[Is anyone else getting insane headaches, or is it just me?]

[These headaches are getting worse. Is Dawd to blame?]

[Something is definitely wrong with Dawd. Is it harmful to us?]

[Help! I drank a load of D-fuel and now my brain is about to explode!]

These were just a few examples of the type of posts Valerie saw, and continued to see over the next few days. Much like the first one that she had received, these had all been pushed to her through an alert system she set up.

Essentially pinging her whenever someone mentioned specific keywords, such as ’headache’ ’migraine’ or ’D-fuel’.

There were a few dud results, people talking about how dealing with certain things could be ’such a headache’ or discussing certain flavour possibilities of D-fuel, things like that. But as the days went on, the positive hits became more and more likely, as well as more frequently. Until Valerie’s phone was nearly pinging once an hour with new posts.

Naturally the ’journalists’ scraping the forums for stories quickly caught onto this, and started to release multiple stories about it.

That was why, as Valerie sat on her couch at home sipping ’wine’ from her glass, she was watching a press conference from an official representative of ’Rift Divers’ company. Although it wasn’t exactly as cut throat as many people were hoping.

The official simply walked out onto stage, declared that D-fuel was not only safe, but beneficial for those who were drinking it, before half-answering a few questions and then leaving the stage. People barely got any information out of them before they had left, creating a new storm online that the media eagerly fed on like vultures.

Turning off the TV, Valerie let out a heavy sigh and finished her ’wine’, licking her lips to get any more traces of the iron tinged liquid.

After taking it from Smith, Valerie had done some much needed experiments on his blood. The first thing she had tested was how it reacted with her [Eternal Companion].

Surprisingly enough, whether it was in the flask or in any other container, the blood did not spoil from being inside of her shadow. That narrowed down the issues to transferring it between worlds, and when she went back into Dawd she confirmed that it went both ways.

For whatever reason, the process of transferring between worlds polluted or drained the blood of whatever it was that gave it its taste and nutrition for her. Even the system in Dawd did not react when she drank some, confirming that the ’Sanguine Essence’ had been stripped from it.

The same was true for any type of food, going in either direction. It didn’t just come out stale, it came out completely green and rotten. The only exception was plant-life, such as the wood of the spear.

It would kill them by transferring them, but if they were already dead then nothing would happen to them. That confused her even more.

Beans’ transference wasn’t as simple as she thought either. Moving him between worlds drained a lot of energy from her, and in all honestly she enjoyed him being in the real world. Not just because he was adorable and fluffy, but because it added another layer of protection to her real world body.

After seeing what he could turn into, and still having her assassin thrall acting as a body guard, Valerie had no thoughts in her mind that anyone would be able to mess with her.

Her phone pinged again, drawing her eyes away from the pathetic press conference as she picked it up with a smidgen of apprehension, waiting to see if it was a message about more than just a headache.

While that was technically the case, it was not the one that she was expecting.

{Revenant: We need to have a little group meeting, immediately. Despite interference from a certain someone, everything else has been going according to my timeline. Which means that within the next few days, the secret is going to be out and the world is about to change.

We need to discuss things, in person, and figure out what we are going to do.}

Valerie read over the message and sent a quick thumbs up as a response, before tossing her phone back down. She sighed heavily, and held out her hand. Her cane lifted itself from the ground, flying over to her like the thunder gods hammer, where it settled comfortably into her grasp.

Using it to support herself, she slowly rose to her feet, and hobbled towards her bedroom.

With Smith’s blood, and a few other very generous donors, she had managed to heal herself a bit more and regained more use of her legs. Although there were still times when she had to fall back onto the chair, after exhausting herself.

But it was still progress nonetheless. It was also in this progress, that she learned that synth-blood, which is what people with more cybernetics used, tasted like grape juice for some reason, which was better than she expected.

*** 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Logging into Dawd, Belladonna left the inn she had been staying in and headed towards the local tower of Mystica. She had spent the last few days, in preparation for everything, grinding her levels. She was now level 49, just a hair away from the level that gave most people their transformation skills, although she was not too bothered by that.

She had her transformations already, so it was unlikely she was going to get anything at all.

Her grinding had most netted her stat points, as well as a few source remnants. However whatever she collected, she stored in her [Eternal Companion] so that she could transfer them to the real world, either for herself or her friends. They were going to need them, after all, if what Revenant said came true for once.

Entering into the tower, Belladonna entered using her source this time which put her into the more exclusive second floor which was mostly filled with members and powerful source users like herself.

No other players had yet risen to such a height. In fact many of them were still struggling to form their first tier of source, although it had occurred with some pro-level players from what she had seen as well as few that understood magic better than others.

She sauntered over to the receptionist counter, leaning on it casually as she gave the woman behind the counter a slightly threatening smile.

"So, What’s this I hear about a teleportation service that you have been hiding from me, and why did I have to hear it from some random elf instead of you?"