicked it. A white glow circled the window and I pushed my hand inside.

In games, anime, and manga storage skills usually keep things in perfect condition. So that means all the food in here should be great for Esther to fill her appetite on!

I wrapped my hand around something.

That…

Didn’t feel like an apple…

I pulled my hand out to find this rotten, ugly ass—what used to be an apple—sitting in my palm. It was all wrinkled and mushy… the color desaturated to a dull red-gray. My left eye twitched and I whipped the apple as hard as I could out to sea.

<Cyn…?>

…

“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUUUUCK!”

“Are you serious!? Why couldn’t it work like anything I thought of… Things move at the same time frame as the real world in there?!”

Esther woke with a start.

“Huh- what? Are we being attacked? What’s happening-”

She looked back toward me to see me screaming into the air. Her face went straight.

“Cyn… I’m still hungry… I was trying to hold it back by sleeping… but it looks like you really want me to eat you.”

She started hungrily glaring at me.

“W-wait Esther… we can talk about this-”

She leapt forward her mouth wide open, going for a bite of my arm. I threw my hand into [Storage] and pulled out another rotten apple. I held it out quickly, her mouth connected with it. She bit down only for a second before her eyes went wide. Esther pulled back and stared at the rotting apple in my hand.

“Ah… a-ah…”

She raised her hand shakily to cover her mouth.

I saw tears forming at the corner of her eyes, she quickly jumped off the side.

“Laviel! Cyn made me bite something disgusting!”

She sobbed all the way down and slipped into the ship.

I let out a heavy sigh… I solved one problem temporarily and then made another.

I stood up and brushed my coat off.

After that I stood on the side of the ship for half an hour, the storage window on the other side of the safety railing aimed down into the sea. I was unloading all of the food. Rotting apples, bananas, oranges, meat, etcetera. 

Goldwill’s corpse started to slip out of the window, I reached down to grab it and missed. I looked back and forth quickly to make sure no one saw, then I hopped up onto the railing before dropping into the ocean.

I found it relatively quickly and pulled his corpse up to the surface. I used some of my slime as a rope going up to the railing to pull myself back up slowly. I looked to my left and saw that Goldwill’s hand was charcoal black now. Since the passage of time in [Storage] was just like reality, his body had started decaying.

“AAAHHHH-”

I quickly threw his corpse off of me before hastily throwing out some slime to catch it. His body floated on the surface of the water, so I used a few slime tentacles to lift it back into [Storage]’s gray window.

I pulled myself back up over the railing and fell onto my back, there was a puddle of water that formed under me. I laid there and sighed before I heard the bulkhead door open. I quickly got on my feet and leaned against the railing, trying to act like nothing happened. Risible peeked his head out and stared in my direction.

“Cyn? You good?”

“Huh? Y-yeah…”

He opened the door a little more and started walking toward me, he looked at the deck, spotting a puddle of water. Also, small drops of water were falling from the tips of my hair.

“Did you fall in the ocean?”

“N-no…”

“Liar~... Oh-”

“Hm?”

I turned toward him.

“You should probably get moving, Esther is on her way.”

A shiver ran down my spine as the bulkhead was thrown open again, it slammed against the ship's walls. Esther stepped out.

“Where’d he go?!”

“He just jumped off of the ship.”

“Wh… What…?”

I was now running along the side of the ship, using my slime to keep myself attached. Esther quickly caught up while running on the deck.

“Cyn…! Get back here~!”

“I firmly refuse!”

I swapped into my slime form and zipped forward under the railing, sliding underneath the bridge’s door. Esther tried pulling on the door but it was locked.

“Nghhh- not fair!”

She continued yanking and banging on the door.

I warped back into my human form and let out a sigh of relief, I was now standing in the ship’s bridge. It was filled with different controllers, buttons, and levers. The room was devoid of anything living though, so I climbed down this ladder at the back of the room since I was trying to figure out where Atlas had gone off to. 

I was now in this generator type room at the bottom of the ship, probably the engine room if I had to guess. There weren't any lights on and shadows were cast from behind the generators, fuel pumps, and whatever else was in there.

“Atlas! Hello…?”

My voice echoed across the dark room, bouncing off of the pipes and metallic engines. I started walking around… maneuvering past the electrical cords scattered across the ground.

I came to another bulkhead and opened it.

“Oh, Atlas.”

He turned around and motioned me with his head to walk over to him. His hands were on these two gear pillars, dark ocean blue slime rising from under his palms into the surrounding air.

