Jason floated over the water of the River Faron, meditating on his progress towards diamond rank. He had not been human for a quarter of a century, yet he had always clung to his humanity. It had been a close thing, a couple of times, but he’d always managed to hold on. Power, destiny, and no few of his own choices seemed determined to make him something more than human, already rendering him immortal. He couldn’t help but think that they would also make him something less.One day, he would come into the fullness of his power. The System. The full realisation of his astral kingdom. Whatever it was listening to prayers led to. And he had been listening, not that he could do anything about it. What he could do something about was holding onto his humanity.Dawn had been in Jason’s position once. Looking down the barrel of transcendent power, losing track of who she once was. She’d been sent to Earth to anchor her sense of mortality before she left mortality behind. Jason had been doing the same thing, spending as much of his years on Earth as he could indulging in time with friends and family. They did everything from fighting vampires to learning to kite surf. High-rank agility helped a lot with the latter.As Europe was slowly but surely reclaimed by humanity, Jason increasingly left that task to the humans. Humphrey continued to participate, but the team at large did not. They moved their combat from Earth to the outer edges of Jason’s astral spaces, where Rufus had done much of his gold-rank training.The dimensional boundaries of the astral spaces offered fluctuating magical conditions and a plethora of often bizarre gold-rank monsters. Rufus had always acted with caution, never going too close to the outer edge, but things were different with the full team.The astral spaces were the only place on Earth, or at least Earth adjacent, that could offer genuine challenge to the most powerful adventurers. Jason’s grandmother had started (...)