“One-”

“You can just call me Cyn if you want.”

“Alright then, Cyn, place your right hand over mine.”

“Okay…?”

I placed my hand over his, as soon as I did his right hand disconnected from his arm and returned to an oceanic blue slime.

“Slowly start absorbing the slime connected to that pillar, and replace it immediately with your own.”

I tried what he said, it was a little difficult, but I managed.

“Now place your left hand on the other pillar. Once you do, start absorbing me.”

My left hand touched the pillar and my slime tentacles formed and started absorbing Atlas. The ship’s coloring started distorting into ocean blue slime.

Heh-?

“Cyn, you’ll be in charge of keeping the ship’s shape until I get back out. The pillars are the ship’s focal point and they hold it together.”

“What-”

“The ship’ll collapse if ya don’t hold it, d’ya understand?”

“I think…?”

Atlas was absorbed, and I felt an instant strain on my body. I tried to keep the ship’s shape intact. Each piece was intricate and I could feel it breaking apart. I hadn’t practiced with [Integral Requisite] nearly enough to hold the ship together…

H-how the fuck could Atlas handle this intense pressure…?

Shit-

I’m losing it… we’re gonna sink!

A dark blue orb shot out of my right arm, in a yellow-gold color the number ‘727’ was carved into it. The orb quickly warped back into Atlas, he swiftly placed his hands on the pillars. The distorted red and blue slime reformed back into the ship again.

I fell back and landed on the floor.

“Holy shit…” I panted.

I looked up toward Atlas. He looked overly ecstatic about something…

“This save data is magnificent!”

“Save… data…?”

He turned toward me and helped me up.

“What? Did they not explain it yet? Hm… actually they might be too young… It took me ‘round five hundred years to get access to it.”

<Cyn? Atlas? Can you hear me?>

“Loud and clear.”

Atlas had his hand to his right ear as he spoke before he turned back toward me.

“This is perfect timing. Ode d’ya know about save data or no?”

<I heard the term brought up once by Harbinger.>

“Alright, alright… let me explain it to ya then. Save data is the magical experience that is absorbed by us variants. Pretty much everything we’ve ever absorbed becomes a data file that can be tapped into at any time.”

…

“Cyn, could you absorb something for me quickly?”

“Uh… sure.”

||STORAGE||

I tapped an icon representing a fishing rod, the box was outlined in white and I pulled this unique looking fishing rod out. It was shaped slightly differently from a normal one, it almost appeared to be made out of this bamboo type of material as well. I absorbed it quickly, my red slime wrapping around it until there was nothing there.

“Good, good~”

Atlas released some of his slime and immediately recreated the same exact fishing rod I had just absorbed, it was a pure dark blue color though since it was just his slime.

“Wha-”

“That’s the power of ‘Save Data’. Which means everything that Zenith devoured from the Elven continent…”

“Can be used-”

“Exactly!”

Atlas smiled before he started walking toward the bulkhead door.

“Huh- but how can I-”

“I’ll teach ya~ it took me five hundred years alone. So if ya have someone with experience you should learn it in… maybe a month?”

A-a month?! Only…? That’s insane…

How do the variants know all of these things though? They’ve been locked up in the Lacuna since they reincarnated here.

“Atlas-”

“Hold that thought. You were going to ask how I know all of this.”

“What-”

“Now hold your other thought~... the Lacuna is just a practice chamber. So even though I spent all seven hundred twenty-seven years of my life in this world there. I still know how the variants, their abilities, and their body functions work.”

“You’ve been the most helpful with info so far.”

<Hey.>

After that Atlas and I went over to the bridge, he walked over to this table on the side that had a map of sorts on it.

“What’s this?”

“A world map, I’m choosing our next stop.”

Hm…

Where could we even go though? Dynanimus was dangerous since they had me wanted for a crazy amount, Chroterr was destroyed, and Viantis… wait. Isn’t Four over there?

I turned to my side, my hand to my right ear.

“Ode.”

<Hm?>

“What about Four?”

<Ah- um… about him. We’re going to have to send Levin over to collect him, a bit of an incident happened almost as soon as he arrived haha…>

An incident? What did he do now…

“I’ll talk to Levin about it in a bit.”

<No need, I’ll just tell him.>

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned back toward Atlas.

“I’ve got our next destination~”

“What is it?”

“Well the only continent that I can take into account that is quick for a pit stop, doesn’t care about criminal acts, and won’t try killing us over stupid traditions would be Synacri. The Dwarven continent.”